iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

We need to talk about the people who still think “AI will just go away”.

James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Google, Microsoft, and Meta, like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Bytedance, and High-Flyer, are still going to do LLMs even in the very unlikely event the upstart labs completely fail.

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bree bird 🇨🇦 @goose.ski · 05/04/2026

we made being a charlatan a viable career path — TV talking heads, opinion columnists; even journalism proper has become little more or less than industrialized charlatanism

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

So the FT has this in-house data guy who makes a lot of shit up and vibe-stats his way to justifying his weird ideological whims most recently he wrote a piece on how AI would make everyone centrist I wrote about it, and for you methods nerds, you will never believe it unherd.com/newsroom/the...

unherd.com

The FT’s AI optimism rests on shaky science

Last weekend, the Financial Times published an article about the broader social impacts of AI. Studying, managing, and mitigating the negative impacts of the technological transition is supremely impo...

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Great piece in FT on the crisis of humanitarianism. archive.is/OBSGt

archive.is

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

the crypto bubble taught a bunch of people that if they just plug their ears and yell ‘fake’ for long enough, things they don’t like will just go away (even if those things are still very much still around and the people behind it are funding a superpac of unprecedented size)

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 15/12/2025

Nature would do well to publish more content like this thoughtful piece from @kevinbaker.bsky.social and fewer Buzzfeed listicles gussied up as career advice "Five productivity hacks for using AI in your scientific workflow"

artificialbureaucracy.substack.com

Context Widows

or, of GPUs, LPUs, and Goal Displacement

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Just heard that the main differentiator between the US and Chinese gov’t’s approaches to AI is that the US (and US defence establishment) want AGI and China wants AI 100% integrated across their economy by 2035. big AI’s marketing fantasy will have huge natsec implications

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

re: AI we are in a feedback loop where hype is used to attract capital (which is needed to further develop the tech), but each increase in hype raises expectations, growing the delta between current performance and market expectations

There is a gap between a current technology and its (presumed)
potential

Capital is needed for R&D to close the gap
Investors put in money on the basis of the new (increased) expectations

Hype is created around the technology to spur investment

The gap between the technology's current performance and its (assumed) potential increases

Hype increases expectations around the technology

Innovation Hype Loop (1)

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

the issue here is that AOC’s record on Palestine *does* speak for itself, and it doesn’t say what she wants it to.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

In just a few short years, we went from “Facebook for dogs” to “ethnic cleansing on the blockchain”.

The final slide deck, titled "The Great Trust: From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally" has been shared with members of the current and former US administrations, according to people familiar with the project, along with other governments and stakeholders in the Middle East. "Great" is short for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation.
It envisaged all Gaza's public land being put into a trust for development, whose assets could be sold to investors via digital tokens traded on a blockchain. Gazans would be offered the chance to contribute their privately owned land to the trust in return for a token that gave them the right to a permanent housing unit.
Advanced Manufacturing
Example: EV Industrial Zone
American electric vehicle companios build factories ant facilities for employees in northern Gaza and
Southern Israol
Minerais and Matorials shipped from KSA and UAE
Assembled into batteries and cars by skilled (low-cost) personnel in factories powered by Gas from
Gaza- Marine and PV energy
Cars delivered in Europe with low shipping costs via El-Arish Port and 0% tax (free trade zone) - competing with Chinese EVs
EV Companies gain profits - while giving a better future for Palestinians and Israelis
One of the slides from the Great Trust deck showing an idea for postwar Gaza's industrial sector

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

plus ça change funny how this part always gets cut out of America’s self-narrative about WW2 “Students at American universities were caught in the middle of academic freedom battles as anti-Nazi faculty were forced off campus and pro-Nazi groups spread hateful propaganda.”

Between the German government's disinformation campaign and the groups that voluntarily aligned themselves with Hitler, Nazism had tentacles that touched every American community to some extent. Thousands of people joined groups like the German American Bund and the Silver Legion, marching down American streets in Nazi-esque uniforms, sending their children to Nazi summer camps, and heiling their leaders.
Supporters of celebrity radio host Father Coughlin's Christian Front roughed up Jews on subway platforms and discouraged Americans from shopping at Jewish-owned stores. In the marbled corridors of Washington, DC, a German agent ran an ingenious operation to disseminate shocking quantities of isolationist and pro-German propaganda at taxpayer expense. This twentieth-century version of spam email showed up unsolicited in millions of mailboxes around the country. Business leaders found themselves courted by Nazi envoys who promised huge profits in the Reich if they could only convince Roosevelt to keep out of the war. Students at American universities were caught in the middle of academic freedom battles as anti-Nazi faculty were forced off campus and pro-Nazi groups spread hateful propaganda.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

someone please tell this dumbass about the literal holocaust

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 09/04/2025

“Prime but with human beings” is trafficking. Often when people use “tech company but for x” they don’t understand the implications, but they know exactly what they are saying here.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Dual claims have been made by some analysts that will now be tested: 1) the goal is not to build credibility with the market, but rather to bring it under political control by demanding fealty from businesses in exchange for tariff waivers,

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Apparently telling a *literal* fascist group that they’re a shadow of their former selves is what constitutes “hateful conduct” on the other site, in case anyone was wondering.

Hi James Rosen-Birch AA*
，
Your post was reported and has had its visibility limited for violating the X rules. Specifically:
We have determined your post violated our rules against Hateful Conduct.
You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
James Rosen-Birch AA* @provisionalidea
@Betar_USA you're really just a shadow of what you were in the 20s, though. Like how neonazis today are just white trash.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Kylie is focusing on the wrong thing here: while the government began by using “antisemitism” accusations as the wedge, they are now moving beyond it to banning any and all criticism of the government as “anti government speech”.

Kylie Cheung @kylietcheung
Follow
NYU canceled a speech by the former president of Doctors Without Borders because she was going to discuss the genocide in Gaza. A slide about the death toll in Gaza "could be perceived as antisemitic":
A couple of the slides in her presentation touched on the casualties in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war as well as the cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Liu said she was told the slides about Gaza "could be perceived as antisemitic" while the USAID section might be perceived as "anti governmental."
Liu, who was already in New York when she got the call, offered to make edits to those slides but then three hours later, after some deliberations, she said the university apologized and said they had to cancel.
"I was stunned," Liu said.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

The promise of the Friedman revolution was that ‘unchaining’ companies from any and all responsibilities to society would cause unprecedented growth Thirty years later, it turns out that hypothesis was wrong The market continued to slow, but stock manipulation masked it x.com/_timbarker/s...

x.com

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

you know, it's kinda crazy that there are well-known and widely-celebrated stories of John Deere invoking kill switches against Russian military users of tractors but if you suggest the US government has the same capability on American-made weapons, it's denounced as crazy talk

The image of a John Deere tractor from a YouTube video seen pulling a Russian tank is an example of the epic struggle underway for the farmers in Ukraine.
John Deere has struck a blow against the Russian Army, in its war of aggression in Ukraine.
The tractor company found out Russian troops in the occupied city of Melitopol have stolen all the equipment from a farm equipment dealership, and shipped it to Chechnya, according to a Ukrainian businessman in the area.
But after a journey of more than 700 miles, the thieves were unable to use any of the equipment, because it had been locked remotely.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

the feed on the other site is total ghiblidegook

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

plane just got sprayed with antifreeze and my brain thought “we’ve been antifrozen”

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

the mRNA vaccine platform started about 30ish years ago as a USG biodefence initiative against novel pathogens; I used to get coached by one of the folks who did early development on it the deep foresight of US planners amazed me to see that system dismantled is horrifying

What a difference a month makes. In February, scientists reported that an experimental vaccine showed promise in a small group of patients with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is often diagnosed late and carries a notoriously poor prognosis.
The vaccine - using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology similar to that found in some Covid vaccines - activated tumour-targeting immune cells that persisted for nearly four years after surgery in some patients. Not all 16 recipients produced an immune response but those who did were less likely to see their cancer recur. These early findings, from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, have already spurred a follow-up study.
Could mRNA vaccines now be the White House's latest target? On March 16, scientists were reportedly being advised by US National Institutes of Health officials to remove references to mRNA technology from grant applications.
The informal advice followed an email from the NIH's acting director soliciting details of grants, contracts and collaborations involving mRNA technology.
Nature reports the existence of a spreadsheet with around 130 entries.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

the airport here has ads for uranium deposits in Saskatchewan

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

what kind of sign is it when the National Post starts pushing conscription

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

As the US increases its threats against Greenland, Denmark increases their Arctic military vessel production and replaces their American anti-ship missiles with Norwegian ones

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

This continues to be the biggest story in the country: DOGE has already squandered half a trillion dollars in 6 weeks. Not billion. half a trillion, $500 billion talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-p...

talkingpointsmemo.com

IRS Predicts DOGE Lost Half a Trillion Dollars for the USA

The Post reports today that the IRS’ internal projections estimate that the...

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

A bunch of Democratic strategists were tasked with the problem of how to win the Silicon Valley billionaires back from Trump, pored over the blog posts and manifestos of the tech right, and laundered it into a milquetoast platform of platitudes about red tape called Abundance.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 22/03/2025

“Though the AI was trained on the work done by the LIS [legal investigations support] team, it has not yet been able to replicate it. And now 10 engineers charged with developing the AI have been sacked and the fate of the project has been thrown into doubt…”

forbes.com

Google Wants AI To Process Police Data Requests. It’s Not Going Well.

After Google laid off part of the team responsible for ensuring government requests for users’ private information are legal, it turned to AI to pick up the slack. Employees tell Forbes it hasn’t.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

One of the main benefits of the Saab Gripen contract replacing the F35s is that it gives us full IP and systems control, as well as the right to modify the jets as we see fit. As the nation of the Avro Arrow, this gives us an opportunity to rebuild our defence aerospace sector.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

The new Reichstag is a Tesla dealership

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Religious sermons here in Toronto are starting to make reference to American threats of annexation.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Back when I worked in (American!) large and public businesses, we used to run special playbooks for execs traveling through or to unfree places. Scripts, debriefs, lawyers on standby, burner devices, VPNs, tight content controls. That America is becoming such a place is wild.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21/03/2025

one of the ways in which the madisonian logic of the american system doesn't seem to be working is that ambition *isn't* countering ambition. there are all these lawmakers who just, don't give a shit, even when giving a shit could propel them to political fame and success

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

OH on the bus: “I applied for my visa three times, and the first time I missed it because the postal service is shit. Well, it wasn’t shit. They were on strike. Which is absolutely their right, I totally supported them for, and was totally reasonable for them to do.” I love Canadians.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

On further reflection, this is the right-wing attempt at grievance politics — but from people with all the power and privilege and no real grievances except hurt egos. Which is why it comes off so ridiculous.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

DOGE is the Trump administration’s squadristi (“blackshirts”), digital paramilitaries whose goal is to terrorize the system’s functionaries and ensure it only serves the wannabe dictator. That they use a veneer of efficiency and not revolutionary violence is a sign of the times.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

The thing I consistently do not understand about this Administration, from this to the “did you say thank you”s, is the absolute loser vibes from people who control the house, senate, executive, and judiciary, and are careening towards absolute power at breakneck speed

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Katz here offers Gazans two options: Expel Hamas and be expelled from Gaza, or don’t and be exterminated.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Growing up in the Jewish Diaspora in the 90s and early 00s, it was fairly common to hear people list names of famous scholars, scientists, and celebrities who were Jewish as ‘proof of our greatness’ inevitably, some of them (like Marx) were atheists who disavowed the faith

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

the thing about racists and ethnonationalists is that they’re profoundly mediocre, if not downright pathetic individuals who try to salve their insignificance by hiding behind the greatness of a purported group

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

A private citizen installing his own encrypted backdoor into the White House. Incredible.

Teddy Schleifer & @teddyschleifer
Wild story from my colleagues@maggieNYT @kateconger@esullivannyt@RMac18
In February, Chris Stanley, who currently works as a security engineer at two of Mr.
Musk's companies, SpaceX and the social media platform X, went to the roof of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex to explore installing Starlink there. Mr. Stanley has also been working with Mr. Musk's Department of Government Efficiency as a special government employee.
As Mr. Stanley opened a door leading to the roof of the building, which is directly opposite an entrance to the White House, he tripped an alarm that alerted the Secret Service to his presence. It created a dramatic scene as a uniformed officer rushed to respond, according to four people with knowledge of the incident.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

can someone please tell @mark-carney.bsky.social that the proper answer to this question is, “I have already complied with the legal requirements of the role. I do, however, understand that we have had scandals around this before in this country, and the extraordinary times we live in…

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

It’s hard to emphasize just how much of US hegemony was based on trust. Trust the values meant something. Trust the laws would be followed. Trust the central banks would be responsible. Trust the tools and weapons would do what they said on the box. All of that’s evaporating.

James Rosen-Birch
@provisio....3h
l used to feel some sympathy to American concerns about the need to maintain the military advantage against authoritarian adversaries.
Then America became our authoritarian adversary.
Geoff Lewis
@GeoffLewisOrg.4h
The U.S. military needs to accelerate dramatically in order to keep up with our accelerating world.
Therefore, it will be the responsibility of a...
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Geoff Lewis
@GeoffLewisOrg •1h
Solely for thought experiment purposes, let's assume your notion is correct. In that scenario, you still ought to want multiple scaled transcendent defense tech companies to avoid extreme concentration of power at that level.
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Rosen-Birch 44
@provisi... •53m
When America's threatening our home country? (it's yours too, Geoff!)
At that point, I don't want continued American military advantage. I don't trust America to use it responsibly. And American companies just aren't safe purchases for Canadian defence with the killswitch risk.
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James Rosen-Birch 44
@provisi... •51m
This, by the way, is the calculation now happening across the world, with both allied and neutral powers. Nobody sees American weapons as viable investments anymore.
Which does not bode well for American defencetech companies.
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James Rosen-Birch 44
@provisi... •41m
American companies (esp defence cos) could only be "transcendent" (ie transnationally successful) in a stable liberal world order where America was a respected and trusted power, because American corporate power is American soft power. If nobody trusts that power, nobody buys.
Ill

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

“Companies exist to plan, otherwise we’d all work for ourselves and there’d be nothing but freelancers. A company is a planning machine; if you take away their ability to plan, a company can’t company anymore.” - FT’s Rob Armstrong on market impact of Trumpian uncertainty

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Musk is absolutely abusing this platform to make it appear there is more pro-annexationist and internal division in Canada than there actually is (in addition to openly advocating for Poilievre) Some have gone so far as to say Elontwitter should be banned

THE TYEE
Log in
X Threatens Our Democracy. Canada Should
Ban It
The risks of election interference, misinformation and attempts to support a US takeover are too great.
David Climenhaga
7 Mar 2025 Alberta Politics
David J. Climenhaga is an award-winning journalist, author, post-secondary teacher, poet and trade union communicator. He blogs at AlbertaPolitics.ca. Follow him on BlueSky @djclimenhaga.bsky.social.

CTV News
Poilievre didn't directly answer when asked whether he accepts Musk's endorsement, but said it would be "nice if we could convince Mr.
Musk to open some of his factories here in
Canada."
St-Onge accused Poilievre of "kissing up to Elon
Musk."

Since Trudeau's resignation on Monday, Musk has posted repeatedly about Canadian politics on X - the platform formerly known as Twitter he bought in 2022 for $44bn. He has praised clips of Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada's Conservative party, while relishing in Trudeau's downfall and engaging with rightwing Canadian influencers.
Trump and Musk have been promoting the idea of Canada becoming part of the United States, something that every major Canadian party leader, including Poilievre, has rejected. Trudeau posted on Tuesday that there "isn't a snowball's chance in hell" of Trump's proposal becoming reality.

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Reminder that (1) American mfg wages were only middle-class high during the postwar boom because the rest of the world was bombed out and the only place that could make quality stuff en masse was America (also why America never recovered from emerging competition thereafter)

You don't really want a Manufacturing Economy.
You want a political economy where industries have the economies of scale and lack of international competion to support generous compensation for twice the employees that they really need and a political system that forces them to

(Manufacturing is way, way too competitive and low margin to support that arrangement now)

If you want a Manufacturing Economy for security reasons you're on much firmer ground (which is basically where l am), but you gotta give up the idea they will produce plentiful cushy jobs

Manufacturing is not about producing jobs; it's about producing physical stuff

(I kinda wrote a whole book with this as the subtext: amazon.com/Parable-Rust-N...)

If you want to support a 2000 hr, 80k/yr manuf job, here's the back-of-the-envelope math
- $40/hr
- fully-loaded employment cost is 1.5x nominal, so $60
- need revs 2x labor cost to cover overhead and material, so $120
- retail markup 2x wholesale to cover distribution, so $240..

So in order to support a Good Job, $240 of consumer spend on manufactured goods must only require 1 hour of manufacturing labor, and thus $480,000 of consumer spend is required to support 1 full Good Job ...

And with 80k being the median US household income, of which you could maybe get to 25-30k spend on manuf goods, domestic demand could only support 7-8% employment in manufacturing at the Good Jobs rate

So of you want more manufacturing jobs than that, then you either need a massive export market where you are competing with China, or you gotta have lower labor costs

Commenter:
Interesting. I can't think of any obvious reason you are wrong. I've never thought about it this way.

Reply:
The most obvious thing I skipped is that consumer spend is 65-70% rather than 100% of the economy, government and capital investment requires a good deal of manuf goods as well. But it's still hard to get over 10% under those assumptions

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James Rosen-Birch @provisionalidea.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

If you thought “The Department of Government Efficiency” sounded like an Orwellian twist on a Kafkaesque nightmare — wait til you see this.

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