iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

This is utter bullshit, projecting 2026 Trump onto 2020 Trump. The “inject bleach” thing was nuts…but called out as crazy. Covid was widely accepted as external, not created by the govt…and Operation Warp Speed was an incredible vindication of everything good about the US system. We saved the world.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

In both of those cases, it was clear that the US would still be the global leader in whatever followed. I think it’s sinking in for a lot of Americans that that era is over. And that the American middle class as the envy of normies around the world is ending with it.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

The “punish OpenAI” line is appealing but kind of misses the point. It concedes that the problem isn’t that OpenAI created this tech; it’s that they *used* it irresponsibly. Creation of frontier models is hard. Using them is not. There will be a *lot* of users less responsible than OpenAI.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

I was going to make a “well this predator was just a kid…” joke. But I find it more notable when far-right figures casually throw in a singular “they”.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

A common refrain in Colorado is how all the transplants are “turning the place into California”. I give you the list of nutty ballot initiatives the right wing has placed on the ballot this cycle:

List of a dozen ballot initiatives, all but two of which are opposed by the Democratic Party.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

A crucial thing to remember about the discourse on “manliness” is that it is not driven by rugged, confident sex machines. It is driven by incels who are pathologically insecure about their failure to perform some imagined ideal of maleness. Ie the least manly men in the country.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

Imagine if people had taken as much exception to people saying computers could "talk to each other" during the early days of networking as Bluesky does to people saying that agentic AI is "thinking" and "planning" and "going rogue". This is the dumbest front in the AI war.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

Part of what’s so interesting/complex/frustrating about the AI discourse is that there are so many distinct groups all masquerading as each other.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

I’m trying to figure out if a pick’em pool I’m in is a scam. I assumed (and still assume?) it’s a legitimate pool if ~200 entrants, but I was invited by mistake. In lieu of another Rob Shearer who frequently mistypes his gmail address as mine…

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

Apparently I got crushed by my interlocutor’s overpowering logic.

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

yes, i am saying this. literally this. i am saying that you should not care about water for 16,000 people when "growing alfalfa for export in deserts with approximately zero precipitation" is literally orders of magnitude more water and vastly more pointless.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

The irony to post this on a site hell-bent on redefining the words “thinking” and “reasoning” to suit the political project of the moment.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

It was only a few months ago Bluesky was insistent that the main problem with AI was water usage. I wonder how many of our new AI language police have deleted those posts.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

It is ironic that “thinking is a thing humans do and machines don’t, and I refuse to provide any definition beyond that” is alleged to be “being specific”. Banning words because feels is not specificity.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

Never underestimate the capacity of the LinkedIn crowd to warp any business trend. Amazon’s famous “write a 6-page doc” culture wasn’t about the value of the six-page doc. It was about slide presentations sucking.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

This is very much “You’re not allowed to say he ‘went crazy’! That’s offensive! He simply experienced a violent dissociative episode…”

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 26/09/2026

There is some truth to this, but the real accusation (which the admin is TERRIBLE at articulating) is that the insurance companies are stealing subsidies by signing up ghosts. Which is absolutely a real thing with Medicare fraud.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 26/09/2026

Two of my slightly-unfair biases: people who don’t like dogs and people who only pretend to enjoy sports. Trump is both.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 24/09/2026

This was the debate that dominated linguistics in the Chomsky era. And “children learn language purely by hearing it” was decisively refuted: there simply wasn’t enough data. LLMs are drastically different, but it’s absurd to claim the structure of a system is irrelevant and only inputs matter.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 24/09/2026

September 24th: first day since spring that I used a space heater. Winter is coming, Colorado.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 24/09/2026

Whenever they claim they “restored” these names, remember that Fort Bragg is now named after a random PFC they picked because he has the same last name as the Confederate general. Because they *know* they’re wrong.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 23/09/2026

Bad (self-proclaimed) philosophers, like bad political and social scientists, tend to be bad because they confuse learning the names for things, which is a big part of any field, with the actual contributions of the field. It would be a like a mathematics paper full of definitions but no theorems.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 23/09/2026

There is more philosophical depth here than “common meanings of words”. I subscribe to the school that believes consciousness is less an experience than a perception. We are wired to try to divine intent when we see what looks like autonomous behavior. Ie the intuition is itself the ground truth.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 23/09/2026

I feel like there is pretty significant division between people who think Nagel’s “what is it like to be a bat?” actually provides a definition of consciousness and those who thought it was a good exposition of why he couldn’t and didn’t.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 23/09/2026

Having done what may be my last town hall event for local candidates, I’m starting to conclude that one of the reasons red counties stay red is because Democrats get lulled into a belief that “collegiality” is the path even when they’re completely out of power.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 22/09/2026

There has been way way too much analysis of what Mamdani’s success means in terms of socialism and way way too little of how young, charismatic new-media natives can crush complacent octogenarians even if some of their signature policies are a little bit nutty.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 22/09/2026

I am begging anyone to brief Trump about anything ever.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 22/09/2026

In fairness, one of my formative experiences was asking a social studies teacher to write me a recommendation. His thing was that he would—for (just about) any student who asked—but you had to sit with him while he did it, to demonstrate that it took time and effort and this was actually a favor. 1/

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 22/09/2026

A warning that in future years it will be branded the “pumpkin spice equinox” to drive consumer activity.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 22/09/2026

I really really really don’t want to hear the Blueskyers tell us this is good reason to “spend” some of that margin tacking farther to the left.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 21/09/2026

The judge *rejected* the DA’s offer to let the guy who attacked a protest last year off with nothing but a misdemeanor. My understanding is that this is *extremely* rare. Ie the judge is implying that the (elected Republican DA) is intentionally throwing the case.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 21/09/2026

You only hear about things like rice as Giffen goods. I’m wondering if the American obsession with protein means ground beef has reached that level, or whether this is all just a complete lie.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 20/09/2026

I mean, not the Kennedy Center. Not the reflecting pool. I’m just saying he is doing SO much damage it’s a mistake to pretend that all of it is part of some coherent strategy.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 20/09/2026

I'm generally not all that defensive of core curriculums or humanities teaching at universities...but how did so many educated people dodge doing even one undergrad survey of philosophy?

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General Boles @generalboles.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

*this is a sub-epistle*

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Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The groups that Taylor Lorenz maps onto are grifters and absolutely full-tilt social media addicts

Two Drinks with . . . Taylor Lorenz
Social media’s best-known gadfly insists: ‘I haven’t changed what I believe. I’ve just gotten disillusioned about the political landscape. There’s not a clear political group I map onto now.’
By Peter Savodnik
09.18.26 —
Two Drinks

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/09/2026

I really wonder how peak Twitter would have evolved if it had the nuclear block. It really does allow you to assume good faith and engage knowing you can then just nuke if it turns out to be pure trolling.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/09/2026

I think I’ve implied this several times, but it’s clear that my doubts about AI capability from five (two?) years ago have been thoroughly refuted. In SE, at least, it doesn’t just replace team members with negative productivity. Anyone who claims it’s not an obvious productivity boon is blind.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/09/2026

I disapprove of how Will Stancil uses quote tweets.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 18/09/2026

I think one of the big philosophical challenges for the next generation will be grappling with the realization that Love and Originality and Moral Judgement are not the ineffable ideals we pretend. And that this doesn’t have to undermine their value in a well-lived life.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/09/2026

This is absurdly myopic. It’s like saying stock prices should reflect nothing but the P/E ratio. The numbers on inflation may not be that bad, but we are witnessing the most catastrophic rhetoric and political positioning on any issue in decades. Trump is actively promising worse inflation.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/09/2026

Does your thermostat “know” what temperature it is? When a computer is calculating a route—spending seconds running an algorithm and incrementally building up internal state to answer the question, is it “thinking”? These uses of the terms have never been controversial. Redefining them is new.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/09/2026

Bluesky has all the predictable reactions to this. It’s not worth it. If the main thing that gives you satisfaction is the identity of the politicians in power and not the actual lives of people in your country, you live in a failed state.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

This is Doctorow really showing his cards: "I reserve the right to claim that coding in mere Python is no sign of intelligence." No, dude. Reserving that right reveals that this is all bad faith. You don't believe that AT ALL. You're just tossing out rhetoric.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

I seem to have spent the last couple of days scolding people for pretending they have unambiguous definitions of terms like "consciousness" and "sentience". The post-compatible version of my claim is there is no rigorous definition of these terms. But that erases a huge amount of nuance.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

Subtweet: People are agonizing over whether AI agents are capable of operating “independently” and “autonomously”, and whether they are “sentient”. Folks: insects can operate autonomously. Nematodes operate autonomously. This is an absurdly low bar. Of *course* autonomous AI agents are practical.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

I get that the last time we did this an academic egged on the participants to turn it into an abusive, exploitative spectacle. So what if not an academic but Netflix?

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

Some people I’m hesitant to block because I don’t want to hide the proof that these AI deniers aren’t strawmen. “Cars are just as intelligent as modern AI” is an utterly indecipherable claim.

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