iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

(As was presumably the intent.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

For those who don't know Hebrew or ktav Rashi, and may be wondering about the passage depicted on the cover, it's this:

A screenshot from https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/425178?lang=bi, showing this text:

Sefer Razin D'Oraita, Rabbi Yechiel Michael from Zloczow (1731-1786)

It is known that when Issac was born, he was born with the soul of a female, as it is written in Or Hachaim, and through the akeidah (binding of Issac) he got a male soul that can influence (meaning, can impregnate). ... But, this is known according to the Sod (Secret/Mysticism) of reincarnation - that at times, a female would be in a male body, because in the reasons of gilgal (reincarnation) the soul of a female would come to be in a male. ...

Translation by Abby Stein

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yes, this. It's legit to dislike the use of underhanded tactics to help Democrats regain the Senate; but it's foolish to try to combat that by helping Republicans instead.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Only Nixon could go to China, I suppose.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

(BTW, your math is a bit off even aside from that; increasing p($1B) by 10 percentage *points* would be worth $100m, but in fact p($1B) is near zero, as even the most arrogant aspiring billionaire must surely realize. But that also lowers the expected tax, so may roughly cancel out.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

5% of $1B is $50m, not $10m. But people aren't 100% rational, anyway. Insofar as billionaires (IMHO correctly) perceive this as a targeted attack, they may feel motivated to leave even if they'd technically be better off staying.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

If they fail to express humility, a Roman will pop up behind them and start reminding them that they're mortal.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

No: presumably this belief came from someone who *did* handle a rape accusation that way, but no, this guy legitimately believed it. (I think he was trying to warn us that even a seemingly consensual interaction could be risky. But mostly he was just a bit of a blowhard.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That said, he actually announced this loudly and confidently *during* the mandatory training — I think he thought he was being helpful — so clearly the training isn't magic!

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

FWIW, there's definitely some misinformation about consent; I remember one brother telling everyone ca. 2004 that rape accusations often happen because the woman regretted the sex. I don't think that misinformation *causes* rapes, per se, but if it gives rapists cover, combatting it might help.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

If there isn't one already, then I nominate disco ball: 🪩bureaucracy🪩 . . . can I start using it myself, or do I have to trick some bigots into using it so I can reappropriate it?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

(But the spelling "antisemitism" is 100% fine, if you prefer it.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

FWIW, I don't think the spelling "anti-Semitism" really implies that there's a "Semitism": just as "marine biologists" ≈ "marine biology" + "-ists" (the biologists themselves are not marine), I think "anti-Semitism" ≈ "anti-Semite" + "-ism" and "anti-Blackness" ≈ "anti-Black" + "-ness".

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It makes a nice decoration, it only becomes a problem when people try to pretend it's food.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

So, like, when Hamas took over Gaza, instituted a brutal dictatorship, and its leaders became fabulously wealthy, you interpret that as "resistance", that will instantly vanish as soon as there's nothing to resist? That seems hopelessly naive to me, but OK.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This is one of those neat insights that's so obvious once it's pointed out: selection pressure will have less effect on a non-isolated population (because genes will keep flowing in from outside), and experiments on wild populations have to take that into account.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

TIL they finally changed it! I think part of the motivation for the old rule was a concern about people with incentives to answer the health screening questions in whatever way would let them donate.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Setting aside how creepy that is . . . how would we know if AI agents *weren't* happy to comply? Historical slaveholders sometimes pretended that enslaved people were happy with their lot, but that doesn't mean it was true.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Nonsense. Prof. Bender isn't commenting as a potential consumer, she's commenting as an academic, and presenting herself as an expert on the subject. That comes with obligations. Do you really not see that?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fun fact: those aren't mutually exclusive. Lying is bad, *and* lying is bad!

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If the makers of chicken nuggets are lying, that only makes it more important to have critics willing to tell the truth about them.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If she doesn't like chicken nuggets, and doesn't want to learn about them, that's really her business. But she shouldn't go around spreading misinformation about them. (No, they're not made from parrots.) And for the most part, the only people she's fooling are the people who trust her.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Are you picturing some kind of atmospheric carbon capture? Is there a specific CCS technology that you're bullish on, or just generally bullish that we'll figure something out?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes, definitely considered more humane; and France kept using it until their last executions in 1977. . . . but maybe not *as* humane as intended. It was assumed that the condemned would lose consciousness almost immediately, but there's reason to doubt that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillot...

en.wikipedia.org

Guillotine - Wikipedia

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Online was *not* like that 30 years ago; web sites weren't optimizing for engagement back then, and would have struggled to do so even had they wanted to.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It can't be a scheduled tweet, because it has accurate quotes and a picture. He's just lying, shamelessly, not caring that many readers will know that he's lying.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

To be on the safe side, let's say both.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

That seems simplistic to me. If everyone everywhere agreed to cut power to all AI servers, then sure, we could. But when's the last time that everyone everywhere agreed on something?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Before the internet: "I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me." After the internet:

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

(Don't get me wrong, it's legit to worry that anthropomorphizing AI is risky in a way that anthropomorphizing a door is not. But you should be honest with yourself that that's what you're doing, and that other people aren't necessarily confused just because they weigh the risks differently.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Sure, but we regularly anthropomorphize objects that "are not sentient, embodied entities with their own desires and feelings". If you don't resist when someone says "Ugh, this door just doesn't want to stay open!", then your resistance in the AI case must involve some additional factor.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Heck, an anti-trans Dem could even be better than a hypothetical trans-friendly Republican, if it makes the difference between a Democratic majority and a Republican one: the Democratic caucus will never bring an anti-trans bill up for a vote, while the Republican caucus will.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

(More precisely: the ancestors of sharks split off from the common ancestor of tuna and humans longer ago than the ancestors of tuna and humans split off from each other.)

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Tuna are more closely related to humans than to sharks.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Its profile says in Spanish that it's AI.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

That's a common misconception: it's actually very rare that airplanes fall onto people's houses.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

When Adam delved and Eve sewed, who was then the Robin Hood?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

OK, I'm glad I wasn't the only person confused by this!

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Characters magically coordinating without enough communication is an out-of-universe convention to simplify storytelling IMHO, like ancient Greeks speaking English, or cops driving somewhere together and then telling each other where they are. It's funny, but we just have to accept it.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I wonder if it would make sense to simply have two definitions of "planet" (one geophysical and one astronomical), like with "metal" (chemical vs. astronomical, e.g. oxygen) and "fruit" (culinary vs. botanical, e.g. tomatoes) and so on.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I think you've misread Eiynah's screenshot; it doesn't say what you seem to think.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Why do you keep lying about having read the article, when it would be so easy to just go read it?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I repeat: you obviously haven't read the article you're replying to. Read it, or F off. Don't waste my time by pretending you know something when you obviously do not.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If two events are both rare, then of course it's even more rare that they both happen at the same time. I assume that you've looked into ~0 specific cases — you obviously didn't even read the article that you're responding to — so it's not surprising that you found no cases of that type!

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Are you seriously claiming that no one *ever* forgets their phone in their car? Who do you think you're fooling?

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I mean, people certainly do lose their phones. But yes: if you're someone who always has your phone with you but doesn't always have a baby with you, then it's a good idea to put the phone in the back seat with the baby, so that remembering one guarantees you'll remember the other.

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Ran Ari-Gur @ran-arigur.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I'm sure you find it very comforting to believe that mistakes can never have tragic consequences; but out here in the real world, yes, it's absolutely possible for someone to accidentally do this.

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