iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I love this show so much lmao

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 29/09/2026

And you know if they had actually succeeded in making products that broadly improved the lives of anyone outside software engineering they might have gotten away with it! Instead it's been "now your potato peeler costs $15 more because it has AI, use it or we'll shoot this puppy"

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Never have I been closer to running for office then when dealing with how few renters protections we have

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Angela Collier @acollierastro.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I wish the people actually cared about the safety of children playing sports because I don't think children can consent to playing tackle football and it should be illegal to have it in public schools.

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Could it have something to do with the fact that the GOP put in so much effort marketing Big Tech as liberals for the past couple decades? So it's not like, a factory or whatever, it's a "liberal" project now somehow?

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Oh, I also thought the Harfoot plot in season 2 was a little weak but I liked it a lot in season 1 so it's fine, haha

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm sad that Bronwyn's actress left the production. I liked the ending to Adar's storyline but I feel like the "evil" side could potentially be much less interesting going forward now that that has happened.

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I actually really love the writing in Rings of Power pretty consistently, I seem to be one of the few, haha

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Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

it feels odd that what's holding technology back from benefiting humanity at this moment, isn't really a technological problem, but a bureaucratic issue of incentive structures there's so much money being wasted on things that are either neutral or a net negative within tech now, it's weird

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This thread is much more fun than actually watching Game of Thrones lol

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

"I'm not quite sure yet how to stare into the fourth dimension" is a pretty great sentence

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

It's definitely harder when there is no longer, like, *news* and possibilities for speculation and stuff like that. :(

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I have a friend who nannys for a very rich family and while she doesn't get paid, like, *terribly*, they did go on vacation a few months ago and spent several thousand dollars a night just for their hotel and didn't notice. You'd think some of that could go to the nanny instead.

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The absolute youngest millennials are 30 now lol

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Don't worry we are very normal

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

This is a video about Angela being angry and it's very relatable because I am also angry and on some level I feel like not being angry in 2026 is like... kind of a yellow flag tbh

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

These videos are so fun I am enjoying them so much

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

My favorite one by far was "Richard Dawkins concludes cocaine is conscious, even if it doesn't know it" WHY IS ANYONE WRITING HEADLINES ABOUT RICHARD DAWKINS

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

How has this existed for months without me being aware of it

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

You can't tell me it's impossible to go through life without using chatbots because not only am I doing that just fine, literally so was every single other human less than like four years ago. Is your memory really that short?

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Maybe chatgpt is in charge of your timeline, too (I can see the post)

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I just finally got caught up with this season, I'm liking it a lot

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I feel like the dystopia finished manifesting real quick all of a sudden

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

It's the drawing equivalence between "spirituality" and "caring about being a good person"

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Update: the egg was not boiled enough

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

The discord voice chat I am in right now is just six people trying to crowdsource how to boil an egg

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Today's episode of The Pitt was very stressful

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

One of iWot's new partners for this owns an AI company. Because we live in the worst timeline.

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

This post is the reason that I just realized this site is a ".app"

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Are there people out there who have never put a lego in their mouth?

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I just rewatched Universe again a few weeks ago, I fucking love this show

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 19/12/2025

a post that should be incoherent but is not because we're all trapped on the same emotional roller coaster together

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I'd take a year off work, instantly. And then go back to school.

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

The last time I saw this meme I was in the middle of Diplomat and my reaction was "oh god"

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Every technology problem is three social problems in a trench coat

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Don't put this evil on me

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Literally came here to make this exact comment

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Well, it *was* my favorite news all week

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

BREE IS WATCHING THE DIPLOMAT THIS IS MY FAVORITE NEWS ALL WEEK

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Ryan @ryanbars.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

"The researchers were stunned" that AI made the participants worse. "We didn’t even really consider a slowdown as a possibility" I would like to request new researchers

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