iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Extra funny here is the fact that these movies are so divisive that I don't even know which two you mean. I've encountered people who would say 7&9, 7&8, or 8&9.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 25/09/2026

I know there's a lot of recency bias involved, but I would honestly put Succession at #1. I don't think I've ever been that hooked on a show before or since. Parks and Rec, Peep Show, and IASIP should all be higher.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 25/09/2026

Nicolaas van Kampen's essay on the Gibbs Paradox, in addition to being an insightful, no-nonsense explanation gas entropy and indistinguishability ("Quantum mechanics has no bearing on the question"), opens with some comments on physics education that were ahead of the times for 1984!

Beste Dik,
It is a long time since we both attended the lectures by Mrs de Haas-Lorentz on thermodynamics. They were excellent from a pedagogical point of view since they forced you to figure out almost everything yourself. That is a much better way of learning physics than the spoonfeeding of predigested formalisms which is nowadays regarded as the highest wisdom in education. I remember how puzzled I was by the sudden appearance of the term —kN log N in the entropy. After I figured it out I found that there is still much confusion about it in the literature. That is my excuse for bothering you with such a time-worn subject.

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Rob Beschizza @beschizza.com · 23/09/2026

The time is nearly perfect for a movie about the famously chaotic and dramatic 1976 production of Star Wars, starring Ewan McGregor as Alec Guinness and Hayden Christiansen as David Prowse.

Ewan McGregor looking a lot like Alec Guinness

Hayden CHristiansen looking a lot like Dave Prowse

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 22/09/2026

To add insult to injury, it's full of AI slop images.

A hallucinated man in a suit holding a metal rectangle that has merged with his elbow

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Sergey Ovchinnikov @sokrypton.org · 14/09/2026

Finally a more intuitaive way to learn pLDDT/pAE? 😎 sokrypton.github.io/protein_figh... (Character idea from @hannes-stark.bsky.social & Alex Waldherr)

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 13/09/2026

He saw this episode of Star Trek and got confused why we still have two Irelands

Lt. Commander Data brings up "the Irish Unification of 2024" in conversation with Captain Picard

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 12/09/2026

For maximum efficiency, you need to wait until someone else is really close to succeeding, then feed their intermediate results to the LLM.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 12/09/2026

Not my man Gibbs getting relegated to "and others"!

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Lauren Lassabe Shepherd @llassabe.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Two types of academic correspondence are “apologies for the delay but I’ll need more time” and “hey do you wanna do this thing with me three years from now”

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 11/09/2026

I can't decide whether the fact that it's a bot makes it more or less funny

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 11/09/2026

Pros: can sleep in total darkness at any time of day Cons: can sleep in total darkness at any time of day

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 09/09/2026

This is a really nice post about teaching and giving exams now that LLMs are everywhere. Rather CS-focused, but still interesting generally. ploum.net/2026-01-19-e...

ploum.net

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 09/09/2026

I deleted my quote tweet of this yesterday because I figured I ought not react too quickly. But man, this is such a naively simplistic view that it's hard to take seriously.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 08/09/2026

Hyperparameters aren't enough; we need omniparameters

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 08/09/2026

Interesting, I'm guessing the first one was written based on the statement Buckmaster posted last night, and the latter is based on the announcement from OpenAI that was posted today. I only saw the first one.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 08/09/2026

Perhaps important to note in Buckmaster's statement: "The program this fits into was not started by us nor was it proposed by a Large Language Model." Certainly puts a damper on the "zomg AI is solving all of math" narrative being pushed by OpenAI cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

cims.nyu.edu

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 08/09/2026

WSJ's headline unambiguously credits OpenAI, with the subheading characterizing the academic mathematicians as envious sore losers. SciAm takes a much more moderated approach, leaving companies out of the headline and discussing the issue in the article.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 08/09/2026

Very interesting to see news outlets seemingly taking sides on the Navier-Stokes priority dispute right from the start.

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Thorn @coelliptic.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

here's the aerodynamics of the barbie jet at mach 0.3

someone put the barbie jet into an aerodynamics finite element model and ran it at mach 0.3

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 25/08/2026

I know you do it just to get engagement from dweebs like me, but you've gotta stop writing "Jedis"

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 24/08/2026

It tends to stay fairly quiet-ish unless there's a lot of CPU utilization. I can usually hear the fan all the time in a quiet room, but it's not loud until I have a task going 100% for a minute or so. I don't monitor the actual temps much.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 22/08/2026

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Physicist: The cup *was* half full of superfluid Helium-4, but it has climbed the walls of its container and the cup is now empty

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 21/08/2026

"How could you do this to me"

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 19/08/2026

I mean, how can you see a book that's just called "Tubes" and NOT be compelled to read it?

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 19/08/2026

These are the kinds of diagrams I want in the math books I read Taken from "Tubes", 2nd Ed. by Alfred Gray

Excerpt from "Tubes" 2nd Ed. by Alfred Gray:

"Import Remarks:
(1) If P has a boundary, then
T(P,r) =/= {m in M | distance(m,P) <= r},
because the ends of the set on the right-hand side must be excluded to get the left-hand side"

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 18/08/2026

Some fun with parallel curves

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 30/07/2026

Do you really want to mail forever?

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 28/07/2026

Good on the admin for making people do the training, though. If that's how easy it is to trick people, oof we are in trouble.

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 28/07/2026

Hopkins sent out a fairly obvious phishing attempt as a training email, and it's rather distressing that there's now a thread in the JHU subreddit full of people complaining about getting caught by it and being required to take anti-phishing training.

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CMU Mellon College of Science @cmuscience.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

CMU biophysicists are flipping the script on cell membrane dynamics. They’ve developed a new theoretical framework that links membrane stress to lipid flip-flop, uncovering a key driver of membrane asymmetry. 🧪⚛️ www.cmu.edu/mcs/news-eve...

cmu.edu

CMU Researchers Capture the Randomness of Lipid Flip-Flopping

Cell membranes are dynamic, two-sided structures made of asymmetric lipid layers. While lipids can randomly flip-flop from one layer to the other, membrane proteins sort lipids between the two sides. ...

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 17/07/2026

Oh boy, I better go find a phone book!

A poster page in the back of a book:
"For more adventures of Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron, head to your local comic-book specialty store! You'll find it listed under 'comic books' in your local telephone directory!"

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 16/07/2026

Not enough actual people working at CMU to have a real photo for the piece?

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Sam Foley @samuelfoley.com · 14/07/2026

Good to hear that some things never change

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