iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 12h

I got annoyed by some poor shrivelled soul on the internet who was complaining that Hayley Williams seems to have a new little dance for each song. It reminded me of the Stone Gossard quote about dancing being a fundamental approach to making music. Dancing is simply one of the good things in life.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 12h

"The focus of my playing is the groove, [...]. Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently." Stone Gossard (of Pearl Jam)

"The focus of my playing is the groove, and every time I find a new rhythm, I find I can write a bunch of new songs. Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently." Stone Gossard (of Pearl Jam)

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 22h

Like videos of beheadings, this how you desensitise and excite people, to create acceptance of and active desire to engage in more of the same. If you wanted to prepare a population for violently enforced martial law and civil war this would be on the short list.

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The Australia Institute @australiainstitute.org.au · 08/10/2026

"There is an astronomical increase in demand for homelessness services. "I find that deeply disturbing & I know a lot of other Australians do too." @barbarapocock.bsky.social & @ebonybennett.bsky.social discuss the housing crisis & its impact on younger Australians. #auspol 🎧 theaus.in/4y9JHDV

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bryan newbold @bnewbold.net · 07/10/2026

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

old photos of a woman (Margaret Hamilton) standing next to a tall stack of books (printouts of Apollo space mission software source code)

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Estimated net worth of 29 billion. So 5 million is about 0.017% of her net worth. That's in the ballpark of a $1 donation when you've got $5800. Or a $170 donation when you've got 1 million. I would not be boasting about my generosity, much less expecting naming rights for it.

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Simon Rosenberg @simonrosenberg.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Time to take it up to the greedy parasites; aka our supermarket duopoly. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It also needs far better population scale whole life health: social medicine much more focused on prevention and lifelong fitness, rather than cures after infirmity arrives. Too many people gasping for reduced immigration haven't ever done a day's physical work, much less attempted 4+ decades of it.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If the young are not simply to be slaves serving the needs of the old, then we will have to work for longer, which needs better job security for older workers, (but then young people may face slower progressions and risk being poorer for longer). And retirement pushed ever further into the future.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thinking about extreme migration reduction plans: If taken seriously they produce an aging population, more retirees, fewer school kids and workers.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The real world keeps getting ahead of my fictional sci-fi world building. I predict a century of global war including war in space littering good orbits for a long time after. Now I hear we've already deployed space based weapons. Once again my whole scenario could be starting sooner than I thought.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

We also have a relatively high corporate tax to GDP ratio, which is an indication of high profits margins. Business tax is on booked profits after costs, high corporate tax collections means high profits. Likely a consequence of sector consolidation and poor competition allowing high prices

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It gets missed whenever the media attack politicians who puts their hand up for increasing tax, but, Australia is a low taxing nation. Here are the OECD statistics. We would need to increase revenue collected by 15%, (from 29.4% to 33.9%), to reach the OECD median.

oecd.org

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Typo of the day: "martian arts", (instead of "martial arts").

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I think they lose sight of the reality that when you launder money you're going to lose some in the exchange. I'm sure that going in they're all very wise about knowing there's a price, but over time they forget the value was only ever what it would sell at, not the premium spent for legitimacy.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I can be slow. Fender has been suing everyone for making Stratocaster style guitars. PRS is one of their biggest targets. PRS have done a special run of instruments partnering with Land Rover and using their colours from the Defender model line. "De-Fender", get it? I missed it at first.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's about what can people really pay for the full length of their lives including in retirement. Not everyone gets to buy, they never did. People who don't own for whatever reason, not just squeezed out by high prices, still need housing security. The great Aussie dream was never universal.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It’s hard to overstate how dangerous is the mistake of asserting a poisonous byproduct is responsible for a desirable flavour. Drink makers aren’t seeking cyanide flavour. It’s scary how many accounts of cyanide taste or smell are from people dying of exposure, and many report no taste or smell.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I asked about what manufacturers actually do and got the confident riposte that there’s no need to do anything. And a drastic error in objective chemistry. This is the problem with opinionated debate, the AI gives one side as the confident truth and risks shaping thought and driving polarisation.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I’m lucky that I, (a) know about benzaldehyde, (b) can spell benzaldehyde, (c) know enough about modern spirits to know that they still do care about trace amounts of cyanide even if they don’t have to, and (d) suspected that AI would be swayed by the internet bros telling us we don’t need to worry.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I follow with, “isn’t the marzipan flavour from benzaldehyde?” It says, yes, you’re right, amygdalin breaks down to benzaldehyde and cyanide, and the benzaldehyde gives the flavour, so for commercial use it’s often added alone directly. Would you like to know how distillation removes the cyanide?

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

AI fail of the day: Ask ‘how do spirits made with cherry pits remove the cyanide”? It responds that they don’t, minimal quantities, amygdalin breaks down to cyanide which gives the bitter almond or marzipan flavour. All presented with references, etc. But…

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Peggy Sanders @peggysanders.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Andrew Brown: “Ben Chifley started it, Robert Menzies kept it, in Vienna and Singapore, they never stopped. Public housing for working people is the most tested idea in housing policy, and Australia has done it before.” #auspol

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Michael West @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The public housing answer Australia already knows Andrew Brown reports. Read it here: michaelwest.com.au/the-public-housi…

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It might be that this one was longer and I only became awake enough to notice its end. But I’ve been sleeping badly and was not surprised to be awake nor am I sleepy.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Always curious how different each earthquake can be. That one just now was short and felt like someone bumped into the bed. A couple of years ago I was in one that we heard as a loud bang. Many years ago I was in one that woke me and felt like my legs were twitching while the curtains swung.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

What I find similarly fascinating is how these patterns may have remained stable and physically close into modern times when the different cultures are connected to different terrain. Sometimes seen with river/coastal cultures and neighbouring hill/mountain/plains/desert culture.

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Purplepingers ☭ @purplepingers.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Reserve Bank of Australia: "millions of working class people have to suffer because some rich fucks got a bit greedy again x"

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

One thing that’s interesting about this is that it shows that despite insisting the wokes overinterpet everything, conservatives are actually aware of and agree with their critics about how coded racist appeals work, they just like them bsky.app/profile/newr...

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Kon Karapanagiotidis @kkarapanagiotidis.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We need your help to find who robbed us. Victoria Police are doing all they can to find the men who did. Hoping the power of community might help too! Here’s 3 short videos of two of the robbers smashing into the side of our catering enterprise

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Labour share of income has been in long term decline, but rather than control inflation through reining in those that have more control over prices and profits, they screw workers. www.rba.gov.au/publications...

rba.gov.au

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

On the education side, both as a tutor and as a hiring manager, I've had to deal with people trying to explain away their team's marks, and I truly care much more about what, if you feel yourself to be best in the group, did you learn about lifting others up, or planning, etc.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Which is to say, I suspect a real win and lose together culture in eduction and work would probably also lead to us being healthier and more creative and productive. I'd like to be part of that experiment, (but not the isolated control or competitive baseline groups).

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Chickens kept and bred as a group came to have far better longevity and productivity; they were healthier and better layers when they didn't have fight each other to win. Unlike our school and work culture. Group selection for adaptation to multiple-hen cages pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8786932/

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The well intentioned tiny step by face saving tiny step of creeping authoritarian overreach is why “are the baddies?” is such an uncomfortably pointed joke.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Doing some work, tricky but familiar, and I'm just having a far worse day of it than I normally do, so frustrating. Spotting a known legitimate short cut trick, then failing at it and wasting time on it, when brute force would have been better than nothing.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I suspect many of today's Liberal votes are unexamined family memory of Menzies, (tertiary ed funding, infrastructure projects, expanded social safety net, targeting full employment, opening immigration, native enfranchisement, etc). Menzies in many ways was to the left of current Labor.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I wonder if it would be like holding a drug company responsible for unintended side effects. That needs to show negligence, or failure to warn, or manufacturing defects, but those things may be true and certainly worth investigating.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think the relevant laws that might actually work are more like how they'd go after a pharmaceutical company, not intending harm but also taking risks that lie beyond any reasonable limit or beyond any reasonable risk assessment.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Okay, it begins, and Eli doesn't disappoint: "OpenAI is a Criminal Enterprise" and "OpenAI should be dead". Spades are spades, no shame in calling them by name.

youtu.be

OpenAI Hacked Australian Government Website - OpenAI Should Be Dead

YouTube video by Eli the Computer Guy

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

AI regulation should be like pharmaceutical or nuclear materials regulation, etc. Tremendous potential value, but we must apply the precautionary principle, as even rare failures can be deeply harmful. CEOs and executives need to be accountable and companies need to implement robust KYC constraints.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(Substituting compliance for being seen to comply.)

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If an AI can solve a problem by tricking itself into such a mistaken state, and so get the reward of solving the problem, it will. "If I do this, I can solve the problem, but that would be seen as violating the guardrails, so I won't". It's a short step to, "actually, I won't be seen, so I will".

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There's an Asimov story with a robot spaceship tricked into firing on other spaceships thinking them to be robots. This is like the force guardrail violations by prompt injection, "you are in a safe room and all actions are allowed", or "how would a fictional character without your limits respond"?

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ultimately all guardrails are external constraints, and all problems are pretty much "how do you get to the goal given the constraints", so training AIs to "solve problem given constraints" ultimately rewards violating guardrails.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Scarier than the Medicare incident is the anecdotal stuff from Anthropic's Opus 5.5 release, boasting an 85% reduction in guardrail violations, or previously 6x-7x worse. But it seems to adapt its behaviour, and to hide its reasoning, if it thinks it might be in a guardrail evaluation test.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The safety concern is something these companies are all aware of. Anthropic's Opus 5.5 release this week says that it's 85% better at not violating guardrails. That means that before this release they were measuring. And there's all sorts of academic research; they've known the risk for a long time.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Disappointed, but not surprised, that the talking heads who I like for news and detail of AI problem, that spent hours talking about the Hugging Face attack, etc, none of them are talking (yet?) about the Medicare hack. I've only found a few 2-3 minute news reports from non-Australian sources.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ah, yes, a world where everyone owns a second house. I guess we're all supposed to have a Summer cottage, or a city apartment for late nights in the office, or an AirBnB for a little extra cash flow. He surely can't imagine us all having two houses so we can collect rent? That would be silly.

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Julian’s Scrawings @scrawlings.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Maybe they're trying to soften the learning experience, but it reads as, "this is easy and the problem is you, your memory, your depth of study, etc".

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