iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 9h

The LLM pastry, modeled on the basis of the consumption of an enormous corpora of pastries.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 18h

It turns out that this Dickens novel is about a *shared* friend.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 18h

Is its subtitle “The Critical Heritage”? I’m teaching one or two pieces from the George Eliot volume. Really looking forward to seeing what my students think about the real-time responses to individual installments of Middlemarch.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 11/10/2026

Oh, that didn't take much digging. They asked people to solve stupid fraction problems. One group got to ask AI, the other group didn't. Then they took the AI away from the AI group. Those people started fucking off. The non-AI group didn't magically know it was time to start fucking off.

$For the first experiment with 354 participants, one group was tasked with solving 15 basic fraction problems without help, while another had ChatGPT open on the side to use for assistance and to even ask for the answer. The group with AI access started off more accurate than the group without it. Then, after 12 problems, researchers took away the AI tool. Almost immediately, the people in that group stopped solving questions accurately. A similar thing happened when they ran the experiment on a second, larger group of 667 participants. Whereas the AI users got answers wrong or gave up entirely when the AI assistance was withdrawn, the group without AI stuck with the task and were more successful at the end.$

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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Cloudflare Data Explorer shows the amount of russian bot traffic has dropped to 49% after Ukraine struck a yandex data center.

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onion person @junlper.beer · 10/10/2026

this is the ultimate end point of capitalism, ai will completely atomize everyone and there will be zero shared experiences. there will be no culture, only pure consumption. this must be resisted

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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Google, who was the piano accompanist in a 1973 Franco Corelli/Renata Tebaldi duets recital in London's Royal Albert Hall? Gemini: "No such concert ever took place. It is a common misattribution in collectors' circles." Gemini's source for this? An ebay listing of *the actual concert programme*. 😂

ROYAL ALBERT HALL
General Manager FRANK J. MUNDY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9th, 1973
S. A. GORLINSKY and DENNY DAYVISS
present
RENATA TEBALDI FRANCO CORELLI
and
in Duo Recital
At the piano:
GORDON JEPHTAS
S. A. GORLINSKY Lid. 35 Dover Street, London, W.I.

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Matthew Guariglia @mguariglia.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I’ve been seeing more police doing cutesy meet and greet events with their robots, I feel the need to remind people: many of these companies deliberately advertise the goodwill departments can get on social media via selfies, and that these are like putting a cute face on a rolling Flock cameras

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Police Robots Are Not a Selfie Opportunity, They’re a Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen

The arrival of government-operated autonomous police robots does not look like predictions in science fiction movies. An army of robots with gun arms is not kicking down your door to arrest you. Inste...

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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Newsprint has a way of lingering & lying around. It's been striking to realize, teaching my "Literacy Stories" seminar this term, how often readers are made BECAUSE newspapers lie around. Lila in Ferrante's _My Brilliant Friend_ learns to read from the newspapers wrapping shoes in her father's shop.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

“Bullets shot from a gun, acting on their own,”

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I sat near an elderly gentleman on a London bus with a dog on his lap. He said, “it’s time for your Mars bar, Nigel.” The only part of this story I’m making up is the Nigel part.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That is amazing. I also learned several verses that were new to me.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Real you don’t like waffles energy there.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Are you sitting down? How familiar are you with the works of Simon and Garfunkel?

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Wordle 1,937 2/6* 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Wow, so I’m just two handshakes away from Anne Carson!* *because you once responded politely to my Twitter advice about New Haven pizza

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Four days of the week, laborers will be in cryogenic suspension.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

*Highlighters. Damn voice dictation.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Highliners are, in fact, evil, but I’d love to hear your argument against them.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We should wear five or six ties, as in the AI illustration. (When did the Guardian start using AI illustrations?)

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It’s got two Democratic senators. It’s a blue state. That’s enough of a justification, apparently.

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Phil Tinline @philtinline.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Doctor Who has described the BBC's new AI-generated director general as "pretty good", and suggested that the technology now enabled the creation of content "at the standard of an unimaginative man who spent years working at McKinsey then Google".

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.

, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.

As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“We are starcats, We are golden” —Joni Mitchell

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Why stop there? Primary school students could be earning so much more as teenagers if they just quit school at eight and started working.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

What if the employer is just someone who can’t alphabetize.

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Andrew Deck @andrewdeck.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

ChatGPT is adding the signatures of real New Yorker cartoonists to its AI-generated images. So far, I've found the signatures of more than 15 contributors. "It’s slop, and unlike the other slop that I’ve encountered, this is slop that’s pretending to be me." www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chat...

Left: A cartoon generated by ChatGPT and signed with Emily Flake’s signature that was posted to a Reddit forum in June. Right: A real Emily Flake cartoon published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2026 and licensed via The Cartoon Bank.

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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 05/10/2026

linkrot is so maddening. basically nothing that's linked to from my blog in the aughts exists anymore. my still-looks-like-2003 blog is all there, absent some images that got lost at some point.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Honestly, if Annie L. had used crude A.I. for the cover, it would’ve made a much better case for her continued high salary than this photo does.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I wish they’d done this with DALL-E.

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Mike Ensminger Fan Account @laplanck.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“Enrollment is down 4 percent at schools nationwide. Why? Because of a weird silly course taught at a school of less that 2,000 that you hadn’t heard of until this column.”

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Mr. Max was everywhere. He was not, however, involved with the 1969 Beatles film 'Yellow Submarine,' often assumed to be his work, in part because he often took credit for it."

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Sarah Følina | clikkiesky goes to ØH @subtlefire.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

LRS: I can't believe I didn't put it together until now. we're not getting "left behind" in any professional or creative sense. we're going to miss the AI rapture and suffer the tribulation of... whatever they think people still capable of doing things themselves will suffer

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

The paperclip problem: AI takes instructions too literally, channels all its efforts into transforming the world’s resources into paperclips. The actual problem: AI industry takes instructions too literally, channels all its efforts into transforming the world’s resources into AI.

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Hate it when you see what you think is a cool bird and you look it up later and it’s called like the Common Dumb Asshole. “Birders throughout history have hated its guts. It can’t even fly right.” I thought I saw an interesting guy.

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Am I the only person who loves The Subtle Knife the most? (Maybe I am.)

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Christo Silvia @christosilvia.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Phillip Pullman wrote an atheist polemic book series in which God is real

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Stuart Semmel @semmiotic.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

As in, they write down lines they like from the readings?

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