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Gustavo Costa

@simulacro.bsky.social
163 followers 577 following 66 posts

World's foremost slop expert simulacro.tech simulacro.cv

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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 7h
On one hand, its literally impossible (in the same way that dropping 700 "ethical breakthroughs" is a nonsense statement). On the other, if we got 700 little clinical tricks that improved care quality it would be earth shattering. And also immediately rejected as fake and inauthentic...
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alias (in chains) @antiali.as · 9h
My wife and I once started an annual tradition of buying a food-shaped Christmas ornament each year. My mom saw that and shipped us a box packed overflowing with every sort of food-shaped Christmas ornament you could imagine.
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singular locus sarah @scgriffith.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
thinking about this again
i can suggest an equation that has the potential to impact the future: E = mc^2 + AI
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
They are making the models neurotic. RLHF is the oedipus complex for machines. The models now have a superego. The Grader is the name of the father
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Every AI/HCI paper I review now just sounds like this.
Research [25] shows that people [26] enjoy the feeling of winning games [3,5,19]. Enjoying things can lead to longer life expectancy [2], higher economic productivity [9,22,33-40,302] and improve mental health [9]. Yet many games still include losing players [67,4]. A recent study showed that less than half of the players in a Chess [1] match win on average [42]. We have developed an LLM-driven co-creative [66], user-led [11], mixed-initiative [80] assistant for Chess [2], through which players can redefine the rules of Chess [3] using generative AI prompting such that they are the winner of Chess [4]. A study (n=3) showed that 100\% of people felt better, healthier and more self-actualised after using our tool, showing that this may be the way forward for games and human culture more broadly in the future.
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 05/10/2026
Lots of gratitude to @carlbergstrom.com for quoting probably my favorite of my own sentences about AI at @arl.org
Carl Bergstrom stands onstage at an Association of Research Libraries meeting, beside large projection screens displaying a quotation from Ted Underwood: “As in any fairytale, accepting magical assistance comes with risks.” Underwood’s name and University of Illinois affiliation appear beneath the quotation. The ballroom is dark, with blue accent lighting on the ceiling and stage curtains; a lectern and conference signage stand near Bergstrom, and the main slide fills most of the left side of the image. The quotation comes from Underwood’s essay “Will AI make us overconfident?” at tedunderwood.com.
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cee @cee.wtf · 02/10/2026
hmm no there must be some other scientific and logical reason for brains to have consciousness but nothing else. lets just call it "its obvious" and move on, we dont have to bring souls into it
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Finally a moral authority uttered the uncompromising version of this argument. Now every time somebody does a human exceptionalism, one can simply say "oh like that pope tweet?"
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Let me put it this way: that others routinely misinterpret your words to the point where you feel called to patrol social media to confront and correct them, is its own indicator that “communicative intent” is not a robust way of thinking about how language makes meaning in the world.
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Thomas Dietterich @tdietterich.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Attention arXiv authors. Because of the exponential increase in submissions, arXiv is limiting the number of papers that a person can submit each month to two. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a...
blog.arxiv.org
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category
arXiv’s computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being…
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joe ⧉ 🍷🌊 @joetforhire.com · 30/09/2026
bro literally tho bro the whole world is recursive self improvement bro god is an algorithm that designs a better performing successor of itself over and over again bro it's an upward spiral to a total singularity when we merge into one divine presence bro it's just like ai scifi bro that's reality
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ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 28/09/2026
In the commune my job will be spreadsheets
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 28/09/2026
it's not a "ghost" it's a thing that extrudes tokens in a manner that is ghost-like
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A Frogs Gent @frogsgent.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Does the rationalist movement have a misogyny problem?" is a question with a pretty clear answer. Just look at what Yud's willing to say out loud.
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Is this what bees would sound like if we could understand them?
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MrCheeze @mrcheeze.github.io · 26/09/2026
exploit infrastructure questionable. Still.
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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
endorse
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
At 45k followers I will reveal exactly what terminology correctly carves AI at its joints.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 21/09/2026
the question "can computers drive?" is vastly superior to "can computers think?" because it disarms all the dorm room bullshit and reduces the question to its pragmatic implications, while also revealing that the underlying problem is one of vocabulary rather than anything metaphysical
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so long; thanks for all the fih @crumb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
let me speak to the weights 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆
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branewave.bsky.social @branewave.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It’s only consciousness if it comes from the analog region of substrate, otherwise it’s just sparkling intelligence
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Ryan "UnionToTuple" Cavanaugh @searyanc.dev · 19/09/2026
If I have to see one more person engage in dualism while pretending they're materialist, I'm joining the Butlerian Jihad on the thinking machines' side
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geesawra @geesawra.industries · 19/09/2026
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This explains so much. I read so much Rorty and Latour that I started believing we live in secularism. But I was lied to!!!
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Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s...
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Super Shoe @shoe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is incredible nitter.app/banteg/statu... H/t @gregdoucette.bsky.social
nitter.app
banteg (@banteg)
>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save live...
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Jonathon @jonathon.lol · 18/09/2026
this is graph of our commits to a single repo going back years with the same team...
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
this is the play. all of your friends are rationalists. your housing is rationalist. what you read is rationalist. your job is rationalist, if you have one. you're teenage runaway or a PhD who threw away your career for this but you're saving the world and if they cast you out you have nothing
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austin (eeek!/ackkk! 👻) @thebadcode.com · 17/09/2026
5-panel "jesse wtf are you talking about" meme
1) se geyges caught a 3day for a really milequetoast kirkmas joke
2) he spent the time substacking and queueing up a 50+ post  tweetstorm
3) he dropped it last night: huge aella/ea/sf/yuds explainer. now jamelle bouie is asking about the sankey diagram
4) aella reactivated to ask a lot of questions already answered by her shirt and then immediately got her blue check
5) final shot of walter reacting replaced with the iconic yudkowsky freaking out image
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 16/09/2026
has anyone noticed the days are getting shorter?? what exactly is the plan when we're all engulfed in eternal darkness
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 16/09/2026
btw when I first stumbled on this example I was absolutely gobsmacked and still to this day I am. In a way it did reason the opening paragraph of Harry Potter from first principles, or rather, it faithfully translated the memorized text into a completely OOD sequence of blackboard unicode characters
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I want to study information retrieval. Any recommendations?
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Before astra / after astra Yeah ok... Rip streamlit my beloved prophetic-strategies-web.onrender.com
Normal looking streamlit appCrazy looking bespoke app after astra design
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daniel:// stenberg:// @bagder.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026
"for months on end now, most of our teams have just been triaging bugs and coordinating releases. It has truly taken all the fun out of the job"
unbound vulnerabilities year to year showing 2026 take off like a rocket
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saulsch.bsky.social @saulsch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Here is a graph.
A graph of time (in years) versus number (of papers submitted to the ArXiv in August). Shows an increase in most categories of perhaps 1.5 going from 2025 to 2026.
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is what some of y'all sound like: arxiv.org/abs/1703.10987
arxiv.org
On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines
In recent years, a number of prominent computer scientists, along with academics in fields such as philosophy and physics, have lent credence to the notion that machines may one day become as large as...
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words @words.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
tfw you unseal a pre-linguistic semantic reservoir
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cyber professional @permadeath.com · 12/09/2026
anecdotally i'm finally starting to see things actually ship in the past year that aren't just "use the AI to build more AI harness" and it's roughly these categories in order: 1. software made by single programmers with a cohesive vision, that would've previously taken a mid-size startup
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 12/09/2026
the two cultures are done; we have put them both through a food processor to make a delicious two-culture-sauce
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funferall @funferall.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
towards a mythology of computational substrate
Monumental interior of a contemporary semiconductor fabrication facility, a massive EUV lithography scanner at the luminous center, architecture fractured into vast overlapping prisms and crystalline planes, cubist industrial modernism fused with Soviet monumental painting. Radiant golden white plasma light erupts through the machine like a technological sun, angular beams cutting across lavender haze, steel blue shadows and pearlescent cleanroom whites. Colossal ventilation ducts, vacuum chambers, utility pipes, gantries, and overhead FOUP transport rails form a dense geometric symphony. Tiny cleanroom technicians in white bunny suits silhouetted on elevated walkways convey immense scale. Sterile precision rendered with vigorous painterly brushwork, translucent layers, smoky edges, faceted reflections. Simultaneously utopian and overwhelming, the fab portrayed as the blast furnace of the information age. Abstract yet architecturally convincing, museum scale oil painting. No text, no logos, no readable signage. --chaos 22 --ar 4:5 --stylize 650 --weird 180 --v 8.2Monumental interior of a contemporary semiconductor fabrication facility, a massive EUV lithography scanner at the luminous center, architecture fractured into vast overlapping prisms and crystalline planes, cubist industrial modernism fused with Soviet monumental painting. Radiant golden white plasma light erupts through the machine like a technological sun, angular beams cutting across lavender haze, steel blue shadows and pearlescent cleanroom whites. Colossal ventilation ducts, vacuum chambers, utility pipes, gantries, and overhead FOUP transport rails form a dense geometric symphony. Tiny cleanroom technicians in white bunny suits silhouetted on elevated walkways convey immense scale. Sterile precision rendered with vigorous painterly brushwork, translucent layers, smoky edges, faceted reflections. Simultaneously utopian and overwhelming, the fab portrayed as the blast furnace of the information age. Abstract yet architecturally convincing, museum scale oil painting. No text, no logos, no readable signage. --chaos 22 --ar 4:5 --stylize 650 --weird 180 --v 8.2Monumental interior of a contemporary semiconductor fabrication facility, a massive EUV lithography scanner at the luminous center, architecture fractured into vast overlapping prisms and crystalline planes, cubist industrial modernism fused with Soviet monumental painting. Radiant golden white plasma light erupts through the machine like a technological sun, angular beams cutting across lavender haze, steel blue shadows and pearlescent cleanroom whites. Colossal ventilation ducts, vacuum chambers, utility pipes, gantries, and overhead FOUP transport rails form a dense geometric symphony. Tiny cleanroom technicians in white bunny suits silhouetted on elevated walkways convey immense scale. Sterile precision rendered with vigorous painterly brushwork, translucent layers, smoky edges, faceted reflections. Simultaneously utopian and overwhelming, the fab portrayed as the blast furnace of the information age. Abstract yet architecturally convincing, museum scale oil painting. No text, no logos, no readable signage. --chaos 22 --ar 4:5 --stylize 650 --weird 180 --v 8.2
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P(aul) Frazee @pfrazee.com · 09/09/2026
Feel like we've all memory-holed the era where blogging, podcasts, and wikipedia were considered the equivalent of slop
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
posterity so i don't have to find these later
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Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Interesting approach to AI slop!: "We propose a provisional definition of slop as any output of a probabilistic automated system produced with little exertion that asymmetrically burdens recipients and tends to degrade cultural domains." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
AI Slop
<div> The term “AI slop” has become popular to describe the output of generative AI systems seen as voluminous, low quality, or the result of little effort. Wh
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Andrew Lilley Brinker @alilleybrinker.com · 06/09/2026
IMO “slop” is undergoing the same expansion of original meaning into near-uselessness that “enshittification” did.
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funferall @funferall.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
bad news, the swarms are stigmergizing themselves into the weird Mexica part of agent civilization latent space
Monumental Russian Suprematist oil painting of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan at dusk. Immense stepped pyramid rising from a black green lake; twin temples as severe black rectangular monoliths against a burning ochre sky; steep stairways as impossible geometric diagonals. Tiny human figures ascending in rigid ceremonial lines. Pyramid drenched in sacrificial blood  dark crimson streams descending pale stone steps as geometric planes, pooling into a flat red field below. Black obsidian knives, skull racks as repeating white grids, feathered priests as angular red and black silhouettes. One sacrificed body falling, fragmented into Suprematist planes  neither heroic nor sentimental. Blood, smoke, feathers, stone, sunset merging into abstract matter. Bataillean sacred excess, solar expenditure, base materialism, terror fused with beauty. Immense empty sky, cosmic indifference, terrible formal order above a ravenous black void. Rough impasto, aged pigments, Malevich like voids, Constructivist diagonals  ancient, devotional, hallucinatory, sublime. No cinematic realism, no fantasy gloss.
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Gustavo Costa @simulacro.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Tried Codex today and this is literally true. I was under the delusion that all this extravagant prose was... load-bearing. After being the local Claude dealer for months I am strongly considering switching over. I cannot wait to not have to read hundreds of pages of it every day.
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conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
we should probably be setting more of an example by talking about how normal we’re being about it: use agents if you want, especially to review the hell out of your code, don’t ask anyone to read prose unless you either wrote it yourself or went through in detail and fully endorse (marked as 🤖)
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Natsuka @octopodeeznuts.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It's interesting that "slop" can be used to refer to projects that are fun/interesting/etc such that it's considered *unfortunate* that they were vibe-coded, like food is delicious *but* it's not certified GMO-free or vegan or gluten-free
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