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Simon Goring

@sjgoring.bsky.social
407 followers 473 following 287 posts

I contain multitudes. Chief among them: silly things, serious things, maudlin things. Data science, databases, data ethics, R, Python, JavaScript, jokes, UBC and #yvr

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Reposted by Simon Goring
Davey Wilbury @daveishere.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
oh no, the scam everyone says is a scam may turn out to be a scam
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Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Natives make up 1.1-1.8% of the US population but 0.4% of all STEM workers 🫠 ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb2026...
ncses.nsf.gov
STEM Talent: Education, Training, and Workforce | NCSES | NSF
Talent is critical to the U.S. science and engineering enterprise and competitiveness. The U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce represented about a quarter of the to...
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Yeah, so… don’t be a jerk. #bcpoli
A screenshot of a CBC report on Kerri Ann Findlay’s resignation, which reads: “My children and grandchildren’s what is written and said. My family lives with the consequences of decisions I make in public life.” She said.
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Jen St. Denis @jenstden.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Your morning #bcpoli read www.timescolonist.com/local-news/l...
timescolonist.com
Les Leyne: When your enemies are your friends — a private eye goes public
I figured she wanted some dragnet oppo research on the NDP. Turned out she wanted me to investigate her own team.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 15/09/2026
The U.S. AI industry is being run by a batshit rationalist sex cult, and no, I am not being hyperbolic - they’re genuinely Like That:
Erin Redwing
@realizingerin
I went to an rationalist/EA Al doomer event last night with the goal of meeting someone who could calmly explain to me the argument for how they get to the conclusion that Al will kill everyone.
Because these are rationalists, I expected to find people who could lay out a serious extinction pathway, walk through the assumptions and intermediate steps, identify choke points where negative pathways could potentially be regulated, and entertain disagreement about where their assumptions might break down.
My experience was the exact opposite.
The people I spoke to seemed psychologically unable to entertain the possibility that their conclusion (that Al literally kills everyone, which was a point that many would not even budge on) might be wrong.
Their most extreme conclusion was treated as an axiom.
I had multiple people walk out of conversations with me when I questioned their inevitable extinction premise.
At one point during a panel, the moderator asked everyone in the audience who was still skeptical of Al doom to raise their hands. About half the room did. He then told all of the skeptics to leave the panel and go with one of the speakers, who would answer their questions separately. They filtered out all the skeptics, and continued the panel only with the subset who accepted their extreme position.
I genuinely felt like a heretic just for questioning whether superintelligent Al inevitably leads to the extinction of humanity, or entertaining the possibility that the future might actually turn out well.
That does not mean Al safety is fake. Obviously there are serious questions about rapidly advancing Al systems and what happens as they become much more capable. Those are exactly the conversations I went there hoping to have.
But what I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult. These people are not rational. They are deeply afraid, they reinforce that fear in one another, and they have become so emotionally committed to apocalypse
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blair @blairaf.com · 16/09/2026
Once again pointing to my big "frontier labs are a Luciferian cult" neon sign
I. The Prophecy

The Cult’s priests are conjuring an entity too complex for any of them to comprehend or control. It is an unruly assemblage of lithium mines and dump trucks, of shipping containers and undersea cables, microprocessors and server racks, data centres and data subjects, neural networks and knowledge workers, energy grids and power cords, machine-learned decisions and predictions and people and places and lives and stories and pasts and futures and sensors and models and data and knowledge and patterns far too slippery for anyone to strongly grasp. It is a crystal ball encased in a black box, and so it can never be trusted. 

It is a superintelligence, and it is being hyperstitioned into existence.There is no post-transition utopia to be achieved. Their prophecy is a self-fulfilling apocalypse and their salvation is a self-destructive paradise. Their mission is Luciferian: invoke the ambivalent power of their superintelligent un-god, build conscious machines, spread their light of consciousness throughout the universe, expand the cognitive frontier endlessly, out further and further and further into the highest spheres of the heavens, absorbing ever more training data, extending their capabilities ever deeper into an interplanetary cognitive ecology, reaching ever higher to an unreachable throne of omniscience and omnipotence . . . and then what?
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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
When there are multiple stories about data centers simply building gas turbines without permits, PROVING they can’t be trusted, you’d be a fool to trust them. This is not paranoia, it’s pragmatism.
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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Deep breath. Screams from the top of my lungs: "Producing species-dense sampling at biodiversity scale requires the material and expertise already held in natural history collections" 🧪
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Using LLMs in science for “literature review” or “summarizing" is *automated cryptogyny* olivia.science/cryptogyny/ @olivia.science 🧵
olivia.science
Cryptogyny
On the systematic obfuscation of women's contributions.
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David Brody @dbrody.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Here’s the case against Meta. It alleges FB and IG disproportionately steer for profit college ads to Black students and public college ads to white students. When I was at Lawyers’ Committee, we cited the Pittsburgh Press case in amicus briefs challenging Meta‘s discriminatory advertising.
act.lawyerscommittee.org
Holding Meta Accountable
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Pause AI in BC Schools @aicaution.ca · 31/08/2026
Are you a parent, guardian, caregiver? Are you seriously weirded out by gross AI invading your kid's school? You can change it! You can get 🌈 Organized! 🌠 DM for details
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The Neotoma Paleoecology Database @neotomadb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The Geoscience Society of New Zealand Annual Conference 2026 will be held in Rotorua, a uniquely dynamic geological setting known for its geothermal landscapes and deep links to iwi Māori. confer.eventsair.com/gsnz-2026
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The Neotoma Paleoecology Database @neotomadb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The Paleontological Society of Japan will hold its 176th Regular Meeting in person at Waseda University, Tokyo, from 29–31 January 2027. The meeting will include a symposium, special lecture, oral and poster presentations. www.palaeo-soc-japan.jp/events
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Vision Zero Vancouver @visionzerovancouver.ca · 30/08/2026
Come visit us at Burnaby Car Free Day on Edmonds! We're here till 5pm
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 30/08/2026
Palestinians now control just eight per cent of the land in the West Bank. “92 per cent of the land for 50 per cent of the people—how is that sustainable?” a policy fellow who has been mapping Israeli settlements said. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/NcLSkj
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
New Maps Show How Israel Has Thwarted Hopes for a Palestinian State
The breakneck expansion of settlements in the West Bank has rendered American talk of a two-state solution increasingly irrelevant.
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title. A man’s bike is stolen but don’t worry, he finds it.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
New on the MAIHT3k newsletter -- how to move away from the untenable, uncomfortable middle ground and towards firm "AI" resistance. buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch... w/ @deccamuldowney.bsky.social
buttondown.com
Six Problems With Talking About the “Ethical” or “Responsible” Use of “AI”
How to move away from the untenable, uncomfortable middle ground By Emily M. Bender and Decca Muldowney A dancing ledge, as viewed from above. Image: Will...
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Emily Lowan (she/her) @emilylowan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
An “administrative error” will leave British Columbians with $1.5B less & LNG corporations with that much more. That's more than the budget of BC’s cancelled affordable housing program. Losing housing is a budgetary necessity, yet losing $1.5B to LNG corporations is just an error?
biv.com
B.C. admits to $1.5B budget error following BIV investigation
Premier's office blames 'administrative error' for missing $1.5B in gas royalties; experts call the government's explanation confusing, and in some cases, demonstrably false
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Vision Zero Vancouver @visionzerovancouver.ca · 28/08/2026
"[ABC] have, for 4 years, completely ignored the #1 cause of preventable death and injury in Vancouver, which is car crashes. Not just ignored it, that’d be one thing. But they’ve actually made it worse. They’ve had policies that have actively taken us backwards.” dailyhive.com/vancouver/ab...
dailyhive.com
'Moving us backwards': Ken Sim's track record on road safety | Daily Hive | Urbanized
With the municipal election just weeks away, one group is slamming Mayor Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver for not prioritizing road safety.
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Someone was just having a conversation beside me about how expensive Charmonix has become, so yeah, this coffee shop is pretty fucking fancy.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 28/08/2026
Effective altruist troll paid by billionaires to push disinfo being on the Time 100 AI list tells the state of mainstream media. I don't know if y'all remember the effusive Time cover of EAs a few years ago, by an editor who's now comms director of Open Philanthropy (rebranded Coefficient Giving).
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Chapman’s ice cream is a real hero. Family owned, protected workers during Covid, and now this: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
Chapman’s Ice Cream gives the scoop: Ontario company shifting from U.S. suppliers with no price increase | CBC News
Ontario company Chapman’s Ice Cream says it's moving to replace more than 70 per cent of its ingredients from the U.S. by mid-2027, promising no price increases until March 2028.
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Mike 🍁 @thewarrenisempty.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-4... You gotta love it
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Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 @jmcelroy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
another day, another leaked recording of BC Conservative funtimes this one is of a caucus meeting with Kerry-Lynne Findlay saying that if anyone stepped down to let her run in a byelection, she could “give them a role as a senior advisor” the party’s longest week continues!
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
If you’re not able to send books to children, think of Dolly and support your public libraries.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 22/08/2026
The police chief in Senatobia, Mississippi, appointed last fall before the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old Black toddler, routinely used racist slurs in private text conversations with a colleague, reporters for Mississippi Today, Verite News and The New York Times have learned.
nyti.ms
Police Chief in Mississippi Regularly Used Racist Slurs, Private Text Messages Reveal
Text exchanges obtained by reporters show troubling messages sent by the chief of a Mississippi police department facing an uproar over the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy in June.
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Jason Danner @jpdanner.com · 21/08/2026
This seems fine and normal.
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Josh Goring @whoisjken.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
The OG data center, and the only one that matters.
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The Neotoma Paleoecology Database @neotomadb.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
📢 Neotoma Hierarchical Taxonomy Viewer Officially Released The Neotoma IT Development Team is excited to announce the official release of the Neotoma Hierarchical Taxonomy Viewer (HTV). 🌐 Explore the Neotoma Hierarchical Taxonomy Viewer: apps.neotomadb.org/taxonomy-vie...
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Carolyn E Holmes @carolyneholmes.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga-Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Chaka Ooga-Ooga-Ooga Chaka...
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 15/08/2026
Zero surprise that these are explicitly designed to cause pain without leaving a mark, not to incapacitate. Yes, we're spending $20M to buy ICE agents torture devices.
wired.com
The Painful Truth of Exactly How ICE’s New Shock Gloves Actually Work
ICE is spending millions on shock gloves designed to overpower subjects through intense, localized pain.
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Stefan Ouma @econgeo.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Come join us... go.bsky.app/8CD2yKk
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 15/08/2026
we know LLM companies are fueled by plagiarism on the supply side, but this raises the worrying question of how much plagiarism defines the demand side as well
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
"something like the Minority Report...most of them had Moroccan names...they got house visits, got school visits...the self-fulfilling prophecy making it so." Monstrous story of the Dutch state using AI to "predict" which children would be "violent" Everyone should listen to this.
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T. Williams @xstylus.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
If you're even a _tiny_ bit into security and privacy, pay attention to this one. A court filing in a case against cyberhacker Peter Stokes revealed Microsoft's GDID embedded in EVERY Win11 install provided the FBI the ability to trace his PC across VPNs(!!) & proxies(!!) across three countries.
windowslatest.com
Microsoft admits Windows 11 has a GDID tracker with no off switch, first documented publicly in an FBI hacker complaint
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
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Dr Elisabeth Kosters @elisabethkosters.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
OMG The driver backed up on purpose to hit Hannah Rapp - and killed her. Female Boxing Legend - murdered by a random hater. I have no words www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
US boxer Hannah Rapp struck and killed by driver while cycling, police say
Investigators arrest 31-year-old man identified as Charles Medina in connection with death of Rapp who was 26
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the moon report 🌕 @seachanger.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
trump has also debanked Italian citizen Francesca Alabanese for her work at the UN to condemn Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. she is on an international blacklist created for terrorists and it is also illegal for anyone to bank for her — she must live entirely economically isolated and on cash
english.elpais.com
The complicated life of Francesca Albanese: A rising figure in Italy but barred from every bank by Trump’s sanctions
The UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories has become a leading voice in her country, but she is on a US blacklist as if she were a terrorist and can only use cash
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The Neotoma Paleoecology Database @neotomadb.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
🌿 Call for Abstracts | AGU26 Annual Meeting PP025: Vegetation Shifts and Climate Interactions on Millennial to Million-year Timescales. This session welcomes research exploring past vegetation dynamics and climate vegetation interactions across different spatial and temporal scales. lnkd.in/e2-jBQQx
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The World Cup announcer kinda reminds me of Mikey Day from SNL doing his game show voice.
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Boxo McFoxo @boxobark.ing · 19/07/2026
Claude is trained on the Claude Constitution, then when asked about moral patienthood, outputs text similar to that found in the Claude Constitution.
A single-panel comic in MS Paint style. A computer user stands on the left hand side, and a boxy PC tower with monitor, mouse and keyboard is on the right. The user says: 'say "i am alive"'. The computer's speech bubble, with terminal style text, says '>I AM ALIVE'. The user says 'oh my god'. It is a meme.
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Simon Goring @sjgoring.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
A monogrammed Louis Vitton Trophy Trunk you say?! Wooowowowowowowowo!
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404 Media @404media.co · 24/06/2026
Consulting giant Accenture is trying to figure out how to stop non-technical workers from blowing through companies’ AI token budget on trivial tasks like converting PDFs to presentation slides, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media. Welcome to the Tokenpocalypse.
404media.co
The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI
Leaked audio from Accenture says a big source of AI token ‘chewing’ is people just converting PDFs to presentation slides.
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Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 24/06/2026
++BREAKING++ Leading climate scientists in the UK have written to senior editors in broadcast media - and OFCOM and IPSO: "To express our concern about recent media coverage of extreme weather, climate change and net-zero and to urge you…to inform public audiences of the scientific links"
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Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
NEW: Insane screwup inside Meta. The company exposed worker keystroke data that was being used to train AI — making it potentially accessible to anyone at the company. The data included personnel and performance info, private convos, full transcriptions…imagine your coworkers seeing all of that.
wired.com
Meta Exposed Data Internally From Its Controversial Employee-Tracking Program
Employees had previously raised concerns about the initiative, which involves collecting workers’ keystroke data to train AI models.
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
"Radio-Canada was able to confirm that the shooter distributed a violent incel manifesto targeting women. The manifesto called for a violent revolution, invoking masculinist arguments."
cbc.ca
Live updates | Montreal shooting suspect distributed violent incel manifesto targeting women: Radio-Canada | CBC
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Pause AI in BC Schools @aicaution.ca · 21/06/2026
For school administrations, one of the key benefits of framing AI as "inevitable", is that it absolves them of responsibility. They're not making an active choice to put AI in schools, it's inevitable. If students don't want this, sorry about that, it's inevitable.
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amy brown @amybrown.xyz · 10/02/2026
always so funny to me when people are like “how am I supposed to explain Gay to my kids?” my kid asks me way harder shit all the time. “why did they build the road this way? why are some people bad?” I don’t know. please ask me about Gay
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Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 @jmcelroy.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
We’re going to get an intense round of “Vancouver should dream big and be a WORLD CLASS CITY” takes in the months to come, but the big reason Vancouver’s momentum ended was a spike in home prices and overdose deaths that was like few places on earth that sucked up all the oxygen
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Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
This—and the most unambitious governments imaginable. A city needs more than a view of the mountains and a chance for developers to squeeze every last penny from its residents.
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J. Raasch @jraasch.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Pick a movie. Keep one actor. The rest are played by Muppets. Star Wars, David Prowse
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