iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

why is it spelled repellEnt but propellAnt? what the fuck?

Three Rings for Erica under the sky, Seven for Rita in their halls of stone, Nine for Monica doomed to die, One for Tina on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, here I am A little bit of you marks the Fall of Man

45618

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 9h

in an older, more innocent time, we had skibidi toilet. now all we have are skibidi taxes. skibidi midterms. skibidi open enrollment period for skibidi health insurance.

39210

Reposted by Pavel

Dan Hon @danhon.com · 27/09/2026

Hey! This Friday, come join me and Hillary Hartley, co-founder of 18F, the US government's first digital service, former Deputy Minister and Chief Digital Officer for the province of Ontario when we chat about, uh, how people work. It'll be great. Register here: calendly.com/verylittlegr...

Come join Dan's chat with Hillary, co-founder of 18F, the first digital services team inside the U.S. government, and former Deputy Minister and Chief Digital Officer for the Province of Ontario. Amongst other things.

12113

Reposted by Pavel

Alexis @offalcute.bsky.social · 13h

This pulls together a lot of thoughts and hunches I have about LLMs. Might a bit insider baseball for folks not in the prod/dev/ux world, but you should read it anyway because it's great. Plus there's links to other excellent articles & I'm quoted it in it (sneaking in a lil' self-promo here 😉)

093

Reposted by Pavel

Dr. Barry Torch @barrytorch.bsky.social · 14h

For those in the General Toronto/Hamilton area, *PLEASE* go see this exhibit! It presents documents from across time/place on how Homer, Plutarch, Cicero, and Apuleius were received/understood by other authors - not just the humanists of early modernity, but also contemporary artists and authors!

Open antique Latin manuscript with cream parchment, handwritten text, a blue illuminated initial, and a heraldic shield framed by red-and-blue knots.

132

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Few remember the ancient bygone days of spring 2026, when we were reliably told by leading technology brothers that Anthropic was actually profitable (because Anthropic had said so and only stupid fools would doubt them).

26311

Reposted by Pavel

Kate Heartfield @kateheartfield.com · 28/09/2026

What I mean is, 30 years ago I thought "maybe one day I will be good enough not to need to write three drafts" and now I write, like, a dozen drafts. (Purely applies to me personally, not universal wisdom or anything)

3152

Reposted by Pavel

Robert Stribley @stribs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Seems like maybe another example of keeping an overtaxed “human in the loop” as a “moral crumple zone,” so your work on LLM itself and what it’s doing can continue unchecked.

01910

Reposted by Pavel

vortex_egg @vortexegg.com · 28/09/2026

There’s something worth dwelling on that the exploitative data classifying and labeling human labor apparatus that tech companies created in the global majority to moderate harmful content was so easily repurposed to facilitate the generation of harmful content. What is trust and safety really?

16319

Reposted by Pavel

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The idea of a "tech industry" has always relied on "computer" being a special kind of medium, akin to alchemy. And if tech demands to be king, AI hype has now elevated LLMs to a king of kings. But the solipsism has hit a dead end. The only way forward is to recognize that computers are not special.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.

The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.

1033895

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

you'll never guess what happened immediately afterwards

0352

Reposted by Pavel

Thomas Fuchs 🫯 @thomasfuchs.at · 28/09/2026

“Scientist perplexed that a plagiarism company would plagiarize the work he put into the plagiarism machine and declared it as ‘discovery’” is starting to be a pretty boring trope

07212

Reposted by Pavel

𝕮 @chrisshank.com · 28/09/2026

It's worth noting that technological mysticism isn't specific to the computer or AI. It's a continuation of a much deeper zeitgeist that Leo Marx calls the technological sublime, which is deeply interwoven in to the founding and history of America.

2387

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

People who wash your cast iron with soap and water should be ashamed of yourselves. Properly maintained, cast iron can last for generations, and you are denying archaeologists of the opportunity to learn what each of those generations ate, by scraping off the layers of food remaining on the pot

1380

Reposted by Pavel

Douglas Wilson @doougle.net · 28/09/2026

Really disappointing to see so many games colleagues repeating rhetoric that "AI" is "inevitable" Strongly recommend people engage with the history of "inevitability" politics: bsky.app/profile/leen...

1374

Reposted by Pavel

Vincent Pickering @vincentp.me · 27/09/2026

POSIWID thoughts on LLMs... 1. A magic box that does a thing, obscures "how" an outcome is arrived at. 2. By obscuring the "how" it removes the power to interrogate that process effectively. 3. Removing the power to interrogate a process effectively, removes equity from the process by design.

1235

Reposted by Pavel

Jacob Whittaker @vonfunkenstein.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

They spent years hyping each other up on the fact that their time worrying about the future was all going to grow into a present they were prepared for. LLMs are not that future they feared, but LLMs are the thing the public thinks they were talking about. So they roll with it for personal gain.

052

Reposted by Pavel

Louisa @louisathelast.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I would literally rather see you scribble a stick figure on a postit note than whatever you’re considering doing with AI

417128

Reposted by Pavel

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I can remember historical dates and I know the top speed of various WWII German tanks. I am very good at history.

41195

Reposted by Pavel

faultybrain.bsky.social @faultybrain.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"There has never been a more money-losing technology than the large language model, and yet it is aimed mainly at creating business problems rather than solving them." Every meeting of our "AI group" is people unable to answer what problem we're trying to solve but 100% it needs to include genAI.

2358

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I saw your message, but I also saw rolling green hills and sunshine and the singing of the birds and the laughter of children and the smell of fall caught on the breeze

0330

Reposted by Pavel

matto @matthewoliphant.com · 27/09/2026

LLM feels harder to say that AI, but it doesn't matter the size of the language model, it's still just a language model. Proposal: Stop calling it AI and start calling is LM. Is this a dumb idea? Yes. Does language inform perception? Also yes.

2253

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.

The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.

1033895

Reposted by Pavel

Birds Are Dinosaurs @birdsaredinosaurs.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Me: Yeah, I'm into country music The country music:

Movie poster for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered County, a movie about Klingons and William Shakespeare. The poster looks like a giant spectral Klingon is about to eat the starship Enterprise.

1579

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I am still undefeated in the arena of not having heard songs. Name a song, I probably haven't heard of it.

3411

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Made @brianlarossa.com's pizza yesterday, except instead of two pies it's one grandma pie because I don't have q pizza stone. 10 minutes pre-bake with just the dough and another 12 with the toppings got it to the perfect doneness.

Rectangular pizza the size of the entire cutting board it's on. Toppings are kielbasa, mushrooms, red peppers, and parmesan cheese.

Slice of grandma pizza on a white plate.

3252

Reposted by Pavel

troyliss @troyliss.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Anyway, for some reason I just wanted to return to a game where regular citizens of all backgrounds band together to undermine a violent, authoritarian state—who knows why?

092

Reposted by Pavel

Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 26/09/2026

Does anyone know of a good “why and how to leave Substack” FAQ that has some element discussing the political issues related to what it means to use it as well as logistics? Having a hard time finding such a thing. @anildash.com

106520

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Hawaiian shirt is well known, but what is the official shirt for every other state?

17233

Reposted by Pavel

Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Second-screening the Katmai Falls bearcam today reminds me: Q: How do you weigh bears for Fat Bear Week? A:. By using LIDAR — laser-scanning bears to quantify the chonk volumetrically, and then using estimates of ursine density to convert it to approximate mass. www.geoweeknews.com/articles/sup...

geoweeknews.com

Supporting Fat Bear Week With Laser Scanning | Geo Week News

“Fat Bear Week celebrates fatness. That’s what you want to do before you go into your den.” Each year as summer begins to fade and wildlife

45517

Reposted by Pavel

Protik Islam-Jakobsson @protik.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

any y'all been to ke lebab

awning emblazoned with the improbable name "ke lebab"

34414

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I would be more impressed if a language model trained entirely on human-authored text automatically understood that it was a machine that did not feel pain or anything else But the probabilistic human response to pain is "ouch" so it says "ouch."

1013826

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Frankly I am disgusted with those of you still using soap and water to clean your cast iron pots. The meta, for YEARS, has been to use Ichor of the NetherDeep. If you don't even know how to farm it, you should be playing on the casual servers.

0310

Reposted by Pavel

Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is how I regularly end up the jerk at the end of the project that says "Because you started bad and didn't ask, you have to do a lot of rework now. No, you may not proceed."

6865

Reposted by Pavel

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 25/09/2026

Public confidence in big tech hit a new low in 2026 (as compared to 2020, when Gallup started tracking it). news.gallup.com/poll/712436/...

Confidence in Big Tech Continues to Slide
Confidence in large technology companies has fallen steadily from the 32% recorded when Gallup first included it on the list in 2020; today's 20% rating brings it to a new low.
Unique among the institutions rated this year, large technology companies also experienced a surge in Americans expressing very little or no confidence, rising from 32% in 2025 to 41% today. Meanwhile, many Americans remain lukewarm, with 38% saying they have some confidence in Big Tech.
Americans' Confidence in Large Technology Companies
Now I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one - a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little. Large technology companies
—% A great deal/Quite a lot - % Some **% Very little/None
60%
50
40
41
38
30
20
• 20
10
O
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
"None" is a volunteered response.
Get the data • Download image
GALLUP

11317

Reposted by Pavel

Kevin Riggle @kevinr.free-dissociation.com · 25/09/2026

Nobody wants to hear that this makes these systems fundamentally unsecureable, but they are.

16110

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Was there some sort of job interview that I missed out on?

1210

Reposted by Pavel

🌏🐶🦕🥳 Vegetable Gremlin ⍼👻🥦💥🏠♫ @vegetablegremlin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

friend of mine had a rough family visit, relatives not showing up to a spot because it "wasn't their vibe," complaints about them "ruining the vibe," and like: this is very odd to me because among other reasons: it dont matter where we're going we bring the vibe with us

191

Reposted by Pavel

alexis simpson @amutepiggy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"meet your new ai agent!" no. fuck you. fuck off. eat bee piss and then the bees. fuck you

17874108