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Stephen Bell

@stephenjbell.bsky.social
357 followers 509 following 160 posts

Senior Design Technologist (front end dev) at a big nonprofit. Dad to two sets of twins. Canadian living in Oklahoma City. Love your neighbor.

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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 3h
Just use Affinity. They already made their own free versions of Adobe’s main products and made them different they won’t get sued into oblivion www.affinity.studio All of these vibe-coded versions of complex software that don’t make any money are going to be abandoned when their creators get bored.
affinity.studio
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I tried so hard to save you.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The tweet: “Well, I’d like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam! *Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily * Ah! Well. Nevertheless,”
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Yup bsky.app/profile/step...
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Brian Jay Jones @brianjayjones.com · 24/09/2026
Jim Henson would have been 90 (yup, you read that right: NINETY) years old today. You can celebrate his life by celebrating creativity, diversity, peace, imagination, and silliness.
A tuxedoed Jim Henson sits in a sea of Muppets.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Harvey Dent: Die A Hero Quote
Alt: Harvey Dent from Batman: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
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Matt Thompson @mvthomster.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
me, being questioned by the police, after my personal robot holds up a liquor store: "it went rogue"
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Danger Bay! My brain had that sculpture buried pretty deep in my memories. Thanks for the Canadian kids TV reference.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Trump’s doing us a favor showing which AI products to avoid. Anything that immediately changes its marketing to “Super Intelligence” is a big red flag that it’s ignoring safeguards and good judgment.
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Autumn Nash 🎃👻💀🖤 @withenoughcoffee.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
😂😅
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It’s funny you should phrase it like that, because your physical “gut” has brain cells that are separate from your main brain, and it has its own thought processes. www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/welln...
hopkinsmedicine.org
The Brain-Gut Connection
A Johns Hopkins expert explains how what’s going on in your gut could be affecting your brain.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is what a rigged economy looks like.
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Owen Lacey @owenlacey.dev · 20/09/2026
Parents rejoice
Spotify setting: "include children and family music in taste profile" set to false
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
THANK YOU. It’s been a long few years with toddlers. 😭
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404 Media @404media.co · 18/09/2026
It’s easy to see why the AI companies wanted to hide this from the public. The statements are some of the most damning indictments of the ways LLMs were trained, how they work, and the immediate threat they pose to human labor. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports. www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...
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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Straight from OpenAI's Brockman and Microsoft's Nadella - 'doom loop' for the entire web [as they vacuum up and substitute the work of journalism and threaten their economic foundations]. /2
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Not saying it’s not ridiculous, but the math doesn’t quite add up if that’s the *maximum* they’re each allowed.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Most students and faculty members would use a tiny fraction of that, right? It would be extremely difficult for most people to spend $2500 in tokens in a month, I think?
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New idea to try when you can’t remember someone’s name in a social setting. “Hello… THERE” Way to break the ice, corporate email.
An email from a SaaS company where their “Hello (person’s name)” is substituting the word “there” in bold when it doesn’t have my name on file.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is great, and I need more handcrafted birds energy in my feed
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Laurie Voss @seldo.com · 14/09/2026
For the last 2 years I have been tracking a generational change in the nature of software development, and I think I've finally decided where all of this turmoil is going to end up. It's good news, but not for everybody. seldo.com/posts/we-are-all-product-…
seldo.com
We are all Product Engineers now | Seldo.com
Agents are eating the software development lifecycle from the bottom up — code generation already gone, review and ops following fast. What remains is figuring out what people actually want, which can't be automated or scaled. That job is called product engineering, it pays $240k, and nobody's training for it.
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
When the steam engine arrived on the scene, everyone was talking about how it's basically alive and has a soul Seems like we should learn a thing or two about the AI discourse from that
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The other people in your replies talking about inflammation are on the same track. PANDAS/PANS is brain inflammation. Usually kids (the P is “pediatric”), but I think it can happen to anyone.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Source: I know children who have dealt with this, and antibiotics are something that can calm down some pretty extreme symptoms. The longer term way they deal with their symptoms is IVIG, which is kind of an immune system reset.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This may sound weird, but maybe you have something like PANDAS/PANS (autoimmune psychiatric symptoms from a bacterial infection), and antibiotics calms it down?
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It’s amazing how fast we went from “software engineers are all going to be laid off because of AI” to “software engineers are in hot demand!” www.businessinsider.com/high-paying-...
businessinsider.com
10 high-paying, fast-growing jobs that are at the forefront of the AI revolution
Data scientists and human resources specialists are high-paying, growing jobs with very high relative exposure to AI.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I’m holding out hope that the open weight models get good enough that everyone just uses those on their own computers and the huge AI companies never make another dime. Level the playing field, since this technology isn’t going away.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The Cat Righting Reflex is the official name of the process cats use to automatically correct themselves mid-fall and land on their feet. It develops between 3 - 9 weeks of age, and is responsible for the greatest wikipedia gif of all time.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Mt. Heyburn, Idaho. Playing with different styles and effects. These are all vector images (SVG). Shadows based on the tilt of the line at the top of each segment.
A pencil-like rendering of Mt. Heyburn in Idaho.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Swiftcurrent Lake, Montana #gis
A mountain landscape created using altitude data. Blues, cyans, greens and yellows, fading into a white background.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
These dialect maps are very interesting. I’ve lived mostly in SK and OK (with side quests to MB and TN), and the combination of those places somehow places me mostly west coast. I don’t think it’s wrong, but I wouldn’t have thought it would place me here.
A map of the United States, showing where it thinks I’m from after me answering dialect questions. Mostly west coast. Definitely not east coast or southern.
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J. Michael Mull @jmichaelmull.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
even now, she's still teaching us
screen on car radio reading:
Dolly Parton
Love is Like A Butt
(it should be Butterfly but the last part couldn't fit on the screen)
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
“Does not connect to any law enforcement databases” - Just private databases that law enforcement can buy access to, right?
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Republicans who see Canada as an enemy has leapt up this year, similar to how Republicans’ approval of Putin shot up in 2016. Virtually no anti-Canada US constituency before this year, and virtually no pro-Putin constituency before 2016. Out of nowhere. Now millions say that’s their position.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Yes. It’s possible to be against giant AI facilities and against tiny, stupid Bitcoin facilities without calling them all the same words. bsky.app/profile/step...
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
After a hiatus of a few months I'm back at it! "Lighting" adjusts colors based on angle of top surface, smoothed with gradients on each shape. Pictured: Mt. Rainier #svelte #gis #apparel #mtrainier
Mt. Rainier, generated from elevation data and exported as vector graphics
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Yes, this is bad and stupid. But I think we need more exact words than calling anything with a computer in it a “data center.” These look like shipping-container-sized huts. Is that the same thing as the huge AI processing sites that are being set up?
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Congratulations! You’re someone’s ancestor!
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The whole reason to make money is to be able to say "well I have money" when there's a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it.
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
One way you know Dolly Parton lived life the right way: I don’t think anyone’s going to get fired for accurately quoting Dolly Parton today.
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 25/08/2026
If you missed it the first time around, I highly recommend listening Jad Abumrad's podcast series "Dolly Parton's America." www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dol...
wnycstudios.org
Dolly Parton's America : Episodes | WNYC Studios | Podcasts
The story of a legend at the crossroads of America’s culture wars.
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Xe @xeiaso.net · 21/08/2026
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Chris from 🇨🇦 @ichris.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
TIL: August 1st is Emancipation Day in Canada. “It marks the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect across the British Empire.”
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
RIP Glen Hansard. I listened to the Once soundtrack yesterday, and it’s still moving, raw and powerful. And this busted up guitar that was in the movie rules. m.youtube.com/watch?v=_FB3...
m.youtube.com
Glen Hansard talks about his well-worn guitar at Glucksman Ireland House NYU
YouTube video by Glucksman Ireland House NYU
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I’m so sorry. For her, and for you having to witness that.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Hey, this was the plot of Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge. I thought he was just being melodramatic about Google scanning books 20 years ago, but it turns out he was right. a.co/d/02WiKQC2
a.co
Amazon.com: Rainbows End: 9781250841506: Vinge, Vernor: Books
Amazon.com: Rainbows End: 9781250841506: Vinge, Vernor: Books
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Helen Kennedy @helenkennedy.com · 26/07/2026
That book inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing, which killed 167 people, including a bunch of kids in the building's day care center. In case you wondered how dangerous this rhetoric is.
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Stephen Bell @stephenjbell.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
But I can see circumstances where people want to send tens of thousands of dollars where it’s hard to track if any real product is being sold. No teachers and no students, maybe?
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