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Steve Norum

@stevenorum.bsky.social
91 followers 133 following 95 posts

Tinkerer, zookeeper, ultrarunner, adrenaline junkie.

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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It’s funny how one of the best potential uses of LLMs (complex semantic search, for lack of a better name) is also completely useless because of LLMs (the vast majority of stuff published online anymore is meaningless slop).
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Whenever I see one of these "closeted conservative" stories that doesn't mention the person's actual political views, I can't help but think of the classic tweet. (re: apple.news/AUGXnsTfARwq..., "Confessions of a Campus Conservative" from, of course, National Review)
A tweet from Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence):

Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones

(timestamp: 11:24pm on October 11, 2018)
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I really want a tech billionaire to attempt to claim Bir Tawil. Both because it seems like it’d actually be possible with that level of funding, and because the odds of them getting merc’ed by the actual inhabitants when they show up to gaze on their domain seem relatively high.
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
im starting to believe in acceleration. please trump. do your coup. burn it down. water the tree of liberty with the blood of our sclerotic institutions. the more you destroy the more that will need to be rebuilt. exhaust us, spend our rage, slake our bloodthirst. let the hangover begin
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Micah @rincewind.run · 08/07/2026
every day someone comes on this retirement home for millennial forum posters and gets my ass
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
On the one hand, it's funny how Trump's intervention to help the US team made it so a win would be viewed as illegitimate. On the other hand, it's also funny that barring some last-second miracle, we're still going to lose fairly badly.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Terrible WSJ headline in Apple News this morning: “Chatbots Are Replacing Therapists With Little Scientific Evidence Behind Them” What the article says is incredibly different and it should be titled: “Chatbots With Little Scientific Evidence Behind Them Are Replacing Therapists”
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Listening to Ep.123 of @lionsledbydonkeys.bsky.social as they joke about if people in the present day used radioactivity as a health thing and apparently they haven’t heard of the “energy” pendants that are discs of heavily-thoriated glass.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
I feel old. I just realized that my github ID (271_804) puts me in the earliest 0.15% of users (approximately), given that the IDs are roughly sequential and they're past 197_000_000.
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Jake the Quick @jakethequick.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I often find myself thinking back to something Robert Evans said kinda early on in BtB. “I’m not saying violence actually solves anything. But people treat you differently when they know that violence isn’t off the table for you.”
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M. T. Anderson @mt-anderson.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
JFC NO, AWS. Bad. Stop it.
Screenshot showing an email from the Amazon Web Services marketing address with the subject line, "Could AI end the need for clinical trials?"
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Apparently 3 AWS data centers in UAE and Bahrain were damaged by drones (two direct hits, one near-hit that still caused damage). Definitely looking targeted at this point. Fun times. www.cnbc.com/2026/03/02/a...
cnbc.com
Amazon says drone strikes damaged 3 facilities in UAE and Bahrain
Amazon Web Services warned that instability is likely to continue in the Middle East, making operations "unpredictable."
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Oh man am I glad that I no longer work on AWS CloudHSM. The service was/is great but having to deal with a secure-hardware-based stack after a datacenter takes a military strike is not an experience I'm eager to have.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I’ve been asked to give a workshop on GenAI-assisted coding at work, giving me quite a bit of faith that my boss isn’t snooping on my public socials.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
"Also in the medal mix are Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson of Britain, whose presentation is so energetic they should be scored in kilojoules." I couldn't resist: if we assume a top speed of 5 m/s and a combined mass of at least 80kg, then yes, that is over 1000 joules. (from archive.is/ACK4f)
archive.is
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Yes, I’m sure the market crash is because of how much AI is enabling and not the realization that while it may help with some specific tasks, it isn’t economically feasible for the vast majority of what it’s supposed to take over. People are insane. apple.news/ANeh0JCpYTgq...
apple.news
Anthropic Just Sent Shockwaves Through the Entire Stock Market by Releasing a New AI Tool — Futurism
A minor update with major consequences. Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Last week, Anthropic released a new AI tool for automating legal work, precipitating a mass stock market selloff...
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Micah @rincewind.run · 04/02/2026
if you’re not putting General Sherman in charge of the DOJ in your administration we aren’t interested
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Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
3 yrs ago I started writing a book that is in stores TODAY. It's narrative nonfiction, anti-fascist spy thriller set in Trump era. It's timely as hell & I'm proud of it. A thread of what people are saying abt it & why I hope you'll help make it a bestseller www.simonandschuster.com/books/To-Cat...
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
It feels very weird to dig out my old mountaineering gear to go for a walk in the coastal plains region of the south.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
It pisses me off when articles like apple.news/A5Wrva_s7RL6... say that the speed with which AI is evolving is why it’s crucial to integrate it into school. That’s exactly why it shouldn’t be a big focus. GPTs are 8 years old and have been common for 3. Tech changes quickly; math and science don’t.
apple.news
Why higher education needs to embrace AI — Fast Company
In a panel with Fast Company, education innovators shared why colleges and universities have a responsibility to arm students—and workers—with the skills they need as AI transforms the workplace. [Ima...
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
I really wish more people realized that recent layoffs aren’t because of AI, they’re because the economy is in the shitter and only propped up by AI speculation. AI is just a convenient excuse that delays a complete collapse of the market. www.axios.com/2026/01/15/c...
axios.com
The Fed may have crushed entry-level jobs more than AI
The deterioration in the job market for young workers began before ChatGPT was widely available.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Experience so far with Claude Code: it tried to inject a remote code execution engine into an API request router. At least one good but junior FAANG dev I spoke with didn’t catch it. The next while is going to be even more of a payday for hackers and infosec folks than their wildest dreams.
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
the apparatchiks of this regime have de facto surrendered their right to share this society with the rest of us. theyre too dangerous to walk among us anymore
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
If your main example for why something is Constitutional is a slaveholder being a dick to brown people 240 years ago, before the US Constitution was written, you're an idiot. (1/3) re: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... archive.is/tLePk
washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Why denying rights to deportees is not unconstitutional
Constitutional rights, since their beginnings in America, have always come with a caveat.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
I think the best predictor of a person's views on LLMs are their thoughts on broad popsci books like Sapiens: There are people who read it and think "sure, it's wrong about the stuff I'm an expert in, but I trust the rest is accurate", and then there are people who see the big problem in that.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
The aurora is visible in central VA.
Faint red aurora through the trees.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Perhaps even some financially-well-off Jews voted for Mamdani because improved social services make society better for everyone in it? If the article weren’t written by a Jewish author for Haaretz, I’d honestly guess parts were written by quite the antisemite. Link: archive.is/ljgQX
Paragraph from an article in Haaretz by David Rosenberg, discussing why some Jews voted for Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor: “If they aren't hurting economically, why would Jews, young or old, support a candidate promising things like free bus rides that they don't need, and threatening to raise taxes that they will have to pay more of?”
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... very much brings to mind one of my favorite songs: youtu.be/0cXSz2XfS7A?...
nbcnews.com
Farmers fight an 'extension cord' for data centers
Tensions over a proposed 67-mile transmission line have rocked Maryland's farming communities, as the nation’s largest grid operator says data centers are driving power demands.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
"There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power stations. I hope that, encouraged now as 'patriotism', may remain a habit." - JRR Tolkien, Letter 52 (re: how the state of the world in 1943 was shifting his politics towards Anarchism)
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
A nice reminder of the days when America’s eternal militaristic jingoism was able to coexist happily with a welcoming attitude towards immigrants*. * yes, I know it was a super racist and shitty system, just in different ways than the current state of immigration law.
A torn but original poster for World War One war bonds. Top text reads “Remember your first thrill of American Liberty”, bottom text reads “Your duty-Buy United States Government Bonds” and “2nd Liberty Loan of 1917”. Poster image is a ship of poor European migrants approaching the Statue of Liberty.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
It might be good that they’re trying to measure signs of psychosis and mania in their users, but I’m dubious of how well they’re doing given that the population rate of schizophrenia (to say nothing of bipolar with or without psychosis) is at least 10x the rate of psychosis/mania they’re seeing.
Screenshot of a Wired article with the paragraph:

In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around 0.07 percent of active ChatGPT users show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania” and 0.15 percent “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
An advantage of the shutdown: this is what a VA-DC light rail ride looks like today.
A two-story train car with approximately 20 seats visible, only one of them occupied.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
On the one hand, it’s good that this research is being done and reported. On the other hand, the fact that the starting assumption, even among many in the field, is that things like “autism” or “ADHD” are single conditions and not convergent syndromes, is shocking. (1/) apple.news/ARCzJKbBbS4S...
apple.news
Autism Is Not a Single Condition and Has No Single Cause, Scientists Conclude — WIRED
Research reveals that those diagnosed with autism early show distinct genetic and developmental profiles from those diagnosed later.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
It’s annoying the number of interviews I’ve seen with students who said that Charlie Kirk made them feel comfortable expressing their true opinions on controversial topics without asking what those opinions are. (Insert goose chase meme here, but I’m too lazy to make it on mobile.)
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
What, Harrison Butker goes too far to the right? Who could’ve ever foreseen such a thing.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Honestly I’m not opposed to this change. We should be honest and call it the Department of Using Military Force to Economically Pillage Developing Nations, but at least Department of War is closer to true than Department of Defense.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 01/09/2025
Americans Astronomers watching watching US politics Betelgeuse 🤝 “It could happen at any time”
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
I guess Home Assistant wants to steer clear of cosmogonical debates.
Screenshot of the Home Assistant "Devices" menu listing the "Manufacturer" of the Sun as "<unknown>".
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
I’m working through the Behind the Bastards back catalog and I love that @iwriteok.bsky.social is one of around a half-dozen people in the world who remember the show SeaQuest DSV.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d consider someone stalking me with a rifle a bit of a provocation. (From www.npr.org/2025/08/09/g...)
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
I'm most proud of how flammable it was
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Missouri Jones @lildwu.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
The U.S. left doesn't need a Joe Rogan, it needs a Wyman Manderly.
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Blue sky nice ghost @rajandelman.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
Someone on here said that videogames offer a fantasy of predictable rewards for one's work, which in real life might not be rewarded at all. I think about it a lot!
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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
i think the correct way to think about the lonely boy question is not "how do we reach out to incels?" but "how do we make sure that a teenage boy looking for romantic advice isn't flooded with right-wing propaganda?"
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Too many of the things I’d want to use “AI assistants” for are things that are just needlessly shitty. Flaky online portals, calling an office to set up utilities or make an appointment, those sorts of things. I don’t want to burn 1.21 jigowatt-hours of energy; I just want the dentist to use email.
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Steve Norum @stevenorum.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
I’ve long thought “Epstein wasn’t killed but was possibly/probably talked into offing himself given his hopeless situation,” but the feds are really trying to push me into the full “Epstein was actually murdered camp” with all this video editing BS.
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