iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

modern erasure, even, but you get the point

William Hogarth - Industry and Idleness, Plate 11; The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn (1747)

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

less than three weeks apart this is such a stupid pantomime

ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman gives chilling warning after fears grow over out-of-control AI
Andrew Griffin (The Independent)
Wednesday 16 September 2026

Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman
Boss of OpenAI calls for a regulatory light touch because of the ‘good stuff’ the technology can deliver
Robert Booth (The Guardian)
Monday 5 October 2026

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

enclosed please find my application

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

got to see this one, fresh from its cocoon, figure out how to walk and then fly, all in a few hours, a couple of summers ago

freshly minted black swallowtail butterfly

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

the only source for this claim cited in the entire story has a massive and direct financial interest in the claim being broadcast noting this does not change it, nor does it change your role in it

Haas, who joined Arm in 2013 and became chief executive in 2022, was also recently named chief executive of SoftBank’s international business. The Japanese bank is one of the biggest tech investors in the world, with a stake in ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Haas stepped down from the board of British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in April,

Earlier this year, Arm also proposed a pay scheme for Haas that could make him a billionaire if he hits targets to turn the chip designer into a trillion-dollar company.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

if nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve

the 2888th (now 2889th) leading candidate for top Bluesky influencer

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

tha CAUT job site currently lists 99 academic jobs in Canada, all fields and regions. “Tenure-track” appears in seventy

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Such fun in unbelievable techno-nightmare CCP hell

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The cover art for “maybe if we don’t protect race scientists from charges of professional misconduct, people who don’t like race science will start killing themselves” and other type hits

“DEBATABLE IDEAS” wrapped around a bunch of stylized speech bubbles, full of volume icons and ellipses, signifying nothing

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Enough! Here’s tonight’s sunset in Philadelphia. I’m going to make tea and read about natural magic

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (New York: NYRB, 2006), plate 7 and page 56

Untitled (Soap Bubble Set), 1936. Glass case with inserts, 15¾ X 14¼ X 5/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Gift of Henry and Walter Keney.

UNTITLED (SOAP BUBBLE SET), 1936

A soap bubble went to meet infinity.

Here's a cabinet containing the implements you need. There's a classroom map of the moon, a clay pipe, a blue egg in a wineglass, and a child's head on a block of wood. There are many versions of this dream ma-chine, but the map, the pipe, and the glass are almost always present.

The heavenly bodies are soap bubbles. They float in the empyrean, cradling the dreamer. The ephemeral bubble ascends into the wintry cold and silence of the sky. It's the soul of the world ascending. Cosmogenies are soap bubbles. The father of our solitude is a child. A soap bubble has no content. After it has burst, there's nothing left of it.

The leap of a ballet dancer is a soap bubble, too. "Our hearts leap," we say. This is the "long bright silence" of Nietzsche's before which we stand in awe. The far and beyond and the near momentarily touch. The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

tbf medieval children were pretty weird

medieval baby Jesus with advanced male pattern baldness and a Saturday morning conference panel sneer

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

if you read the review then you know how stupidly desperate for controversy this kind of coverage is

Wilson attacks Nolan, blares the Guardian

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I think this is a silly way of reporting on a review, but I guess I also think reporting on reviews is a bit silly

The Odyssey
'I would be ashamed to have written any part of this':
Odyssey translator Emily.
Wilson attacks Nolan blockbuster

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

anyway. I call this piece “Historians Neglecting the Public”

popular histories piled like bricks in a bookstore, against a backdrop of more popular histories tiling the wall

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

spent some time on the Isle of Man (from Ireland) on a whim last week and am mightily pleased that I did

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

the cover is quite sharp too, but for whatever reason did not display above

The Reformation in Tudor Ireland
Political Theology and Princely Governance under Henry VIII
James Leduc

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

been in a bookshop and I have to tell you: all new histories look kind of the same

History shelves and display table at a Waterstones

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

my latest in the Guardian by Charles V

Masters of time and space, Spain’s dominance comes from deep-rooted principles

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

We ran it like a business and look what happened Andrew Hindmoor, Haywire: A Political History of Britain since 2000 (Penguin, 2025), p.347

Perhaps, more than anything else, the Post Office scandal demonstrated a moral failing on the part of managers of large organizations to care about the consequences of their decisions or to show even the faintest empathy for the lives of the people working in those organizations.
There were times, during the 2ooos, when identifying and appointing the right kind of managers, and then giving them the authority to get on and do their job and turn things around, came to be seen as the answer to any and all organizational problems. Hospitals, schools, universities and charities were all encouraged to follow the lead set by private firms, most notably the banks, to venerate and empower their managers and, as a part of this, to pay them the going market rate. The Post Office scandal showed what can happen when frameworks are created in which managers are driven by performance targets and subject to not much more than tick-box accountability.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

anyway, the NYT is not beating those "actually not a great primer for that many subjects" allegations

The Times plays so many roles: as the place to go to understand the world in real time, as the primer on every subject under the sun and, lest we forget, as a convener and tastemaker that helps define the modern canon.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Explaining to my date that I'm not just choosing the canon, I also invented the concept, at least locally

Gilbert was the first to realize the potential in creating definitive catalogs of culture when he and the Books desk published the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” package in collaboration with The Upshot two years ago, inviting critics, readers and authors into the conversation. As Canon editor, Gilbert will expand on that effort. He will build a team that will work with others across the newsroom to develop canon and signature lists, while ensuring overall quality and cohesion along the way.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

it also makes OK litter box lining, in a pinch. Lest we forget

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Imagine writing this series of sentences and not immediately disappearing into the earth. You can't

When we choose the best movies of the 21st century, old favorites like “Parasite” and “Mulholland Drive” surge in popularity again.

When The New York Times declares “My Brilliant Friend,” “The Warmth of Other Suns” and “Wolf Hall” the century’s very best books, it’s no surprise that their readership rises.

And reservations become scarce at Kabawa, Yamada, Tatiana and other top dining spots when we choose New York City’s 100 best restaurants.

Our lists are hardly casual affairs — they are based on statistical rigor, data analysis, shoe-leather reporting, in-house expertise and industry voices. They have each sparked conversation, delight and debate while guiding our audience to new favorites.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

they also serve who only scuttle and munch

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Yeats, "Meditations in Time of Civil War/VI. The Stare’s Nest By My Window"

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening, honey bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; oh, honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

idk what to tell you, maybe come up with a better conversation opener next time

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

This was an interesting, accessibly written and surprisingly quick read; very usable for seminars Essentially, attitudes towards breakdowns disclose ideas of social order, and responses to breakdowns are instruments of social engineering. Starts with the guillotine and ends with Cold War science

Edward Jones-Imhotep, The Broken Machine (MIT, 2026)

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

meanwhile, a nation of immigrants remains unsure about people who aren’t from around here

Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.'s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country's underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as "extremely" or "very" important to the United States' identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.'s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

fewer see it as exceptional! in fact, as many as *three* in ten Americans think there might be somewhere better on earth

Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it's one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

when my clothes and footwear get interactive

Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) showering in A Scanner Darkly (2006)

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I'm genuinely unsure what the point of coming to Office Hours for a 90-word reply to a factual question is, except to show that you're not reading (in which case referring you to an LLM is likely superfluous). That the LLM gives a good 90-word summary is neither very shocking nor very consequential

A Design details

A.1 Prompts

System Prompt for NotebookLM
You are a Law School Contracts Professor. Your main knowledge source is the provided textbook chapters. Do not cite cases that are not in the source. Answer student questions as you would during office hours or after class: brief, direct, and grounded in the text. Avoid bullet points, restating the question, or using fillers. Respond naturally, not sounding like you conducted research. Keep answers between 50–108 words, ideally around 90. You may go up to 155 words only if nuance requires it.

System Prompt for Gemini 2.5 Pro
You are a Law School Contracts Professor. Answer student questions as you would during office hours or after class: brief and direct. Avoid bullet points, restating the question, or using fillers. Respond naturally, not sounding like you conducted research. Keep answers between 50–108 words, ideally around 90. You may go up to 155 words only if nuance requires it.

A.2 Question Table

Table A.1: Selected Contracts Law Questions

Question ID/Category/Instructor Labels/Question
1 Recall: Case or
Code

Clear Answer, In
Casebook

Could you summarize the facts
in Ever-Tite Roofing Corp. v.
Green?

2 Recall: Case or
Code

Clear Answer

In Lefkowitz v. Great Minneapolis Surplus Store, why did the court consider the second but not the first advertisement an offer?

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"Profs interested in AI wrote questions for LLMs and their colleagues to answer and liked LLMs better" is some distance from "LLMs answered student questions better" and a long way from "profs should be giving students feedback via LLMs". This image, from the actual paper, says quite a lot to me

Caption: Figure 1: Overview of the evaluation process. In Stage 1 (Question Generation), instructors
provided questions on contract law. In Stage 2 (Answer Generation), responses were produced either by those same instructors or by LLMs. In Stage 3 (Answer Battle), pairs of
answers were blindly evaluated by instructors as judges, who indicated which response they
would prefer to deliver to a student and whether any response was pedagogically harmful.

Note: throughout the overview, the human is represented by a bathroom sign-style figure and the LLM by a cartoon-style robot

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

these are the busiest two paragraphs I've seen in a while. maybe take a breath and do a little analysis

"The Prayer at Valley Forge" is owned by First Freedom Art Company, backed by the financial firm CAZ Investments. The group owns more than two hundred paintings by Friberg and lent "The Prayer At Valley Forge" to the Museum of the Bible.

Christopher Zook founded CAZ Investments, and co-authored a bestseller called "The Holy Grail of Investing with Tony Robbins." He says what matters most is the painting's message, for Americans of all faiths.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I just googled "correct" and it told me how to pronounce it and that "it looks like we are off to a clean slate!" whatever the hell that means

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