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Todd Rowell

@toddrowell.bsky.social
213 followers 356 following 1.3K posts

Not only a man of science—a man of hope. Software primate and UI designer at the Toyota Research Institute. I fight for the users. More fox than hedgehog.

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Reposted by Todd Rowell
rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Boosting again for people getting COVID vaccines (thank you for getting vaccinated!!) because my mentions are full of people finding it helpful. There is way more detail (and citations!) in the thread both up and down but this is the key info!
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 16/09/2026
Danny MacAskill Plays in the Endless Light of Norway. A gorgeous video of MacAskill riding three different mountains in Norway above the Arctic Circle, backed by a Max Cooper soundtrack. [kottke.org]
kottke.org
Danny MacAskill Plays in the Endless Light of Norway
Scottish trials rider and mountain biker Danny MacAskill, who I first featured on the site more than 17 years ago, recently took his Santa Cruz eMTB north of the Arctic Circle to Narvik, Norway. He rode three different m
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 16/09/2026
We Must Create the Shit Machine. “I asked everyone I know at the BIG TECH HUMAN CENTIPEDE ROUNDTABLE, and we all agreed that UNCONTROLLABLE SHIT-RAIN IS USEFUL AND GREAT, and that EVERYONE WANTS IT.” [mcsweeneys.net]
mcsweeneys.net
We Must Create the Shit Machine
“For as long as humans have created SHIT with our BODIES AND BUTTS, we have been asking this FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION: What if there were a COMPUTER that could ALSO SHIT?
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I just heard an ad from Meta portraying their changes to their apps (required by this settlement) as something they did because they care about users so much. Hypocrites.
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 22/06/2026
AI Economics for Dummies. “The Wall Street Journal’s business editor moves into Alex’s house, having accepted a part-time position as Alex’s human footstool. He never asks to see the books.” [mcsweeneys.net]
mcsweeneys.net
AI Economics for Dummies
“Xavier owns an apartment that he rents out at a loss of $1 billion/month. Seeing this success, he decides to make financial commitments to construct $850 bi...
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Annette Gordon-Reed @agordonreed.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Don’t know who to credit for this. But it is how I feel.
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 18/06/2026
“The prevailing emotions among scientists right now are rage and shock.” U.S. Science Is in Chaos. “This compact that has existed since World War II, that made the U.S. the successful, prosperous nation that it is, is being dismantled.” [scientificamerican.com]
scientificamerican.com
America’s compact between science and politics is broken
How did we get here?
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Jeff MacArthur @jeffmacarthur.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I just came up with the term "emotional abuse casino" for "social media" and I quite like it, especially with respect to young people on social media. That is all. CC: @ambermac.bsky.social
static.klipy.com
Dog Scroll
ALT: Dog Scroll
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Every word of this.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Jesus H Christ is right This is so bad you’d think it was Facebook daringfireball.net/linked/2026/...
daringfireball.net
Google Search Is Now Using AI to Rewrite Headlines
Link to: https://www.theverge.com/tech/896490/google-replace-news-headlines-in-search-canary-coal-mine-experiment?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjI0Q05IV0dlS3EiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvODk2NDkwL2dvb2...
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Turns out, imperialism isn’t free. (Imperialism is also not imperative.)
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
I keep wondering how the people who insist these models are conscious somehow think it’s OK to use a consciousness as a tool and that it’s not slavery.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Welcome to the dual state.
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
But lots of these are rape whistles, why would Republicans want to ban ooohhhhh right
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Wait wait wait, I got it! “Lil’ Duce” Eh? Eh? *reads news* Shit, a week too late.
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dougmuder.bsky.social @dougmuder.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Here's a phrase we all need to start using: weeklysift.com/2026/01/19/e...
weeklysift.com
Expand your vocabulary: the Dual State
[I haven’t done an Expand Your Vocabulary post in several years, but “the Dual State” merits one. We should all become fluent in its use.] It’s commonplace these days to com…
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
@getskyscraper.com are you planning to support using lists as feeds? Or is that here and I just can’t see how to do it?
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 18/12/2025
The people want a Knives Out Muppet movie (w/ Daniel Craig as the only human). To tide us over, Netflix & Sesame Street have teamed up for “Forks Out”, in which Beignet Blanc solves the mystery of who ate Cookie Monster’s triple berry pie. [kottke.org]
kottke.org
Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery
For years now, the people have wanted only one thing: for Daniel Craig’s chicken-fried detective Benoit Blanc to feature in a Muppet movie (with Craig as the only human). Earlier this year, Netflix picked up the streamin
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Brian Hughes @bmhughes.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥
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Kate Gray @hownottodraw.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HORSES! IT IS HORSE BIRTHDAY! HORSE!!!!!
a screenshot of text from a website. it reads: 

The History of the January 1 Birthday
The tradition dates back to the early days of organized horse racing, long before electronic timing and online records. Race organizers needed a simple way to group horses by age since a horse’s age often determines what races they can enter. Instead of tracking every horse’s exact birth date (which would have been a logistical nightmare), they decided that all thoroughbreds would share one official birthday: January 1.
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ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 19/10/2025
I keep thinking about how so-called AI is literally just time-displaced human intelligence. Bottled human decision-making, by converting human acts of perception and description into data via effective slave labor, that can be replayed for first-world elites who have given up on thinking themselves.
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later. harpers.org/archive/1941...
harpers.org
Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson
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They-Ra @xanindigo.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
roses are red violets are blue singular they predates singular you
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 01/09/2025
One of the victories of the "AI" industry is that the use of the word "intelligence" for their product has led to people conflating a massive appropriation of intellectual property for an database sorted and outputted with algorithms, with what actually happens in human brain, one artwork at a time.
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Alexandra Lanes @ajlanes.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”
quaker.org.uk
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
I want a presidential candidate who promises to construct Union memorials and statues all over the country. And yeah, North and South. Blanket Virginia with statues of Thomas, who actually chose the right side. Hell, put one of Sherman in the middle of Peachtree Park.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
The interpreter set the dial to 11
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 15/08/2025
the arguments for Butlerian Jihad are becoming increasingly persuasive, but at this point I would probably settle for Wozniakian Jihad
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Dennis Goris | Cartoons @dennisgoris.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
One of these things is not like the other #washingtondc
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 11/08/2025
bro, your entire field is built on the vision of fooling people into thinking computers are people and calling it "intelligence," because nobody actually understands what that word really means
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 11/08/2025
oh, word?
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RCaddy27 @rcaddy27.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
The not so invisible tiny orange hand
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
The reason people keep claiming that Republicans and other types of creepy religious freaks want to take away the vote for women is because they keep saying that's what they intend to do.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
The Weekly Sift's featured post is about how an authoritarian economy is bad for business (disastrous, really): weeklysift.com/2025/08/11/an-author…
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 08/08/2025
There's not enough money to be made in using tech for the things for which they are most suited and efficient, and there are both too many people hoping to be billionaires, and too many people not smart enough to know when they're being sold hype.
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Kevin McShane (Verified) @kevinmcshane.org · 08/08/2025
Just once, I want to see a job description that says: • Must be able to juggle one project in a slow-paced environment
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
When you say "AI is absolute shit" people will say "that shows you don't understand AI and how it's supposed to be used" and I will say "I'm not talking about AI in some imaginary rainbow world where it's used right and not fecklessly monetized, I'm talking about our world, fucknuts."
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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
I'm most proud of how flammable it was
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
“Our history” is the tell
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
I absolutely agree with this characterization of (one of) the harms of “AI” … soul stripping is perhaps the result that makes me the saddest.
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MC Frontalot @mc.frontalot.com · 07/08/2025
Wow. Appallingly, this is real.
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 07/08/2025
The Death of the Fourth American Republic. The Roberts Supreme Court means to end the fourth republic, which “began with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 60 years ago today”, by gutting that same act. [kottke.org]
kottke.org
Jamelle Bouie on the Death of the Fourth American Republic
This is a great piece from Jamelle Bouie on the likely death of the Voting Rights Act and, zooming out, the end of an era in American society that began with the Act’s signing. Americans pride ourselves, by contrast, on
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
I am going to be a massive humorless asshole about woo-woo shit, no matter how seemingly harmless, for the rest of my life due to this. astrology, homeopathic medicine, etc etc it's all bullshit and it's not fucking harmless. there are people who will die due to this who would have otherwise lived.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
BRB gonna make stickers for Teslas that read “this car is trying to kill me and then cover it up”
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 05/08/2025
just wait until you see this in some actual context, Autopilot is the biggest high-tech scandal in modern history
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Monteiro @monteiro.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
”Society has largely required us to alter our lives to avoid this, rather than society being altered to make us free and equal.“ @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social’s essay in today’s Guardian is VERY much worth your time. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein | Rebecca Solnit
Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
I have nothing to add here; luckily, nothing more is needed.
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Todd Rowell @toddrowell.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
The real question is: is there a DNC plant in the GOP, or is this the GOP inadvertently revealing the shitty future they plan for us, or has the GOP drank their own kool-aid for so long they’ve reached CCP/Tiananmen Square-levels of ignorance?
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