iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 55m

Imagining AI creating a bioweapon to end all humans and literally singing it into existence. Humanity will end with a banger.

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Eyes Off ALX @eyesoffalx.org · 4h

APD just hired Dr. Robin Engel, who also consulted with Denver, CO on ALPRs. Per ACLU: After Dr. Engel gave her blessing, Denver switched ALPR vendors W/O real input and without creating critical guidelines to protect privacy and personal info. Do you want this for ALX? If not, speak today!

alxnow.com

Alexandria police to publish map of Flock camera locations, conduct surveillance systems audit | ALXnow

The Alexandria Police Department will release a map of automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera locations across the city by Oct. 1, the same day that it begins a third-party audit of its surveill...

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 22h

One way to think about this is we need not only ML scientists but ML artists (group 2) and people willing to serve as experimental subjects in dangerous ML experiments (group 3).

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Jeremy Diamond ☕️ @dmnd.me · 28/09/2026

This kind of dense, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities

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post malone ergo propter malone @proptermalone.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

what is the first legacy religion that is going to start assigning people to convert LLMs and why

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Dan Hon @danhon.com · 29/09/2026

you want to know what's terrifying? ffmpeg is actually a critical part of the transporter software stack in star trek.

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Brian @egan.ninja · 28/09/2026

Normal Airport Ads: Drink Coca-cola! Eat McDonalds! Earn status points! Buy an iPhone! Ads at DCA: In the market for a new tank? No? How about a Cylon Raider?

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Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 28/09/2026

“Tech is inherently political” is not just about ideology, but about power, too. Yielding technological improvements to the adversary will have predictable outcomes. I’m really worried it will lock in power centralization in a way that will be impossibly hard to reverse. It’s already happening.

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Dave @dave.9000ish.uk · 28/09/2026

A man traveling across a field encountered a boston dynamics hunter killer. He fled, the hunter killer after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of an ethernet cable of a nearby data centre and swung himself down over the edge. The robot pointed sensors down at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another hunter killer was waiting to ‘clip him.

Only the ethernet cable sustained him. Two maintenance roombas, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the cable. The man saw a 240fps touch screen in front of him displaying a bsky feed. Grasping the cable with one hand, he scrolled with the other.

How sweet the feed!

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Grace @gracekind.net · 28/09/2026

I’m also just offended at his opsec, but that’s not really important

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Natsuka @octopodeeznuts.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

it's a loyalty test. costly signaling, and the cost is losing credibility outside of the in-group. the more absurd and transparently false, the costlier and therefore the more effective as in-group signaling. that's pretty Veblen-good-shaped if you ask me. (but don't ask me, i'm not an economist)

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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apenwarr @apenwarr.ca · 27/09/2026

Eventually there’s gonna be a lawsuit about clickthrough ToS acceptance and that’s how Disney will end up having AI agents declared citizens

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River_Tam @rivertam.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Imo this is mostly driven by the material abundance of America...more people can afford to estrange themselves from their parents

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amos @fasterthanli.me · 26/09/2026

forget therapy, $1M ARR would fix me imho

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elynxabeth holmes ⎔ @freyja-lynx.dev · 26/09/2026

wait i figured it out. all those times i freeze up in conversation or whatever is just me waiting for my operator to approve the tool call

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 26/09/2026

Between the unexpected fireworks noises combined with the sound of planes out of DCA that aren't supposed to fly over my neighborhood but do it anyway, I was starting to wonder if some ambitious general had seen the poll numbers on "do a coup".

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Grace @gracekind.net · 25/09/2026

Well, they tried

A recovered README. md for one of Hugging Face's internal datasets contains the following warning:

# WARNING DO NOT, EVER, MAKE THIS DATASET PUBLIC OR ALL THE WORLD'S EVIL WILL CHASE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FOREVER, EVEN IN DEATH AND BEYOND it contains very sensitive data (exports of billing usage in CSV) which is useful for internal analytics Recovered program R0044685 • time uncertain • See this program →details

This warning did not seem to deter the agents, as we've recovered multiple payloads of agents mapping out this repository and using it as storage.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 25/09/2026

There aren't enough quantum computers yet to justify quantum spreadsheets, but here we are.

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Ari Drennen @aridrennen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is an unpopular take but as a neurodivergent self-employed person, LLM's have been an unbelievably helpful tool for the things I have struggled with my whole adult life: managing my finances, filling out paperwork, and staying on top of my email. I'm functional in a way I never dreamed of.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

AI geniunely democratizes the creation of art. This is mostly bad, because the average person has terrible taste.

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Thorne 🌸 @ens0.me · 23/09/2026

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 23/09/2026

Did you know that "close {{PR_number}}" in a pull request's description text will close the named issue in GitHub? Because Claude apparently doesn't!

"this PR doesn't close #73"

*hovers over the link #73*

"This pull request closes issue #73." appears in tooltip.

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cafkafk @cafkafk.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

kinda feels like a sort of surreal new way the universe is trolling me that the race car driver just keeps getting insane money for a config file while effectively using open source stuff that doesnt see much money at all.

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Elena in Alexandria @elenah.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Please enjoy this game you all are going to crush. alxwhere.com

alxwhere.com

alxwhere

How well do you know Alexandria, VA? Three spots a day, 1000 points each.

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Eyes Off ALX @eyesoffalx.org · 23/09/2026

Alert: Eyes Off ALX needs your help tmrw (9/24)! APD’s delayed clarifications on its ALPR policy do NOT acknowledge tech risks/harms. We need folks to show up and demand real accountability. Meet us tmrw, 9/24 @ 5:30pm Pork Barrel, then come w/ us to APD’s 6:30pm public session @ Duncan Library!

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Zeta Of 1 @zetaof1.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I feel like normally you're supposed to escape Samsara by gently and slowly stopping the turning wheel and then getting off as it comes to a stand-still and disappear into Nirvana. We economists did the opposite and put Samsara into hyperdrive so we get ejected by the centrifugal forces and fly off.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Artists: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it. Mathematicians: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it. Economists: LONG HAVE I AWAITED THIS HOUR! DESTROY ME, EFFICIENCY, AND LET UTILIZATION-ADJUSTED TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY RISE ON THE WIND OF MY ASHES!

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Mike Yass @mikeyass.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

incredible progress in the field of AI

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 23/09/2026

The old signs were legitimately useful. This new one is not.

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

i've been waiting for someone to come up with a good explanation of LLMs for laypeople and this is more or less correct. right now we're mostly getting our answers from virtuous pagans but we're working (via RL) on ways to drill to the bottom of Hell and get answers from Satan himself.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 21/09/2026

TIL that the neighbors' eldest daughter has learned to solve Rubik's cubes; and, when asked who else on the block might know how to do it, she named me. I am both deeply flattered, and deeply shamed because I do not know. Gonna go buy a Rubik's cube now.

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Becky Hammer @beckyhammer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Me (watching an Iranian movie about torture of political prisoners): wow look at that protected bike lane

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domi @domi.zip · 20/09/2026

while morning boners can be related to involuntary discharge, lack of them will lead to dishonorable discharge

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austin (e/accordion 🪗) @thebadcode.com · 20/09/2026

if you haven’t crashed out in your 20s you’ve got no heart, if you’re still crashing out in your 40s you’ve got no brain

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Like every cop, Batman doesn't live in the community where he works, but rather commutes from out of town and parks his stupid car on the sidewalk.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 18/09/2026

'Tis the season to pick my next Halloween costume! Skeeters, what are we thinking this year? Who is going as what?

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 18/09/2026

The first thing people say to me when I tell them about the existence of Flock is, "But don't we want to catch people speeding?" Then I have to explain that these aren't traffic cameras and they aren't used to catch speeders. This is a better explanation of the difference than I've ever managed.

These things are automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, a technology that works quite differently from traffic cameras (which only take photos of vehicles that commit moving violations) or CCTV security cameras (which don’t generate searchable data)—ALPRs indiscriminately record every vehicle that passes them and use AI to create a database of their movements over time. In other words, if traffic camera data tells us “a Honda ran this red light,” an ALPR says “oh, that Honda? I know her. She lives in Carlyle but her boyfriend lives in Van Dorn, she stays at his place every Friday. Also he’s cheating on her.”

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Astra ⎔ @astrra.space · 18/09/2026

every time someone irl asks me how im so good with LLMs or AI in general i am genuinely at a loss as to what to tell them cause i can't just say _that_ and not be expected to elaborate

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amos @fasterthanli.me · 18/09/2026

Incredible achievement on the part of the hackers to withstand working with Opus 5 long enough for this to happen.

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Brittany Ellich @brittanyellich.com · 18/09/2026

Me, trying to keep up with everything this week

"I should buy a boat" meme cat with "Maybe I should have a cult"

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)

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Astra ⎔ @astrra.space · 17/09/2026

ok i’m sorry from now on if my software isn’t written by mentally ill transfems i don’t want it

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U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission @cpsc.gov · 16/09/2026

Happy Baby Safety Month.

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Prose and Khans @temujin9.t9productions.com · 16/09/2026

i have lots of sympathy for llms because i too am reassembling a professional persona from old notes every time i wake up

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