iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Unfortunately we probably spend more time in the lower half of that figure

Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

And even if every individual student leaves after 4 years and we somehow accept that as reason for them not to vote there, students *as a group with shared interests* is a large constituency that is not leaving, as new ones come every year. For some college towns, that's about half the population!

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

On n’est pas loin de “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I appreciate the greater point you're making in the thread, but I couldn't help and think about the consequences of this system. For instance, Olympic records based on time would be broken in cities far from the equator when the games take place close to the solstices.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Yeah, the most boring and likely answer is that it's just money and model size...but it's very tempting to speculate that there's something special about *language* that enables those results.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

The fact that it's a generic LLM that did it, and not some math-specialized neural network or the likes, really blows my mind.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Therapist: The paper figure monster is not real, he can't hurt you. Paper figure monster:

Figure from a scientific paper. First row has two side-by-side color plots that are somewhat circular, second row is a row-wide 1D plot with somewhat horizontal lines. Taken together, the whole thing looks like a face.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

(a slowdown that more-or-less vanishes if we don't exclude transfers)

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Right... I've been catching up on all the replies over lunch and my main takeaway is this: it's hard to explain a historic drop in sentiment (the "vibecession") by a small slowdown of income growth, the likes of which has happened many times in the past decades, often in larger magnitudes.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

This is an earnest question because I generally like your replies but doesn't the chart precisely show that real personal income decouple from the trend starting around 2022?

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

The fact that they appear the same size is incredible, but to be clear, that's not required for total eclipses--all that's required is that the Moon appears at least as big as the Sun. (E.g. moon could be 3x bigger and total eclipses would still be possible, even marginally more common.)

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Dark matter's existence is not controversial and the evidence is overwhelming. We don't know what it is, but it's not just some weird speculation, it's really there. Also the big bang is not a point from which everything expanded, it's just the idea that the universe used to be real hot and dense.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Thought the same and looked at the numbers: - lowest quintile spends $1655/yr eating out (4.7% of $35k total expenditures), - highest spends $7652/yr (5.1% of $150k). Can't tell how much of that discrepancy is "eats out more often" vs "orders costlier food" but surely not just the latter.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

There's no one answer but Gatineau, Sherbrooke, and (hear me out) Chicoutimi all have a claim imo.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Probably something like that yeah, he's likely on a bunch of "celebrity with interesting names" lists that went into the training sets. I have to admit this one gave me a giggle though, love to see it faceplant like that:

"Bart Hart / Bret Hart — Bret Hart doesn't rhyme, but Bret "The Hitman" Hart — no."

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

The rhyming prompt is even worse. The "solid list" has three names, including one that doesn't rhyme, and one that's made up.

Screenshot of Claude Opus 4.6 struggling to rhyming celeb names, just saying random names and Jack Black.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

People will tell you that you're using the wrong model or whatnot but even the fanciest paid Claude does the same gimmick—with more hits, but still.

Screenshot of Claude Opus 4.6 struggling to give 5-syllable celeb names, always randomly inserts ones that don't fit the criterion.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Les deux factions politiques américaines distinctes représentées sur Bluesky :

Région identifiée comme "American Progressive Democrats"

Région différente, identifiée "Progressive American Democrats"

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Many BQ voters refuse to see any difference between Canada and the US, so being a province or a state is potahto-potayto to them. They are also vehemently anti the-very-concept-of-Canada so they definitely wouldn't fight for it. They're wrong imo but that probably explains the poll results.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Ah oui c'est vrai, avec Mr Flighdwin. J'aurais pas dû douter!

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

"a jeje" c'était pas Laflaque qui imitait Paul Martin? Je mélange peut-être mes sketchs.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Sound on to hear me call the owl's attention.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

These pictures were all taken using the 3-second exposure setting of my iPhone. Next and last post bonus video.

Long-exposure picture of the same tree shown in the previous post, this time at night time. An owl can be seen sticking out from the top. Stars are visible in the background.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Here are pictures of owls taken with a 127 mm (5") telescope and my phone camera. Those guys just hang out there all day. Next post night time pics.

Picture of a telescope (foreground) pointing towards the top of a tall tree (background) in daytime, with a red arrow to indicate more precisely where the telescope is pointing. At that location, there are branches and a dark shape, and it's hard to identify what that shape is due to distance.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

A friend's wifi password was "ALL IN LOWER CASE NO SPACES", and the wifi name was "the 1st at the top".

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Il a été rédacteur en chef adjoint deux ans (1990-92). L'Actualité est à l'origine la branche francophone de Maclean's, et appartient aujourd'hui à Alexandre Taillefer (ancien directeur de campagne du PLQ de Couillard). C'est vraiment pas une publication pro-PQ, même si des péquistes y sont publiés.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

That's the only way I can make sense of it, e.g., what he calls a "100%" decrease is what you and I would call a 50% decrease.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

The kind of paper I wish someone shared with me when I was learning GR and cosmology

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

The clue from the screenshot is "even if they are separated," and from broader context, what Einstein said on the topic. True that there's room for LHV if we break common assumptions (I did evoke superdeterminism), but my understanding is that Einstein's contentions were not with those assumptions.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

From context clues we can assume that where the screenshot says "hidden variable" it implies "local hidden variables," which Bell's theorem does preclude.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I don't think M-theory is relevant here! It's Bell's theorem (1964) that settled it. Einstein died in 1955, but Bell only used theory that existed when Einstein was alive. M-theory (1995) hasn't refuted Bell, although some marginal interpretations of QM claim to (e.g. superdeterminism).

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Tbf she specifically said "half of everyone born was dead by 35", not "life expectancy was 35". Considering the antivax/anti-science stuff will likely increase childhood mortality I don't think that's a case where the misconception matters as much.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Very cool, I'd never seen that one! If anyone has trouble switching between horizontally/vertically, it helps to look at the edges of the frame.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Ben voyons je croyais que c'était une nouvelle parodique avant de lire l'adresse du site.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Aww! There's a couple that keep coming to my house, I'll be sure to send pictures over!

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Yeah... I’m a physicist, not a coder, and I’ve wasted way too much time on broken Python envs or slow code in the past. Now, I can just ask the robot to fix it and move on to the science. Because of all the harm they cause, I hate how well LLMs work for some tasks.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

(I only doubt because I've never seen an edition use 4 on the A but it's still very playable so I can believe it)

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

is it the adagio from Beethoven op. 2-1

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I think the other detail is the questions were specifically of the type "what's the source of this excerpt". Still not a good look but it doesn't mean that 60% of questions in general would be answered wrong.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

J'ignore l'origine de cette photo mais c'est de la fiction... le gnosticisme est essentiellement disparu un bon 500 ans avant que les notes soient nommées. Leurs noms n'ont d'ailleurs rien à voir avec l'astronomie (malheureusement!), mais plutôt avec un hymne religieux en latin du IXe siècle.

Capture d'écran de l'article Wikipédia sur le gnosticisme, qui mentionne entre autres que le gnosticisme connaît son apogée au cours du deuxième siècle. Le passage suivant est surligné : "Les sectes gnostiques ont ensuite progressivement disparu à partir du quatrième siècle".

Capture d'écran de l'article Wikipédia de l'hymne pour saint Jean-Baptisme (Ut quant laxis), qui a donné aux notes leurs noms. Le passage suivant est surligné : "L'hymne, datant du neuvième siècle".

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

I only learned that recently when I did the math: I'm paying the same amount in taxes in the US than I would if I still lived in ON (it'd be a tiny bit higher in QC). And I have to pay $1000s/year on top for health insurance! Most of it is federal too, so it's not due to living in a blue state.

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Vincent MacKay @vincentmackay.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

I could've saved the Planck team a whole lot of trouble by just saving the COBE map in jpeg a bunch of times

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Reposted by Vincent MacKay

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 22/01/2025

Devastating for scientists and their research, and everyone who benefits from that research. I’m not sure if everyone outside academia is aware that a delay or “pause” in grant funding often means the researchers themselves are lost from the field, along with their expertise.

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