iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 2h

If we’re in a situation where we’re down to Moni and Steve in run-off something horrible has truly happened to the world, but maybe it can at least be one iota less horrific

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 3h

she's still better than kromer, so still gets a vote at 4th

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 6h

china, japan, south korea have horrendous work norms compared to the US, do you think they are way behind on technology? maybe it has more to do with stuff like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_La...

en.wikipedia.org

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - Wikipedia

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 6h

i find this grimly funny bc the reason we have a 5-day/40-hr workweek norm right now isn't because of technological progress, it's because of labor. an amazon eng can use a frontier model and finish their day's tasks faster. do you think Bezos gives 'em the rest of the day off, or more work?

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 7h

this might be one of the greatest burns i've ever read

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 8h

it would be really funny if Trump is actually obsessed with Roko's Basilisk

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

by contrast look at the polling density of TX. this is the kind of data density that makes you throw away the fundamentals of the state.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

ah yeah, probably the same thing at work. probably a little too close than would be desired, but there are just so few data points to weight even the adjusted polls too strongly vs "fundamentals" (see how sparse the dots are, a neat feature of the nate silver forecast)

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

FWIW a lot of the impact of the forecasted victory chance come from non-polling influences filling in the gaps for the relative sparseness of polling. basically nate silver and the argument's models (which i use) are saying they don't *really* believe the adjusted polls bc MN is such a lean D

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

what's the chart from? does the source adjust for survey house effects? FWIW, silver's forecasting an ~88% chance of D victory here. tighter actually than GA (>95%), but very much a likely D

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I can feel it physically in my commute. Even more longer Red/Orange trains please

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i will note that this year, silver's model appears to be more bullish than some others: the argument (53D but lower likelihood) or fiftyplusone (52D as modal outcome). either way, we'll see which way the polling errors go this year, but still incredible we're at this point vs where we were at start

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

incredible that the modal senate outcome in nate silver's forecast is now 53D-47R when the forecast first launched, senate control was basically a coin flip

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

well regardless, happy to see that the project is still moving along. ~400 units in one development, pretty sweet

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

important but very hard to tell normie voters that Susan Collins is mostly just a successful branding exercise and not some maverick independent voice. i forgot who quipped it, but some dem legislator was like "Collins is always a great vote for us... unless we actually need it"

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i'm presupposing that for the democrats to get large and overwhelmingly crushing, there's been something that mediates/ameliorates the current centrist-progressive tensions and it would have be something newly salient to crack the party

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

eh, fixed price modulo placement on like a corner lot or certain exposures

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

auctions can have price floors, that's what the secondary market for housing basically is, and what the list price effectively is in most cases. IME (admittedly it's been a while) new construction is literally a fixed price for specific units or layouts

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It’s still live? It just took that long to get demo permits?? I doubt there’s a paper trail explaining why, but shouldn’t this just be a simple administrative thing

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i got a (push?) poll where one of the Qs was something like "prop 40 is based on an untested idea from a FRENCH economist, california shouldn't be an experimental lab, is this argument convincing or not" and i immediately thought "wait, is that just Piketty? yes that makes me want it more!"

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

NGL the most plausible version of this to me in the near future is that the GOP dies (at least in all but name) and the dems splinter over AI and parties realign over that

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

the democrats must become gigantic and large and crush its opponents and then splinter into a new two-party system in the US over some new political topic, has happened before (lit the dems, and the dem-republicans before), can happen again, we don't have to accept the specific 20/21st century GOP

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

everyone who's ever been on the hunt in the bay area knows FCFS hurts those with limited time, and i do not think we should be wasting time carrying water for landlords. i think the better argument is simply that we should remove market power for landlords by building tons of apartments

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

classic example is the ultimatum game. two players, give player A $100 & tell them to divide between A and B. B can accept division, or completely reject. rational outcome is that A devotes ~$100 to A, & B accepts because it's strictly better. but surprise, nash eq has no connection to reality

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

it's like deeply ingrained things about humans as a social species in terms of like fairness and relative status. you're not going to browbeat everyone into accepting this stuff unless you somehow make everyone into a classic econ major.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

you can argue whatever the heck you want. rationally these are all sensible arguments. i'm not saying these arguments aren't sensible, or even that these wouldn't be more socially optimal outcomes in many ways. i'm saying that it doesn't matter because it's not behavioral, for non-rational reasons

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i'm going to underline here that you're thinking too much like a rational (in the econ sense) actor. systematically you get that there are market pressures & price signals everywhere, TANSTAAFL etc whatever. but what most see is: everyone at this store buys tomatoes at the same price, that's fair

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

it is a cultural norm in the "secondary market" of home purchases, because we've highlighted homes as investment vehicles for the lay consumer. if you go to a new subdivision, they are absolutely NOT going to auction-price homes for you, it'll be rationed.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

you can convince like certain small groups in highly rationalized situations to like auctioning, but just look at how much people hate scalpers

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

like, it's a very very deep, cross-cultural thing. there's even some kind of a quip about it, wherein the only people actually behave rationally and/or prefer these outcomes in these various situations are economics students.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

idk. auction vs rationing is like the canonical econ/game theory question of optimal vs behaviorally what people actually want. maybe you can interrogate it a bit, but i have serious doubt you can actually convince ppl en masse about the merits of the former, no matter how rational it is.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

priceline has basically folded its main competitive differentiation (auction for travel purchases), and the proliferation of buy-it-nows is pretty significant.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

true, but people generally value "fairness" with price signals, so people will generally dislike auction mechanisms in favor of FCFS/rationing if the latter case means everyone pays the same "fair" price. people tend to not like things like surge or variable pricing either.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

huh, what do you know, in the right ballpark. (this is average distance, when saturn is closer to earth you would definitely be able to do it) though in practice you'd need way more kids bca every time the earth finishes a turn you'd lose a lot of them into the sun or into other planets

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Is not even a Trump rule, right? it’s an Obama rule for most intents and purposes?

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

i think that space is shrinking. idk what to make of it in terms of industry or new/existing careers. AI has increased my productivity, but now my skillset appears to be a lot more about how to set the AI up for success, which sometimes requires tech/eng intuition, but very unlike trad pipelines.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

it really is something that started as an uncontroversial (amidst the left) attack against for-profit and/or predatory programs, and hasn't really changed much under several presidents. only the framing has changed

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

yeah, his big point is that no one cared until TNR chose its particular (inaccurate!) framing, it's all just stoking outrage. ppl attacking him as hypocrite bc he did philosophy & he pointed out by these measures that philosophy wouldn't be affected & neither would ~all liberal arts degrees.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I also think that if you use AI with any regularity you’re going to fall into habitual communication styles, that means lots of please and thanks for me, and I reserve lots of eyebrow arching to anyone who reverts to rudeness and hostility with AI

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

was the solution that gemini gave me the best? i don't know! but it didn't matter, given how little website our traffic gets and how non-mission critical it is.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

like, real example, i fixed a crash that had emerged on the BDC's website using flash 3.8 caused by some custom PHP a volunteer had written many years ago. i could've spent a decent chunk of my free time to fix, or i could've spent the 5 minutes to paste in error logs and do what it told me to do.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

based on my experience working/volunteering on the tech side with some non-profits and orgs, i would even probably take AI slop over what typically passes for dev at these marginal cases, and that bar keeps rising over time

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

like flash-lite or flash 3.6 as the main offerings even at the plus subscription tier is just a steaming pile.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

i will note that one of my concerns these days about AI has more to do with access, not AI threats. like google is paring back models available at free and even plus tier to models that, IMO/IME, absolute garbage. people should be able to see what quality model can do for them!

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

and then there's the long-term view of what this means for someone who likes messing with tech and apps like my oldest but is a good ten years out from the labor force, where IMO the question of slop will get increasingly niche.

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🅒🅗🅡🅘🅢 🍫 🍫 🍫 🤯 @wowitschris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

this is not intended to be an ad for argon and whatever new checkpoints google is testing on us, but between argon and claude i'm finding not a lot of slop to worry about it. some of it is just making sure to have very clear designs and prompts, but it's also just light years ahead of summer

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