iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Over 18 American service members have died and over 750 have been wounded since the start of Operation Epic Fury, the war on Iran currently deadlocked in the Strait of Hormuz.

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So, remember when folks were upset about the extended deployment of the USS Lincoln? Well, it turns out the USS John Finn, has been deployed for 319 days and the deployment's been extended another few months. Smaller ship so we don't hear much about it. Holds 270-300 sailors.

I really hope there's a next President. I really hope they're competent. And if they are, they'll bring Lina back and let her cook!

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Former FTC Chair Khan dismisses 'constitution' signed by AI leaders to self-police

Important 5 minutes with Lina Khan. AI companies are developing malfunctioning products. Laws already exist to protect us, they're just not being enforced. Self-policing has proven inadequate. abcnews.com/Politics/for...

abcnews.com

On "This Week," former FTC Chair Lina Khan called on Congress to help regulate AI.

Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

1 year ago, the national average price of diesel was $3.69-$3.75 a gallon. Today it is $6.34-$6.38. Diesel prices will continue to climb higher & set new records as the US-Iran conflict remains deadlocked and worsens. The 2 week "military operation" at the Strait of Hormuz is now going on 8 months.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Susan Collins, age 73, has been in office 30 years. When she ran in 1996 she pledged to only serve 2 terms. She's now coming to the end of her 5th term in office and is running for a 6th. If she wins she'll be 80 years old by the end of that term.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I liked this because this is what I see working with companies at Neo4j. Folks first look to LLMs like they're all knowing but quickly find out they have limitations and don't understand their business. AI has a place, but it requires guidance, guardrails, validation before it can create value.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Great interview. Turns out Ben Affleck is the one with super intelligence. He sees the reality of AI. It's smart, but it doesn't understand his business, the business of film. So he leverages it to aid his business & ultimately sells this company to Netflix. www.youtube.com/watch?v=or3F...

youtube.com

Ben Affleck on AI and Hollywood Economics

YouTube video by Bloomberg Podcasts

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Reposted by Pete Aven

Chirag Mehta @chirag.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Companies not hiring "enough" junior devs is a flawed assumption. Junior devs are still getting hired and arguably don't have the baggage. They have seen no two ways. The entire dev pyramid is being disrupted and redefined as companies figure out who can and should do what work.

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Building an Ontology for a Knowledge Graph Is a Process, Not a Diagram

Solid guidance here - Start with the Competency Questions! I'm not a fan of the word ontology, but if you want to avoid boiling the ocean to quickly build a graph that answers relevant questions that add value to the business - start with the questions! medium.com/neo4j/buildi...

medium.com

Five established approaches, and the ongoing process that keeps them working.

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A Data Center Is a Dependency Graph Before It Is a Building

A data center is also a dependency graph after it's a building. Graphs are everywhere. Mapping out the dependencies in a graph helps alleviate and measure impacts to the users and business.

oreilly.com

The buildings and physical infrastructure for a new hyperscale data-center region are complete. Power is live and redundant, the cooling loops are balanced,

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The knowledge layer for enterprise: Processes

This is actually a really good series. Morgan illustrates the layers of an enterprise knowledge layer in Neo4j, hands-on, building and connecting it up one graph at a time. medium.com/neo4j/the-kn...

medium.com

Tasks, handoffs, escalations, owners. The flow behind the work, built as a graph you can load, query, and explore.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Super Duper Intelligence!

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Nicki Minaj out here endorsing politicians and she can't even vote. She's not a US citizen. She's an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Inflation and the cost of everything going up each week, a never ending war in Iran, an insane national debt growing every day, and the geriatric republicans waste the day disparaging Jack Smith.

Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is exceptionally well-educated, and his folksy public persona is a calculated political performance. The guy has PhD in law from Oxford in England.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If a school systematically ignores sexual assault or violates Title IX protocols, the federal government can legally strip a university of all federal funding. The next President should investigate how schools are policing as assaults are increasing. dailynorthwestern.com/2026/09/28/c...

dailynorthwestern.com

NU rape, stalking offenses jump in 2026 security report

Content warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault and violence. Rape, dating violence and stalking offenses increased on Northwestern’s Evanston campus in 2025, breaking with a larg...

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Wondering how/if the latest news will affect college applications to Cornell and other various universities this month. I imagine the quality of applicants might suffer but the numbers won't.

Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Chuck Grassley is 93 years old and has been in Congress 51 years. This is elder abuse. He's abusing us.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One thing i've learned during my career is people reflect who they report to - their words, thoughts, clothes, actions. You can influence people to a degree, but they will always fall back to the behaviors the gatekeeper values/exhibits to attain opportunity, promotions, etc.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If I had a dollar for every trans woman in college sports, I still wouldn’t have enough money for a pound of beef at the grocery store.

Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If I had a dollar for every trans woman in college sports I still wouldn't have enough money for a gallon of diesel.

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Why do the AI companies speak so frequently of the billions of deaths to come but don't ever speak about the billions of lives potentially saved? What the hell kind of AI are they creating back there?!?

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Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The good news: He provides the core example of what contemporary republicans value and uphold.

Pete Aven @wpaven.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's a simple matter of programming!

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AI CEOs: "We need to regulate AI. It's unsafe. And we're going to make good on all our investment promises just as soon as the government gets involved and makes it so we don't have to do that anymore... Just trust us."

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So the AI companies that take everyone's data, steal people's life's work, raise energy prices, drain local water supplies, disrupt lands & add to noise, heat, air pollution do not care about anyone's safety. I'm pretty sure they are not slowing down out of the goodness of their hearts.

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The unacknowledged truth about today's AI is that you have to be smart to use it. It requires rigorous, vigilant, informed guidance to wield it successfully. If you lack critical thinking skills, are lazy with it, or anthropomorphize, you're likely going to hurt yourself or others using it.

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Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here

Exxon, Conoco, Chevron warned us in March. We're running out of reserves and the bill comes due. They can't sacrifice profits or their christmas bonuses so be prepared for price increases at the pump. #giftarticle www.wsj.com/business/ene...

wsj.com

Trump officials say the oil-market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s Mike Wirth and others warn global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight.

Graph intelligence on your existing data, go live in days

But you can now run native graph queries on top of Snowflake using Neo4j Virtual Graph. Zero data copy. A simpler way to get started with native graph than engineering it all in SQL. End 🧵 neo4j.com/product/virt...

neo4j.com

Layer graph intelligence onto your existing data with zero copy in just a few days, all on the world's leading graph platform

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In Fraud, open ended structural patterns and circular paths are simpler and cost much less computationally in Cypher than SQL

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Use cases where this becomes painfully obvious: In fraud detection, supply chain tracking, customer/patient journey or identity resolution, you often need to find deep connections.

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Performance Scale: Cypher (Graph Native): Index-free adjacency ensures fast traversals independent of database size SQL: Performance degrades exponentially with data volume due to massive CPU memory overhead during joins.

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Query Complexity and Code Size: Cypher (Graph Native): Short, readable, declarative SQL: Massive, deeply nested scripts that are difficult to debug or maintain.

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Variable length paths: Cypher (Graph Native): Native support. It easily traverses unknown or infinite lengths. SQL: Extremely complex recursive CTEs that are highly prone to performance degradation.

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Multi-hop / Path Queries Cypher (Graph Native): Concise syntax regardless of depth SQL: Requires a new explicit JOIN or recursive CTE for every single hop

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Data Relationship Model: Cypher (Graph Native): Relationships are first class entities with native pointers. SQL: Relationships are impled via foreign keys and intermediate join tables.

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Because Snowflake SQL is built for a relational data model (tables, rows, columns) and Cypher is built natively for property graph models (nodes, relationships, properties), trying to force Cypher workloads into SQL creates severe operational hurdles.

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However, in the real world, trying to replicate Cypher's native graph-traversal capabilities in SQL results in code that is incredibly complex, extremely difficult to maintain, and highly inefficient to execute.

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