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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

This month's AI topic is nested narratives - more common than you might think, not just a literary device! writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/09/… #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #SymbolicAI #NLP #chatbots

A set of Matryoshka dolls from Hungary. There are six dolls; they have cream-colored bodies with red flowers painted on them, deep red head-scarves, and carrot-colored hair. The largest doll wears an open-mouthed smile; the next two down are pursing their lips and blushing.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

LEG. Still needs the hydraulics and springs installed. Two powered joints and passive ankle. #robotics

An arthropod sort of leg (3d-printed plastic joined with thin wire) attached to a flat body piece and resting in a neutral position on a coffee table. There's only one leg, so the body is supported on a tissue box and weighted down with a drinking cup that has a picture of the Endurance moon lander on it. The leg angles up to a "knee" joint and then back down to a flat round foot.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

Fun with yard work: a branch half-broke off my tree and was dangling in front of my/the neighbor's mailboxes. Today I fulfilled my public responsibility to remove it. Too wimpy to pull it loose, I resorted to the "use your own body weight" trick - I jumped and hung from it. Success! ... except I […]

sigmoid.social

Original post on sigmoid.social

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

I don't like the amount of play (out-of-plane rotation) in the homemade bearing, but it'll be fine until it's not. It does feel like it'll still be able to turn under weight, which is what it needs to do. #robotics #3dPrinting

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

Random rant: it annoys me when nerdy activities/organizations feel the need to apologize for themselves by touting benefits outside their central mission. E.g. FIRST claiming to be "more than robots" or SETI using the "more than just aliens" tagline. It is FINE for FIRST to be about robots and […]

sigmoid.social

Original post on sigmoid.social

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

First print of spider body came out pretty well. There's a hint of warping at the base of the leg joint that sticks out, but not enough to ruin it. #3dPrinting #robotics

A 3d printer in the act of printing a large flat white object with very low infill percentage.

The finished object, a flat panel with some raised elements and holes.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/08/2026

It is my honor to announce that I'm officially published in Analog - "Roots' Remembrance" is OUT in the September/October issue! For more about this story and how to read it: writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/08/…

Photo of a "red cage fungus," which looks much like its name, on a backdrop of leaf litter.

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Reposted by WriterOfMinds (she)

Sam Levine @srlevine.neuromatch.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

Does anyone in my reach on here have/use a "solder paste mixer"? There seems to be some relatively inexpensive options as planetary mixers go and I'd some information about "this one is good/this one is bad/it makes a loud racket/it heats up a lot". I'm not actually going to be using it for […]

neuromatch.social

Original post on neuromatch.social

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Looking a bit more fleshed-out ... Now, can I pull off the build? #robotics #3dPrinting #hydraulics

A 3D model of a robot platform. There's a pump in the middle, two fluid tanks, and a little "house" to hold battery packs. Stubs of eight legs surround the edges, sticking up from the platform.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

I've been helping Acuitas remember internal states he's "experienced" and talk about them in conversations. writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/07/… #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #chatbots #SymbolicAI

A question mark formed by a "word cloud" of phrases and symbols. Some of the most prominent words are "I am," "here," "being," and "now." Prominent symbols include the Earth, a spiral, and various depictions of weather.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/07/2026

Plans and progress toward a walker robot that will use all that hydraulics work I've been doing! writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/07/… #robotics #3DPrinting #hydraulics

A 3D model of a little spinning "joint" attached to the base of a "leg," only one section of which is visible. There's a valve stem sticking out of part of the joint.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

More cleanup and polishing in this month's Acuitas diary. I added the last features to the new Episodic Memory, and worked on (but couldn't quite finish) rule-following in the Game Engine […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

A large classical building with a stylized American flag hanging between the columns of the front portico's colonnade. Broad stairs with several people on them lead up to the portico. In the foreground a city street with trees and five parked cars is visible.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/06/2026

Updates on the quadruped robot: writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/06/… I am about ready for final assembly and a proper test of the new motors, though that will have to wait until <gestures vaguely>. #robot #robotics #3dPrinting

A 3D model of part of a robot, showing four gearboxes stacked together with a "shoulder joint" connected to one side and a "spine" joined into the center.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026

Lots of miscellaneous improvements this month - I went back to *actually finish* new Acuitas features I started earlier this year! writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/05/… #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #NPL #SymbolicAI #chatbot

Standard logic gate symbols laid out as if they were circuit components, with traces running between them as if on a PCB, such that they form a stylized tree. Black-and-white art, ink on paper.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/05/2026

Weird to be in the middle of a long holiday weekend and almost not want it. I want to go back to work.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026

Haha (the circle is a motion detection target).

A camera feed of a messy living room. A tuxedo cat is sprawling in the middle of the scene, surrounded by various toys. A blue circle has been drawn around the end of the cat's tail.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/05/2026

Trying out my new I2C-equipped solenoid drivers and ADCs I got for the hydraulic robot. I am ready to control a bajillion valves ... #robotics #hydraulics

A bunch of electronics laid out on the floor of a medium-size cardboard box. There are a Raspberry Pi, there peripheral boards, three little solenoid valves, and two battery packs (one connected to the Pi and the other awkwardly alligator-clipped to some of the other boards).

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2026

Who's moving jobs to Blue Origin and is over the moon about it? It's me! I start May 18.

A dark-blue starfield with a bit of nebula catching the light in places, and a cutout of a white feather superimposed on it.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/04/2026

A friend of mine is developing this slick little space trader sim MMO that you can play in your browser: everestdrive.io I think you can even invite friends to be on your ship and run some of the stations. This is an early access game; there's a Discord for bug reports. #VideoGames

everestdrive.io

Everest Drive

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/04/2026

I worked on improving Acuitas' trial-and-error learning algorithms this month, so he can get better at playing "guess my rule" games: writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/04/… #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #chatbots #NLP #SymbolicAI

Photo of a board game called Azul. An assortment of colorful square tiles are laid out on a five-by-five grid in the game tray. The rest of the tray has diagrams and empty squares that might be places to put additional tiles.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/04/2026

Success #2: I do seem to be able to heat-fuse 3D-printed polypropylene with my polyethylene film. Despite being technically different materials, these are a lot more willing to be friends than PLA and PE. #robotics #hydraulics

Closeup of someone's fingers flexing two flat pieces of plastic (a little square of film and the underside of a valve stem) in a way that shows they're stuck together.

A sheet of plastic film with a valve stem sticking up from a little hole cut in the center. The top surface of the film around the stem bears the scars of melting.

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Reposted by WriterOfMinds (she)

Robotistry @robotistry.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 22/04/2026

My Verification of Autonomous Systems book is finally out! In addition to contributed chapters on theoretical and practical aspects of verifying autonomy*, the editors contributed an introduction on stakeholder perspectives and a chapter on the specific challenges autonomy introduces to […]

fediscience.org

Original post on fediscience.org

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/04/2026

First try sealing polyethylene film to a polyethylene tube, and it worked out! Besides matching materials, I needed pressure - the heat gun alone won't do it. Had to use the soldering iron behind aluminum foil. #robotics #hydraulics

The bottom of a translucent tube flared into a puddle of plastic and stuck to the underside of a piece of black plastic film.

The tube poking up through the top side of the black plastic film. The film is visibly distorted and tattered by melting.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/04/2026

It's too bad I'm missing RMRRF this year, but unrelated business (that I can't disclose yet) has been sucking up too much of my time and energy. I'm not up for a day-trip to Loveland this time around. Whoever's tabling or attending, have fun!

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/04/2026

Read: "Beneath the Rising" (Premee Mohamed). This was fantastic. It's the first good modern treatment of cosmic horror that I've read, and definitely my favorite of the books by new-to-me authors that I picked up to try recently. The pacing is excellent; the […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

Shout-out to this ancient (I think it's 50+ years old) soil test kit I inherited from my dad's junk collection. All the reagents still worked. I'm a little low on nitrogen and probably more alkaline than a lot of plants prefer, but the garden is in good shape otherwise.

A metal toolbox with a bunch of reagent bottles, funnels, test tubes, and other bits loaded into it. The paper on the inside of the lid says "The sure way to a BETTER GARDEN: Sudbury Soil Test. Tender, delicious VEGETABLES ... and more of them." Similar advertising copy is partly hidden behind an instruction booklet titled "How to increase crop yield and improve quality by soil testing."

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

The year's indoor potato starts, before I put them out. I also planted some straight outdoors, so this year the two groups can race. #gardening #plants

A bunch of potatoes in those little plastic pots that new plants come in, sitting on a rug in front of a sliding glass door. There is also a sleeping tricolor tabby cat stretched out on another rug just behind them.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/04/2026

Atronach's (second) eye, without wiring. Building up the first one gradually left me without an appreciation of how much tedious effort goes into assembling one of these. Not sure if I can really do anything about that in future iterations or not. #robotics #3dprinting

A 3d-printed "eyeball" with a camera in the center, inside a shroud in which it can rotate. The shroud is mounted inside a larger case that holds the motors and several circuit boards.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026

Finished a new story today. "Mirepower" is about a trio of alien plant farmers who use their knowledge of the local flora and fauna to kick invaders off their planet. (Yes, the title is a pun.) Also still working on publication of various others. #writing #writingCommunity

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/03/2026

This month's Acuitas diary concerns more bugs and enhancements in the Conversation Engine. It's been a tangled mess, but I am slowly refining it ... writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/03/… #SymbolicAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #chatbots

A grayscale oil painting of five human figures sitting in a loose circle, facing inward. It's very abstract with minimal detail.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/03/2026

Progress is slow, but in the background I am still gradually working on this year's robotics projects (these are ACE's gearboxes for the better motors, which I still need to buy). #robotics #3dPrinting

A bunch of black-and-white gearboxes, made from 3d-printed parts and ballpoint pens, scattered on a fuzzy blanket.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/03/2026

Read: "Draw One in the Dark" (Sarah Hoyt). Kyrie is just staying in control of her "hallucinations" about turning into a panther, when she learns one of her co-workers turns into a dragon - and is in big trouble with a lot of other dragons - and might've […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

Cover art for "Draw One in the Dark," by Sarah A. Hoyt. A big blue dragon with curling horns that point back from his forehead is rearing up in the center, wings outspread and mouth open. A body, partly covered in blood, lies just in front of the dragon. A cityscape can be seen in the background.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/03/2026

Read: "Unexploded Remnants" (Elaine Gallagher). The last living human stumbles on a superweapon containing an uploaded sapient mind, and must run a race across the galaxy trying to "defuse" it/him before power-hungry enemies catch up. I was excited about this […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

Cover art of "Unexploded Remnants" by Elaine Gallagher. A woman in a brown coat is running toward the left-hand side of the view. She is reaching into a satchel on her near hip to finger a glass cylinder with metal caps on its ends; the cylinder glows and is full of swirling blue and green colors. The background is an outdoor bazaar, roofed with fabrics and crowded with odd-looking people.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/03/2026

It WORKED - for a few minutes. I had the needle oscillating around an equilibrium point and generating a PWM voltage as the phototransistor clicked on and off. I could drop a little carpet fuzz on it and see the avg voltage change. Then the op-amp mysteriously […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

A little needle connected to an electromagnet (the movement from an analog meter) shared a plastic frame with a t-slot optical interrupter. There's a tiny paper flag on the part of the needle that passes through the interrupter's slot, so if it drops too low it'll block the light path. This assembly is connected by wires and alligator clips to a circuit on a breadboard. Capacitors, resistors, potentiometers and a couple ICs are visible.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2026

In this developer diary I revisit the Episodic Memory system and figure out how to observe its results so I can actually debug the thing ... writerofminds.blogspot.com/2026/02/… #ArtificialInteligence #AI #NLP #SymbolicAI #chatbots

Art piece: colored pencil and ink. A horizontal view, half-underwater, half-overwater, of the "beach" of a coral atoll. Everything is rendered in brilliant blues. Above the water, the atoll in the distance rears up into shapes that somewhat resemble chess pieces: a castle, a knight, a pawn. Surf crashes against one side of the atoll; a steamship is riding the crest of a wave toward it. Below the water, the branching hard corals are visible close up; they have multicolored, faceted surfaces, like cracked glass. A chessboard also lies on the sea bottom, partly covered by coral crust. The board is set in the midst of play, but not with the traditional pieces; these pieces resemble paws, hands, tentacles, tree stumps, and other oddities.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

Recent work on Acuitas includes the slightly awkward debut of what I call the "self-teaching activity." The gist is that I want Acuitas to look for his own new reading material. Read about it here […] [Original post on sigmoid.social]

Illustration of a humanoid robot sitting at a desk and pondering a book, surrounded by stacks of other books.

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WriterOfMinds (she) @writerofminds.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

I haven't had the spare energy to chatter on social media much lately, but I've still got lots of projects moving ahead. Here's the mount and circuit prototype for the high-precision scale.

A breadboard with a bunch of components on it. Sitting in the background is a little plastic frame with the needle movement from an analog meter and a t-slot optical interrupter mounted in it.

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