iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

and now I can! deleting both these posts in a sec

Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Our public conversation has become dominated by shameless people because the nuance of wisdom can't break through the noise of hyper-optimized engagement algorithms. Nuance is thoughtful, balanced, and boring. It doesn't hold eyeballs. It's also what runs successful organizations.

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Carla Rae @peace1carla.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Every woman you know has taken a longer route. Has doubled back on herself. Has pretended to dawdle by a shop window. Has held her keys in her hand. Has made a fake phone call. Has rounded a corner and run. Every woman you know has walked home scared. Every woman you know.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I haven't seen that but now that you mention it, it resonates.

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Joe Flynn @chinajoeflynn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I work with Afghan immigrants in Virginia. Thousands were promised visa, vetted, and ready to come to America after our military pulled out and the Taliban retook the country. The Trump administration ended this last year. This includes the 1039 Afghans stuck at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Why can’t Congress create a legistlative branch agency to determine where grants go? (And then the executive is only responsible for disbursing the grants as determined by the legislative agency?)

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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 19/09/2026

Insisting that LLMs are Not People is not an academic argument about the nature of sapience or free will. It's a rejection of accountability laundering. If non-determinism made machines responsible for their own actions then revolvers used in Russian Roulette should be indicted for murder.

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Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The contagion of fear bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/t...

bcantrill.dtrace.org

The contagion of fear | The Observation Deck

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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Random note; since my dad passed away last December, I’ve been handling all of my mom’s mail and accounts. It is incredible. How many scams are aimed at the elderly in this country, including my companies that superficially seem legitimate. Every week her mail is full of this crap.

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Jeremy Sheff @jnsheff.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The problem with private monitoring is a classic collective action problem: if any one private monitor identifies risks that the target does not want to abate, the target can simply contract for a more pliant monitor.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

We didn‘t need a multi-billion dollar national security state to secure against that mode of attack. Ordinary people did what had to be done in the moment.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The National Debt has basically doubled since the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...) failed in 2010 to find compromise palatable to the extreme views that dominate our politics. It's all worse now and no one in power is acting responsibly.

en.wikipedia.org

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - Wikipedia

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Hisham Zerriffi @hishamzerriffi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Happy Rice Truck Day! Truly one of the best threads from the old site. I remember sitting in my couch waiting for the next instalment of the saga.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

That passes the smell test - lots of reservation slots each day and people use them to entertain VIPs, and each group can be sizable.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Dolly Parton loved her neighbors as herself, and were all the richer for it. She provided good cheer, amusement, and musical artistry, using the revenue to fund band uniforms and books. Her memory is a blessing and an example.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

"In 1975, the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act required all states to allow right turns on red ... estimating a travel time savings of 1-5 seconds for turning vehicles." Is that per intersection or in the total trip? You'd think we would have better data than a 1975 estimate.

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Every time I update this graph it still makes my jaw drop

US and UK real gdp per capita. they basically moved in lockstep until 2007Q4

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dillo saint dillo @dillo.media · 19/08/2026

"we can learn so much from these betting sites"

kalshi screenshot of Dem Senate nominee odds
showing vindman at 95% for most of it and then it flips to Nixon at the end

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Not sure there’s a hard-and-fast rule. Some students travel back home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other breaks. Others really have functionally moved out. My litmus test might be / if the school closed for two weeks because of some disaster, where would a student go? The answer will vary.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

This might be the greatest example of "Twitter isn't real life."

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

in some preferential fashion of a truth test, it can be absolutely exhausting to attempt to challenge their literally baseless pointless belief system." Source: www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Psychologists have known for decades that vivid stories are more persuasive than statistics, and that confidence often masquerades as competence. We are wired for anecdotes, not evidence. And for those who forego their logical brains and give in to that “wiring”... 3/

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

We routinely struggle to convince people with large, independently funded, multicentre, double-blind trials involving thousands of participants. As if all they hear is one person’s recommendation...yet an N=1 anecdote from a stranger with a discount code cuts straight through. 2/

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

"I cannot fathom is how readily people trust, “I’m oBsEsSeD with this XYZ,” “my hair/skin/sleep has never been betterrrrr,” delivered in a haze of vocal fry by someone with a financial incentive, whose last obsession was 15 minutes ago and whose next one is already on deck being negotiated. 1/

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Ugh I'm so sorry, the blackout rules are terrible.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

For your consideration, my childhood friend Bea had some grarley healthcare situations in childhood that continue to reverberate, and is seeking support to augment insurance for intensive (and possible residential) mental health treatment. gofund.me/7deb77643

gofund.me

Donate to Help Bea Get Treatment!, organized by Bea Woodworth

Hey. It’s me, Bea. If you don’t know me, I'm a 37-year-old transfeminine non-binary pe… Bea Woodworth needs your support for Help Bea Get Treatment!

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

There's little effect condemning the bad actions of political opponents, but politicians won't win any friends (or will lose support) condemning the bad actions of political allies, so they treat real moral concerns inconsistently and voters rightly see partisanship > morality.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

In 2025: 1,295,857 women earned 59.8% of all bachelor’s degrees. 550,124 women earned 63.6% of master’s degrees. 119,696 women (58.9%) graduated from doctoral or professional programs. Men matriculate less and drop out more. (educationdata.org/number-of-co...) We don't discuss these gaps enough.

educationdata.org

College Graduation Statistics [2026]: Total Graduates per Year

Find college graduation statistics, including the annual number of college graduates by state, degree, discipline, and demographics.

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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

There is a lot to say about the Nolan Odyssey movie. But one point that I think has not been emphasized enough is: this is a film about living in LA, as Nolan, my erstwhile British compatriot and age mate, has done for years. I gather it’s a strange place.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Look the way she translates the opening versus other versions. It's incredible.

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Chris Forster @cforster.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

After trying to use contextualized embeddings for something, I wrote way more than I intended to in an attempt to understand how contextualized embeddings actually work. And then compared them to Cleanth Brooks's description of poetry. cforster.com/2026/07/assa...

cforster.com

Assays of Bias: LLMs and Geometries of Meaning

Trying to understand how LLMs represent meaning by way of a discussion of Cleanth Brooks's account of poetic paradox.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I don't think anything you said is a breach of decorum - and I think the norms also work differently for the rest of us compared to colleagues.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

It's also true that an asymmetry where one "side" unloads and mocks constantly while the other is held to/punished by these norms doesn't work. I don't have a solution for that and wish I did - but I don't think "X person was a forceful presence in our politics" is gamed. It's how I was raised.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

IMO, saying something generically nice (or praising one specific thing) about someone you know when they die isn't a game. It's a social norm - the same as I would do for any neighbor upon their death. There are infinite occasions to criticize/condemn harm. The moment after passing isn't the best.

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Chris Kuang @chriskuang.com · 05/07/2026

Every time it’s a jump scare when I see USDC, but it’s actually just the stablecoin

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

She’s making a argument similar to Karpathy’s here: karpathy.bearblog.dev/animals-vs-g... LLMs are summoned ghosts, producing imitations of what a smart/wise/etc person would say. We can couple them into strong tools, but they aren’t thinking - but rather writing imitation monologues of thinkers.

karpathy.bearblog.dev

Animals vs Ghosts

Today's frontier LLM research is not about building animals. It is about summoning ghosts. And a bit more on Sutton's Dwarkesh pod.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I think of PKs as a bit of a roll of the dice - so the "stronger" team has a strong incentive to avoid them. I feel like the stress of them ages you.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

This might be better: www.nytimes.com/athletic/180... Or just start taking away a player every 3 minutes of extra time.

nytimes.com

(Published 2020)

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I don’t think it works in soccer. Hockey is so much more close-quarters; in soccer you can make a defensive shell.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Be strong enough to be gentle.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

SpaceX still deserves credit for destroying the "legal" monopoly of ULA and the excessive costs it imposed on taxpayers. Social media is reductionistic.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

100% I was more replying to "Rapid hiring authorities that get people back into government" - just reseting/reverting isn't right.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Some of these offices are genuinely duplicative - I have yet to see a strong case for a large ODNI. The purpose of that office was to mitigate the turf battles that led to past intelligence failures but seems to have become something else. Rapid hiring yes, but first a clear idea of where.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

The “last mile” of wires is hard. I had same issue where I was in DC.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Thank you for correcting me! Deleting my original as its not as clear as what else I'd read.

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Will Slack @wslack.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I love this and it puts words to some of what I absorbed (I think) spending some time with Quakers When growing up!

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Christopher Whitaker @civicwhitaker.com · 05/05/2026

Civic technology teams have to keep four monsters in their heads at all times: How we think things work (layperson), how the law actually works (lawyer), how the software works (coder) & what that actually looks like in reality (constituent) The art, and something AI is crappy at, is the merge.

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