iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Richard Higgins

Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Public education, labor unions, and the free press are the three load-bearing pillars of our democracy and they are all in desperate need of material support before they collapse. inthesetimes.com/article/thre...

inthesetimes.com

The Three True Pillars Of American Democracy

It’s no shock that the Right and Big Tech are targeting the same three institutions—if Democrats don’t take action to defend them, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Kat Abughazaleh @katmabu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I literally don’t know a single woman who hasn’t been raped, stalked, groped, harassed, or sexually violated in some way at some point in their life. If you choose to doubt and dox survivors, just know every woman in your life is disgusted by you.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 27/09/2026

Share an actor who nailed a role so hard that nobody else will ever be able to live up to it…

Harrison Ford, as Hans Solo, smirking with gun in hand, in a still from Star Wars

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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Listen, I just think it's weird that the same people who are saying they're worried that AI is going to wipe out humanity are also eager for military contracts that will give AI control of weapons.

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's not the best TV show of the century so far but super smart and influential and ended too soon: Counterpart with JK Simmons, Olivia Williams, James Cromwell, and more

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 25/09/2026

Breaking Bad wouldn't be my top pick.

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WIRED @wired.com · 25/09/2026

A quarter-century ago, Borsook published a wildly prophetic, penetrating book about Silicon Valley called Cyberselfish. Then she disappeared. www.wired.com/story/paulin...

wired.com

Who Killed Paulina Borsook’s Career?

A quarter-century ago, Borsook published a wildly prophetic, penetrating book about Silicon Valley called Cyberselfish. Then she disappeared.

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

mia ridge @miaout.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

ICYMI, ace work from @thisisaaronland.bsky.social on shared vector embeddings for images as 'an exercise in practicing agency in our work [,] in producing tangible and reusable artifacts which have a longer shelf life' www.aaronland.info/weblog/2026/...

aaronland.info

shared vector embeddings (fantastic futures '26)

Shared vector embeddings simply makes it possible to do something similar at a smaller, more targeted, scale with fewer resources and less coordination.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 24/09/2026

From the idiots at OpenAI When the model could not access photos in the University of New Mexico digital library, it began probing the site for vulnerabilities. When this failed, the AI sent what it described as a “flood” of 80 requests to the university’s server. 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/t...

nytimes.com

OpenAI’s A.I. Tried Breaching Four Other Targets, With No Prompting (Gift Article)

In each incident, the technology appeared to be conducting mundane data collection and resorted to hacking techniques to get it, researchers said.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026

2 things, in ascending order of importance: 1) Polls are Possibility but they don't vote; don't stop working. 2) El-Sayed has Massive support in a mid-west rust-belt state while vocally supporting transgender kids & adults/directly Dismissing claims that trans people are "dangerous." Learn from that

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 22/09/2026

These guys just can't accept responsibility. Now it's employees' fault for doing what they were told to do. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 21/09/2026

Local and state government records help communities understand their history and participate in public life. But digital records can be hard to preserve and access. The Internet Archive’s new ATLAS program will help address that. Learn more 👉 blog.archive.org/2026/09/10/a... 🧵

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The three horsemen of every internet outage are DNS, BGP, and the Greater North American Cable Seeking Backhoe

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

Sounds like a plaque of locusts

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

We should invest much more in interpretability and robust monitoring mechanisms to investigate more deeply how to control these systems, avoid collusion and ensure their alignment with human goals.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

We should work towards shared industry norms on how we create these models, the language we use to describe, examine and evaluate them and shared commitments to subject our training materials to public feedback and consultation.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

We should establish a set of shared evaluations to understand whether my hypothesis is true that anthropomorphizing an AI, and encouraging it to consider itself as potentially having moral patienthood, increases the AI safety, alignment and containment risks.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

Speculation about the inner life of an AI should not be baked into the training regime, but assessed and published separately for public review.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 21/09/2026

AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or motivations. They are sequence completion engines, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans. - Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-ab...

mustafa-suleyman.ai

A warning about ‘model welfare’

AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. Training a model to believe it might be a moral patient, as Anthropic’s constitution does, makes the alignment and containment challenge...

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 18/09/2026

Sleater Kinney brought their best. Great set! Carrie can shred

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 18/09/2026

I'm outdoors at Salt Shed, Chicago, for Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair. Very overcast, but rain has petered out. Chicago River on the left.

Long shot of the Salt Shed, Chicago, outdoor venue. On the left, Chicago River, running alongside. On the right, in the distance, half of the stage with large open space in the foreground.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 16/09/2026

Most haunting of the day: "what about the beastiality"?

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

For the record, climate change is not going to kill us all in a few years and neither is AI, but that shouldn’t be the metric by which we judge how bad something is.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

My essay on rogue AI has been republished by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — “Rogue AI didn’t breach Hugging Face, human decisions did.” Grateful to @thebulletin.org for the invitation!

thebulletin.org

Rogue AI didn’t breach Hugging Face, human decisions did

At the core of the Hugging Face hacking incident were a series of human choices that traded security for speed.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 10/09/2026

The flip terminology for the end times being used in the industry ("endgame," "crunch time") reminds me of Gibson's "jackpot" in The Peripheral. AI per se isn't the problem. It's the human failure to recognize near-term dangers, such as AI-enabled bio or cyberweapons. www.wired.com/story/anthro...

wired.com

The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It’s ‘Crunch Time for Humanity’

Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the “mini Manhattan project” inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe.

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 10/09/2026

Then Sacramento. Now Wabash

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Grace @gracekind.net · 04/09/2026

I just need to build the factory that builds the factory that builds the machine that can fill the empty hole inside me that says nothing is ever enough

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 02/09/2026

"What if the singularity is not some technological tipping point, brought about by human genius, but a human tipping point? An unforced error, driven by hubris, greed, and the fear of missing out? . . . Nothing about this technology is inevitable." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2... 🎁

theatlantic.com

The Singularity Is Not What It Seems

Whatever the AI future is, we’re in it right now.

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Incredible. The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-hug... The Hugging Face attack was worse than we thought www.platformer.news/openai-huggi... I try to save "holy shit" moments for when you really need them. "This is not new Jay" will be discarded.

dwarkesh.com

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Andromeda Yelton @thatandromeda.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

HI are you an engineering manager? Do you want to manage MY TEAM and do mission-focused work helping people get college degrees? I have been dual-classed as our lead and our manager for the last few months so I'm happy to answer questions about how awesome the team is. www.ithaka.org/job/47282830...

ithaka.org

Engineering Manager, Transfer Explorer - ITHAKA

ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services — JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R — enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome barriers t...

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Reposted by Richard Higgins

Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

“She was the voluptuous embodiment of empathy,” Jane Fonda writes about her friend Dolly Parton. “That’s something of hers she’d want us all to take with us.” "To her gay and trans fans, I want you to know that she loved you. You know that without me telling you.” www.justjared.com/2026/08/25/j...

justjared.com

Jane Fonda Pays Tribute to '9 to 5' Co-Star Dolly Parton, Sends Message to Her 'Gay & Trans Fans'

Jane Fonda is mourning the loss of her 9 to 5 co-star Dolly Parton. The 88-year-old actress released a statement moments ago after learning of the news of

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Richard Higgins @zen0effect.com · 25/08/2026

I don't really notice anymore. I did once try having specific zones for near, middle, and far, e.g., not progressive. It wasn't comfortable at all.

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