T.W. Simpson

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Looking at X's new usage-based API pricing and seems like the actual point should be that they massively overestimated how much devs would pay for their old super expensive API pricing. To devs saying this will make them build for X again... why? Elon can change his mind next week.

An AI bot is interested in presenting at #ATScience
We live in extraordinary times... 😅

Gotta be honest: I'm still not convinced.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

The owner of Amazon killed the Washington Post books section.

Never forget: Pam Bondi and Kash said there was nothing in the Epstein files back in March

Does the diplomatic "thaw" between India and the PRC change the reality of PRC influence in South Asia?

Speaker Dr. Sriparna Pathak has noted: Words ≠ actions.

Tomorrow, we look at 2025 data on PRC influence in India & its neighborhood.

Last chance to register: dtl.tw/0204registra...

This is at least the 3rd app coming to Vancouver to talk about how ATproto allows users to add social/semantic layer to the web. The potential is immense. Also an interesting overlap with myhub, launched almost 6 years ago. This is going to be So Much Fun.

2025 Transparency Report Overview - Bluesky In 2025, as Bluesky grew from 25 million to 41 million users, we improved the trust and safety infrastructure to better enable our mission. Here's what that looks like in plain language.

In 2025, as Bluesky grew from 25M to 42M users, we took actions to keep it welcoming, using proactive design to reduce toxic content by 79%.  Our 2025 Transparency Report shares how we're building a safer platform while keeping a transparent and human-centered approach: bsky.social/about/blog/0...

📢 New #ATScience speaker! @simpsontw.bsky.social will present their project @skysquare.app : “Skysquare: context as a service.” Skysquare uses ATProtocol to reattach public discourse to its source, transforming the web into a socially annotated commons 📎

Chef Eric Sze’s Guide to Eating in Taipei, Taiwan Chef Eric Sze shares his favorite meals in Taipei, Taiwan, from classic Taiwanese breakfast at a food court stall to the lu rou fan braised pork he’ll always remember.

👇💯❤️

"Taihu is so uniquely Taiwanese yet also American, and you can only execute that well if you’re fluent in both cultures."

Donovan’s Deep Dives: Kill the myth of the ‘silicon shield’ - Taipei Times Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

"While they will initially count on propaganda-fed ethnonationalism to rally people to support a war, how confident is the CCP in its ability to contain the public if the people turn against it as the costs rise, livelihoods are destroyed and body bags stack up?" www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/ar...

EDU-TECRO in the United States EDU-TECRO in the United States

The Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan provides the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship (HES) for U.S. Mandarin/Chinese learners, including beginners, to study at any accredited Mandarin center at a university or college in Taiwan.

depart.moe.edu.tw/dc/News_Cont...

One of the opportunities lost in the new cultural logic of irreconcilable mutual antagonism that now defines our politics is that it's impossible to perform a credible political act of bipartisan agreement. This would be an excellent opportunity to assert common ground, a Dem leader should seize it.

Last month I helped release the Resonant Computing manifesto. Now I want to explain why ATproto should be seen as a key component for resonant computing. It helps enable the various principles of resonant computing, and it's helpful for people to understand that...

A look at how AI is raising the GitHub repo from being a banal technical resource to being a new narrative and cultural form:

National Museum of Taiwan History's "Taiwan Overseas" database gives instant access to documents on Taiwan provided by institutions from all over the world.
taiwanoverseas.nmth.gov.tw/en

The people don't know that their Bluesky activity exists in their PDS. Adoption could be increased with some user education. Make a campaign and partner with the influential accounts to help distribute the information. @jay.bsky.team @pfrazee.com.

A new Venezuelan ID, created with China's ZTE, tracks citizen behavior China's ZTE is helping Venezuela build its new

A thread of articles documenting China 🤝 Venezuela ties:

"Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond."

a man says " it 's not the same thing " in a star talk video ALT: a man says " it 's not the same thing " in a star talk video

CCP's purpose in the formula "the US capturing Maduro is the same thing as China capturing Taiwan" is cognitive warfare—one imbibed to excess by gullible experts worldwide—that there is moral equivalency between the US and China otoh, and an autocratic regime and Taiwan's legitimate government otoh.

"Facing 🇨🇳's alarming military ambitions, Taiwan has no time to wait and certainly no time to consume ourselves with internal strife. We may hold different views on many issues, but without strong and resilient natl defense, there will be no country, nor will there be space allowed for us to debate."

Notes from Central Taiwan: PRC drills, theater and reality - Taipei Times Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

"The correct move with the PRC is to ignore the noises it makes and avoid repeating them — they are propaganda designed to influence commentary and signal its shills and speakers on what they should be saying."

Will the Times Square ball drop twice in 2026? Inside the celebration For the first time, there will be a second celebration after the Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop.

After the countdown, the Times Square Ball will be lit up in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

It’s all anyone here can talk about. All the kids are all “six seven! six seven!” and all the grownups are all “the Communist Party of China’s steadfast implementation of the central Party leadership’s eight-point decision on improving conduct!” It’s starting to wear me down, tbh.

Brahma Chellaney On Taiwan: China’s bullying of Japan is backfiring in the Taiwan Strait - Taipei Times Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

"In clarifying what geography has long dictated, Takaichi made explicit what Beijing hoped to keep ambiguous: Japan cannot remain a bystander in a Taiwan contingency." www.taipeitimes.com/News/editori...

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video

A photograph of the seminary gym in knives out. It has the same window.

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up.

I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

If you want to understand AI, don’t just read math papers. Read semiotics. Read hermeneutics. Read Derrida.

Mind the gap.

What we’re confronting with AI isn’t machine intelligence so much as a mirror: a mathematical cascade of how culture already works, permuted through each time-bound, context-specific instance of language. Even when the prompt doesn’t change, time does—and consequently meaning/context changes too.

The best way I have found to talk about this invisible cognitive structure of meaning is the concept "cultural logic"—the organic system of infinitely deferred relationships between symbols in all human language.

AI didn’t invent this logic. It reveals it, bit by bit, prompt by prompt.