Leif Hancox-Li, PhD
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struthious.bsky.social
Leif Hancox-Li, PhD
@struthious.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.2K following 4K posts
Applied scientist working on LLM evaluation and publishing in AI ethics. Formerly: technical writing, philosophy. Urbanism nerd in my spare time. Opinions here my own. he/they 🏳️‍⚧️. https://boltzmann-brain.github.io/
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struthious.bsky.social
We need better haters. Source: fly.io/blog/everyon...
Screenshot of text from the link. Text says: "People have wildly varying opinions about LLMs and agents. But whether or not they’re snake oil, they’re a big idea. You don’t have to like them, but you should want to be right about them. To be the best hater (or stan) you can be."
November 7, 2025 at 10:24 PM
struthious.bsky.social
the public already accepts that human-driven cars kill 40k people a year in the US alone

I'm not advocating that _anyone_ be killed by cars but idk how we can get ppl to care about one death if they don't care about 40k
screenshot of skeet with text "In San Francisco, anti-driverless car sentiment has been reignited by an incident in which an autonomous taxi killed a beloved local bodega cat. The taxi company, meanwhile, is like, “It is inevitable that one day one of our vehicles will kill a human being. The public will accept this.”
November 7, 2025 at 2:21 AM
struthious.bsky.social
This is Bad (source: network.fintechtakes.com/library/3d38...)
Image embedded in FinTech Takes newsletter. The image is of a tweet from a company called "Coverd" that includes the text: "Bet on your bills---OnlyFans, child support, and last night's Uber. Wipe them from your credit card by playing your favorite casino games all from the comfort of our app." Accompanying the text is an illustration of a lost machine.
October 31, 2025 at 10:22 PM
struthious.bsky.social
larger context of discussion.

critics could just say 'I object to harmful AI' but instead they have to do ridiculous back-to-nature stuff like 'technology is not human'. ok then stop wearing manufactured clothes and consuming manufactured food and vaccines
screenshot of discussion where Cat Hicks says that they are 'not so negative about the impacts of language as a technology', the interlocutor says 'i'm against anything that separates us from our unique humanity', I reply that 'technology is a human invention and part of our unique humanity', and the interlocutor says 'genAI is evil and separates us from humanity, this isn't a flexible opinion bye!'
October 29, 2025 at 2:07 PM
struthious.bsky.social
I'm not sure what the implications of a claim like this are. Humans are also not "designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions". In fact there's a long philosophical debate about whether/how evolution necessarily produces organisms with justified true beliefs.
screenshot of skeet saying "Chatbots---LLMs---do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they're "right" it's because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That's all"
October 27, 2025 at 6:34 PM
struthious.bsky.social
My skinny and peevish son
Photo of grey cat with tuxedo pattern on a cushion
October 24, 2025 at 3:00 PM
struthious.bsky.social
when even the AI art generator says 'upzone marin' www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancis...
screenshot from linked reddit thread. screenshot shows a comment that points out that the AI art piece depicts a nonexistent city in Marin County.
October 15, 2025 at 9:18 PM
struthious.bsky.social
beyond parody
screenshot from AlgorithmWatch newsletter with text: "In 2016, Elon Musk announced that one of his cars would drive from Los Angeles to New York entirely autonomously by 2018. He later changed the date to 2017. Earlier this month – for context, we are in late 2025 – two men attempted to make good on this promise. A YouTuber going by Bearded Tesla Guy, along with a friend, drove (manually) to San Diego, California, with a Tesla Model Y. There, they began the trip back in “self-driving” mode. About 100 kilometers later (that’s 2.5% of the planned journey), they saw something large on the highway lane. “Looks like roadkill,” one said. “No, it’s not,” he added, as the car, which did not brake, started flying after hitting the large piece of metal. Hours of YouTube videos from repair shops follow. In a subsequent video, the bearded guy said he’d continue the trip but added: “I’ll be a lot more conservative in what I consider something I’ll take [control of the vehicle] over for.” Hope dies last. Luis Prada. Tesla Bros Attempt Coast-to-Coast Trip in Self-Driving Mode, Crash Right Away, Vice, 25 Sept. "
October 9, 2025 at 7:28 PM
struthious.bsky.social
we can go to Mexico twice a year for HRT. so far, transphobia in my daily interactions is minimal, but once I stop feeling safe, I’m leaving
Screenshot of skeet with text “ I'm realizing a grim exercise/prompt may be in this ... If others want to share, I'm curious: Why aren't *you* leaving america (yet)? Asking for trans folks in particular, especially those of us on HRT and/or other very directly threatened in terms of our healthcare ... Reposts welcomed. Sigh.”
October 3, 2025 at 9:18 PM
struthious.bsky.social
Our so-called environmental activists have failed us.
Phot of excerpt from Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman with text: “ The hit parade of potentially worthwhile clean energy projects undermined explicitly or implicitly by the legacy of progressivism's Jeffersonian impulse is too long to list in full. But the most blatant examples make clear that the problem isn't just climate denialism. Progressives mo-bilized, for example, to fight a developer's plan to build a 690-megawatt solar plant northeast of Las Vegas, with the detractors claiming the new facility would imperil a desert tortoise habitat. The Audubon Society sued to block wind farms in California. The Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented project whose tagline is "We are the climate revolution," mobilized to fight solar projects in Amherst, Massachusetts, for fear that new paneling might lead to deforestation.* And the local chapter of the Sierra Club would play a crucial role in the fight against NECEC in Maine.”
September 28, 2025 at 3:31 PM
struthious.bsky.social
I think about this essay a lot cakezine.substack.com/p/a-baker-co...
"There’s a statistic that gets thrown around a lot—that asking an LLM to write one hundred words is like pouring an entire bottle of water on the ground6. By a conservative estimate, I’d drained two thousand, seven hundred, and ninety-six water bottles over the course of writing one recipe—no Chat GPT required. The time I spent composing this essay on my laptop and emailing it to the editors of Cake Zine cost about as much, in watt-hours, as asking Chat GPT over two hundred questions7. The dissonance between the performance of abstaining from AI and the acceptance of other, far more extractive behaviors has begun to feel profoundly unsettling to me. It would probably be more powerful, both ethically and environmentally, to abstain from chocolate. According to the Water Footprint Calculator, chocolate requires 129 gallons of water per ounce—14 more gallons of water per ounce than beef."
September 26, 2025 at 1:52 AM
struthious.bsky.social
*taps earpiece* I'm hearing that human brains and metabolism are not energy guzzling
screenshot of skeet with text "I will hand write to not use an energy guzzling convenience"
September 26, 2025 at 12:45 AM
struthious.bsky.social
we need to stop this kind of "lattice of exemptions" way of permitting development. progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/the-proper...
"Baltimore is the clearest case study of a sprawling lattice of exemptions. The city’s base property-tax rate is 2.248 percent, almost double anywhere else in Maryland. To soften the blow of that high rate in a city struggling with vacancy and disinvestment, Baltimore has built an elaborate web of tax breaks: historic-rehabilitation credits, multiple “high-performance” housing credits, enterprise-zone benefits, home-improvement and targeted homeowner credits, and more. On top of these sit the bespoke instruments like TIFs and PILOTs." "The result is a city where incentives are not broad-based, but negotiated case by case. To build with tax relief in South Bend, a developer must be prepared to navigate the politics, hearings, and handshakes required to get the council on board for one specific site. This is precisely the type of ad hoc policymaking that is ripe for corruption & backdoor deals."
September 24, 2025 at 2:27 PM
struthious.bsky.social
when you definitely support bike lanes and traffic calming in good faith (context: the city has spent a year engaging businesses and has given them every loading zone they asked for, now those businesses are suing the city---this is what they mean by 'without input from the local businesses')
screenshot of reply from Pizzeria Davide with text "Speaking for traffic calming, we definitely support that, as well as bike lanes, but we do not support the current way the city is going about making changes to traffic patterns and parking in the Strip without input from the local businesses. We wish they would go about this project in a better way, but we welcome bike lanes and traffic calming. "
September 24, 2025 at 1:20 PM
struthious.bsky.social
junji ito-ass shower.
photo of a shower where the pipe to the showerhead also serves as the railing for the shower curtain. The pipe forms a spiral-like shape starting from the wall and ending with the showerhead in the middle. The curtain goes over the outer edge of the spiral.
September 21, 2025 at 10:34 PM
struthious.bsky.social
I don't know if you've ever read the fine print on a United plane ticket, but this part is extremely mysterious.
screenshot of fine print that says: " Check-in Requirement - Bags must be checked and boarding passes obtained at least 45 minutes prior to scheduled departure. Baggage will not be accepted and advance seat assignments may be cancelled if this condition is not met. EXCEPTION: When departing from Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Greenville-Spartanburg, Guam, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kona, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Maui, Miami, New York (LGA), Newark, Orange County (SNA), Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh/Durham, Reno, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, PR (60 minutes), Savannah, Seattle, St. Louis, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (60 minutes), Tampa, Washington, DC (both IAD and DCA), the check in requirement time for Passengers and Bags is 45 minutes except where noted. "
September 21, 2025 at 10:30 PM
struthious.bsky.social
it's pretty nuts in this day and age that a large bank is willing to (or has no choice but to due to bad technical decisions) take down online banking for 3 days
text message screenshot with text: "New PNC Online Banking is coming! Sep 26-28: Online Banking & Zelle unavailable, PNC Mobile limited. Use ATM, Voice or Branch. Visit Online or Mobile for more."
September 19, 2025 at 5:41 PM
struthious.bsky.social
things I could have been constructing at academic receptions instead of trying to schmooze
a photo of 27 cubes of mystery cured meat and bad cheddar, arranged in a 3x3x3 megacube, the whole thing sandwiched between two mediocre-looking pieces of toast
September 17, 2025 at 7:57 PM
struthious.bsky.social
poodle armchair www.dezeen.com/2025/08/27/p...
photo of the armchair in the link. It has a silver frame that is minimalist other than thickened sausage-link shaped middle sections, similar to a poodle haircut. It has a tan leather seat.
September 17, 2025 at 2:58 PM
struthious.bsky.social
TIL. Gonna say I live in the 'velvet rut' from now on theplacesreview.com/p/gainesvill...
Screenshot from link with text: "“The velvet rut” is in fact a slight pejorative, applied to various college towns and mid-sized cities with just enough going on socially to keep an ambitious creative person rooted in place. The thinking goes, you’re (probably) never going to achieve major national artistic success while living in Charlottesville or Ithaca or Eugene or Gainesville, but the rent is cheap, the vibe is progressive, and there’s always a cool band playing downtown. Why leave?"
September 14, 2025 at 2:58 AM
struthious.bsky.social
no lies detected www.theverge.com/news/774242/...
screenshot of linked short post with text: " Dominic Preston Google’s courtroom confession. After Google donned its hot dog suit in court to complain that the open web is in decline, one commenter argues that’s where we see Big Tech’s true colors: trifge01: Increasingly with these companies, if you want to know how they really feel- look not at the lofty public pronouncements of their leaders, but at their official statements in court."
September 9, 2025 at 4:50 PM
struthious.bsky.social
Relatable, from anne helen petersen. annehelen.substack.com/p/the-futile...
Screenshot from linked essay with text: "I don’t regret getting a PhD. But I basically got all the shitty parts of the corporate experience and none of the resume lines. I got yanked around the country chasing jobs but none of the pay bumps. I was expected to attend conferences to keep up with the field but was also expected to take on credit card debt to pay for them. I learned how to teach but, hilariously, only at a level where I would continue to be paid less than a (unionized) kindergarten teacher. I accumulated so much knowledge and so much debt and so little readibly translatable experience. "
September 8, 2025 at 2:36 AM
struthious.bsky.social
I plan to speak (schedule allowing) against unfunded inclusionary zoning in front of pgh city council on wednesday. Draft of what I plan to say
Hello, my name is [] and I'm a resident of []. I registered to speak in opposition of unfunded citywide inclusionary zoning. My opposition is based on academic research that shows that unfunded IZ depresses the supply of new housing. By unfunded IZ, I'm referring to proposals like the current one, that require developers to rent out certain units at a loss, without the government making up the shortfall. Unfunded IZ acts as a tax on new housing, depressing the supply of new housing. These assertions are not just based on economic theory, but on multiple lines of empirical evidence. Empirical studies have found that unfunded IZ decreases construction, raises home prices, and raises rents.The city of Portland found that their initial unfunded IZ mandate led to a 'bunching' of new construction at sizes just below the size that triggers IZ---clear evidence that developers reduce the size of new construction to avoid the IZ penalty. A recent study has found the same in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods that currently have unfunded IZ. Economic modeling has backed up these same conclusions about supply, prices, and rents. I fully support the other components of this proposal: removal of parking mandates, legalizing ADUs, and transit-oriented development. But I oppose the IZ component unless it is fully funded by the city.
September 7, 2025 at 6:55 PM
struthious.bsky.social
This was the only size bean curd sheets (as opposed to sticks) I could find at the Asian market. My suspicion is restaurants are their main customers for these
Photo of 2 feet wide bean curd sheets with cat and bike lock for scale
September 5, 2025 at 8:52 PM
struthious.bsky.social
this exchange was interesting on many levels:
- suppose andreessen really believes 'prosperity is good': given that he opposed multifamily housing, it means he thinks it's good for only _some_ people, since housing is essential to prosperity
- the watering down of 'abundance' to such a thin message
screenshot of skeet exchange with dustin moskovitz. timeline: ‪Leif Hancox-Li, PhD‬ ‪@struthious.bsky.social‬ · 7m what do you mean you agree on it? andreessen explicitly opposed multifamily housing in his city, how would that have been a disaster? Dustin Moskovitz ‪@moskov.goodventures.org‬ I mean the topic “prosperity is good” September 4, 2025 at 11:46 PM ‪Leif Hancox-Li, PhD‬ ‪@struthious.bsky.social‬ · 5m so maybe this is just different understandings of 'abundance', in my view being pro-housng is non-negotiable and if anyone is a NIMBY we simply don't agree.
September 5, 2025 at 3:55 AM