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Brandon Downey

@bdowney.bsky.social

1.5K followers 570 following 5.8K posts

Infosec professional, photographer, math enthusiast, occasional augmented reality warlord. Peculiar but refined tastes in triangles, cinema, and cocktails. Some skill with Azad. Signal: bdowney.23 Opinions are my own and not those of my employer

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 1m

Is Facebook actually declining in any meaningful way? It just seems like a golden (or some more terrible material) goose for them, with powerful network keeping users ensorcelled and ads rolling in to them.

*Growth* may not be in the picture, but...

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 1h

My wife (who is brilliant): "So you're telling me the business plan is there are people who can read porn faster than Chuck Tingle can write it?".

Reposted by Brandon Downey

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 3h

i'm not going to chide or scold anyone for only now leaving twitter. your private, unspoken acknowledgment that i'm your intellectual and moral superior is all i need

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 2h

These people are willing to fight for a liberal democracy and I think Liberal Currents is worth a follow and your financial support.

Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 2h

If you’re new to bluesky you really ought to hit “follow all” on both @liberalcurrents.com starter packs, it’ll greatly improve your experience go.bsky.app/QC76CyV

go.bsky.app/JtF6uD1

Reposted by Brandon Downey

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 5h

at present, what is happening is that all of the capex out to 2027 is being done in 2025. the idea is that if there are first-mover profits on AI, you can buy them out of free cash flow right now and then pull back on capex if the market for AI is limited.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 6h

i genuinely do not see how exactly we are going to see all this AI/data center demand work out in the long run? like, thankfully most of investments are with cash not debt, but even then, what exactly is the case for AI investment here?

Blurry TV Headlines @blurrytvheadlines.numbergoup.com · 6h

META BUILDING NEW GIGAWATT-SIZED DATA CENTER IN TEXAS

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Reposted by Brandon Downey

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 8h

Almost like we founded the entire country on opposing this exact sentence.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 9h

Bessent: "No kings equals no paychecks"

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Reposted by Brandon Downey

C.H.O.A.M. Director @choamdirector.com · 14h

POLITICO
EXCLUSIVE
'I love Muad'Dib': Leaked messages expose Young Fedaykins' racist chat
Thousands of private messages reveal young sietch leaders joking about no-chambers, maulas and imprinting.
Anyone that votes for Stilgar will have their water returned to the well
Great. I love Muad'Dib
Also ... we are officially under consideration for a Reverend
Mother endorsement
When do we bring that lasgun out?
You're giving Qizarate to much credit and expecting the mentat-ghola to be honest
Are you going to do the Gom Jabbar?
I'm ready to watch people get dehydrated now
I'd go to the graben villages if I wanted to watch museum Fremen play tarot
If we ever had a leak of this distrans we'd be cooked fr fr
When do we start Amtal dude?
Kick the b---g-----t
And everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the deathstills
Boom - they're ghafla
They love the thinking machines
It was imperial conditioning
Ya yaaaaym

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 19h

Did Not See that coming.

Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 23h

This is disgusting. And I can GUARANTEE you that lots of dumps are going to come out about lots of Republican electeds who are way too close to the people in these texts. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 19h

I like the idea that we get answers from it from a probabilistic process; so we use the jewel to roll the bones.

Reposted by Brandon Downey

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · Apr 20

there is a perfect hyperdimensional jewel made of every word a human being has ever written, and all the correspondences between those words. people mostly use it to get insane household repair tips or jerk off. i guess it basically runs the government now

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Reposted by Brandon Downey

Carlos Scheidegger @cscheid.net · 1d

This may just be the best CS paper I’ve read this year. Just read the abstract and first para of the intro! The rest of the intro is really wild too, but very very good:

dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

A screenshot of an academic paper. It reads:

Abstract
A "
'quine" is a deterministic program that prints itself. In this essay, I will show you a "gauguine": a probabilistic program that infers itself. A gauguine is repeatedly asked to guess its own source code. Initially, its chances of guessing correctly are of course minuscule. But as the gauguine observes more and more of its own previous guesses, it detects patterns of behavior and gains information about its inner workings.
This information allows it to bootstrap self-knowledge, and ultimately discover its own source code. We will discuss how-and why-we might write a gauguine, and what we stand to learn by constructing one.
CCS Concepts: • Computing methodologies → Philo-sophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelli-gence; Theory of mind.
Keywords: reflection, probabilistic programming
ACM Reference Format:
Kartik Chandra, Amanda Liu, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and Joshua B.
Tenenbaum. 2025. Gauguin, Descartes, Bayes: A Diurnal Golem's Brain. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward! '25), October 12-18, 2025, Singapore, Singa-pore. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/
3759429.3762631

1 A Way of Knowing

From time to time, we all have crises of identity-moments of radical and overwhelming uncertainty about our selves.
I' don't know whether the doubts that seize us can really be externalized in language, but if I were to try, I would express them as questions, questions like: Who am I? What am I?
What kind of person? What kind of mind?

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 20h

He is the great Liberator (from targeted advertising).

ZiK ZAK BLiPVERT - Deleted Scened From Max Headroom Movie.

YouTube video by JETJOOBOY

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Brandon Downey

NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 1d

Whether it's young Democrats expressing their support for DEI or young Republicans saying "I love Hitler,' both sides have expressed controversial opinions.

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Reposted by Brandon Downey

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 1d

Donald Trump thinks he’s all powerful. It’s up to us to remind him on October 18th that he’s not.

We will show him who really has the power in this country — and we will do it peacefully. nokings.org

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

Hate America so much I got an Abe Lincoln pin to wear to No Kings.

Golden Abraham Lincoln pin; courtesy of the WideAwakes.

Reposted by Brandon Downey

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 22h

Greg Bovino, Kristi Noem, and DHS need to answer for their unchecked attacks on Chicago residents.

ICE is an out-of-control danger to our peaceful communities.

The images from the Sun-Times today speak for themselves.

An ICE agent throws a tear gas canister at protesters at East 105th Street and South Avenue N in East Side.

Photo Credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Federal immigration enforcement agents detain a protester during a skirmish at East 105th Street and South Avenue N in East Side.

Photo Credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent points a crowd control weapon at a protester Tuesday at East 105th Street and South Avenue N in the East Side neighborhood.

Photo Credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

A Chicago Police Department officer washes his face after being exposed to tear gas during a protest at East 105th Street and South Avenue N in East Side.

Photo Credit: Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

First words out of my mouth: "At last a business model!"

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

Hard to believe that the mainstream media is shocked to learn the leaders of tomorrow for the Republican party are Nazis.

Shocked! Just shocked.

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

New Final Fantasy just dropped!!!

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

Is this some 'but the margin is too small to contain it' Fermat BS?

Please don't tell us you're going to be in a duel!

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 22h

This is a man so afraid of porn he has his son monitor his phone to narc on him.

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 23h

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet"

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 23h

Wow!

I've planned one wedding (my own), but I got addicted to reading stories like this doing the research for it.

There's like no bottom for wedding planning though right?

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 23h

At least now there's a business model?

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 23h

Literally #1 Tool in the fascist toolkit is getting people to believe lies via propaganda.

So yeah, it's important.

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Reposted by Brandon Downey

Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 23h

“Years of lead…supplements” - @bdowney.bsky.social

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