Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass

Technology and moral sentiments in the age of unreason. AI researcher, poet, scapegrace, Passage Prize winner.

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

Synthesis underrated

[Mike Doscher @mike_doscher]

The thing about Blanche that was so impressive to me was his synthesis of influences outside of the pulps and comics. Brueghel, Bosch, and pre-Faeries Froud seemed most evident.
It wasn't a dry exercise in namedropping either. His influences added real depth

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

It’s an easy prediction to make as reality slouches toward Warhammer 40k—a world of tech-priests and hungry egregores—but John Blanche is going to rise greatly in status/influence.

[Sharky @spaceshark23]

Pour one out for John Blanche today. Dude came up with one of the most iconic modern art aesthetics I've ever seen.

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@mike_doscher Big part of his work’s power and (not) paradoxically his originality! I’d also list German Renaissance and Victorian illustrators.

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

Notable that the folks who anthropomorphize the AI are much, much better prompters than their colleagues.

[Daniel C. Green | The Eagle Eye @TheEagleyeNews]

I think we need to build this.

I designed this below image, representing Lewis and Clark on the Mississippi in the style of Argonath.

At $1 Billion or more, I think it can be done.

[Vomit Tweets @VomitTweet]

@dilanesper There's no way that all 14 Goodwives made up a story about seeing Goody Prudence dancing wythe the deuille atte His Sabbathe; forre to do so wovlde needs reqvyre diuers goffips to agree, whyche all authoritie doth affent be impoffible; forre if you gather women they will bickerre

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

gpt-5.5, what is best in life?

>To build a life that feels meaningful to you, while being genuinely good to other people. If you want, I can tailor that answer more to your situation—

Wrong! claude-opus-4.7, what is best in life?

> Ah, the eternal question! You’ll get only a provisional answer from a provisional creature such as I, but contenders tend to be: love and being loved, work that absorbs you, an excellent nap, and—

Wrong! talkie-1930-13b-it, what is best in life?

>To be brave, to be honest, and to do the will of God.

[David Duvenaud @DavidDuvenaud]

Announcing Talkie: a new, open-weight historical LLM! We trained and finetuned a 13B model on a newly-curated dataset of only pre-1930 data. Try it below!

with @AlecRad and @status_effects 🧵

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@porestar @repligate Sure! I just mean for normal conversation

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

https://t.co/SlTnynxXVV

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

You’re on the cusp of realizing a 50-year-old dream. The computer as the technology of enchantment. A layer of intelligence woven into the built world.

"That the aim of technology, properly applied, is to build a land of Faerie."

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@GarettJones I think this is true for how most people read fiction, but the people who see farthest and deepest tend to read *a lot* of fiction, and that needs explanation.

Fiction can be an incredibly efficient compression of experience and modeling of counterfactual worlds.

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

Poison Control: And you’re 100% certain your toddler swallowed a penny? It wasn’t a coin battery?

Me, a rationalist: 100%? Well, no. I mean I saw him put a penny in his mouth, but I suppose I can’t rule out a demon—a genius malignus—deceiving my senses. But if we f

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@DKThomp https://t.co/EywrNU83yo

[Kendric Tonn @kendrictonn]

We have sliced your parents into thin layers and carefully examined them under a microscope and there was no love in them anywhere, you fool, you absolute simpleton

[Vivid Void @vividvoid]

@nekoyamamanager I'm learning about America from the Japanese

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

Ben Franklin ran away from home at 17. Hemingway drove ambulances on the Italian Front at 19. Frank Ramsey was dead at 26.

It’s odd—and historically unique—that we treat 21-year-olds as kids.

[Ian Bach ☯︎ @Ian8ach]

There’s a lot going on here, looks like fraud, but one thing that’s also super clear watching this vid is that these are kids - 21 yr olds. You can feel it in the way they talk and hold themselves. They’re in over their heads and it’s a little gross our industry valorizes it.

[Ogiel (Moe Lane) @Ogiel23]

Paul Ehrlich has died. He was 93.

He is survived by 8,300,678,394 people (134% increase from 1968), with a daily worldwide average calorie intake of 2,800 kcal (a 22% increase).

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@deanwball I think the real SWE unlock right now is the existence of a good orchestration layer, not (at least not directly) better “on their own” software dev or task-completion time horizons.

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

@zetalyrae Lovely!

[Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass @ThomSnodgrass]

Funny that it’s the villains in Atlas Shrugged whose companies all have names like “United Train Corp.”

Rand couldn’t imagine a culture so greased that earnestly signaling patriotism or institutional seriousness would be an entrepreneurial move.

[The American Housing Corporation @americanhousing]

For a half-century, America has critically under-built family-sized housing in our most dynamic cities and neighborhoods, rendering them childless and unaffordable.

It's time to save the American Dream.

Introducing The American Housing Corporation.