iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Sam Harsimony @harsimony.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This is the most consequential thing that might come from LLM math. Note that the NSA switched to post-quantum crypto years ago and Signal app already uses it. But we really need to get the financial system on board.

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Jeff Kaufman @jefftk.com · 24/09/2026

Summary of where we currently are with pathogen-agnostic early warning, what the benefit curve looks like, and what still needs doing.

data.securebio.org

State of Pandemic Early Warning

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 09/09/2026

Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).

A crescent Moon seen during the day, arcing from upper left to lower right of the frame. At lower centre is the full disk of Jupiter; the small dots to its upper left and lower right and Io and Ganymede, respectively.

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What's Going on With Shipping (Sal Mercogliano) @mercoglianos.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

W*T*H: What the Hormuz Is Going On? ⚓Recent Tanker Attacks ⚓The "Blockade" Reality ⚓Oil Export Myths ⚓Tracking the "Dark" Fleet ⚓Market Impacts ⚓The "Shuttle" Strategy Video: youtu.be/QeQwZgWN9dw

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Peter Wildeford @peterwildeford.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

When an aircraft goes down, wreckage is preserved by law and the investigators have subpoena power. However, when AI goes rogue, the investigations are at the pleasure of the company being investigated. I have unanswered questions. My latest: blog.peterwildeford.com/p/rogue-ai-a...

blog.peterwildeford.com

Rogue AI attacks deserve more scrutiny than airplane crashes

There are still many unanswered questions about rogue AI attacks

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

huh, I had forgotten, but someone pointed out in the comments that I had called the Iranian regime being resilient against leadership change (like decapitation) back in 2021. 🤷‍♂️ It was not a hard thing to call. That said, I think 'monarchy' was the wrong term here and oligarchy is probably closer.

A block of text reading, "For what it is worth, Russia’s system reads to me as more of a tyranny (Putin’s office is formally defined, yes, but not his real position of power or his near-total dominance of the political system) while Iran’s system seems to me to be more of a monarchy (there is a system in place for the selected of the Supreme Leader, it has functioned once before and the Supreme Leader’s position is formally defined, albeit unpopular). Consequently, I think there is relatively more uncertainty, in my mind, about what happens when Putin leaves power (be that tomorrow or forty years from now) than when Khamenei does – whatever the manner of that exit. In the later case, I think the odds are fairly high that a new Supreme Leader is selected and the regime continues to sustain itself (in no small part through violence against its people). In the former case, uncertainty is much higher, since it seems like the chance of a transition of power to a picked successor is no more or less likely than regime failure."

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 18/08/2026

Yikes, I did not realize that the USS Lincoln's issues are tied to the fact that Iranian attacks on the second day of the war basically destroyed our naval base in Bahrain www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/u...

nytimes.com

Navy Carrier’s Problems Are Tied to Attacks on U.S. Base Early in War

Diego Garcia, a tiny island 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman, took over as the Navy’s logistics hub after Iran damaged a base in Bahrain.

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Michael LaFrance @mlafrance.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

This whole crisis really brings out quite strongly to me how Trump thrives in the fact that he focuses on things the median voter can see (gas prices), but also in the fact that much of the media is unwilling or unprepared to explain the more fundamental things that have broken here.

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Eris ⌬ @eriskii.net · 08/04/2026

Keep. Your. Shit. Updated.

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Where the population falls most evenly into a pair of religious categories 1 Eritrea 2 Nigeria 3 Bosnia & Herz. 4 Uruguay 5 Estonia 6 Chad 7 Ivory Coast 8 Ethiopia 9 Mongolia 10 Japan www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/0…

In 173 countries and territories, at least 90% of the population falls into just two of the seven religious categories we analyzed, sometimes resulting in a fairly even split. We calculated a “religious divide” score for each place to analyze just how evenly these populations are divided. Among the 10 countries with the most evenly divided religious composition, six have a Christian-Muslim split. In the remaining four, the split is between Christians and the unaffiliated (Uruguay and Estonia) or between Buddhists and the unaffiliated (Mongolia and Japan).

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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 11/02/2026

Breaking news: A federal grand jury refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes.

washingtonpost.com

D.C. grand jury declines to indict six Democratic lawmakers

Federal prosecutors launched an investigation into the lawmakers after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.”

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 04/02/2026

Only 10 cases of Guinea worm disease were recorded *globally* last year. It may become the second human disease we eradicate, after smallpox.

Semafor: Guinea worm neared global eradication, with just 10 cases reported worldwide in 2025, all of them in Chad, Ethiopia, or South Sudan. When former US President Jimmy Carter founded an eradication program in the mid-1980s, there were millions of infections in developing countries and the only human disease that had ever previously been permanently defeated was smallpox. The parasitic infection, transmitted via contaminated water, leads to three-foot worms emerging from painful leg ulcers, and causes long-term incapacitation and disability. While Carter did not, as he hoped, outlive the last Guinea worm (he died in 2024), he may have come close; the 10 cases mark a 33% decrease year-on-year.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional! ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

The Gravamen of the Disclosure

4. The gravamen of the disclosure is as follows:
a. By memorandum dated May 12, 2025 (“the May 12 Memo”), Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons authorizes ICE agents to forcibly enter into certain people’s homes without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency.

b. Specifically, in the May 12 Memo, the Acting ICE Director authorized ICE Agents to rely on Form I-205 (which is not a judicial warrant) to enter the residence of an alien subject to a final order of deportation, without consent, including by “a necessary and reasonable amount of force.”2c. While addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” in practice the May 12 Memo has not been formally distributed to all personnel. Instead, the May 12 Memo has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the Memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the Memo and return it to the supervisor.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

So to be clear we have actually reached the point where NATO states are deploying tripwire forces to deter *another NATO state* from invading *another NATO state.* I struggle to communicate the strategic and just regular insanity of this moment.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

To expand on this in a 'what should we do' sort of way, I think the prudent course here is for Dems to see if they can get the handful of GOP votes to force a discharge petition on a bill that affirmatively declares that military action against Denmark or Greenland would be illegal.

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Jeff Kaufman @jefftk.com · 13/12/2025

Far-UVC is something people have talked about for years in a "that would be great, if you could buy it" sort of way. But the future is now, and it costs $500. I think we're now at the point where dances, churches, offices, rationalist group houses, schools, etc. should consider them.

jefftk.com

You Can Just Buy Far-UVC

Far-UVC is something people have talked about for years in a

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Andrew Clough @aclough.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day! And here's looking forward to Polio Eradication Day when we can finally celebrate.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

The thing is, by refusing to truly engage with the public and to support/value scholars who do, we cede the public understanding of history to these 'history buffs,' - and at the same time, contribute to the decline of our field, as the public doesn't know what we *do* that they should pay for.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

That is because the United States is unusual in that it isn't a nation - indeed, it is something like the opposite of a nation - which entirely rejects the 'ancestral bonds' that might make someone more or less American in favor of the bonds of citizenship. acoup.blog/2021/07/02/c...

acoup.blog

Collections: My Country Isn’t a Nation

I hope everyone will forgive me taking this week to break from our normal diet of history-and-pop-culture (though we are discussing a key historical concept here – it is me after all), but it…

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

One of the marvelous things about the United States - something it shares with Rome, I might add - is that American identity is fundamentally legal in definition and almost totally binary. Regardless of my politics or his, Zohran Mamdani, naturalized in 2018, is every bit as much an American as me.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Well worth reading this whole thread. My concern is that I can't imagine anyone could really get POTUS to understand these complexities, but these realities, combined with Iranian retaliation, could easily pull the United States into further strikes, bogging us down in an unnecessary conflict.

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Let's face it, as Trump outrages go, his actions on the TikTok ban wouldn't seem to rate very high. But what he's claiming to do here -- suspend the operation of a federal law, even as to its enforcement by states and private parties -- is actually among his most radical and king-like moves.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

I suppose to index my nat-sec views right now: no strikes on Iran are better than limited strikes is much better than regime change. Even better still would have been a nuclear deal without Israeli strikes, but that's water under the bridge. 1/

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 09/06/2025

I wrote a new piece on how much progress has been made in treating childhood leukemia. The answer is: quite a lot! Before the 1970s, fewer than 10% of children diagnosed survived 5 years after diagnosis. Now most are cured and around 85% survive that long. ourworldindata.org/childhood-le...

Two charts present survival rates for childhood leukemia over time, specifically focusing on Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

In the top panel, for ALL, a series of curved lines represent overall survival rates plotted against years since diagnosis. The lines show a marked increase in survival rates from the late 1960s, when only 14% of children survived more than five years post-diagnosis, to around 94% in the 2010s. Key intervals are labeled, with different colors indicating different periods of diagnosis, ranging from 1972-1975 to 2010-2015.

The bottom panel illustrates survival rates for AML, which are consistently lower overall compared to ALL. Like the top graph, it features several colored lines indicating specific periods. The highest point noted indicates a survival rate of 65%. The graph captures trends in survival as well, showing gradual improvement over time, from 1975-1977 up to 2011-2017.

Data sources for these visualizations are cited at the bottom: Mignon Loh et al. (2023) for ALL and Todd M Cooper et al. (2023) for AML, both from the Children's Oncology Group. The chart is published by Our World in Data, and licensed under Creative Commons by the author, Saloni Dattani.

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Dustin Moskovitz @moskov.goodventures.org · 24/05/2025

I can’t believe it’s already been 90 days since the April 9th pause. How can businesses plan with time moving so quickly?

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Andrew Clough @aclough.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

We were married at the Boston Museum of Science, which recommended an obvious pair of figures on the cake.

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 29/04/2025

>war starts over taxes on trade >insecure young man uncertain about his place in the world turns evil after listening to a pseudoreligous podcast >liberal republican order gets auto-coup'd because it's too hidebound to institutionally respond to both internal & external threats how did he know

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Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

If you're just waking up, the Liberals are poised to win Canada’s election www.economist.com/interactive/...

Liberal
154 seats
43% of vote

Conservative
142 seats
42% of vote

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Owen Winter @owenwntr.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Whoever wins, it is one of the most dramatic elections in Canadian history

Chart showing averages of opinion polls for the Canadian election. the Conservatives led from 2022 to the start of 2025, when the Liberals surged by over 20 points to overtake them

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Andrew Clough @aclough.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

The Malden cherry blossoms trees are in bloom. 🌸

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

1760: 🇫🇷25 million people 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿5.5 million 2025 🇫🇷68 million 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿56 million If France’s population growth had kept pace with England’s, there would be 250 million Frenchmen and another 320 million abroad. What happened? 🧵 www.worksinprogress.news/p/570-millio...

worksinprogress.news

570 million Frenchmen

France's decline coincided with a collapse in its birth rate – now we know why.

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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

MIT following Harvard's lead here

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Andrew Clough @aclough.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

A friend brought these to our house warming. 😄

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

In this moment, with so many of our institutions - economic, social, educational - being actively undermined, when I think of what my role as a historian is, my mind goes to my favorite passage from The Lord of the Rings. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?

A screenshot of text from The Return of the King, with the following passage undermined (Gandalf speaking), "And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in the days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?"

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The Economist @economist.com · 03/04/2025

Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded econ.st/3YbbFjq

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 30/03/2025

This was really interesting. In the study, all 13 cases with ALS ate a particular species of wild mushroom (false morels), while none of the 48 matched controls in the hamlet did. Otherwise they had a range of different occupations, habits, health risks, etc. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34216974/

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

This being the United States, how long is it before these guys accidentally approach a citizen in plain-clothes hoodies and try to grab them and someone pulls a firearm and shoots? Law enforcement officers doing an arrest should be in uniform and clearly individually identified, faces in the open.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

This astounding failure by the highest level of our defense officials is really distracting me from the conference paper I need to revise about how the Romans successfully prepared their generals for command. You know, so they didn't text Hannibal the war plans.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

So, reading the article, I am also struck - in addition to the OPSEC catastrophe - by how shallow the strategic thinking here is. Maybe that's just always the way it is, but all the concerns are domestic politics and messaging. No one asks, "will these strikes accomplish anything and if so, what?"

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Folks are going to say, "well, they were (legal) immigrants" - but if the administration is packing people off to a foreign slave-labor prison without due process, you, me and the public have exactly the same evidence that they're not citizens as you do that they are gang members. Which is none.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Trump's own former chief of staff warned the country about this exact thing, at great risk to himself, and the New York Times imes ran it on A14 and buried it

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SwiftOnSecurity @swiftonsecurity.com · 09/03/2025

Oh! She has! In at least one interview she talked about the briefings she's received on counter-intelligence. She has made music videos to click tracks instead of audio so it wouldn't leak. Taylor Swift is a legitimate security expert like almost nobody in the world. She has to be. She's the target.

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