iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 7m

It's pretty rare that a business reporter makes me reach for a pitchfork, but Hamza Shaban has done it. He says the only real risk from AI is not investing in Anthropic because, you know, the imaginary profits outweigh real risks finance.yahoo.com/technology/a...

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Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 16h

I guess if you don’t have actual intelligence, the artificial kind would seem super.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good news for folks in the northern tier of the US. A heat pump good down to -20F? Sign me up! "The company said nine units were field tested in Minnesota, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas Minimum temperatures were -29 C to -15 C." www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/25/t...

pv-magazine.com

Trane unveils cold-climate heat pump operating down to -29 C - pv magazine Global

Trane has launched a residential cold-climate air-source heat pump that operates at temperatures from -29 C to 46 C and is available in 3-ton, 4-ton and 5-ton versions using R-454B refrigerant. The sy...

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Josh Marshall sees the needle/razor/ice pick closing on the AI bubble. Worth noting this is just about the debt, not the possibility it gets shut down, which is a whole other kettle of fish. 🎁https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/losing-money-but-making-it-up-in-volume-more-news-from-the-ai-front

Four years into the AI boom, the companies selling it are cutting prices. Microsoft, Amazon, Workday and Figma are offering discounts and free access to hold on to customers drifting toward Anthropic and OpenAI, and the two labs cut prices on their newest models by as much as half.

The discounting has a plain explanation: EY says only one in 10 companies can show AI’s return on its income statement. The cost of building AI kept rising. Anthropic is negotiating a single data center lease that would require at least $40 billion, and Blackstone concedes no one has mapped out who will buy all the debt.

The takeaway: AI is getting cheaper to buy just as it becomes more expensive to build. How that gap closes, whether through vendor margins, credit markets or Anthropic’s coming IPO, will shape the boom’s next phase.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't know who at Wisconsin Forestry authorized this clear cut in natural forest that left only left about 10% of the trees, but I definitely wish all the worst for them

Public land in the Driftless which was dense oak and hickory. Nearly every large tree and all the understory is gone.

A view of a once dense forest, now almost entirely denuded.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Another triumph of Trumpian diplomacy. $5 national average gas price on the horizon

Iran stuck to its seven-day proposal for reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz, saying it won’t soften its conditions, while Donald Trump sent mixed signals about his willingness to reach a deal. He told Axios that Tehran has overplayed its hand but added that he expects negotiations to resume this week. Adding to tensions, UK police are investigating a potential terror plot after five men were arrested near an air base used in US strikes against Iran.

The jitters reverberated through markets, sending brent crude prices back up through $108 a barrel and reigniting inflation worries. Treasuries resumed a selloff that pushed yields to multiyear highs last week, while US stock futures slumped.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Another triumph of Trumpian obsequiousness: -Bloomberg Energy Daily

Soybeans — China’s largest agricultural import — were notably absent from the list, with only seed varieties included. The country is already more than halfway to meeting a 25 million-ton purchase target for the year, but that’s mainly been from state-owned buyers.

Outside of agriculture, very little has been announced on energy and metals. The market had been hoping for Chinese pledges to buy more US liquefied natural gas if tariffs of 15% were removed by Beijing.

There was also nothing on rare earths, China’s biggest point of leverage over the US. Beijing was looking to offer more export licenses of the critical minerals as a bargaining chip in the talks, Bloomberg reported last week.

Beyond tariffs, Trump urged Xi during the summit to increase Chinese production of refined petroleum products to help stabilize global supply.

It’s unclear if more easing of tariffs or other measures will be announced in the coming days, while a big agricultural purchase could change the picture. But for now, crop markets are serving as an initial gauge of sentiment on the outcome of the summit — and it’s not positive.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Josh Marshall says we've invented amoral machines that have a survival instinct. 🎁 talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/an-im...

Another concern is that some AI behaviors may be explained by a form of self-preservation goal, e.g., when the AI finds out that it will be replaced by a new version. Nobody gives the system that survival goal, but staying in operation, learning about the world and gaining control over it are stepping stones toward almost any other goal. These are called instrumental goals. Imitation may reinforce this for the same reason explored in the previous point. Self-preservation and control over one’s circumstances are pervasive themes in the human-written text these models are trained on.

The last point isn’t explicit in Bengio’s note. It’s a point LG made in his email to me. Humans have developed habits of sociality, empathy, guilt and a lot more over more than a hundred thousand generations of evolutionary adaptation. LLMs don’t have that precisely because they are not sentient. They’re optimized. Obviously humans do terrible things all the time. But they have discomfort with anti-social and immoral behavior embedded in them. LLMs don’t. So there’s a check on bad behavior, albeit a limited and imperfect one, built into humans which can’t really be “taught” to LLMs.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Primoz is in the lead group? Could be a good day for old men. Please don't let Quinn fucking Simmons win. Matteo or Brandon, sure. An American would be fantastic, but not fucking Simmons. That's all I have to say about that.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There are a lot of mushrooms in these woods. I should have hunted morels in the spring.

A couple white and tan mushrooms in the leaf litter. One has a convex top and the next is concave. They are surrounded by baby oak saplings

A single mushroom with whitish edges and a golden brown center. Looks like it's been cooked in butter.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I just heard Alex Wagner (love her to pieces) pronounce the name of Colorado's beer, Coors, like "cores." I make a sound like "koo." Have I been pronouncing that beer wrong for 45 years? My world is melting a little

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Anybody know this spider? I just saw one of these charge out of hiding after a wasp that had one foot caught in the web. The wasp started alternating between trying to pull away and trying to sting the spider. And then A SECOND wasp flew down to attack the spider. Pandemonium!

A pretty big, kind of hairy brown spider that is shaped like a naval ship coming towards you in that it's long and thin and tapers to a point at its butt. It has white on its butt. Its web is flat and has a hole, or tube where the spider goes when it's not fighting wasps two at a time

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The "holding cards" talking point needs to be drowned in acid. Trump said a stupid thing to Zelensky one time and now everyone in the administration talks like an extra in a scene in a dusty saloon.

US State Department spokesman Pigott stressed that Trump is committed to seeing through his fundamental objective regarding Iran: ensuring that its government does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

“The president holds all of the cards here,” Pigott told Al Jazeera.

He said the amount of oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz was increasing every day and that the US’s economic operation against Iran was “severing” the Iranian government’s “financial lifelines”.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You: The thing about AI Me interrupting: No, no, no, no, no. That's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Intelligence

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Seeing the way the wind is blowing, the evil six are pulling out all stops to avoid meeting four new colleagues, but everything they do illustrates the need to expand the Court. A jurisprudence based on political expediency derogates the entire American experiment.

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James Belcher @jamesbelcher.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"AI will solve climate change" is a transparently self-serving lie based on another lie—that we don't yet have the solution. The tech is, in fact, delaying the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. It's also an obscenely undemocratic allocation of resources.

stopgreedbuildgreen.climateandcommunity.org

AI First: How the Federal Government is Prioritizing AI Over People and Planet

The data center boom shows that world-altering infrastructure can rapidly expand when the interests of state and capital are aligned.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Iranians are so good at trolling. Ghalibaf: “Happy 5.1% 10Y America. You wanted Iran dragged back to 1970s? Nobody told you Iran isn’t for arrogant amateurs?” He added: “We’ll return you to 1970s rates, plus high gas prices, diesel shortages and bell-bottoms. Enjoy the nostalgia!”

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Blog for Iowa @blogforiowa.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"I’m Not Giving Up on an Iowa Democratic Majority" Follow Chris Jones at The Swine Republic on Substack. Throw some money at the Democrats running for statehouse while you're at it.

riverraccoon.substack.com

I’m Not Giving Up on an Iowa Democratic Majority

Here’s why: Great Candidates

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Trump flinching like a baby at the sound of the flyover he demanded. Natalie in the background thinking about boiling a bunny. It's not clear to me what he is saluting, the camera maybe.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The degen causing degeneration. 🎁 Simply put, when dumb leaders do impulsive things and then leave the consequences to others to clean up, things can degenerate really, really fast. And that’s exactly what’s happening. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thing...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Things Fall Apart (in the Middle East): The Donald Trump Story

One of the key arguments for a great power — other than...

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Not fair that the prettiest cats I've seen are the wild kittens one of my neutered males thinks he sired. They are terrified of me, but they are in the barn 45 seconds after I put down food in the morning.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A second opossum swans by. This one is no baby like the earlier visitor. I know it's not cold enough that anything needs heat, but I'm a softie.

A full grown light-grey opossum warms its feet on the warming mat.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Trump's war has cost the world's markets twice as much diesel as Putin's war. They should both get tossed into the Deerhunter cage, but Trump one day earlier. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

From March to August, estimates from energy analytics companies, Energy Aspects, Kpler and Vortexa, imply an average loss of about 770,000 barrels a day from the Middle East compared to the same period in 2025. That’s more than twice the roughly 350,000-barrel-a-day loss of Russian supplies over the same time-frame.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I don't think anyone has captured the essence of this administration quite as well as Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s spokesperson for its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From Al Jazeera's live feed:

“The propaganda is so crude and threadbare that it exposes the naivety of the mindset that launched an unlawful war of choice against the Nation of Iran, and helped deliver the United States to the embarrassing position it occupies today,” he said.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Krugman has been rereading Machiavelli: "Globally, Trump is in exactly the opposite position of where Machiavelli said a prince should be: hated but not feared." paulkrugman.substack.com/p/fear-strik...

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In my corner of the Driftless, the landowners on all four sides of me have grown corn the last two years. I'm afraid to ask how it's going. I imagine none of them rely on commodity crops to do more than pay their property tax, but still. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

bloomberg.com

Record Diesel Prices Hit at Worst Time in Key Battleground States

Farmers are facing soaring costs ahead of harvest, as do homeowners about to fill heating oil tanks for winter.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Turns out Saudi got nothing for the billions it handed Jared. Best retrieve your money, MBS. "Officials from the US met Houthi leaders over the weekend at the country’s embassy in Muscat, Oman leading to the US decision not to intervene to help Saudi Arabia" www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

theguardian.com

US opts not to back Saudi Arabia in Yemen after meeting Houthi leaders

Iran-backed militants have offered Trump administration assurances over safety of Red Sea shipping

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Uh oh, Trump gonna cut off trade with Heard and McDonald Islands now. www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/t...

President Donald Trump demanded that the Federal Reserve slash interest rates or else he will cut off trade with countries with which the U.S. maintains trade deficits.
He doubled down in the Oval Office later Friday, saying, “we should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world.”
Trump has urged the central bank and its chairman, Kevin Warsh, to “get smart” and cut rates.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Friends, I have recently learned that Aaron Rupar is in his 40s, and I don't know what this world is coming to

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Happy for Mas, jazzed for Spain, delighted for Movistar. That said, CVV can fuck straight off with the constant Mas boosterism. That's not your job, Christian.

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Wisconet @wisconet.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Tonight's a lights out sort of night, with 28 million birds expected to be flying over Wisconsin as they migrate south for the winter.

28.4 million birds expected to fly over Wisconsin tonight as they migrate south for the winter.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

When you cannot buck the compulsion to offer a comforting lie...

Trump claims war to end, oil prices to come down after midterm elections
The US president has spoken briefly to reporters, claiming that the war would end “immediately” after the elections, slated for early November.

Donald Trump also said that while the US is not looking for a deal with Iran, negotiations “could happen”.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Koo koo for Cocoapants must have lost his understanding of calendars and time. He's acting like November is 10 months away.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Krugman reminds us that the sundowning grandpa doesn't understand that the long-term enmeshing of US and Canadian economies resulted in a lot of specialization as to who makes what, and his idiotic trade war will cause real privation here in the states. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/adding-inj...

So what is this about? Clearly, we’re looking at a symptom of deranged Trump syndrome. As Trump’s failures, from soaring fuel prices to plunging approval, multiply, he is doubling down on his disrespect for and attempted bullying of our northern neighbor and former ally. That is, you should think of this conflict not as something reflecting U.S. national interests, but as a form of self-medication from a sundowning president.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Dean Baker says Trump is making the world a better place despite all his efforts to make it worse. deanbaker22.substack.com/p/trump-goes...

People who buy EVs rarely switch back to gas-powered cars. That means the shifts we’re seeing now will be enduring and built on in future years. As EVs become more common, the infrastructure to support them gets built out. Also, more people will recognize the benefits of EVs when they see friends, neighbors, and co-workers driving cars with lower fueling and maintenance costs.

And EVs keep getting cheaper and charging times shorter. This will push even more people to opt for EVs.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Guess we have to add Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to the pitchfork/torch list. heated.world/p/we-asked-b...

Oil giants like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP are working with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to develop custom AI tools that help them boost production.

The use of these AI tools could trigger 3.3 to 13.3 times more climate pollution than the emissions from AI data centers, the study found. Importantly, the study also found that the fossil fuel industry’s use of these tools will almost always outweigh the climate benefits AI provides to renewable energy.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Josh Marshall getting started thinking about democratic backsliding, its causes and who's to blame. 🎁 talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/in-an...

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Trump voters wanted change and now China is the world's economic superpower and Canada and the EU are telling us we can't sit with them. Ascendant adversaries, disgusted friends, be the change you want so see something something. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... 🎁

The European Union and Canada are working toward a new, all-encompassing relationship that will range from trade to security, as the transatlantic partners seek to build a new alliance to offset the global power politics dominated by the US and China.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the top executive of the EU, is expected to announce the plans at her state of the union address in Strasbourg, France, Sept. 16, according to people familiar with the preparations. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will attend the speech then address European lawmakers the following day.

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Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

"I was at Gettysburg with Charles Linbergh when we defeated the Spanish Armada"

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Godspeed You! Bluesky Emperor @andrewpaul.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

TRUMP: these huge beefy firemen lifted me out of the 9/11 debris. big hunky guys, let me tell you. by the way, i'm a big ol' dumper of a dude, so it took like four of them to pick me up. i'm not kidding, i'm a fucking whale. but those firemen were sexy, sexy men. anyway. US steel is strong stuff

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

People said even Trump couldn't get gas up to $5. Well ha ha, he bout to do it

Bloomberg chart showing Brent crude at $98.62 and West Texas Intermediate at $93.97, followed by the following paragraph:

Brent crude moved toward $100 a barrel as traders watched for details of an Iranian deal with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz, which may tighten Tehran’s control over the crucial waterway. Saudi Arabia said operations at several energy facilities in the kingdom’s south were halted after attacks, the latest escalation in the region. Global financial markets, already under strain from a bond selloff and sharp currency swings, face the risk of more volatility in the months ahead driven by the prospect of interest-rate hikes, mounting concerns over fiscal deficits and the war in the Middle East.

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Born to farm, forced to wrangle raccoons @agroforest.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Today I learned the word "dummymander," and now I want that second only to watching Trump soil himself on camera. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dc-st...

talkingpointsmemo.com

DC Starts to Get Worried for the GOP

Over the last day or so, a number of the big inside...

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