iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alexander Chee

Proud to be a designated spokesperson for the anti-AI humanist movement in this excellent @newyorker.com piece. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Paragraph from linked New Yorker article reads: This is not A.I. populism, as Sun describes it, so much as anti-A.I. humanism; its champions worry about what would be left if human pursuits became pointless. I was struck by how many A.I. skeptics converged on the same formulation: what is this activity for? When I called Lila Byock, a mother of two and the founder of Schools Beyond Screens, a coalition fighting the influence of big tech in schools, she said, “I think that we just need to ask ourselves, like, what is school for? What is education for? One of the really basic problems with using A.I. in education is that it is designed to make tasks easier and to reduce friction, and friction is how learning happens.”

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 11h

George Saunders on using AI: "Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that?"

Have you spent time trying to write or revise with AI? Is there an experiment that would be interesting enough to try?

I have not. Not for a second. To me, this whole idea of using AI to write is . . . anathema. A thing to be most radically avoided.

Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that? Not even in an email and certainly not in a short story or novel.

Who are we ceding our authority to, exactly, when we let AI write for us? And why? Why surrender our agency (that amazing ability we have to reach across time and space, with our strange, idiosyncratic phenomenon, and land within the sensibility of another human being) to something that, by its very design, pushes the individual sensibility aside? And in the name of . . . what, exactly? Ease, I guess? Efficiency? The person who chooses to write with AI has also sacrificed, from the start, the opportunity of experiencing difficulty, of struggling to say what he wants to say, of making himself evident in his prose, of trying to find out what he believes. By this, he sacrifices a chance to know himself and his mind better. To me, that’s a shame. And it’s dangerous, because, as we are now finding out, it affects the brain and lessens our capabilities. Thanks, but no thanks, get thee behind me, etc.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 13h

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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19thnews @19thnews.org · 12h

1/ This year, The 19th is partnering with YouGov for our annual State of Our Nation poll, shedding light on issues that impact women and LGBTQ+ people and helping us better understand our country. Let us tell you more about it. 🧵

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 12h

Wrote about how Trump’s tantrums over the Supreme Court reveal the not so hidden subtext of what Republicans expect from the justices. Also a mention of how Supreme Court politics resemble the Calciopoli scandal. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

As is nearly always the case with the president’s accusations, this was an illuminating projection. Trump fears that public pressure on the Supreme Court can sway the justices and how they rule. So when they don’t side with him, he assumes that’s what happened, and he trashes the Court in the hope that it will side with him the next time. He views criticism of the Supreme Court much as he views laws in general: When Trump or one of his allies wants to do something, such as use taxpayer dollars for cultish campaign ads, it’s legal. When his opponents want to do something, it’s illegal

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gamera obscura @ohrobin.bsky.social · 12h

Sweden, while subject to the same climate shifts as the rest of the planet, has some relative advantages in the near term. Mobility and freedom are assets, and the more things deteriorate the more consequential those class privileges become. Or he could need a murderbot training ground, who knows.

fortune.com

Palantir CEO Alex Karp quietly purchased 37,000 acres of forests in Sweden—and locals found out when hunters lost leases to use the property | Fortune

Cladonia Skog AB, a newly registered company owned by Karp, said it would use the land for “forestry and other related activities.”

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evy kwong @evystadium.bsky.social · 14h

whenever you feel like you’re too small to change anything know that citizens from small towns and cities that speak up against flock and axon cameras in their communities (and sometimes get arrested for it) are fighting and sometimes succeeding against this

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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 16h

Not a great sign when your 12-person private fundraiser includes someone who hates you enough to leak damaging audio

The audio of Mr. Paxton was shared with The Times by an attendee who recorded him speaking at a private fund-raiser in Washington attended by roughly a dozen people. The person, who opposes Mr. Paxton’s campaign and provided the recording to The Times, was granted anonymity because Mr. Paxton’s remarks were private.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 15h

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Cåråbine à Citron 🍋 @carabinacitron.eurosky.social · 30/09/2026

Abood’s medication has run out😭 His family in Gaza cannot afford to buy more. Without his treatment, his seizures are becoming more frequent & sudden, his condition is getting worse. He urgently needs his medication 💔 Please don’t leave Abood alone, Give hope here👇 chuffed.org/project/1844...

Picture of abood with a text : "I'm Abood from Gaza, save my life"

another picture of abood in a blue shirt after a seizure

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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

should be instructive for democrats that Magyar is living up to his promise to prosecute Orban officials for corruption and is continuing to poll extremely highly

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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 21h

Someone really wrote to me cold out of the blue to ask me about whether I thought living in New York was a good idea. We don't know each other. She didn't even mention whether she knew my work as a writer. Then when I didn't respond she... followed up?

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Rachel Holliday Smith @rachelholliday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

because of this post I read Hell’s Heart and holy smokes what a book. just finished it last night. can highly recommend! it’s very weird and good!

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Tina Vasquez @tinavasquez.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

NEW: H-2A worker Carlos Vargas Moreno experienced a catastrophic heat stroke when his employer, Florida Orange Gold, subjected him to unsafe working conditions. The same company was cited two years prior for the heat-related death of H-2A worker Carmen Sebastian Hernandez Mosqueda.

prismreports.org

Despite farmworker death and another disabled by heat stroke, employer keeps sending people to fields

Florida Orange Gold has exposed workers on H-2A visas to extreme heat, but continues to bring hundreds of migrants to North Carolina

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gamera obscura @ohrobin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Michael Tracey has so much to answer for.

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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Turned in 78 more pages of the new novel to my editor tonight, bringing the manuscript now to 343. I’m turning in sections every Monday until it is all in. We’re close.

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Anne Helen Petersen @annehelen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is *the* piece. Kate Manne, professor of philosophy at Cornell, speaks truth to the totality of failures at the university — and why students protesting the war in Gaza have faced far harsher consequences than any of the Cornell 7: www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I posted in my newsletter about an incarcerated comrade named Kenneth who is running a mobile library in prison. He needed a new cart and some readers generously donated. Here's the new cart! Thanks to those who supported him.

Two men in striped pants and white shirts stand by a cart with books, under a colorful “Perfection” sign on a white brick wall. One holds up two fingers in a peace sign, the other displays a book.

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm not the audience for the Smith hearing, but the main political issue here is that Republicans want the world to know that Smith subpoenaed congressional phone records as he investigated Jan. 6 etc, and nobody outside the Senate can explain to you why that's bad.

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the beggars out of here getter @milesklee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i took the most deadly boring weekly three-hour seminar on transcendentalism with this guy, and yes, he brought a frisbee to toss around outside during the break

nytimes.com

Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think.

If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026

“What if we released malware represented in the form of a cute avatar” is an actual business plan now.

engadget.com

Dots are OpenAI's new personal agents and soon you'll be able to control several of them - Engadget

Sure, seems safe.

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Clint Smith @clintsmithiii.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Very excited to share the cover of my new book JUST BENEATH THE SOIL: WORLD WAR II THROUGH THE EYES OF ITS LAST WITNESSES. It will be out May 4, 2027. I learned so much writing this book and truly can't wait to share it with you all. It’s available for preorder now: sites.prh.com/justbeneatht...

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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Definitely click through on this story for the quotes from the Third Way spokesperson, who AGREED Democratic candidates should NOT adopt Republican language on trans issues. I was floored - even tried to get Billie to put it in the headline. This is not just analysis, these quotes are news.

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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Much of our sitting government is in office because it ignored rape or committed rape. At times, it seems like a job requirement. Much of our media has learned to ask evidentiary standards of survivors that they’d never hold a powerful man to.

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Liliana Segura @lilianasegura.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Tennessee plans to kill Christa Pike tomorrow at 10am.

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Maureen Ogle @maureenogle.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Harper Collins tried to claim both my stolen books. Harper Collins published neither.

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Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 29/09/2026

This is like a fucking SNL skit where studios keep making hockey shows instead of gay shows

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

All of you know this, but any time some centrist loser starts talking about how a social policy will only benefit the wealthy what they really mean is they don't want anything to benefit anyone.

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Helen Kennedy @helenkennedy.com · 29/09/2026

Trump’s new AI website is kinda fun, it turns out.

Can the president use taxpayer funds to air his old campaign ads on TV?

No. Federal appropriations law has long barred using taxpayer funds for political advertising.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 29/09/2026

The Trump administration's illegal kidnapping and detention of Mahmoud Khalil will perhaps be seen as one of the more pivotal moments which accelerated the change in elite, and especially elite youth opinion on Palestine.

nytimes.com

A Quietly Shattering Memoir by a Man Detained by ICE for His Beliefs (Gift Article)

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and former Columbia graduate student, offers an account of his ordeal and explains why his work continues.

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Lindsey Boylan @lindseyboylan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This man is a monster. He seeks out women survivors because he hates them. And he hates them because he hates himself. He has harassed me and other women survivors many times over the years. It must end. He should never have a job anywhere.

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind

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DBdant @dbdant.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This tidbit was in the article. 🎈💥 ? "Goldman Sachs warned Friday that AI hyperscalers, including Meta, need to generate roughly $300 billion a year in AI services revenue just to break even on their capital spending—and $1 trillion annually to earn meaningful profits—spooking investors."

finance.yahoo.com

Mark Zuckerberg Loses $9 Billion In A Day As Goldman Sachs Pours Cold Water On Meta Stock Rally

Zuckerberg’s $9 billion loss was the biggest single-day drop among any billionaire Friday.

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Rusty Foster @rusty.todayintabs.com · 29/09/2026

Again, because it’s been a while: Conor Friedersdorf’s whole job is to pretend to believe the stupidest possible thing about every person and event. You can’t get mad at him for just doing his job!

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Boston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In which the Trump administration achieves a two-fer: heightending US and global peril in the face of pandemic disease, and undermining women’s health, again, worldwide. It’s infallible: any policy choice, yea or nay, made by Trump et al. is the wrong one. Amazing (disastrous) consistency.

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gamera obscura @ohrobin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Why are so many people lonely enough that artificial companionship has become so valuable? What happened to their neighborhoods, public spaces, clubs, unions, churches, libraries, bars, parks, affordability, geographic stability, and opportunities to just casually belong somewhere?

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gamera obscura @ohrobin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is a fine group, I’m sure, but an appeal to “your therapist” as your anti-AI message assumes access to the very thing people are so desperately lacking. Care is expensive and isolation is ordinary. Capitalism leaves people desperate for connection, then sells them a simulation of it.

An ad on a subway for an anti-AI action group:

YOU WON'T TELL YOUR THERAPIST.
BUT YOU'LL TELL AI?
STOP THE AI DRIFT.
Learn more at itsnotyouits.ai

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manewt.bsky.social @manewt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Friend who works at meta: “Do not use the muse agent, it’s like inviting a Vampire inside”

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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 29/09/2026

A key component of the Cambridge Analytica outrage was your friends subjecting you to data theft without your consent or knowledge. Facebook is running the same playbook on your text messages. Even if you’re not on Meta properties, they’re ingesting your interactions.

Aten installed Muse on both his iPhone and a Mac mini that he uses to test out various Al agents and tech. It took Meta a single day to begin "helpfully" pitching article ideas based on texts he'd sent to a podcast co-host.
When he asked Muse how it got the information, it said that it read banners from incoming texts. But that's not true, either.
After doing a little digging, Aten says Muse synced 187,000 lines from his Messages database, despite Full Disk Access being Off.

Unless Aten is the most popular person on the face of the planet, I sincerely doubt he'd gotten 187,000 lines of text in roughly 24 hours. What happened is that, without permission, Muse went into the app and downloaded the information.
He had not given Muse permission to access Messages, and full disk access was not enabled. It just went ahead and uploaded those texts anyway.
Muse can take "unexpected actions" indeed.

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Lorenzo Salgado, jr. @oznezol.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

One step closer to justice for my dad, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

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Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You know what's messed up is this is like the fourth time in twenty years I've read this exact headline

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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Meanwhile, New Mexico (one of the poorest states) managed to enact free childcare in March.

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Hisham Zerriffi @hishamzerriffi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The experiment has been run. In Quebec low cost daycare resulting in tens of thousands of additional women joining the workforce. The increase in taxes to both provincial and federal governments were more than the cost of the subsidy.

ippr.org

Lessons from Quebec's universal low-fee childcare programme | IPPR

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is an independent charity working towards a fairer, greener, and more prosperous society.

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 29/09/2026

Many low income people are in fact stay at home parents because the cost of daycare is so high that their salary if they went to work would not cover it.

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jj skolnik @supremenothing.myatproto.social · 29/09/2026

i maintain my position that the only real goals here are about making money for already very rich people and devaluing labor and that should give everyone pause, as well

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jj skolnik @supremenothing.myatproto.social · 29/09/2026

AI cannot and will not ever be able to employ contextual judgment the way a person can. it does not have any social adeptness. it does comparative pattern matching, it doesn’t actually KNOW anything in the way a human does

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Douglas Reyes-CeroÑ @dreyesceron.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Star Spangled Banner being played by the Mariachi Herencia de Mexico band before the Bears-Eagles game in Chicago on Monday Night Football was a deeply cool thing to see tonight

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Rufo literally offered a bounty to anyone who could produce a video of Haitians eating dogs. He got nothing. So he found a video of Congolese men grilling chicken and tried to claim they were cooking cats.

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