iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dr Hannah M. Rowland @hannahmrowland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hope your day was better than Darwin’s, on this day 165 years ago

I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody &everything.

Charles Darwin
Letter to Charles Lyell
1st October 1861

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Brandon Walsh @walshbr.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Embedded Pedagogies is out! Available freely online through @openbookpublish.bsky.social and for purchase in a variety of different formats. It's a tough time to teach, and it's easy to feel helpless. In this book I argue for an expansive view of teaching and the work it can do in the world.

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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

New from our lab! #COLM2026 When people generate stories, they don't just write one prompt. Instead, they explore narrative space via branching edits 🌱 We reconstruct 24k of these edit trees 🌳 from chat logs and map edit types, story formats, how they relate to tree depth, and more!

The Garden of Forking Prompts: How Users Explore Narrative
Space in Story Generation
Advait Deshmukh♣ Nora Benedict♠ Melanie Walsh♡ Maria Antoniak♣
♣University of Colorado Boulder ♠University of Georgia ♡University of Washington

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) have changed the way people engage
with stories. Drawing on public chatbot logs, we can see that when users
generate stories, they iteratively edit their prompts to explore narrative
possibilities, adjusting characters, redirecting plots, and swapping fictional universes. As aggregated data, these prompts represent rich traces of creative preference at scale. Yet story generation evaluation benchmarks rely on static, one-shot prompts that cannot capture this exploratory behavior. In this work, we study how users revise consecutive story prompts in the wild. Using a dataset of naturally occurring user-chatbot conversations, we construct WildStories, a sample of 275,635 story generation prompts (labeled with story format, prompt components, and explicitness), and WildEdits, a collection of 24,291 edit trees that model how users iteratively edit base story prompts and explore branching story possibilities. From these trees we develop a framework of edit types crossing four directions (adding, removing, changing, and extending) with fourteen targets (e.g., plot, character, genre). We then use our datasets and this framework to
analyze user behavior in navigating narrative space via LLMs. Finally, we
show how automated permutations based on the framework can be used
for story generation benchmarking. Content Warning: This paper works with “wild” chatbot logs, which often include toxic and sexually explicit themes.

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

“Hidden Layers: AI Infrastructures and Hallucinations” THE SHOW curated by Antonio Somaini with Hannes Bajohr, Sonja Thiel and Elena Yu Opening today OCTOBER 3r at Berkeley's Worth Ryder Gallery events.berkeley.edu/art/event/32... #AI #LatentSpaces #algorithms #art #thetotalityoftheworld

events.berkeley.edu

Exhibition: “Hidden Layers: AI Infrastructures and Hallucinations”

The exhibition Hidden Layers: AI Infrastructures and Hallucinations examines concealed dimensions of contemporary AI culture — the planetary infr...

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Friends of the Bay! @mariosantamaria.bsky.social and I are taking folks on a new tourist experience! Join us on October 3rd for **A TOUR OF AI** and help us beat the algorithm together ✨💕 www.eventbrite.com/e/a-tour-of-...

eventbrite.com

A Tour of AI, with Mario Santamaría and Alex Saum

An In-Person Journey through Santa Clara’s AI Infrastructure: A Tourist Route of Non-Touristic Places and Prompts

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Mario Santamaría @mariosantamaria.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A Tour of AI — Santa Clara, Silicon Valley. On October 3, Alex @alexsaum.bsky.social and I will lead a walking artwork through Santa Clara’s AI infrastructure. 🎟️ Tickets: internetour.com #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #SiliconValley #SantaClara #DataCenters #NewMedia #ArtAndTechnology

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

👀 We are hiring at UC Berkeley! Join us at the Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese! ✨ Assistant Professor in Colonial Latin American Studies ✨ We invite all qualified applicants focusing on literary, cultural, and intellectual production to apply by 9/23/26 👇 aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05441 🙏RT widely

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

Assistant Professor – Colonial Latin America, Spanish & Portuguese – Department of Spanish and Portuguese

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

eventbrite.com

A Tour of AI, with Mario Santamaría and Alex Saum

An In-Person Journey through Santa Clara’s AI Infrastructure: A Tourist Route of Non-Touristic Places and Prompts

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Thomaz Amancio @thomazamancio.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Important job alert for colonial latinamericanists👇

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Élika Ortega @elikaortega.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

JOB!!! Colonial Lat Am!!! At UC Berkeley! With @alexsaum.bsky.social!!!

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

Assistant Professor – Colonial Latin America, Spanish & Portuguese – Department of Spanish and Portuguese

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

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WIRED @wired.com · 24/08/2026

The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.

wired.com

They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started

The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.

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404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026

EXCLUSIVE: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Investigation by @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social here: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

“In the 1990s + 2000s, gov’ts, uni’s, + libraries—the institutions that historically bore responsibility for organizing + preserving public knwldg—declined to, or were prevented from, bldg the digital infrastructure plainly required by an age when democracy seemed ascendant + universally desirable”

bostonreview.net

What Was the Internet?

As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.

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Élika Ortega @elikaortega.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Delighted to share that Binding Media has won the 2026 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature! So honored to received this particular award because Hayles' work taught me to think about the weird literary works I've always been interested in. @stanfordpress.bsky.social

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Anastasia Salter @anasalter.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

We're about to open the Zoom and welcome participants to @eliterature.bsky.social #ELO2026! Check out the schedule here - anastasiasalter.net/ELO2026/sche... - later this weekend, there will be open access recordings available as well as our online exhibition to explore!

anastasiasalter.net

Schedule in Your Time Zone - ELO 2026

The full ELO 2026 (un)supervised conference schedule, viewable in any time zone. July 15-18, 2026, fully online.

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Ok. Enough. Stop making me hate the internet, Meta, dear. Just stop.

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Lauri Donahue @lauridonahue.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

As one New York financier told Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett, new hires who were seen as “AI natives” are turning out to have alarmingly shallow ideas. So much so, the anonymous finance worker admitted, that his firm now actively avoids seeking out AI-literate STEM graduates, and opts to comb through humanities students instead.

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Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies @jscs-revista.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

In this article by María Rosón’s from issue 16.2, she analyzes the photo album compiled by painter Esperanza Parada (1928–2011), comprised of images taken during the first sixty years of the 20th century doi.org/10.1080/1463...

doi.org

“No estoy sola”: Álbum fotográfico, memoria, género y subjetividad (1900–1980)

Este artículo aborda el análisis cultural de un álbum fotográfico, que recoge retratos datados en los primeros sesenta años del siglo XX y que fue compilado entre 1975 y 1982 en Madrid. Su hacedora...

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Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies @jscs-revista.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Popular romance novel author María Mercedes Ortoll is the focus of Nino Kebadze’s article from issue 11.2, which studies the representation of women in “El pecado de Lida Verona” (1953) doi.org/10.1080/1463...

doi.org

FRANCOIST POLITICS OF FEMALE IDENTITY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF LIDA VERONA

Published in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (Vol. 11, No. 2, 2010)

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Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies @jscs-revista.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Accompanying JSCS 27.2 is a selection of FREE ACCESS articles from our archive, all grouped around a theme of women during Francoism, chosen to accompany Lekuona-Mariscal and Barcenilla’s essay on María Paz Jiménez

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Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies @jscs-revista.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

We just published JSCS 27.2! With essays on early modern music and dance cultures, the fiction of Adelina Gurrea and Almudena Grandes, and the art and archives of María Paz Jiménez www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjsc20/2...

tandfonline.com

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

See you Wednesday, Berkeley folks!

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Élika Ortega @elikaortega.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Sometimes the universe aligns and one gets to have dinner with three super stars ✨✨ @alexsaum.bsky.social @loriemerson.net @mariaa.bsky.social ✨✨

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

So pumped for this! 💜💜

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

When people use AI for writing assistance, it can shift their political attitudes by autocompleting sentences in biased ways. Yet people are often unaware of the AI bias & it's influence This is not merely about the facts presented, but how autocomplete worlds www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Bay Area Poets! my friends are in town; come and read some poetry with us? This Thursday 4/9! <3 bcnm.berkeley.edu/events/109/s...

bcnm.berkeley.edu

Poetry in the Commons: Brian Ang, Kyle Booten, Alex Saum-Pascual, and graduate students - Events - Berkeley Center for New Media

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

OpenAI's Sora and Meta's metaverse were shuttered the same week. Both were defined by an aesthetic that embodies Silicon Valley's current project: to undermine labor, replace art + lived experience with digital facsimiles, and extract value at any cost. And users recoiled at the mere sight of them.

bloodinthemachine.com

AI's aesthetics of failure

On the demise of Sora and our enduring revulsion to AI slop

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Alex Saum @alexsaum.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Every year, around this time, someone leaves a chocolate egg on my desk at work. It's definitely trespassing, but still, thank you.

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erin rose glass @glass.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

long story but i just founded an AI education platform. if you want to join the board or contribute to the blog, hit me up. just submitted a conference talk on "surveillance as care" to ELO. wish me luck!!!! puregenius.education

puregenius.education

The World's First Fully Automated Genius System

Experience the future of education with PureGenius - an AI-powered learning platform that unlocks every student's potential. Sign up for early access today.

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Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · 25/03/2026

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

photograph or a poster on cream colored paper. "Dear President Ambar,
we are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old. This is a
machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of institutional 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-called 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini subscriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeemable tunnel of intellectual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as.advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' with no books in stock and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all costs through automated rather than hand pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it." there's more that doesn't fit in the 2000 character limit :(

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 24/03/2026

"Hello World Wide Web" by Raúl Feliz & @Mai.bsky.social offers an interactive timeline tracing the web’s origins 🕰️ This Internet Archive x #GrayArea.org Trillionth Webpage Net Art Commission shows how archives aren’t just storage, but memory 🌐 More ⤵️ blog.archive.org/internet-arc... #Wayback1T

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 23/03/2026

I worry about this with writing. It’s become clear to me that students don’t understand that writing is a way to build and discipline thinking, which is very important. They’re right to be confused, because we (I) haven’t done a good job explaining. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-...

psychologytoday.com

Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them.

Discussions of cognitive offloading often miss a critical distinction: What AI does to a 45-year-old's brain is categorically different from what it does to a 14-year-old's.

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Anastasia Salter @anasalter.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Apparently my talk on AI and the author function was recorded and is available from Linda Hall Library: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3te...

youtube.com

The Author Function: Humanity (and Humanities) in the Age of AI

YouTube video by Linda Hall Library

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