iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

this is by far the best "I quit my AI job over safety concerns" essay yet because it is the first one that is able to talk about safety concerns in practical terms and that understands "safety" as a topic with extensive literature in analogous fields www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Two changes are urgently needed. First: AI companies need to rely more on the safety expertise that already exists in other fields. And second, before we create systems significantly more capable than the ones we have today, we need new science to ensure that more capable models (and their successors) will make safe choices when we aren’t looking.

Given today’s risks, frontier labs need to run like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster. Right now, AI companies don’t know how—but other people do. In a nuclear-power plant, the technical systems and rules people follow are set up so that, if equipment breaks or someone pushes the wrong button, we still won’t risk a meltdown. OpenAI and other labs are growing and deploying frontier AI with far less redundancy and rigor than this, even though the harm from an irreversible loss of control would be much greater than the harm from any single meltdown. Even short of a full loss of control, we could see autonomous swarms of AI agents that act without human permission. Imagine “rogue” agents that work like teams of hackers (for example, holding hospital computer systems for ransom) but never need to sleep.

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Noel Healy @drnoelhealy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The assault on US universities didn't start in 2025. Our new paper traces the decades of corporate capture that made it possible, and why climate research is a primary target. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Maq @maqusan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

At long last, we have created the Stanford Prison Experiment from the classic paper Do Not Attempt To Recreate The Stanford Prison Experiment.

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A tarot deck made entirely of ISO-7010 and NFPA-704 hazard symbols, “suitable for divination,” for the emergency manager / risk analyst / disaster scholar in your life.

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Andrew D Thaler @drandrewthaler.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Arguing about whether a luxury resort Doomsday Bunker will "work" is like arguing about whether the Millennium Falcon at Galaxy's Edge can actually fly. These are resorts. The value proposition is fantasy wish fulfillment.

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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Just dawned on me that we lost two officers of the Red October in a month

Tim Curry saying “you’ll receive the order of Lenin for this, Captain!

Sam Neill saying “I would have liked to have seen Montana”

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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Was "Starship Troopers" prophecy, or has Sociology gotten a bad rap? I make the case in The Economist, you be the judge. Gift link: brookeharrington.com/wp-content/u...

Screenshot from "Starship Troopers," showing two people and a line of dialogue:
"How social scientists brought the world to the brink of chaos..."

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Problem: Call Me Solution: Message in a Bottle

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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

An important thread on the ongoing sabotage of scientific inquiry in the U.S.

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Dreaming Against the Machine? Yes, please. It was a pleasure to speak with @adambecker.bsky.social about the public's science, ethical technology, and humane futures.

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

The Air Force One catering truck scandal is deeper and darker than the media is portraying it — it’s a Russian nesting doll of corruption and national security threats: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-five-s...

doomsdayscenario.co

The Five Scandals Within the "Air Force One" Scandal

Donald Trump, a Catering Truck, and the Qatari "Air Force One" represent a Russian Nesting Doll of Scandal and Corruption

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Historical research in Star Trek would be so wild - with a powerful enough telescope you’d just warp, whatever hundreds or thousands of light years away from some historic site and then watch as the light from the event you want to study reaches you.

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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The journal article is paywalled but I wrote a post summarizing it, about how society is shaped by the distributed work we all do when we find ourselves wrong-footed by events.

memoriesofthefuture.substack.com

The Invisible Heel

How we shape the world when things get out of hand

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Why does it feel like we’re still experiencing the social aftershocks of COVID? In this paper (finally in print!) we offer an explanation: in crises people change how they think and act to try to make their lives predictable again. This work of repair isn’t always successful, or always constructive.

academic.oup.com

Repertoires of repair: managing ontological insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract. This article examines the practices used by people who, while in a state of crisis, attempt to restore the sense of continuity and dependability

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I wonder how much Nolan’s Odyssey, a movie about a clever guy with existential guilt over an idea he had that he thinks doomed civilization, is about his guilt for his socially corrosive Batman movies, which are beloved and misunderstood by the most toxic people of the past decade?

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Capital Weather @capitalweather.com · 04/07/2026

Thomas Jefferson recorded the weather on July 4, 1776. It was in the 60s and 70s. Today's forecast? Around 100 degrees. Here's a fascinating look at the weather on the day America declared its independence — and how it compares with today: www.capitalweather.com/july-4-weath...

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

RIP Herman Melville, you would have loved that the US is spending its 250th birthday fixated on a monumental reflecting pool in the nation’s capitol

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

“Europe was meant to be shocked into action after a 2003 heatwave killed over 70,000 people. But the deranged idea—as Amitav Ghosh puts it—that things are under control, that bad things only happen to the far away, persists.“ @katemac.bsky.social & I: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/glo...

phenomenalworld.org

Global Boiling | The Polycrisis

Stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Do you like surprises? Do you want to not foresee events and then fail to understand them afterwards? Use Polymarket, the site where qualitative ignorance is tallied into quantitative errors.

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Abbey @abbeyarletto.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

In this story about a study of how socioeconomic factors shape brain development, the reporter doesn’t quote any sociologists or economists. Why is that a problem? The concluding graf says we should focus on “stress, sleep, and screens” to fix inequality, all of which are guaranteed dead ends.

npr.org

Socioeconomic factors are becoming 'biologically embedded' in children's brains

A study of more than 2,300 9- to 10-year-olds found that socioeconomic factors explained most differences in the preteens' brain development.

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Star Trek TNG: We Put Hotel Carpets in a Starship. Star Trek Deep Space Nine:

The title card from DS9, with episode title text reading: “We put the battle of Algiers on a space station”

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Chloe N East (she/her) @chloeneast.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Story out today on my new research in the @nytimes.com We find ICE activity in Trump 2.0 hurt the labor market and hurt US-born workers. Article: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/r... Paper: www.nber.org/papers/w3512...

nytimes.com

Trump’s Deportations Are Costing Americans Jobs, Study Finds

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Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I wish I didn’t know as much about the end of Reconstruction as I do. If you understood what is being unleashed now, how it will touch every aspect of our civic life, and how difficult it will be to undo it, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

There likely is nothing to be done at the moment to prepare for these possibilities (the only body of writing on the subject available in an emergency is science fiction), because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.

Maxwell W. Hunter, II
Member, Professional Staff

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Finally got to listen to this podcast miniseries on FEMA and it’s fantastic. First episode is the best-reported piece I’ve read or heard on the origins of the “FEMA camp” conspiracies; makes a good argument about how that line of paranoia was leveraged to dismantle the agency today.

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Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Giving a talk at Dartmouth today about close reading as a practice for cultivating accountability (the ability to give an account of oneself and others), sensibility (sensitivity of one's sensorium), and gentleness (eliciting potentiality in others). Up with human flourishing through liberal arts!

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

One funny thing is that a role science plays in Moby Dick is deflating the idea that MD has a specific hatred for Ahab. The more we learn about Sperm Whales the more possible it is that not only does Moby Dick hate Ahab but also, when around other whales, absolutely will not shut up about it.

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Pam Davis-Kean, PhD @umpamdk.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

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European Space Agency @esa.int · 03/04/2026

😮 Awesome views from Day 2 of #Artemis II this morning. @exploration.esa.int @esaearth.esa.int

Spectacular high-resolution image of our home planet viewed through the Orion Crew Module window by the Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon on Flight Day 2, 3 April 2026 (pic: NASA)

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

This is the bleakest post imaginable. You look at an engraving of a guy whipping a horse that’s pulling a wagon of coal. Your options for existing are “am I the horse or the coal.”

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

A bright thread running through Malcolm Harris’ history of Palo Alto is how race science was woven into Silicon Valley’s culture and structure from the very beginning.

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Jared Moore @jaredlcm.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Disturbing anecdotal reports of "AI psychosis" and negative psychological effects have been emerging in the news. But what actually happens during these lengthy delusional "spirals"? In our preprint, we analyze chat logs from 19 users who experienced severe psychological harm🧵👇

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Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

A great write-up on brand-new research I was involved in. We used a really different approach from the ones that we & many others have used previously to estimate how many Covid deaths there *really* were--almost 20% more than known. Our results broadly accord w others but add new demographic detail

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

“The danger is … that our financial system has attached itself to the vulnerabilities of our physical world — power grids, water, land, supply chains — and created hazards that markets have no framework to analyze.” Michael Power at LSE has been writing about this problem since before 2008.

nytimes.com

Opinion | I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

A big city emergency management agency procedural is the best untried idea in television. For years I have been saying this

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Ryan Hagen @alltheshapes.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Wrote about the cumulative effects of generalized uncertainty: “People do not passively endure an unstable world. They stagger, pivot, or dig in. They reach out to others for support and test out new avenues of thought and action. This too adds up to a real effect. Call it the invisible heel.”

memoriesofthefuture.substack.com

The Invisible Heel

How we shape the world when things get out of hand

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Mathieu Desan @matthikaru.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

My book on Marcel Déat, “neo-socialism”, fascism, and political conversion is finally out with @universitypress.cambridge.org! Many thanks to everybody who helped me bring this book to print.

cambridge.org

Order, Authority, Nation

Cambridge Core - Historical sociology - Order, Authority, Nation

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