iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Movie concept: No, Man - the exact inverse of Yes, Man. Someone who always says yes needs to say no to everything for the first time in their life and their whole world reshapes in front of their eyes. Plot twist: Added scenes that weigh the opportunity costs directly.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

🧵: Submission is an information problem. From outside, a chosen surrender and a coerced one produce the same picture — the same posture, the same knees. Every tradition that took surrender seriously had to build something that could tell them apart.

Quote card on off-white paper under the Social Signal and Leather & Lavender logos: “Submission is an act — someone is doing it, and everything depends on who.” Beneath a divider: “Submittere, from the Latin: ‘to send under.’ Same posture. A different act.”

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Rainbow Liberty: Liberal Political Economy and Queer Freedom is available to pre-order from Routledge. Edited by Nathan P. Goodman, Jordan K. Lofthouse, and Mikayla Novak, it reads LGBTQ freedom through Smith, Hayek, Buchanan, and the Ostroms. It’s been a long time coming. 🧵

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

🧵/8: Most burnout advice is aimed at the individual: set boundaries, build resilience, log off. My new Social Signal essay argues that’s the wrong target. The pressures of digital work and economic precarity don’t just add up. They multiply.

Social Signal quote card: “The perceived ‘efficiency’ of asynchronous work is therefore a mirage.” Caption: Dennis & Valacich, media synchronicity, 1999. Fast to send. Slow to understand.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

1/ IML just tried central planning on the leather community. On Sept. 10, it announced 50 preapproved feeder contests and 5 open spots. Five days later, it reversed. A thread on spreadsheets, AI socialism, and who gets a seat at the family table. 🧵

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Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 13/09/2026

literally the Stigler sign blacksky.community/profile/did:...

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Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 22/07/2026

Stigler doesn’t get you everywhere but it gets you a lot of places a lot of the time www.jstor.org/stable/3003160

The theory of economic regulation
George J. Stigler
The University of Chicago The potential uses of public resources and powers to improve the economic status of economic groups (such as industries and occupa-
tions) are analyzed to provide a scheme of the demand for regulation. The characteristics of the political process which allow relatively small groups to obtain such regulation is then sketched to provide elements of a theory of supply of regulation. A variety of empirical evidence and
illustration is also presented.
• The state-the machinery and power of the states a potential insurance have their more modest repast. The central tasks of the theory of economic regulation are to explain who will receive the benefits or burdens of regulation, what form regulation will take, and
the effects of regulation upon the allocation of resources. Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it. A central thesis of this paper is that, as a rule, regula- tion is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated pri- marily for its benefit. There are regulations whose net effects upon the regulated industry are undeniably onerous; a simple example is the differentially heavy taxation of the industry's product (whiskey, playing cards). These onerous regulations, however, are exceptional and can be explained by the same theory that explains beneficial (we
may call it "acquired"') regulation.

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Liberalism.org @liberalism.org · 09/09/2026

Michael Munger argues that liberalism survives not by establishing rules that settle questions in advance, but by relearning how to exercise humility and toleration in judgment. www.liberalism.org/p/liberalism...

liberalism.org

Liberalism Under Threat

Militant democracy proposes to save liberalism from its foes. Can it work as promised?

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Here's a gift link to my 9/11 essay in the NYT. Civil libertarians long warned that before giving government new powers, we should consider how an administration with authoritarian ambition might abuse them. We were told that America was too exceptional to elect such a person. Well here we are.

nytimes.com

Opinion | Civil Libertarians Knew This Would Happen. We Should Have Listened. (Gift Article)

The civil libertarians’ warnings have come true.

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Montgomery County, Md. passed a law banning the carrying of firearms within 100 yards of places of worship or places of public assembly. It's now being sued by a synagogue that says the law will disarm its community volunteer security team.

reason.com

Maryland synagogue challenges restrictive gun law

Montgomery County officials are trying to prevent houses of worship from making their own security decisions.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

1/8 One year ago a single shot killed Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University. FIRE's new rankings measure what it did to speech there. UVU fell from 71st of 257 schools to 210th of 261. Not because the administration failed. Because students stopped talking.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

1/ There are bars in this town where a man can tell you what he wants without saying a word, and be understood correctly by strangers. Left pocket or right. A color. That's a working signaling system, and it predates every platform you're currently mad at.

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Cato Institute @cato.org · 06/09/2026

“It’s the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom, that requires justification.” – David Boaz, The Libertarian Mind. ow.ly/SzeS50ZJBCw

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

🧵/8: An unwritten rule is not automatically a suspicious rule. The leather community ran on protocols nobody wrote down. That was not sloppiness. A handbook is a map for the vice squad. Essay 8 in my series borrows the WNBA v Enes Kanter debate for its shape.

A cream card in the Leather & Lavender house style. Large serif text reads “The unwrittenness is armor.” Below a small star divider: “On tacit knowledge and the vice squad. Some things do not survive being written.”

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Jason Kuznicki @jkuznicki.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

One of the unfortunate things about property rights is that they're understood--by people on every side of the discussion--to be mostly about the rich. Yet when you've only got a little, knowing that it's secure from seizure means so much more, and not just for peace of mind.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Why accept a solution when you want a scapegoat?

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

🧵/ March 2020. The traffic outside my basement window stopped and my feed got very loud. I have never stopped thinking about that trade. The essay I wrote about it was my first, and it is the closest thing I have to a manifesto. Everything since argues from it. Unrolling the case.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Ive been using LLMs as a proxy for human copy editors for about 3 years now. I finally understand where it’s hurting my writing… I get feed back instantly and it’s always justified with things I’ve trained the model on about my thoughts and insecurities…

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

🧵/8 The standard progressive diagnosis of American healthcare is that it’s a free market run amok. It isn’t a free market at all. It’s the byproduct of a 1942 wage freeze, a War Labor Board loophole, and an IRS ruling nobody thought through.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

1/ Some men die of being fine. Not the ones who ask for too much. The ones who never ask at all — who show up for everyone’s disaster and drown in a storm no one else can see. We call them selfless. That’s not what’s happening.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

🧵/8 Police respond to incentives. An organization funded and praised for producing arrests will produce them wherever they are cheapest to make. Not where wrongdoing is greatest. Where resistance is least. A leather bar in 1965 was the cheapest target the century offered.

Cream card with the Leather & Lavender mark. Large serif text: “Discretion is the mechanism.” Below: “Discretionary power, 1950s–60s. It oppresses on schedule.”

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

My colleague Stephen Richer on the Supreme Court's latest on mail-in voting and the USPS. When the merits are finally reached, he writes, "I still firmly believe that the administration will lose on the constitutionality of the executive order."

cato.org

Relax. The Supreme Court’s Election Order Isn’t What the Internet Says It Is.

The president does not have the authority to unilaterally change election law.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🧵/7: I would rather be homeless than navigate interpersonal conflict. I have the receipts. When a room turned tense I left, mentally or physically. When a household turned complicated I went back to the couch-surf spreadsheet.

Cream card with the Leather & Lavender mark. Large serif text: “I would rather be homeless than navigate interpersonal conflict.” Below: “Standard operating procedure, most of my adult life. I have the receipts.”

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Every movement seeking mainstream acceptance faces the same choice: advocate for everyone, or advance faster by sacrificing the least respectable among you. The suffragettes sacrificed Black women. The labor movement sacrificed immigrants. 🧵/8

Cream card with the Leather & Lavender mark. Large serif text: “Later never comes.” Below: “Respectability politics, 1950s–60s.”

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Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 @joshuaeakle.com · 19/08/2026

Real liberalism has been tried. First it created the Constitution. Then it abolished slavery. Then it ended segregation. Then it created the greatest surge of prosperity in history. Our problems today are not because liberalism failed. They are because we failed liberalism.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Interesting day today, with two interactions that stood out to me. First, a lengthy conversation with someone in Sons of Solomon MC where I was given plenty of advice ahead of my motorcycle class, first bike, and how to navigate the prospecting period of MCs.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Through most of the twentieth century, sodomy laws didn’t only criminalize sex between men. They criminalized the coordination required to find it. Explicit solicitation was a felony. Propositioning a stranger in a bar could get you arrested. 🧵/8

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Maryland Matters @marylandmatters.org · 21/08/2026

In all but two counties in this year's primaries, there were races decided by a plurality vote, sending winners to November with less than majority support and leaving a majority of voters disappointed. It's time for ranked choice voting, writes Mike Pellittierre. marylandmatters.org/2026/08/16/m...

marylandmatters.org

Maryland's primary results prove it's time for ranked choice voting - Maryland Matters

In all but two counties in this year's primaries, there were races decided by a plurality vote, sending winners to the general with less than majority support and leaving a majority of voters disappoi...

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Most early leather history doesn’t come from the men who lived it. It comes from police reports, psychiatric evaluations and vice squad logs. To write down who you were in 1954 was to hand the state a weapon. Essay 1 of Leather & Lavender. 🧵/8

Cream card with the Leather & Lavender lavender-and-acorn mark. Large serif text: “The same conditions that made the clubs necessary made the archive dangerous.” Below: “On the missing first-person record.”

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Christmas 2025. I had everything I’d spent a year building — the house full, the chosen family assembled. And some reptilian part of my brain wanted to burn it down and run. The introduction to Leather & Lavender is about that urge. 🧵/8

Cream card with the Leather & Lavender lavender-and-acorn mark. Text in large serif: “Solitude transformed from a choice into a diagnosis.”

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

In February 1349 Strasbourg burned roughly two thousand of its Jewish residents on a platform built in their own cemetery, for poisoning the wells. The plague had not yet reached the city. New essay, and it starts here. 🧵

Cream-colored card in the Leather & Lavender house style. Large serif text reads “We are very good at this operation when the document is old.” Below a small ornamental divider: “On reading a persecution text. Strasbourg, 1349. And after.”

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The depressing thing about this isn't that he's doing it as a craven political calculation or in spite of how he has nothing left to lose. It's that even a Republican who voted to convict Trump after Jan 6 still has such a warped perspective that Blanche can seem a normal, acceptable conservative.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

💜😈 I remain what I was before any club voted on anything: a member of this community, a keeper of its stories, and a student of its institutions. Some covenants are not put to a vote.

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Nathan Goodman @nathanpgoodman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Exactly. This whole thing seems to be superfluous discovery due to incentives created by intellectual property law. Had Anthropic continued to train their models on pirated content, they could do so without depleting the knowledge commons. But for legal reasons, they destroy books instead. 🧵

As Anthropic trained successive LLMs, it became convinced that using books was themost cost-effective means to achieve a world-class LLM. During this time, however,Anthropic became “not so gung ho about” training on pirated books “for legal reasons” (Opp.Exh. 19). It kept them anyway (e.g., Opp. Exh. 17 at 93–94; CC Opp. Exh. 35 at -0273474).To find a new way to get books, in February 2024, Anthropic hired the former head ofpartnerships for Google’s book-scanning project, Tom Turvey. He was tasked with obtaining "all the books in the world" while still avoiding as much "legal/practice/business slog" as

possible (Opp. Exhs. 21, 27). So, in spring 2024, Turvey sent an email or two to majorpublishers to inquire into licensing books for training AI. Had Turvey kept up thoseconversations, he might have reached agreements to license copies for AI training frompublishers — just as another major technology company soon did with one major publisher(e.g., Opp. Expert Malackowski ¶¶ 50, 64). But Turvey let those conversations wither.

Instead, Turvey and his team emailed major book distributors and retailers about bulk-purchasing their print copies for the AI firm’s “research library” (Opp. Exh. 22 at 145; Opp.Exh. 31 at -035589). Anthropic spent many millions of dollars to purchase millions of printbooks, often in used condition. Then, its service providers stripped the books from their bindings, cut their pages to size, and scanned the books into digital form — discarding the paper originals. Each print book resulted in a PDF copy containing images of the scannedpages with machine-readable text (including front and back cover scans for softcover books).Anthropic created its own catalog of bibliographic metadata for the books it was acquiring. It acquired copies of millions of books, including of all works at issue for all Authors.

To summarize the analysis that now follows, the use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies. However, Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library. Creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic’s piracy.

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Liberalism.org @liberalism.org · 27/07/2026

"It's like we are walking through the museum of wretched ideas and saying, 'Let's do this again.' How about a little fascism? Big buckets of antisemitism; let's throw in dashes of tariffs and a ground war in Europe." — @davidfrenchjag.bsky.social 👂: hubs.la/Q04qTT8b0

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Cato Institute @cato.org · 22/07/2026

Bernie Sanders and AOC say billionaires get rich by taking from others. Cato’s Marian Tupy says that's a Marxist idea rejected long ago by modern economics. Entrepreneurs create wealth and taxing them heavily risks fewer breakthroughs and slower growth. ow.ly/SGjq50ZqUGg

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

🧵Henry Ergas’s read on Judith Butler landed like a scalpel: she didn’t discover that gender is infinitely fluid, she built the possibility by amputating the “no” from three thinkers who each still believed one existed. Austin’s misfire. Derrida’s neutralization. Lacan’s bar. Gone, gone, gone.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

“For in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order, in all caprice a fixed law, for everything that works is grounded on its opposite.” -Carl Jung

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

This is just what Lutherans look like when giddily celebrating.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Great interview - subcultural institutions absorbing external hostility by converting it into internal cohesion (and even revenue)

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

McCloskey argues homophobia isn’t ancient. It’s bourgeois, and it’s recent — invented somewhere between the Wilde trials and the vice squads, when men who’d lost the frontier redefined Courage as contempt for the feminine. Before that, Whitman walked free and nobody blinked.

open.substack.com

Bourgeois vs. Queer

Courage, masculinity, and the modern bourgeois panic over gender and sexuality

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Everyone knows Stonewall sparked gay liberation in 1969. Almost nobody knows the bar was Mafia-owned, the cops were on a $1,200-a-month payoff, and most “raids” were staged with advance notice. The famous one? It only happened because the mob’s bribe stopped clearing. 🧵

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

A paragraph I removed from tomorrow’s essay but feel compelled to share anyway. I’m trying to incorporate into a blog post for later today.

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Alex Pilkington @alxpilk.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Writing on institutions, subcultural history, and communication. 📌 Projects & Links: 🔗 Blog: alxpilk.me/blog 🏛️ Social Signal: socialsignal.substack.com ⛓️ Leather & Lavender: leatherlavender.substack.com 📚 Read: goodreads.com/user/show/171203621 📸 IG: instagram.com/alxpilk ✉️ Email: alex@alxpilk.me

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