iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Amanda Silberling @amanda.omg.lol · 28/09/2026

I'm interviewing Bluesky execs on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in a few weeks, so it's only fitting to ask on Bluesky... what do people want to know?

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13h

It's easy - and correct! - to focus on just how ghoulish and profane this view of human creativity is. But even if you're the most cynical capitalist on earth, the evidence that people would enjoy entirely dehumanised content, at anything like a scale that would justify this hype, is extremely thin!

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Joseph Fink, we're going to win @planetoffinks.bsky.social · 11h

Every billboard in San Francisco looks like it was cut from a Verhoeven movie for being too broad

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alyson “end journalism” greaves @badambulist.bsky.social · 18h

Imagine looking at the media landscape—music, books, movies—and concluding that it would be better if it were all simply infinite reflections of yourself, if you never had to be exposed to another personality, another experience, another life. Just you, you, you. Sounds fucking horrifying.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A better way to phrase this Variety headline would be "Publicity Seeker Who Invented A Program Continues Long Con"

Variety headline: Tilly Norwood Would Love to Work With Tom Holland and Olivia Colman, ‘but Only If It Were Their Digital Twins’ on an ‘AI Production’

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Anthony Ha @anthonyha.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Probably reflects my weird tech-adjacent "career," but this was also surprising to me since most of my job interviews have either been over the phone or in coffee shops

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

She’s not subtle about it either!

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of
considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.
This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of
pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn
delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost
lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell
you about the people of Omelas?

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 17/09/2026

When will the people who argued in April 2025 that Democrats should stay silent on immigration own up to being frankly just disastrously wrong about the politics of mass deportations? Their punditry basically bordered on enablement

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 18/09/2026

a pretty good way to gauge the conversation is whether people are talking about harm or risk harm is about what's happening now already risk is about what could maybe happen in the future and basically the whole ai cult scene is in agreement that possible risks are more important than current harm

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Adam Bates @abates.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

bro you had one job

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Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Even a lot of people on the left are still way too stuck on the idea that wealthy powerful people got that way by being smart and making plans and forming accurate reads on the world and it’s really just not like that, sorry, the truth is so much stupider

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

My problem with the rogue AI framing is that it's an effective distraction. It's a distraction from the fact that these problems can be solved with more security resources. It's a distraction from the fact that yes, these are human problems...

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 11/09/2026

"When a bridge collapses, you don’t analyze whether the bridge was ethical or sentient or why it decided to collapse. You ask, who built this bridge to be so flimsy? There are permits you have to acquire [& supposed] tests. When you ask about the bridge collapsing itself, you’ve lost the thread"

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Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

happy birthday to this banger

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

welp, ive looked at the data and crunched the numbers and youre not going to believe this but the product my company makes is on the verge of taking over the entire world

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

However much you hate British media, it is not enough www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09...

How having a disability became cool
Young women, nicknamed ‘sickfluencers’, are turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend and entrenching a culture of economic inactivity

Young women are also more likely to get caught up in “social contagion” – the spontaneous spread of behaviours or emotions previously observed by sociologists in “outbreaks” of bulimia, self-harm and transgender ideology. What may have otherwise been transitory feelings are seized upon and obsessed over until they form a central pillar of a person’s identity. A chronic-illness influencer won’t want to get “better” any more than a female-bodied transgender person would want to re-identify with their sex.

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 06/09/2026

We should build data centers next door to the homes of every editor who commissions one of these pieces.

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Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

This, and we can all take the face-eating leopards joke as read. I want to abolish ICE, and I want Milo Yiannopoulos to have the day he deserves, and this is objectively hilarious.

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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Working on a piece for the newsletter, this is a data point - smart people keep shrugging and saying “communities don’t like data centers because of ‘vibes’” etc when it’s really that people are in fact smart enough to know they are bad faith neighbors. It is *entirely rational* not to trust them.

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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 27/08/2026

journalists stop pretending prediction markets are polls challenge 2026

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Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

does this guy work at REI because I think he just sold a Big Tent

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Anthony Ha @anthonyha.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Another @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social banger www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/never-apol...

Nobody chooses how they are born. Some people are born rich and some are born poor. If you are born rich, with much greater wealth than you need for yourself, you are, I think, morally obligated to give away a lot of that wealth. This is a fairly common and uncontroversial moral intuition. It is what rich people who find their way into left wing politics have recognized. Being born wealthy is neither a sign of worth nor a reason for guilt. It is just blind luck. What we are responsible for is what we can control. When rich kids who may have lived privileged lives embrace left wing politics, that is good. That means that they have the moral fiber to recognize that they have been financially blessed by an unfair system, and that they should do their part to try to make the system more fair. It is easier for people whose parents are rich to understand and be honest about this than it is for people who get rich themselves. The heirs can see clearly that their wealth is a matter of luck, while those who gained great wealth through business or otherwise are sorely tempted, by human nature, to believe that they deserve what they have, while ignoring the many structural advantages they were given that allowed them to be in a position to get that wealth. This is unremarkable. Self-justification is one of the strongest forces on earth. But it goes to show why there are rich kids who are members of DSA, but there are not too many Goldman Sachs executives who are.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 23/08/2026

the other thing is that most of the DSA program would be net money positive up to like the top decile. my federal taxes would probably go up 50% under Medicare for all but zeroing out healthcare costs would more than compensate

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 22/08/2026

This is good and true.

The left does not need to pursue its own exoneration in this moment. There is no reason to indulge the fantasy that we governed the nation during these recent, disastrous years, or that our country's brief flirtation with racial justice was an unthinkable disaster with countless innocent victims. Are we, the left, messy as hell? Absolutely. Do I get sick of our shit sometimes? You bet. But our politics are not the politics that have detached this country from reality, or normalized increasingly inhuman policies.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Dependency is the goal.

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 19/08/2026

The airline worker in this story is so brave. Yes, she’s risking her job by talking to @time.com, but she’s also giving other airline workers detailed instructions on how to protect passengers from ICE. time.com/article/2026...

time.com

ICE Is Asking Gate Agents To Help Arrest Passengers. Some Are Pushing Back

An airline manager warned a passenger that ICE agents were waiting at her gate, helping her avoid a possible arrest.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Avoiding AI is about to be a superpower.

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Every Daily Mail headline, summarised

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

it’s always 2 dumb bitches telling eachother "exactlyyyy"

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Anthony Ha @anthonyha.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

"What actually happens when we read the words on the page, look up the key terms, push against the ideas in a text, scan a bibliography, find the sources, identify a conversation, and put down our own thoughts in language??" defector.com/humanists-ha...

defector.com

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...

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thene @thene.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

out it goes: my long post about Rachel Hope Cleves's claim that Tillie Walden plagiarised her book. It's long because Cleves's claim is much, much more bizarre than it looked on first reading. I'm not going to bury the lede here. Cleves's claim does not hold up. buttondown.com/thene/archiv...

stick a pin in this metaphor

…because these covers are a microcosm of the entire conflict; Walden's book is mostly built on writing and other objects left by Sylvia Drake, Charity Bryant, and others. Her work includes many elements from these records that Cleves does not refer to in her book, and many of her interpretations of those records are different from Cleves's interpretations, often intentionally so. In addition to her historical basis, Walden's book includes fictional dialogue and story elements that are original to her work, some of which are inspired by Walden's own life.

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merritt @merrittk.com · 13/08/2026

time for bluesky users to panic? rival social media site "blongo" has 100000000 active users, offers blongo+ members free handjobs and cocaine

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Personally, I think what needs reckoning with is how fake it all was. Centrists convinced themselves annoying leftists on twitter were an equivalent threat to Jan 6 insurrectionists. They wildly inflated the threat of left-wing authoritarianism while ignoring how it was taking hold on the right.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

finally reading the Atlantic piece on “Woke 1” and it’s interesting how even in their attempt to list the movement’s sins they struggle to identify anything significant

The established institutions of the meritocratic elite were swept over by the movement's force: Members of Congress were photographed taking a knee while wearing African-inspired kente cloth. Companies rolled out diversity, equity, and inclusion action plans and donated huge sums to Black Lives Matter and other racial-justice causes. Universities denounced themselves as complicit in systemic racism. Staffers at news outlets revolted against colleagues they deemed counterrevolutionary, and nonprofit leaders and corporate executives treated the books of the anti-racism gurus Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo as revelatory.

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Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

“Winning is the worst thing that could happen to the left” is a genre of commentary that you can expect to get more and more popular now that the “These wackos will never win” genre has lost its plausibility.

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Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Proof of a literacy crisis: pundit Derek Thompson can't read the studies he quotes. This is about "self-published genre fiction ... primarily sold on Amazon" and not “the book industry.” Imagine looking at TikTok slop and declaring “the film industry” is being replaced by AI actors and directors.

Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
Of the many, many books that predicted some dystopian effects of AI, few or none of them, to my knowledge, predicted that one of AI's first major effects would be to disrupt the book industry itself.

But that's exactly what seems to be happening.

- The number of AI-written books with any sales has grown by a factor of *19* since 2003
- Books with “substantial AI text” are making more money with every passing year
- Authors who don’t write with AI are earning less per book in almost every genre

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This is why I find the 'AI has uses' or the 'AI is marketed wrong' so dumb. Of course everything comes with a trade off, but, you can't possibly think that what few things it can do is worth being "the biggest climate polluter in the US." That seems absolutely insane

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Anthony Ha @anthonyha.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

lol a similar thought occurred to me as I prepping the transcript

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Anthony Ha @anthonyha.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I was nervous about interviewing Jill Lepore but it turned out to be a lot of fun techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/h...

Lepore: In some ways, they’re silly examples. But you see the ways in which these corporations, these tech companies from Silicon Valley, and especially their charismatic or not-so-charismatic leaders, are just taking on the trappings of the nation-state and the functions of democracy.
They’re not people with a sophisticated political philosophy, but it’s like a cartoon version of that 1984 Macintosh ad, except that it takes itself so seriously. And these companies have so much power.
But that said, the book doesn’t begin in 1984. I just think that’s a good example of our modern era and the way a fun advertising campaign turns into a kind of delusional fantasy on the part of people like Sam Altman.

Lepore: By the time you get to, I think it’s 2012 — many years into Twitter’s fairly short history — they publish this thing called the Twitter Politics and Elections Handbook, which is really a guide for political candidates and elected officials and how to most effectively use Twitter. And then they begin the rollout of, “It’s a town hall in your pocket, and it’s improving our democracies because we’re restoring the defunct New England town meeting,” and that’s all just bananas.
Objectively, nothing could be further from the truth. At that time, one in five Americans had a Twitter account. Most people who had Twitter accounts had never used them, and above 90% of all tweets about politics were posted by fewer than 10% of the people that did use Twitter all the time. There was no way in which Twitter was a representation of the electorate. Twitter was a representation of the most extreme, politically active, hyper-partisan among Americans, who were following politics really avidly. Looking at it now, we can see, “Well, that’s really just a distortion machine. And if politicians are using it to gauge the electorate, they’re getting really bad information.”

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QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Tick-tock, just past seven o'clock. Today is August 4, 2026 in the city of Allendale, California. Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday! Today is "There Will Come Soft Rains" day! This celebration has been scheduled in advance. This message will display even if none are left to read it.

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

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vacchagotta @vacchagotta.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

When New Yorkers see a dumpster they start jumping and hooting like the apes in the beginning of 2001: a space odyssey

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

[putting on my academic hat] the trash bags smell and attract rats, but they're also part of the erotic biotic infrastructure of the city. i was ferried to an orgy by a rat king the other day. until the dumpsters offer to fist you, count me out

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 31/07/2026

What if KITT were wrong all the time and also gave all its insights about you to the government.

Santos said the new GM assistant, which she declined to disclose a name for, will be able to better “understand the vehicle, the drive and our customers’ needs, and make everyday ownership simpler.”

With Gemini, customers can speak naturally without memorizing commands or repeating context. It also is beginning to offer “live sessions” in which the bot will speak with a like a normal conversation or play games like trivia or 20 questions. It also can control some aspects of GM vehicles, such as temperature and radio controls, but in general operates like it would through a phone.

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Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com · 27/07/2026

I think it's absolutely good & fine for people to disagree with the essay's points but it is baffling to see complaints like "Wilson doesn't get that an adaptation makes changes" or "Wilson doesn't get cinema" or "Wilson should be more polite & gracious," like come on friends what are we doing here!

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Mamdani criticizes Netanyahu. Later, a crazy man stabs a Jewish man and an Asian man. And we get an article suggesting that while one stabbing (dismissed in six words) is just a shrug, the other implicates the mayor. Disgraceful framing. Shame on everyone involved. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/n...

nytimes.com

After Stabbings, a Rise in Jewish Fears and Questions for Mamdani (Gift Article)

Some politicians said Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s criticism of Israel had created a dangerous environment. He pushed back, condemning the stabbings of two men on the Upper West Side and defending his state...

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Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org · 23/07/2026

this is the point I've been making too. They say: 1. AI is as smart and creative as a human 2. humans aren't actually very smart or creative 3. if nothing we do has any value, then there's no reason to pay for labor or art or anything but more exploitative technology

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Every fucking day of my life I see an article in a centrist outlet titled What The Democrats Need to Do Now by John H. Republican and the entire argument is “Be more Republican.”

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