iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Today Senator Blackburn is expected to try ramming KOSA--the Kids Online Safety Act--through the Senate via unanimous consent. KOSA was an Internet censorship bill in its inception, and in 4 years the only thing its authors have done is try to disguise KOSA's nature rather than fix it.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 5h

hear me out: maybe the problem is that oaths of office don't include a slap across the face.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 29/09/2026

Congratulations, you've "invented" the mobile home.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 22/09/2026

Depriving students of "one of the best ways to learn something" because other students might cheat (newsflash: some students will find a way to cheat on anything you choose) seems like a highly questionable pedagogical choice.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 19/09/2026

AI hatred continues to expose how many are so poorly-read that they don't recognize proper punctuation and writing styles. The problem is less AI and more idiots who are more obsessed with rooting out its use than being semi-literate. And that's from someone who refuses to use AI for writing.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 13/09/2026

Not invited for cheesecake on the lanai

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 11/09/2026

People are worried about AI-generated academia and meanwhile Human Slop continues to evade detection.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 30/08/2026

Update: presumably it materialized the headgear from the piece of my soul that it has consumed

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 20/08/2026

S.O. has been desperately trying to convince me that he ordered this "by accident." The more I look at it (or rather, it looks at me...) the less I believe him.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 17/08/2026

"College students are partying TOO much!" "College students aren't partying ENOUGH" "There's a loneliness epidemic" "Loneliness is caused by technology that makes it easier to be connected to people" I swear people just want to pathologize being human. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 17/08/2026

I guess this is true if the definition of "defended the legality of" is "tried to deport people and revoke/dent visas for" brusselssignal.eu/2026/08/unde...

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 13/08/2026

My phone seems to think I'm some kind of archaeological Sir Mix-a-Lot and I truthfully have no explanation.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 10/08/2026

Oh boy did you read this city wrong. Keep your overpriced crap in NYC where it belongs, WatchHouse. You can get excellent coffee for not even 25% of that price around here.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 10/08/2026

If it was because he's "anti science" why wouldn't they have used one of these categories? You think they're just sending the categories at random? Maybe you really DO believe you have a bridge.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 09/08/2026

Just recently I warned (again) that online safety bills like KOSA/KIDS Act (and many others) threaten legitimate, protected discourse on topics like drugs or alcohol. As if to prove my point... platformpolemics.aricohn.com/p/the-kids-a...

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 05/08/2026

Today Senate Commerce marks up several Bad Internet Bills, including KOSA - which for years experts have warned violates the 1st Amendment. Instead of fixing the problems, its sponsors denied they exist & tried to disguise them with obfuscatory language My statement: techfreedom.org/kosa-still-v...

KOSA has been an Internet censorship bill from the start.
It imposes what courts have refused—on First Amendment grounds—to impose for
decades: a duty to protect listeners from subjective, unknowable reactions to
constitutionally protected speech.
It creates a "papers please" social media regime where every single social media user
will be forced to identify themselves before speaking on social media, undermining
their constitutional right to read and speak anonymously, and enabling government
retaliation against disfavored ideas and expression.
And it hands the Federal Trade Commission — which has of late granted itself the
authority to enforce what it thinks customers should want rather than protect against
actual deception — a ready-made tool to coerce platforms into removing speech it
dislikes from the Internet.
Despite years of warnings from experts and civil society across the political and
ideological spectrum, KOSA's sponsors have stubbornly refused to acknowledge and
fix these critical First Amendment problems. They have instead attempted to hide
them behind increasingly obfuscatory language. But the First Amendment is not so
easily fooled, and the Commerce Committee must put an end to this constitutional
fiasco once and for all.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 04/08/2026

Way ahead of you, in a different way

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 29/07/2026

You could have said "Donald Trump was doing trigonometry problems in his head for fun" and it would have been more believable than "Donald Trump was reflecting"

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 27/07/2026

The dot over the I is Tuesdays, and also July, and occasionally that point on the Bearimy timeline is the time-moment when nothing never occurs.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 13/07/2026

Me after assembling and installing all of the closet built-ins

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 12/07/2026

And I'm interested in Warren Buffett's bank account

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 03/07/2026

1 best in show, 2 other first place, & 3-for-4 placing the other submissions - not too shabby for a first-timer who learned all of this stuff just by burying himself in information (and our living space in literally 350+ plants) and learning everything he possibly could. I let him buy more plants.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 03/07/2026

That not only won his specific class and section, but also *Best in Show* for the entire arts division. At least 30 people tried to buy them on the spot. And his plant submissions? Of the 6 cultivars, which he developed himself, h entered... 2 won, 2 got second place, and 1 got third place.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 03/07/2026

I give S.O. shit for his Old Lady plant hobby, but I really couldn't be more proud/impressed He just entered his first-ever submissions in The Gesneriad Society's annual convention competition His earrings commemorating the org's 75th anniversary got a perfect score (has never happened before)

Gesnedriad earrings with ribbons on pedestal in cloche

Gold earrings in the shape of flowers from the Primulina genus angled downward, with large oval diamonds at the top near the ear and green/yellow gemstones inside the flower

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 21/06/2026

Grateful that Six Weeks Ago Me had the foresight to know that Today Me would need a laugh during the move-in

A stack of 4 bankers boxes, the bottom 3 labeled "books" and the top simply bearing a picture of Winifred Sanderson shouting "boooooooook" in Hocus Pocus

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 17/06/2026

Just an incredible line

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 16/06/2026

Lol Ken Paxton being so aggressively shitty as an attorney being the final nail in Sorsby's collegiate coffin is such a delightfully fitting ending. Good job, Clearance Bin Chevy Chase sports.yahoo.com/college-foot...

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 14/06/2026

Wrapped up our three weeks in the Finger Lakes with a visit from some dear friends and managed to only have to drive three cases of wine back to Chicago. High five.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 10/06/2026

I can't speak to what this particular prof does, but when a professor basically just reads their PowerPoint slides, it's less likely to be "phone addiction" or whatever, and more likely sheer boredom or "why am I even here."

• They can't sit in a seat for 50 minutes. Students routinely get up during a 50
minute class, sometimes just 15 minutes in, and leave the classroom. I'm supposed
to believe that they suddenly, urgently need the toilet, but the reality is that they
are going to look at their phones. They know I'll call them out on it in class, so
instead they walk out. I've even told them to plan ahead and pee before class, like
you tell a small child before a road trip, but it has no effect. They can't make it an
hour without getting their phone fix.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 09/06/2026

Can't wait to start running Digital Hooch (h/t @taylorlorenz.bsky.social)

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 08/06/2026

I stand here as living proof that evolution isn't real, apparently

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 05/06/2026

My neighbors tagging Chef Boyardee on...NextDoor...has me pretty glad to be moving

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 02/06/2026

3/ Of course, that's the entire context of the quote the reply brief pulls—which judges surely won't gloss over in the way that Bonta tried to. My brief: courtlistener.com/docket/71503... Bonta's reply: courtlistener.com/docket/71503...

distributor counterparts enjoy." AOB at 30. But, putting aside, again,
that that is irrelevant to constitutionally protected deepfakes, it is also
precisely what Congress meant to do. Section 230 creates a uniform body
of law for the Internet to avoid a patchwork of state laws that would
hinder innovation and stifle the Internet's speech-enabling effects. It
'represents the approach of Congress to a problem of national and
international dimension" and reflects "Congress' desire to promote

unfettered speech on the Internet." Zeran, 129 F.3d at 334; see also Est.
of Bride, 112 F.4th at 1176—77. Section 230 preempts "even the will of the
people as expressed in their state legislatures." ld.
The State cites Section 230(e)'s exceptions in an effort to show
Congress did not intend to limit state power to regulate platforms'
distribution of harmful materials online. AOB at 30—31. But Section 230
indicates the opposite by excluding from the broad immunity conferred
only federal criminal law. California's oblique reference to Section
230(e)(5)—added 20 years after Section 230 was initially enacted to
create an exception to preemption for state criminal charges for conduct
that would violate certain federal sex-trafficking statues—demonstrates
the self-defeating nature of the State's argument. Congress added
Section 230(e)(5) because it understood that Section 230 otherwise
preempts state prosecutions, just as it preempts AB 2655.

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 02/06/2026

2/ Section 230 doesn't create a "regulation-free zone," as Bonta disingenuously claims. It creates a unified body of (federal) law for the Internet. Offline distributors being subject to different law is the point! Congress decided the Internet is different and treated it so. In other words,

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 02/06/2026

1/ I see my brief in Babylon Bee v. Bonta caught the California AG's attention What his reply doesn't grasp: this is the very purpose of Section 230 By creating an exception for federal—but not state—criminal law, Congress established the body of law for online intermediaries