iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It's super difficult to find a replacement for zirkus that captured its exact niche but the management seems to have abandoned the server without finding replacement staff

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

apparently the mastodon svr I'm on isn't being well-maintained and therefore has a lot of spam accounts. What's a server that (a) has a silly and short name (b) is well-connected (c) still not too aggressive about defederation etc so that we can still participate/observe drama and trainwrecks?

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 21/06/2026

‘Father’ and ‘dad’ are synonyms. ‘Figure’ and ‘bod’ are synonyms. But, a ‘father figure’ and a ‘dad bod’ aren’t exactly the same thing…

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

ACL Rolling Review (ARR) @aclrollingreview.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

📢 ARR May 2026 cycle update We have published a blog post about the increased review assignments in the May cycle, what happened, and what comes next. Please read the full post here: aclrollingreview.org/may26-cycle-... #ARR #ACL #NLProc

aclrollingreview.org

An explanatory letter on the ARR May 2026 cycle

For the ARR May 2026 cycle, we had to make the difficult decision to increase the reciprocal service assignments for submitting authors. The reason for this decision was the substantial increase in su...

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

It used to be there even in the early days of Twitter without any algorithmic feed. It's hard to find it here because of the social dynamics that gave rise to the bluesky community more than anything else.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Josephine beckbook.com Riesman @josie.zone · 07/12/2025

Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder and accompanying manifesto represented, in retrospect, the true beginning of violent fascism's return to power in the West There had been precursors (Columbine or the OKC Bombing come to mind), but Breivik crystallized and unleashed a pestilence that now ravages us

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I see some of that too but also a lot of the NLP crowd seems to have moved there anyway.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

There's no point in social media if no one is getting ragebaited.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

There's still ragebait and dragged out drama there. Here, not so much (boring).

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Unfortunately it's deeply built-in to the LinkedIn mechanics.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

for a brief moment a few weeks ago I was using BlueSky more than Mastodon but now my social media usage has settled to X > LinkedIn > Mastodon > Bsky again. There are a lot of people I know on here but for some reason it still feels like a fifth wheel of social media.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

naked admission that the point was always left-punching

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Nikki DuCoté @raisedbyvalaya.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

"Just asking Questions" revealed to be "Just asking you to disappear"

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Juan Diego Rodriguez @juand-r.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

"This is what made Hinton’s speech so troubling. He presented mathematics as a low-hanging fruit, a “particularly easy” terrain for AI, because it is “a closed system with rules,” “like Go and Chess.” Yet Go and Chess aren’t ordinary closed systems. They are actual games with winners and losers.

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Even by Labour's sickeningly disgusting attitude towards vulnerable individuals, this is a new low by Mahmood. Under no possible criteria could Afghanistan be classed as safe. Labour has already prevented Afghans from seeking asylum. This compounds the inhumanity. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

theguardian.com

Shabana Mahmood refuses to rule out sending back failed Afghan asylum seekers

Home secretary indicates Whitehall talks about returns programme, a move that would shock humanitarian groups

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Bruno Dies @brunodias.dev · 21/04/2026

Bluesky just sips from the intellectual lineage of crypto grifting, where you gesture meaningfully towards "decentralization" but really, 2-3 powerful players own everything.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.

A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Point 21 is the giveaway, some cultures produce "wonders," others are "regressive and harmful." Once you accept that hierarchy, you've quietly been given permission to apply different standards of verification to different actors. The form of verification stays, but the democratic function doesn't.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Healthy accountability is triggered by evidence, points upward at power, and happens in public. Disordered accountability protects insiders and aims its punishment outward. What the document does is argue for the second while calling it the first.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Really? You're disagreeing with my extremely idiosyncratic take on a technology nobody understands?

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

what do you call people from Dunedin? Dunedain? Please let it be Dunedain?

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CJ @virmalised.us · 15/04/2026

While I think whale vocalizations are cool, and the inherent structure in them is even cooler, I am not sure that showing that they look like human stuff is nearly as interesting as the tendency for structure

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 15/04/2026

This “-maxxing” and “-mogging” stuff comes from an ugly place and has never been particularly funny. But what about if *I* adopt it, but ironically,

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

magpie TRICKS @magpie.tips · 13/04/2026

i agree. ducks ARE a good shape

fb marketplace listing of a northern pintail decoy. Priced a $400 the listing is titled Good Shape

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

TheAHayKid @theahaykid.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

MULTIPLE ORBAN FAILURE

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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Politics has unexpectedly hit a special interest of mine so here is a quick rundown on the Avignon Papacy.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

If you see this I implore you to quote skeet with an unusual image from your posting device without explanation. Still definitely use alt text, though.

ebike computer with the odometer displaying "6666"

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

so I don't understand luggage locks. airport security can open them and the key is readily available. why do suitcases even have them?

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

New Mexico Man @newmexicoman.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Woman taking chicken eggs inside. Chicken taking baby to coop.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Nancy A. Collins @nancyacollins.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

birdsrightsactivist has painted human babies and hidden them in the shrubbery.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Universal Grammar? Sorry pal, I think people should have to work for their language

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

lukelukeluke @lukelukeluke.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Poetry fans when they hear a bell tolling for them: oh shit oh fuck

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Stef "inclusion is a human right" Christensen @wikisteff.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

If you poll populations, you find that his 5 dimensions collapse into just two: Harm reduction/Justice and Authority/Purity/Loyalty. These are correlated with "support for liberal values" and "support for conservative values", which are broadly independent ideas.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

DM Howlcroft 👻 @davehowcroft.com · 17/03/2026

your last meme saved is your moral philosophy

An orange cat sits on a forklift, the caption says "this cat does not comply with osha regulation..." bc he has no reflective clothing, he's not wearing a hard hat, and is sleeping during forklift operation

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

your last meme saved is your moral philosophy (what happens to people who don't save memes?)

a strawberry holding a gun with the text "This is a strobbery"

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

nanzhounoodles.bsky.social @nanzhounoodles.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The conservatives correctly intuited a fairly materialist conclusion that reshaping the technological basis of society was dissolving the social categories that they hold dearer than profit or growth. Science and tech are actually turning the kids into blue-haired activists, which imo is great.

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Reposted by Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])