iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A big heart. A business plan. The goal? Just a little bit of revolution, for the benefit of #lgbtqbooks readers and authors.

113

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Join our open, free learning community 📣 Technofascism, Feminism and Democracy 📣 to explore: the rise of global authoritarianism; Big Tech, AI, & the billionaire class; how feminist & grassroots movements are proposing alternative democratic futures. technofascism.dataplusfeminism.mit.edu

Image depicts a bundle of cables (referencing the origin of the word "fasces" which means bundle in Italian) along with the head of an ax protruding from them. The text reads Technofascism, Feminism, Democracy and a smaller text invites you to join the open learning community with a QR code.

39644

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

11341512055

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 21/08/2025

Two Eritreans tried to assassinate the butcher, Graziani, in Addis Ababa. Eritrea was ~50 years into being colonized by Italy at the time. The response was the Italians burning people alive for three days. And what do they do in Italy as reparations? Build him a statue to honor him. Disgusting.

34919

Reposted by asocialpenguin

shing yin khor @shing.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Our Kickstarter is now live! Help support our film about neighbors still gathering for dinner in a time of unrelenting doom! www.kickstarter.com/projects/shi...

kickstarter.com

The Last Fifteen Minutes

A marionette opera and short film about having dinner together before a giant kaiju steps on you.

415385

Reposted by asocialpenguin

George @hannahtempler.com · 20/08/2025

for my birthday today the greatest gift would be to get closer to my goal to funding service dog! share to help get a guy a cool dog that can help him navigate the Horrors

gofundme.com

Donate to Help Georgie get a life-changing service dog!, organized by Hannah Templer

PLEASE NOTE: if you are a current icoc/icc member please do not attempt t… Hannah Templer needs your support for Help Georgie get a life-changing service dog!

56964

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Michelle Ma @michellema.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Each time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

bloomberg.com

The AI Boom Is Draining Water From the Areas That Need It Most

A Bloomberg News analysis finds that roughly two thirds of new data centers built or in development in the US since 2022 are in places with high levels of water stress.

6626421943

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Of all the effed up ways of adopting "AI" technologies, mimicking a dead person strike me as one of the creepiest use cases. Are we ever going to stop deluding ourselves that we're interacting with intelligent, caring entities? #StochasticParrots

Caption of a news headline from The Guardian.
Arizona - AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court.

010

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 23/03/2025

You can now register at www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-prese... ⏰Friday April 11 9am-12pm PDT | 12pm-3pm EDT | 6pm-9pm CEST | 7pm-10pm EAT

eventbrite.com

DAIR Presents: Imagining Possible Futures

At DAIR, we want to encourage imagining otherwise. Join us for two panels and a collaborative zine-making workshop.

514061

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Bywater Books @bywaterbooks.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

“Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading & inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.” —Susan Sontag #SapphicBookSky #LGBTQSky #AuthorSky #BooksNotBans

0205

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Too little, too late? The EFF's attempt to recover from the earlier faux pas on Meta's new content policy feels like a hastily patched together PR act.

100

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 08/01/2025

Meta literally created a LGBTQ exception for calling someone mentally ill as an insult. You can't do it for any other group except LGBTQ people.

The image is from a "Transparency Center" document and lists guidelines regarding acceptable and prohibited content for insults. It mentions:

1. Insults about:

Character, such as cowardice, dishonesty, criminality, and sexual promiscuity or immorality.

Mental characteristics, including but not limited to accusations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, as well as unsupported comparisons among politically correct (PC) groups based on inherent intellectual traits.

2. Highlighted section:

The document allows allegations of mental illness or abnormality when tied to gender or sexual orientation, referencing political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality. It also acknowledges the non-serious use of terms like "weird."

634151946241

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Still in beta, but looking great with magnetic attachment and all of the little improvements the model team has contributed so far! 👏 Definitely a fun way to experiment with #qiskit on #RaspberryPi.

010

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

I just discovered #chemadvent24, and I'm merrily geeking out as I catch up with all the goodness I had missed.

042

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 08/12/2024

Since yesterday I was talking about Gates McFadden’s struggles to get behind the camera opportunities, it’s time for me to share a story about the Doctor and how she’s one of the reasons I’m a Professor. 🧵 (Here’s us at the 2024 #StarTrek convention #STLV)

A photo of me with Gates McFadden at the 2024 STLV

703324580

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Michael Whelan @michaelwhelan.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

RISING (2007) Acrylic on Watercolor board - 36" X 24" This image came to me while I was working on THE RIVER in 1996. 1/3

Rough stone steps wind around the side of a hill defining the cliff's edge in their slow ascent. As the path turns sharply, the eroded ground beneath forms an overhang. The sky beyond is suffused with golden radiance layered with grey-blue clouds. The trees at the edge of the cliff, already in the transition to autumn, are lit by the warm glow of sunset creating a contrast of light and shadow up thick textured trunks. Out over the edge, hovering in the open air, a woman in a long dress holds her hands out as if presenting a clear spherical vessel containing a solitary flame. Bathed in the light of sunset, she stares off panel into the far distance while a pair of doves flies low, sweeping over the curving steps.

181153220

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Carve Her Name @carvehername.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars - a new type of star. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM 🗃️ 1/2

Jocelyn Bell Burnell in the 1960s, in front of a radio telescope. she is a white woman with dark hair, wearing a sensible duffle coat given how cold it must have been out there.

4289101

asocialpenguin @asocialpenguin.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

This amazing #sapphic #fantasy series blew me away. Highly recommended.

110

Reposted by asocialpenguin

A L I E N Cerny @alancerny.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

This may be helpful for you new followers. You can block every single person on these lists. Just click on the subscribe button and it will give you the option to block every one on it. Here’s the first: bsky.app/profile/did:...

15251546810991

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 02/10/2024

Facial recognition in smart glasses to dox people? Yeah, a bunch of us warned shit like this was going to happen, and it's going to enable some really bad shit. We need to fundamentally reconsider what constitutes "public" and "private" in our society, and we need to have done it several years ago.

27621267

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 19/07/2024

Digital spaces enable LGBTQ+ people to engage with their gender and sexual orientation, but it can be daunting to give up any kind of privacy online while doing so. Here's a guide to protecting your identities online, from using a VPN to obscuring faces.

eff.org

Beyond Pride Month: Protecting Digital Identities For LGBTQ+ People

The internet provides people space to build communities, shed light on injustices, and acquire vital knowledge that might not otherwise be available. And for LGBTQ+ individuals, digital spaces enable

04421

Reposted by asocialpenguin

Rien Gray @riengray.bsky.social · 14/05/2024

Happy to announce that my lesbian berserker story found a home in @bonabooks.bsky.social's queer pulp anthology, I Want That Twink Obliterated! It's available for preorder, for anyone who missed the Kickstarter: i-want-that-twink-obliterated-an-anthology-of-queer-sff.backerkit.com/hosted_preor...

A black background with a white outline, which has the queer and pulpy cover of the anthology I Want That Twink Obliterated! in the center. The surrounding text is advertising Rien Gray's story submission, A Heart of Broken Steel.

2114