iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 2h

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 5h

This is the thing about AI that I love so much. Think of all the morons you know (many on this site!) using and swearing by this tech that can change the output depending on who is controlling the AI. And those dumbasses still believe it should be used for anything regarding data!

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 17h

That's a $96,318 fine for being raped.

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evy kwong @evystadium.bsky.social · 4h

whenever you feel like you’re too small to change anything know that citizens from small towns and cities that speak up against flock and axon cameras in their communities (and sometimes get arrested for it) are fighting and sometimes succeeding against this

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 5h

I think a lot about Biden/Garland keeping David Weiss on as US Attorney, because they didn't want to meddle with the Hunter probe. And then Garland elevating Weiss to special counsel so he could convict Hunter. And this having ZERO IMPACT on the GOP certainty that Biden was rigging the DOJ

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shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 14h

i thought about this old tweet tonight and how nothing has ever aged better

@Merman_Melville • Jan 24, 2019
Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 5h

well my day is improved approximately 10 trillion percent

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Eric Haywood @erichaywood.bsky.social · 14h

MapQuest has the opportunity to do the funniest thing

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Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 6h

it is very cool to have the livelihood of every creative person on earth obliterated by people who don’t understand what art is for

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Grudgie the Whale @grudgie.bsky.social · 5h

FTR this is a pretty obvious reason to be concerned about AI. They’re all owned by propagandists.

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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 6h

christ this infuriates me. ACA bridged the gap between my divorce (with loss of spousal benefits) and medicare eligibility. without it, I would not have had access to health care for eight years.

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Lee West @whodat35.bsky.social · 7h

U.S. Senate voted 47–51 on Sept. 29, 2026, to block a Democratic-led resolution from Senator Chris Van Hollen that would have required a State Dept report on human rights & violence in the West Bank. Voted Against/To Block the Resolution: Nearly all Republican senators voted no (to block it)…

politico.com

Republicans sink measure to spotlight Israeli violence in the West Bank

The overwhelming Democratic support for the resolution highlights the party’s increasing frustration with Israel’s government.

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 6h

These ads go in the same category as brazen, easily disproven lies after ICE killings. It’s not about persuasion. It’s a display of power. They could have passed them off as PAC-funded. They added “paid for by the U.S. government” because they want us to know they can break the law with impunity.

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 6h

* FRANCE'S MACRON: IF THE BRITISH PM WANTS BRITAIN TO RETURN TO THE EU THAT WOULD BE EXCELLENT NEWS AND A GOOD DECISION @reuters.com

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 7h

NEW: California is teeming with black-market dairies, propped up by consumer demand fueled by misinformation. With evidence against one raw goat milk farm, regulators could have sought punitive action. But that’s not what happened.

propublica.org

A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.

California is teeming with black-market dairies, propped up by consumer demand fueled by misinformation. With evidence against one raw goat milk farm, regulators could have sought punitive action. But...

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Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 6h

Meta is using a radical interpretation of a tax credit for “research and experimentation” to get billions of dollars off GPUs for its A.I. data centers. My latest with Jesse Drucker, @elitan.bsky.social and @mikeisaac.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/t...

nytimes.com

How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes (Gift Article)

Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 5h

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 6h

Not a great sign when your 12-person private fundraiser includes someone who hates you enough to leak damaging audio

The audio of Mr. Paxton was shared with The Times by an attendee who recorded him speaking at a private fund-raiser in Washington attended by roughly a dozen people. The person, who opposes Mr. Paxton’s campaign and provided the recording to The Times, was granted anonymity because Mr. Paxton’s remarks were private.

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 23h

A rather splendid Brian Bolland ad for a Palitoy take on Darth Vader’s T.I.E. Fighter, from Dec 1st 1979’s Look-In. I’ve never seen this particular Bolland take on Star Wars merchandise before, and his ads for the franchise during the period are always fun.

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Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 4h

Reading, and writing, are holy. I love reading novels because they tell me something. They say: "this is what someone believed enough to dedicate months or years of their life to say." This is just as true for the trashiest pulp as it is for the highest literature.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 16h

Men, it’s never too late to leave your fraternity. Membership is lifelong. And these segregationist institutions use your name to uphold the power they abuse. This is what your fellow alums are doing. Do you really want to be associated with that?

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 17h

I spoke to @usatoday.com about data on sexual violence at Cornell. Victimization rates are increasing and reporting rates are falling. “Together… those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell.”

usatoday.com

Cornell rarely expels students in sex assault cases | Exclusive

A third of undergraduate women say they've been sexually assaulted. But on average, Cornell reported expelling just one attacker per year.

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 5h

The collapse of support for Trump in the Rio Grande Valley is a big story of the moment. It's more deserving of our attention than what some centrist tweeted somewhere, believe it or not.

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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 23h

This open letter is now circulating. Please sign and share through your networks. Thanks. sites.google.com/view/frenk-r...

sites.google.com

We call on Julio Frenk to immediately retract his statements

[Links to several other open letters and faculty statements are below.]

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 17h

“There has to be some accountability for the university” Political leadership of Ithaca forces suspension of all Cornell Greek events:

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Broad Eye View @broadeyeview.bsky.social · 17h

A THIRD OF ALL WOMEN THERE. But not just there.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you’re a survivor who wants your rapist removed from whatever social institution introduced you, that’s an okay thing to want. A lot of other survivors want it too. And in a different timeline, there wouldn’t be so many people shaming you for saying it out loud.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And I know this thread is already long, so I’m going to wrap it up with a link to Sara Ahmed’s beautiful essay about how it’s actually okay for perpetrators to face the consequences of their actions—including exclusion from the social spaces where they abused their power.

feministkilljoys.substack.com

The Complainer as Carceral Feminist

I am often asked how my arguments about complaint activism relate to the projects of transformative and restorative justice as well as abolitionist feminism.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Today, there is still a lingering sense that expelling a rapist is a bridge too far. It’s hard to grapple with how far we’ve backslid since 2013. For a minute there, it really felt like there was widespread acceptance for the idea that schools should be safe.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

(Important to note here that women of color are disproportionately likely to be sexually assaulted in college. The “white women” people wag their fingers at are very often not white.)

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

That tactic gave quiet misogynists a “moral” reason to justify their public support of rapists at the expense of survivors. Once again, survivors who wanted their perpetrators gone were “vengeful” and “man haters.” But it was okay if the misogyny was directed at “white women.”

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The co-optation of the history of lynchings of Black men to protect the privileges of wealthy white male college students was racist. It’s one of many scenarios in which Trump (falsely) argued that a marginalized group had to lose their rights to protect another marginalized group.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Since then, there has been a good deal of research on racial disparities in Title IX enforcement. No one found anything. (Myself included.) In fact, sexual assault is one of the only school disciplinary proceedings without a racial disparity.

gao.gov

U.S. GAO - K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities

What GAO Found Black students, boys, and students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) in K-12...

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This claim had previously been widely circulated by conservatives and fascists—including men’s rights groups that literally authored portions of Trump’s Title IX regulation. Flanagan’s Atlantic article brought it into liberal discourse too.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

During the Trump era fight over Title IX, there were a series of think pieces that insinuated that expulsion was an unfair consequence for sexual violence. Many of them cited an article by Caitlin Flanagan who announced without evidence that there were racial disparities in Title IX enforcement.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

For a very brief period of time, expulsions increased—slightly. At its highest rate, the average school expelled one rapist every three years. When Trump took office and rescinded the Obama era guidance, the expulsion rate dropped back down to zero or near zero.

usatoday.com

How many students did your university suspend or expel for sexual misconduct under Title IX?

Explore the results of a first-of-its-kind data analysis of Title IX case outcomes from dozens of the nation's largest public universities.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One of the main critiques at the time was that it didn’t go far enough. Rape was treated as an exceptionally bad form of gender-based violence, but survivors were equally traumatized by sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, stalking, and other forms of sexual assault.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Under the advisement of survivor activists and campus sexual violence experts, the Obama administration issued guidance that schools suspension or expulsion should be the only disciplinary options available in rape cases.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

At the time, the general public was outraged to learn that most elite universities expelled zero students for sexual violence on an average year, which was presented in stark contrast to the numbers of students expelled for plagiarism.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Schools simply refused to do it, which became public knowledge in the early 2010s due to survivor activism. That survivor activism inspired the film The Hunting Ground and the Obama administration’s White House Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And that was the whole demand. Expel them. Because their presence on campus means their victims must shrink. Because they pose a threat to other women. Because they cannot be trusted with the power that a college degree confers.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Survivor activists have loudly been calling for their rapists’ expulsion from school since the 1980s. (For anyone keeping track, that’s about a decade after universities were required to gender integrate.)

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

While we’re talking about campus sexual violence, I want to revisit the recent history of a topic where we have seen some of the biggest backslides: Expelling rapists from school.

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Actually, I can’t find confirmation of the exact number in the group chat. But only one said anything—after the fact. The Cornell student newspaper is doing critical work breaking this story & making sure it doesn’t get buried. www.cornellsun.com/article/2026... www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...

cornellsun.com

Cornell, Chi Phi Sued by Victim of Alleged Gang Rape, Drugging in 2024

A former Cornell student filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging that she was gang raped after being coerced into consuming drugs by several men at the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell in 2024. 

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