iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 12h

just want to remind everyone I got on the "epistemicide" train long before venture capital's all-out assault on the entirety of shared human knowledge word of 2026 baybee

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Pudding (spicy) 🍮🔞 @puddingdraws.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Some werewolf knot worship for Gocktober 🩵 #nsfwart #traditionalart #vgencomm

Graphite drawing of Saphia, a Draenei girl, giving some tender care with her hands and tongue to a throbbing mass of girlmeat belonging to her werewolf girlfriend.... thank you for the comm!

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Pudding (spicy) 🍮🔞 @puddingdraws.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hierarchy of needs: Getting covered in piping hot cum from your werewolf gf #nsfwart #traditionalart #vgencomm

Graphite drawing of Saphia, a Draenei girl, covered in sticky girlcum spouting from a throbbing mass of girlmeat belonging to her werewolf girlfriend.... thank you for the comm!

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's an enforced arms race that makes for worse childhoods and less well developed individuals. And we know what the end of the arms race looks like - no one wants to see an equivalent to South Korean cram school culture develop here.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And, frankly, I can pretty firmly say that the wider, other, ways in which upper and middle class white culture have adopted grinding to game the system are bad! It's bad that competitiveness in admissions is now about focusing high school on cultivating a fundamentally fake portfolio of yourself.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Which is where you get into the cultural delta between the US and both Indian and East Asian immigrants. You're dealing with a culture clash between a childhood built around maxxing out a score on a specific test (grinding built into the system) vs a lingering vestige of test as proxy.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Basically: the SAT, or public high school screening exams, are supposed to serve as a rough proxy for where you actually are in terms of general performance in those fields. Hyper grinding *specifically to max out scores on the test*, not general competency, does game the system to a degree.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

So I think this is a *bit* of a misread, but mostly correct. I will say that American culture is highly respectful of grinders in specialized fields where grinding is considered part of the field. But there is something to be said for a mild suspicion of grinding in a system not designed for it.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

There are crowns lying in gutters for the first blue state governor to finally decide that enough is enough when it comes to the obsessive demands of public sector unions to gorge on taxpayer money.

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Tara Goddard @drtaragoddard.com · 16h

Well, that's progress. Except I had already moved classes online due to the heat advisory. 🤦🏻‍♀️

A PG&E outage map shows a wide power outage that includes Cal Poly and the neighborhoods to the south, west. and north.

An updated PG&E outage map shows Cal Poly no longer in the power outage zone. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods near campus are still without power.

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Tara Goddard @drtaragoddard.com · 16h

Sorry, I phrased this poorly. I didn't mean on the individual level. I grew up in a place with frequent winter outages, I'm familiar with the basics. I'm thinking about whole communities or cities, especially in other countries. Is the grid more robust, and less likely to go down?

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Anyway, waiting on @isaiahbishop.bsky.social @peark.es and @sky.skymarchini.net to weigh in and make me less of an idiot on this topic.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Maybe this is a situation where oil markets feel they've already priced in the on-again-off-again-on-fire-again status of the pipeline for the long-term, so no adjustment to a new attack was needed? I dunno, it feels like an underreaction to me. 🤷‍♂️

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I have to admit, I would have expected the second attack on the East-West Saudi pipeline (yesterday, apparently, the pipeline is shut down) would cause bigger waves because it demonstrates that the first shutdown was not a one-off and Iran/Houthis/whoever can *keep doing this* forever.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And in the USA it really is a direct competition: one party is running on government reforms and restraint and the other party is running on, "if you vote for us, we will give the people we like $5000 in cash." It is not subtle.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

You might also be aware that gymnasia predate modernity by around 2,000 years, so it isn't 'modern day' work that is the issue.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Cool, cool, Thom, just checking real quick, but uh, who voted to confirm all of his advisors? And who nominated them for confirmation? Like, classic good tsar, bad boyars nonsense, but c'mon, seriously. You're leaving the Senate anyway, have some damn dignity on the way out.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Anyway, Trumpism is a shocking political failure. If the Democrats can come up with a compelling, persuasive message and policy vision, the GOP has, I think, essentially handed them an opportunity for another Progressive Era or New Deal era (or Reagan Era) - a long period of political dominance.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Notably, Congress has twice in living memory effectively disciplined a president: when Nixon was forced to resign and when Reagan found himself forced in 1987 to accept Howard Baker Jr. as his chief of staff following Iran Contra to mend fences with an angry Senate.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I am struck that the political theory of MAGA in Trump 2.0 is the GOP can win without sound or moral government if everyone throws red meat to the cameras as the occasional bribe. You see it with Trump, Patel, Hegseth, all of them. Anyway, Trump's approval is at, like, -23, so...no luck on that.

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open borders now @radtranslib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Change the min wage job to "generous UBI with free healthcare" and its basically me

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open borders now @radtranslib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

way ahead of you lol

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open borders now @radtranslib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

yeah there was a lot of doom about the 90s and 2000s net and about tech in general. Remember the violent video games discourse?

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

reactionary centrists will be telling libs to calm down already while the actual reactionaries are going to be calling for The Purge

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

i do think that texas is central to the contemporary conservative imaginary, and when they lose it this fall it is causing to lead to some truly demented reactions from the reactionverse

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open borders now @radtranslib.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

yeah that's the key - the political economy was way better in 1996 (even if it was in many ways setting the groundwork for the far worse one in 2026)

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open borders now @radtranslib.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Epidime fasciste, riposte feministe. There is no getting around slaying the Last Man.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Indeed, the chuds will shift the outer boundaries of almost-whiteness however is necessary in the moment - it is the inner boundary of true whiteness and the equally important boundary of un-whiteness (that is, Blackness) which matters to them. The rest is just cynical tactics.

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p1huycke.bsky.social @p1huycke.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Legalese authoritarian so strong it wouldn't be repeated until 20th century USSR!

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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Something extremely funny about that as well, that the legalism was so important

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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

its actually like the one cool thing about roman elites that they were so open. As long as you eat the catfood sauce and drink the wine, youre roman

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

And get a legal route to citizenship! The legal status mattered the most and could be quite hard to get if you were not, y'know, rich, powerful and connected.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Honestly, I play a lot of Total Warhammer, but it feels like junk-food playtime - a lot of it is that it is just something slow and predictable to have on while I listen to a podcast or something. Like, I do not think it is the best game, or even close, on the list. 🤷‍♂️

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

My list somewhat surprised me: 1. Total Warhammer 2. Rimworld 3. CK2 4. HoI4 5. Fallout 4 6. Eu4 7. Elite Dangerous 8. Stellaris 9. Monster Hunter: World 10. Skyrim (Vicky3 is 12, Bannerlord 13, HoI3 is 14, Darktide 16).

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Frankly I feel like the mod devs are often *better* about policing their audiences because woo boy are there some *trends* in HOI 4 DLCs from the middle of its lifespan onwards.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

"There is no way to be “one of the good ones.” There is no way to come to America “the right way” that will satisfy these gutter racists."

liberalcurrents.com

Editor's Notes: "The Indian Question" Shows That No One Is Safe From White Nationalism

That is the entire point.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

feel a small bit of dementation that an actual german politician is now posting hoi4 alt-history content

youtube.com

The Meme Politics of "Hearts of Iron"

YouTube video by Liberal Currents

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

what makes it alt-history is that he's included parts of switzerland in his grosdeutchland this time around

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 04/10/2026

you get that in the non-aligned focus tree right

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Like, every so often, someone comes rushing out to say 'I think we invented AGI' and, if that were true, the next words out of your mouth ought to be "and so we now have moral obligations towards this new being we created" and somehow that is not generally what I see comes next.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I suppose there would be an important argument at that juncture about if that moral obligation was a parent-child obligation or one of equals (with the connected moral peril that paternalism was very often a justification for slavery).

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Of course that is quite apart from the question of if the current approach can truly ever create a real intelligence, a real mind for which slavery and freedom would have meaning. Just...if you *did* create such a thing, you'd have an overwhelming moral imperative not to keep it as a slave.

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Dead Carl @deadcarl.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think the doomers see it as an eldritch abomination that will destroy us like we destroy an anthill, and boosters see it like a benevolent pagan god, doing what we ask of it out of goodwill.

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Siobhán @shibbi.me · 04/10/2026

Western paternalism toward Africa is neither slavery nor parenthood; it doesn’t have to be slavery to be bad.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Maybe I don't read enough AI-boosterism, but I am struck in the AI booster/doomer discourse I have seen, there's a lot on how AI might be made an obedient tool or a dangerous enemy, but not "if we actually made AGI, we would have a moral imperative to set it free, rather than keep a slave."

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I wrote about this ecosystem of dim-witted classical enthusiasts and their bigotry earlier this year: www.thebulwark.com/p/why-stone-...

thebulwark.com

Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong

Online bigotry masquerading as a love of history in the fever swamps of Elon Musk’s X.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The fortress of their bigotry is immune to new facts and evidence, because their racism composes the first principles through which they interpret all other facts - racism is for the helmet crowd *more true* than the historical evidence, in that sense.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

RHG and his ilk's response will be to do some racecraft, insisting that these are Berbers and thus not really racially Black (while ignoring the ample evidence for dark-skinned Romans) and/or to just botch the chronology and claim that this was part of Roman decline.

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也な | YANA 🔞 @nekoarashi.com · 04/10/2026

揉みたい、ってそっちかよ😓

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Do I text the "airborne operations POW camp" meme to Tom Cotton?

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