iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jessie Gender @jessiegender.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

It’s interesting to read Star Trek and Star Wars as two ways America mythologizes itself. Star Trek sits in tension with itself as imagining a utopian future born from Western liberal ideals while also challenging those ideals to actually live up to their promise. While-

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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

there are people going out in the freezing cold and literally putting their lives on the line in defense of their communities and the multicultural secular society they believe in. not interested in what some online wannabe dnc consultant type wants to tell me what is and isn't possible now

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Robin Riley @riley.pub · 27/01/2026

Solidarity from our siblings abroad 😻 Means a lot in this moment. Together we can defeat the global fascist movement! Shout to @barklaart.bsky.social for creating this and posting it to one of the best subreddits: r/catbongos. www.reddit.com/r/catbongos/... #ICEOut #AbolishDHS

A protest poster featuring an anthropomorphized cat wearing a beanie, boots, and a pair of bongos as they march. The poster reads: Crush ICE! Love cats! Fight fash!

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

r/catbongos, a reddit for smacking your cat like a drum (they love it) has taken a hard stance against ICE! It brought me joy, so here's some art 💗✊ #art #fuckice

an anti-ICE, antifascist poster in a pop art style. In the centre is a sketchy cartoon cat.

The cat wears a hoodie, beanie, jeans, boots, an anti-ICE whistle, and a set of bongos strapped to their body. They march in protest, slapping their drums and raising a fist. Behind them is an abstract background of other protesters.

The text at the top says CRUSH ICE. The text beneath says LOVE CATS! FIGHT FASH! [fascists/fascism]

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

One guy tried, unsuccessfully, to blow up a plane with a bomb in his sneakers, and everybody had to take off their shoes at the airport for the next 20 years. Chatbots have a collective body count equal to Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez, and they're trying to put them in schools.

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Sweatpants Cher @housefeminist.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

one problem with learning is it will make you so angry at how stupid everything is

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

exactly the reason I don't discuss my veganism online 💚😅 I've got a cohesive philosophical viewpoint, but many questions about it are VERY DEFENSIVE - in bad faith, if not actively hostile - and you can't have a civil discussion with something like that

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Sygnin @sygnin.com · 06/01/2026

I solved the 'it's still the Year of the Snake, but everyone thinks it's Year of the Horse' problem. It's now the month of the Snorse. #sygnin

Art of a snake horse creature standing against a red sun

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

big step, congrats!! 💗 hope you're on the track to improvement 🍀

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Sarah Z @sarahz.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Like, my point isn't "copyright doesn't do enough to protect artists"; it's "copyright is literally designed to hurt artists". I absolutely do think a better world would be a world where everything is just public domain. That thread even mentions alternative propositions so artists get paid!

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Sarah Z @sarahz.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

In a strange position where I think there are massive, massive social harms to the proliferation of AI (misinfo, deepfakes, predatory 'companions', surveillance, labour rights) but also feel the mainstream arguments against it range from unconvincing (water) to actively harmful (copyright; "soul")

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

new years people - consider "read more books" as your 2026 resolution! you're running out of time to pick, anyway 😉

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 31/12/2025

good piece with an incidental insanely brutal takedown of klein

The media has spent the last few months trying to make sense out of nonsense, attempting to conjure motive, manifesto, and meaning out of the dumbest shit scrawled onto bullets. These were sad attempts to impose meaning on an increasingly incoherent world by a literati that has not yet accepted its irrelevance in a postliterate society. But the most humiliating display of literate obliviousness in the face of the total collapse of meaning, however, was Ezra Klein's bizarre eulogy to Charlie Kirk. The now-infamous column ("Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way") can best be understood as an expression of class solidarity. Klein, I would argue, sees both himself and Kirk as being Debate Guys, wordcels who engage in the marketplace of ideas and let speech sort itself out into political action.

Kirk did not commit violence, not because he abhorred it, but because committing violence was someone else's job. Last year, he called for using whips against migrants, saying, "Of course you should be able to use whips against foreigners that are coming into your country. Why is that controversial?" In early June of this year, as the president deployed troops to Los Angeles, Kirk publicly advocated for invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to crush the immigration protests. And in August, he called for "federalizing" the district of Columbia, saying,
"Roll in the tanks, bring in the military."
With his close relationship to the commander in chief of the United States of America, Charlie Kirk was no mere talker, idea-peddler, or purveyor of discourse. He built an empire on legitimizing violence and harvesting the enthusiasm and glee around it. Even before his death became a pretext to enact violence on American cities, he had already substantively shaped history. Charlie Kirk was a part of the real world in a way that Ezra Klein will never be.

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Art vs Artist 2025!! 🌞🐍😻🦌🕷🐛👯‍♀️🐈🌲🍾🐸🐭 I drew a lot less, but I wrote a lot more! And started my first ever garden. So here's to a lifestyle diverse as my art style, algorithm be damned 😉

art vs artist grid, with 3 rows of 3 images. The central image is a photo of me, Laura, in a handknit watermelon beanie in the city. The surrounding images are 8 of my artworks from this year: homeowning cats in love, year of the snake, sinister apocalypse deer skeleton, milky flower spider woman, extremely popular mantis painting, empress theresa's little black everything dress, mice on the mouseboat, and fergus the cat portrait.

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Kendra, spooky version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

"You shouldn't make art for the money" buddy I'll take it one step further and say we shouldn't have to labor for capital at all but in the meantime pay an artist

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C. Robert Cargill @crobertcargill.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

A reminder that the key to writing is getting the very best out of your brain, but in order to get the best out of it you have to take care of your mental health. Stress, concern, and depression will take a toll on your work. So always make sure to take care of YOU and you'll get your best work.

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

the phonics discourse really opened my eyes: many "literate" people straight-up don't don't know what they're reading, because they were taught to read by guessing. Sharing the article for anyone who missed it: www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

apmreports.org

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Your thoughtless ambition sparked the ignition On foolish decisions which led to misguided visions

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onion person @junlper.beer · 23/12/2025

rightwingers privately disagree with a good bit of what they espouse because it’s not about being moral it’s about getting unlimited money and personal power

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

one lesser awful thing about the Epstein files is that genuine crimes against a huge number of children are being morphed into fuel for the influencer industrial complex who don't care about truth or accuracy and just want grist for the content mills

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Tom & Lorenzo @tomandlorenzo.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

You've got to figure the type of person who'd go to Stonehenge on the Solstice is also the type of person to completely lose their shit when encountering a random black cat there

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🦇 bat 🦇 millman @mpoltonsimon.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

The running theme between the Epstein story, banning trans healthcare for minors, religious homeschooling and the complaints about adult children estranging themselves is a fundamental American belief that children are property with no rights of their own

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I haven't seen Ten Commandments, but I have great affection for its choice to depict Hounds and Jackals, a real board game from Ancient Egypt:

A screencap from The Ten Commandments (1956), showing three fancifully-depicted ancient Egyptians playing the board game Hounds and Jackals. The two in front look thoughtfully engaged with the game (the guy on the back has shit on his mind though)

Hounds and jackals board, ivory, found at Thebes, 12th Dynasty. An ancient Egyptian board game. The board, a curved box on four sturdy hooved legs, resembles a chunky ottoman or tiny grand piano. The top is decorated with a palm tree and encircled by holes for the pegs. Ten huge pegs impale the board, as if the tiny piano were stabbed in the back several times. The pegs are tall, protruding vertically from the holes, and topped with hound or jackal heads (five of each).

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

Universal Basic Income now! There's no reason not to do it - it's the most transformative, utopian policy we could implement TODAY, and has minimal costs and drawbacks! And everyone benefits. Even if you don't give a shit about the poor, just imagine how many Silksongs you could have 🕸🐞

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

that red on the ground is stunning💗

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Darryl Mott @gamerstavernshow.com · 21/12/2025

And this is another reason. False positives of "AI" art is constant in TTRPGs because Midjourney and others admit to heavily training on fantasy art from D&D and M:TG. This is especially true of "AI detector" sites, which are themselves "AI" and can't tell the difference.

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

and even that joy is stale. I used to love making fun of these images, loved to riff on their weird mistakes, but no more. I'm too sick of this shit to engage

screenshot of a fucked-up ai-generated cat (from a larger image found on Facebook) with two human-drawn interpretations of the cat's anatomy. from back when I had the energy.

The left hand-drawn cat has three heads: one on the front, one on the back, and one impaled on the "tail", which protrudes from the second head like an antenna.

The right hand-drawn cat appears normal, save for lack of tail, but is actively birthing a long knobbly string of cat heads

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

unintended horror/comedy is the only joy AI has to offer, and the powers that be are trying to train that out 🙄

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

the yearning, the motion, the energy of that pose! I must draw this later

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Hell Frasier: Bloodline @babadooknukem.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

my child, who has a better understanding of color layering and shading than most adults, got tired of coloring and instead of encouraging them or just letting them know its ok to put a project down I chose to teach them to outsource creativity to the demon rectangle

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Love seeing sketches!! Great loose expressive lines

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

Congrats to Australia, this is really cool! report.cervicalcancercontrol.org.au

There were no cervical cancer cases diagnosed in women aged <25 years in 2021 – the first time that this has occurred in data going back to 1982. This remarkable achievement is almost certainly due to the impact of HPV vaccination. Across women screened at all ages, biopsy confirmed pre-cancer (HSIL) detection rates have also declined, by 21%, most likely reflecting a lower detection of disease among participants returning for their second round of HPV-based screening. Lower rates are expected, as most prevalent disease was detected and treated in the first round (age-standardised rate per 1,000 women screened was 7.5 in 2024, compared to 9.6 in 2019, the corresponding year in the first round of HPV screening) (indicator 3).

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

In our house, we make festive "meatloaf" for Christmas (impossible mince, sage, onion, cranberries, pine nuts etc), and depending on my mood it goes by "plant-based secular holiday loaf" or "commie chow"

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

vegan product names are just like that. sausage label that stopped me dead in Woolies:

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

god I love historic folk art ❤️ it's always so human. like what's more relatable than "fuck my job and life, but here's the passion that keeps me sane"

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nora "the tea kobold" rude (they/them ze/hir) @nora.zone · 18/12/2025

republicans believe children should be forced to carry pregnancies to term and should be allowed to be pushed into coercive marriages by their parents because they see children as fundamentally sexually exploitable and i am tired of pretending their transphobia has some other angle

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

There's so many heel types too! The classic style is my fave, but you could always try a short row heel (Fish Lips Kiss is the standard)

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Rudbeckia @rudbeckia.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

I love my two blackout drunk Minnesota sons

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Oh that's so kind of you! Thank you! ❤️

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

😭 It ruined House for me. Seriously. That one ep was so queerphobic, AND misogynistic, AND paedophilic(?!!?!), that I realised the show was repulsive all along. I somehow hate it more than the asexuality episode. Which said I should be cured for the sake of my spouse, who deserves a REAL marriage 😬

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Congrats on completion!! Super cute pattern, might hunt that down myself ❤️. Don't forget to account for negative ease

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Yep ❤️ ! Abusers only care about their emotions, and it shows. Their suffering is the star, to the exclusion of all else; if a fact contradicts that worldview, it literally won't enter their memory. Rolls off their brain like water off a duck's back. Hence all the gaps in their stories

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

omg 😭 . you know when Christians can't help but pronounce "He/Him" with the capital letters? Because the way these men say "she/her" is just as revealing. You know exactly how they feel. At least chatGPT, unlike me and the octopus, can't feel sexually harrassed

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Rebecca Watson @skepchick.org · 15/12/2025

One way that the reaction to Rob Reiner's murder mirrors Charlie Kirk's is that the best way to eulogize each of them is to quote their words, and in both cases, doing so pisses off conservatives.

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Thank you! So's your cat! 💗🥰

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

What a darling!! Had to draw her 💗(only a quick one - my wrists need a break lol)

Digital illustration of a cat snail in a soft, lineless style. The cat snail sits in a meadow, surrounded by hearts and flowers. The energy is kind, relaxing, and yet she desires your soul.

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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

as of this week it has officially been 18 years since an anonymous user uploaded this bizarre image of an opossum cornered in a baby grand piano to Wikimedia Commons

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Laura @barklaart.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

God, they're all still around 😭. Several spot-on profiles here. Mr C is the standout, but let's not forget B and E:

An except from "Who Goes Nazi?", an article by Dorothy Thompson in 1941 . It reads:

Mr B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He marries for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class - no worse, no better. He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value - success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.

An except from "Who Goes Nazi?", an article by Dorothy Thompson in 1941 . It reads:

Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded himself that he is a genius, and there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other "masculine" or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour our her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women.

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