iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thank you, very interesting!

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Where's this from? Both US-bound and total payments increasing more in the pandemic years of '20/'21 than in the almost-three years available since ChatGPT release makes me very cautious about attributing this to AI

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these people axed their writing center

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But also "pacing the frontier" or even "pause" isn't stopping biomed research (just as Asilomar didn't) - if every lab stopped releasing new, bigger models today, medical research would probably continue changing dramatically, for good and ill, for many, many years

I do think this speaks to OP's point about how bad it is that public discourse can only talk about AI in terms of "safety" or "slowdown" tho. Hard for the public to be meaningfully involved when insiders set the terms of debate.

Marina Bolotnikova @mbolotnikova.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

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just wanna note my appreciation for @marisul.bsky.social & @jasminsinger.com 🌱 Vegan/animal rights world media is important. And nothing compares to audio experientially for making it feel like they're in your home, at the table with you

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kate wehwalt @katewagner.wehwalt.net · 29/08/2026

It's obviously impt not to let the AI labs write their own regulation, but I feel like if Exxon researchers HAD spent the 1970s raising the alarm about CO2, some of us here woulda decided ""climate change"" was a monopolistic conspiracy against 3rd-world state-owned oil & working-class automobility

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as someone whose life was altered permanently from a concussion i think you should wear a helmet and no i don't think wearing one lets drivers "off the hook" or whatever. there's more than one way to hit your head while riding a bike.

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Bennett @bennettmcintosh.com · 28/08/2026

....and that the hierarchy (and all its model minority epicycles) of today, specifically will be vindicated.

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Bennett @bennettmcintosh.com · 28/08/2026

"I actually think [model minority] is more intelligent than Whites, I can't possibly be racist" is a pretty common rhetorical move here, tho. Which just underscores how ahistorical it is: racial structures from *before* today may be contingent, but the assumption is that history stops this year...

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Lucia C. Neco (Luba) @luciacneco.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Definitely worth a read, and a great conversation starter with students! #philsci #philsky

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Faith Kearns, Ph.D. @fkearns.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

“A prominent UW-Madison professor and artificial intelligence expert has resigned after an investigation found he violated a university policy on consensual relationships…Scheufele has since been hired by Arizona State University’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences.”

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Kyle Clark @kylec.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

UPDATE: Victor Marx says an anonymous out-of-state company made a “silly mistake” in a campaign finance filing listing him as the owner. Marx says he’s not the one profiting from his online campaign store selling merch and meetings with Marx for up to $1299.

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Marina Bolotnikova @mbolotnikova.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

PLS READ: California's pro-housing turn is facing one of its hardest tests yet. The state is on track to create an exception to a law mandating that local govts allow more density on single-family lots for Altadena as it rebuilds from last year's fire 1/ www.vox.com/future-perfe...

vox.com

The most sympathetic case for NIMBYism is still wrong

Wildfires leveled thousands of homes in California. Now the state could block even more from being built.

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Zenz @therealzenz.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Monday's special Madison Council meeting about the city's clearing of Willy&Baldwin worth a watch. Mayor says plans to clear it developed largely in secret to prevent a leak; city acted from safety concerns and increasing number of homeless rather than protesters. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8h0...

youtube.com

Common Council: Meeting of August 24, 2026

YouTube video by City of Madison Wisconsin

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Bennett @bennettmcintosh.com · 24/08/2026

"Should I buy cage-free eggs or slightly lower-carbon but even crueler caged eggs?"

Spongebob "how many diapers" template modified to show Spongebob angrily showing off various egg alternatives. Top two panels: Spongebob angrily gestures at a block of tofu and a bottle of Just Egg. Middle two panels: Spongebob rips back the wallpaper to reveal a glass of aquafaba and lifts the cover off the sofa to reveal that it's actually a pile of flax seed. Bottom panels: Spongebob directs Patrick's attention out the window, where a mechanical harvester is filling a shipping container with a prodigious pile of soy beans.

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Bennett @bennettmcintosh.com · 24/08/2026

>cage-free reforms have been a good thing, because they have made a terrible system that we can’t simply wave away with a magic wand less bad. But more profound change will require consumers to demand something more than cheap animal products ~ @mbolotnikova.bsky.social 🎁 www.vox.com/future-perfe...

vox.com

Cage-free eggs are worse for the climate. Does it matter?

Here’s what to consider instead.

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Kyle Clark @kylec.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Victor Marx's campaign says its unlimited purchase merch shop selling a meetings with Marx for $1299 is legal because the money doesn't go to the campaign. So where does the money go? The campaign isn't saying.

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Magdalena Skipper @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #AcademicSky @nature.com

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I don't think we should accept fundamentally right-wing framings about how people who work in offices don't have real jobs and are unmanly.

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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"if there was a cure to cancer they wouldnt sell it to you, to sell you chemo instead" (actual market): holy fuck these guys mightve cured melanoma BUY BUY BUY

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Roadsides @roadsides.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Working on storage as infrastructure? Submit a proposal for an article, photo essay or other formats! @moritzkasper.bsky.social @saydrandle.bsky.social www.roadsides.net/collections/... #storage #infrastructures #circulation #data #sts

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Mark Pocan @markpocan.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Questions for Congressman Tom Tiffany: 1) You voted to give data centers sixty eight billion dollars in tax cuts. Why? 2. You voted to ban Wisconsin from regulating A.I. for next 10 years. Why? Your “opposition” to data centers doesn’t stand up to your voting record, Tom. 🧐

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Marie Gardiner @mariegardiner.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

OMG LADS LOOK AT THE WALRUSES TONIGHT

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Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Democrats should start funding papers in news deserts

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 19/08/2026

the fact that there's a 🫑 emoji and an 🧅 emoji but no celery emoji shows as a society we still have a long way to go until cajun cooking is normalized in this country

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

What's the difference between this and a pig-butchering scam text, exactly?

A fundraising email from NC Senate candidate Michael Whatley with the subject line of "We might have met briefly (I asked around about you)" that begins:

Friend,

I’m not sure if you remember me, or if we’ve crossed paths briefly on the trail before, but I certainly know who you are.

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Brad Bolman @brad.bolman.com · 17/08/2026

Tulane History is hiring a tenure-track assistant professor of History and Political Economy. It's a joint appointment with Tulane's Murphy Institute and we're excited to continue our department's growth. Please share widely! tulane-ibqejb.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

tulane-ibqejb.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com

Department of History and the Murphy Institute Assistant Professor (Tenure-track) in History and Political Economy

Short Position Description

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Sarah Finn @romanceofbooks.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Amphibian illustrations from ‘Abbildungen zu Oken’s Allgemeiner Naturgeschichte für alle Stände’ by Lorenz Oken. Stuttgart: Hoffmann, 1843. University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Special Collections. #naturalhistory #Amphibians #Salamanders #animalart

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

you get scolded for taking a longer shower because Adolf McKulak in the Central Valley literally has a semi-feudal right to use as much as he wants to grow some of the most water intensive crops in the world, often for export overseas

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Stephen Wolf @stephenwolf.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It’s pretty hard to implement an electoral system that’s categorically worse than the one we already have, but top-two manages to do that

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They have a couple different sensitivity tests using random Fridays (eFigures 2 & 4), that my dilettante's skimming can't find any problems with, but I'd love to know if that's where the issue is! cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_...

cdn.jamanetwork.com

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See eFigures 2 & 4. Whatever the problem is (and I agree it's a problem!) it's more complicated than that cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_...

cdn.jamanetwork.com

Eh, they have a sensitivity test that supposedly addresses that, using placebo fridays. Agree that this is implausibly large, though!

Panel B from the figure described below: Figure shows the results of a permutation analysis in which we selected 10 random “placebo
album release” days from 2017-2022 and estimated our baseline models (which adjust for federal
holidays, day of the week, week of the year, and year fixed effects) to derive the effect size of album
releases on the number of traffic-related deaths, repeated for 1000 iterations. Panel A shows the
distribution of effect sizes for randomly selected dates (all days of the week); Panel B shows the
analogous distribution for randomly selected Fridays, given that most album releases were on Fridays.
The vertical line in each panel shows our observed effect size on actual album release days. This
simulation produced an effect size greater than the observed value in only 14 of 1000 iterations for
random dates and 20 of 1000 iterations for random Fridays.

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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

How much could shoddy day-of-week controls account for this? Like if albums are usually released on weekdays, including 4-6 weekend days in your 20-day window is, uh, not ideal.

We examined the number of traffic fatalities during the dates of album releases compared with the 10 days before and after the releases using a quasi-experimental event study design. This study design combines the period surrounding multiple similar events into a single analysis, with the advantage of accounting for unmeasured contemporaneous factors that may be associated with fatalities in the days surrounding any individual album release. The 10-day window was selected because it includes the same weekday 1 week before and after the release, as well as the weekends immediately before and after, thus providing control days that account for weekday, seasonal, and annual trends. Therefore, if albums tend to be released on Fridays, traffic fatalities on album release Fridays and the adjacent weekend can be compared with surrounding Fridays and weekends. This directly addresses the concern that observed increases in traffic fatalities on album release days are because albums may tend to be released on specific days of the week.

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The ag lobby really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants you to think AI is the reason reservoirs are going empty. It's not. It's agriculture.

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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

And here's the best part: "Tehee but at least agriculture uses the water to make food!" Uh, you'd be surprised! Farmers are INCENTIVIZED TO WASTE WATER. To use more than we need, to grow thirsty crops in deserts, etc. A whole lot of that massive ag water use DOES NOT MEANINGFULLY GROW FOOD.

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Kent Lind @camasonian.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We have data on this. The blue is all the non-ag human use:

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Opposing anti-cheat band-aids because they smack of technosolutionism and are based on a (or at least sold via) a simplistic/patronizing description of how synonyms work? I wonder whether, if Anthropic said "we're making Claude's writing worse, on purpose," he'd be more-or-less fine with the tech