iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 18h

After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

In other professors’ syllabi, the bot flagged the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, essays by the Mexican American MacArthur genius grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, and materials related to a class about the Holocaust (that professor was told to drop material regarding Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people).

Putting aside the ideological slant of the new rules, the bot, like many large language models, seems to “hallucinate,” or make mistakes. The AAUP lawsuit lists texts banned for their “sex-based ecofeminist framework” and “gendered ecofeminist frameworks.” These phrases might sound persuasively like academese, but the academics behind the lawsuit had never heard of them; these concepts “do not exist,” the complaint says. Matthew Pehl, a history professor at Tech, told me that he knew several people who’d received reports from the system that were “plainly written by an AI that had hallucinated content or confused content from one class to another.”

6029331026

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I've been immersed in research on Reconstruction in Lousiana and it's a very difficult truth to absorb that the white terrorist movement in the South was among the most successful terrorist movements in global history. Took 10 years but it won a total & complete victory through murder and atrocity.

17261211496

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This book had me sleeping with the lights on when i was six bsky.app/profile/slee...

The cover of Scary Stories to tell in the dark

85135888

Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D) @blacknihilist21.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I’ve been saying this. And this crisis of meaning and emptiness is not entirely their fault.

000

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

It is genuinely bizarre that we’ve become acclimatized to right wingers throwing a tantrum every time a black person (particularly a black woman) is cast in something, but are also supposed to pretend that this is not racism but related to some other substantive concern.

485241835054

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Mr. Blabalino 🇳🇴🇺🇸💙 @blabalino.com · 04/10/2026

More #cat costume ideas for Halloween. #cats #caturday

701546346

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Almost thought this was satire.

2132175

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 07/09/2026

worth tying this into the political economy of the slave south as well. from roughly the 1820s onwards, slavery became enormously lucrative in ways that had never been seen before. slave traders became millionaires. large planters had tremendous purchasing power. just huge amounts of wealth.

8157251153

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 05/09/2026

Anarchism is not pipe dreams of an impossible utopia. It's simple. Without the state, society organizes collective agreements for wellbeing governed by no law or ruler but organic out of human nature, & human evil will still exist, but there's way more now. @impswrld.xyz @161bklyn.myatproto.social

1287

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Art & Nature @capecodfairytales.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

#Poetry #Painting #Morning It is morning, and again I am the lucky person to be in it - Mary Oliver 🎨 Kevin Kia

13935100

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I'll again note that the folks willing to sign a letter supporting a raging eugenicist (purportedly in defense of his academic freedom to be racist) aren't nearly as motivated when it comes to *actual* threats to academic freedom, like this.

10854341

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 25/08/2026

The largest and oldest Black studies departments in the country have been closed, but a bunch of people decided the eugenics guy was the crucible for academic freedom.

1443911093

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Equal Justice Initiative @eji.org · 24/08/2026

On this day in 1956, the governor of Virginia pledged to withhold funding from any local government that integrated its schools, saying, "If we accept admission of one Negro child into a white school, it's all over.”

calendar.eji.org

Aug. 24, 1956 | Virginia Governor Vows to Close Public Schools Rather Than Integrate

Learn more about our history of racial injustice.

14641

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

fravery.bsky.social @fravery.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Watercolor Painting by Serbian Artist Dusan Djukaric

282179232

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

LMAOOOOOOOOOO somebody finally asked the transphobes if they know any WNBA players besides and NOPE

343148153447

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

In the future, historians will marvel at how a U.S. political party documented their project to destroy America (aka Project 2025), won the elections and set about to dismantle everything that made America great without any mainstream discourse or accountability. Fuck the Heritage Foundation.

26624174

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

NBA Stat @nbastat.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Scouting assessment on a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant in December 1995: “If Kobe Bryant enters the NBA now, he'll be a late first-round pick at best, and might never be heard from again.” (via WiltStats) #NBA

3534341

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you are signing a letter supporting a disgraced eugenicist famous for hounding a Black scholar to death your main concern is not academic freedom. This goes double if you don’t have the same smoke for the Trump administration’s attacks on academia.

14650166

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

roterote @roterote.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Here is the full suspension letter from UGent that was sent to Nathan Cofnas, it shows ample reason for his suspension and potential termination. Including breach of contract, using the University of Ghent’s name and legitimacy to promote his racial supremacist views and causing reputational damage.

7040651253

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/08/2026

here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.

171146083123

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Ida B Wells' Winchester Rifle @dytsras.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

"The team found that the greater the proportion of enslaved people in a county in 1860, the bigger the mortality gap between Black & white people in the 2010s, even after controlling for common factors tied to health inequalities, such as rurality or pop. density" www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Slavery linked to mortality gap between Black and white Americans today

New study is among the first to quantify and explain slavery’s influence in contemporary U.S. health disparities

12892439

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

pmamtraveller.bsky.social @pmamtraveller.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

“The Fatigue” by Mihail Zablodski

101313187

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

LifuX @lifux.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

He accepted his fate #Cat #Cats #Catsofbluesky #Caturday #LifuX

873014317

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

WTTW - Chicago PBS @wttw.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation designating July 25 as a statewide day of reflection and remembrance to honor the life and legacy of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. to.wttw.com/4wpoNk4

Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley, ca. 1954. (Courtesy of NAACP Records, Library of Congress)

03310

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Despite the whining about “ historical accuracy,” the racist backlash to the casting in Nolan’s Odyssey is about the right wanting to justify racial hierarchy by projecting it into a past where it did not actually exist. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

When some on the right speak of reverence for “civilization,” what they’re doing is trying to anachronistically justify the hierarchy of race they would like to see enacted today by rooting it in antiquity. You cannot cast Black people in The Odyssey, because The Odyssey is a pillar of “Western civilization,” which they consider to be white. This faction of the far right imagines antiquity as a kind of idyllic Jim Crow universe of utterly separate civilizations, one in which the integration they despise could not possibly exist.

But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and “Aethiopia” are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as “black-skinned and woolly-haired.” As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role.

993795806

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Rohan Patel @gunnerohan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Me after calling up PSG and Atlético Madrid for target prices and hearing '£120m' and '£150m' respectively.

55914146

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Mabel Logan @mabellogan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Edinburg, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

24712153995

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

NBA Stat @nbastat.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Kylian Mbappé, leading scorer at the World Cup, with Wemby. Sweet mother of God! 😳 #NBA

1133923529

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Instead of changing the language in their legacy scholarship, the Upperman family has decided to pull their $1M endowment from a North Carolina university They plan to move the scholarship to a school where it is likely a Black student will receive it

whqr.org

UNCW Upperman family pulling future scholarship funds over UNC System’s equality policy

For the first time in 30 years, the Upperman family isn’t awarding any new scholarships at UNCW. Linda Upperman Smith said the way the university wanted to rewrite the language around the application ...

311237335

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Archaeo - Histories @archaeohistories.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

When you accidentally find your doppelganger on a painting made over 100 years old. 😀 🎨 : ''The broken Pitcher'' (1891 AD), by William - Adolphe Bouguereau. Legion of Honor Art Museum, San Francisco 🇺🇸 #archaeohistories

447101941030

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Demiurge of Doom @euthyphro.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard meant to protect citizens against the disparity of power when prosecuted by the state. Using it as a rhetorical device to hand wave away credible accusations of abuse denies victims the very presumption of innocence it demands for abusers.

1368

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Ruling against TPS for Haitians, the Trump justices on the Supreme Court have set a new impossible standard for proving discrimination against non-whites: if there is any other reason *in addition* to the racism, the racism doesn’t count www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Mullin now sets up an even more impossible double standard. If the government wants to discriminate against Black people, any pretext will do. “As long as there is a plausible basis—any plausible articulable basis—for the government’s action, then the Court will look to that basis as sufficient,” Aderson Francois, a law professor at Georgetown University, told me, “even in the face of evidence that government actors were motivated by animus.” If a Black person wants to prove they’ve been discriminated against, however, no amount of evidence will suffice.

“This Court sees race when it wants to, and blinds itself to racism in most other cases,” Melissa Murray, a law professor at NYU, told me. “It’s hard to imagine how egregious the statement would have to be to be considered ‘overtly racial’.”

582613748

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Brilliance Proper @brillianceproper.com · 28/06/2026

Some Sunday Black Boy Joy

11849041048

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 28/06/2026

White supremacy in America came to a dead end. All of its history is what has produced this white supremacist dictator we now have, he’s the culmination of what America’s alway been. There’s no way forward for America if it clings to antiblackness. It will collapse & that’s what it’s doing.

04412

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/06/2026

additionally, if there is ANY possible non racist motive for an explicitly racist action, Alito says you must accept it as the actual motivation. meanwhile, ANY use of race consciousness to prevent or alleviate discrimination is unconstitutional under “equal protection”

753038844

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

The new racist double standard set up by Alito in the TPS ruling: if there’s any other motive in addition to the racism, the racism doesn’t count, but if the state wants to *prevent* discrimination against black people, that is racist and unconstitutional www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Roberts Court has been turning anti-discrimination law upside down for years. Its approach came into particular focus in May, with Louisiana v. Callais, in which it determined that not allowing Louisiana’s government to dilute Black votes was racist. In that case, Alito insisted that forcing the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district would be an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” because Republicans were entitled to discriminate against Black voters if they argued that their purpose was partisan instead of racist. The Court reaffirmed that position in a subsequent case dealing with Alabama, after a lower court had found ample evidence of deliberate racial discrimination, as opposed to the discriminatory effect of the Louisiana map.

Mullin now sets up an even more impossible double standard. If the government wants to discriminate against Black people, any pretext will do. “As long as there is a plausible basis—any plausible articulable basis—for the government’s action, then the Court will look to that basis as sufficient,” Aderson Francois, a law professor at Georgetown University, told me, “even in the face of evidence that government actors were motivated by animus.” If a Black person wants to prove they’ve been discriminated against, however, no amount of evidence will suffice.

10748251640

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 25/06/2026

Robin D.G. Kelley recommends three books every radical should read

13969327

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

🔥 Bird mimicking violin tunes

14549731103

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

When these people insist the mere presence of people unlike them is an attack on them, their country, or their rights, this is exactly the outcome they are seeking, and disappointment among far right Trumpists is largely that he failed to produce events like this here. www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...

yahoo.com

Elon Musk accused of fuelling unrest after Belfast knife attack

The use of social media in planning violent protests over the Belfast knife attack has drawn condemnation, with Britain's ruling Labour Party accusing Elon Musk of stoking divisions. The tech billiona...

8637561294

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

This heinous ruling confirms a worst-case-scenario reading of Callais as an all-purpose shield for racist lawmakers who want to gerrymander Black communities into electoral oblivion. And it’s outrageously partisan—a totally unprincipled gift to the GOP. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

4046911684

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 03/06/2026

yes, that's right. clear evidence of intentional discrimination against black voters is verboten because the worst thing you could possibly do is accuse a white conservative of racism. and besides, the real problem is pervasive anti-white discrimination. bsky.app/profile/hard...

41068175

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 02/06/2026

feel like i'm repeating myself a bunch here but the unitary executive is grounded more in some rousseauian idea of the "general will" than it is anything in the american political tradition

23103180

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Moon lover @moon1over.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Post a picture YOU took. Just a pic. No description

6724521493

Reposted by Orlando Hawkins (Ph.D)

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 30/05/2026

The Justice Department removed information about the January 6 insurrectionists from its website. @lawfaremedia.org has preserved and posted it www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

lawfaremedia.org

The Justice Department Erases History; Lawfare Restores It

Last week, the Justice Department deleted thousands of press releases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and other matters. Here they are.

7338831469