iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Benjamin Balthaser

Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 02/10/2026

Checking in on how things are going over at the Chronicle Against Higher Education:

Screenshot of Chronicle of Higher Education website showing featured articles: "Anthropology Has a Truth Problem"; "The Social Sciences Have a Politics Problem"; "Could AI Be Better at Peer Review Than Humans?"; "Colleges Should Take Linda McMahon's Call to Action Seriously."

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

even the barbarism machine no longer works in this country

Tennessee Inmate in
Critical Condition After
'Torturous' Botched
Execution, Lawyer Says The inmate, Christa Pike, is "alive right now" after surviving an attempt to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyer said. He called on Gov. Bill Lee to reduce her sentence to life in prison.

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes agree - Xtian messianism is not extricable from resource extraction

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

However if it is used to prosecute Palestine solidarity activists - and does not protect 1st Amendment - I think there needs to be a concerted effort to shut it down

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Btw the ADL’s ethno-fascism and the bizarre instance that anyone who says antisemitism exists has been zog-pilled, I am starting to come around to the idea that a Zohran Mamdani cool-as-a-cucumber-mint-martini antisemitism task force mightn’t be such a bad idea

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes I don’t want to suggest there are no material interests involved, au contraire. But the intense ideological commitment of imperial planners cannot be discounted

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Left critics esp - bc they think perhaps of themselves as reasonable - tend to discount just how much Christian messianism has been a shaping foundation of the US and Anglophone empire

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They are even worse than they used to be - but from backing the red scare to authoring the New Antisemitism thesis to say nothing of their bourgeois origins, they’ve always been an elitist and small c conservative organization

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There was one thing the interview did not get into and that is the nature of the case against him - Khalil has a green card and is being threatened w deportation solely for 1st Amendment activity. The Trump admin is trying to revive the red scare McCarren act deportation machine

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The entire NPR interview w Mahmoud Khalil, about his new memoir, is worth listening to, but I esp loved his description of the Columbia encampment and the feeling of solidarity during the Palestine encampment mvt

KHALIL: I believe the Palestinian movement or the movement for Palestinian liberation at Columbia was really rooted in dignity, safety and equality for everyone. And we are so proud to have built this movement with our, you know, Jewish peers, whether they are students but also faculty. And to me, the movement itself - absolutely, there was no antisemitism. There was no place for antisemitism there.
And that's why I keep repeating again and again against, like, the narrative that Columbia itself helped push, because, you know, we must take antisemitism seriously, like all forms of bigotry. We have also to acknowledge when antisemitism is being used or weaponized to chill or, like, to protect Israel from criticism. And I went to Shabbat dinners. At the encampment, there were Seder meals. And that's where I learned a lot about the Jewish faith, about why these Jewish students were also protesting Israel, because they refused - all these crimes that Israel is committing was basically committed in their names. And they refused that to happen.
WBEZ
OPEN ^
On Air Now
anusemiuc inclaents tnat nappened trom - mostlv from individuals

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is exactly one large, well funded organization in NYC that makes me feel unsafe specifically as a Jewish person, and it’s the ADL

•@NYCMayor Mamdani's antisemitism strategy finally landed and only confirms what we already knew: this mayor does not treat the hate facing Jewish New Yorkers as an emergency and refuses to acknowledge the different shapes it takes. Since he took office 271 days ago, ADL has recorded hundreds of antisemitic incidents in NYC, nearly 40% of which were related to Israel.
After throwing out the IHRA definition on his first day in office, nine months later, his signature strategy still refuses to replace it with any working definition of antisemitism. He has looked the other way as flags glorifying terror groups have been flown outside synagogues, a deliberate act meant to intimidate families walking in to pray, and as crowds gathered outside houses of worship voicing support for the same groups. At the same time, he continues prioritizing his anti-Israel agenda over the basic promises he made to Jewish New Yorkers.

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think for many ppl in higher ed what is particularly galling about the lenient treatment the Cornell frat bros received is that students standing up for human rights are expelled & gender studies programs that might help students understand patriarchy are being shut down across the country

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Reposted by Benjamin Balthaser

Dr SpookyGoth @ghostingdani.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Humanities will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no humanities.

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes one would think better of the former editor of New Inquiry

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I imagine for some ppl it’s easier and less painful to imagine anti-Zionist Jews are all crypto-Zionists holding back the movement than acknowledge that the entire world has failed to stop a live streamed genocide

JVP is zionist please stop supporting and platforming an org whose prominence is due entirely to their utility to zionism and the racism against Palestinians that prompts westerners to prioritize and defer to "jewish voices" on the subject of Palestine
7:24 PM • 9/25/26 • 14K Views

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Marx described commodity fetish as the imaginary of capital being more alive, having greater agency, and requiring more deference than the worker who produces it

For people who deny Al personhood for any Al model at any point in the future, you're going to need better arguments than this. There are arguments out there, but once agents can solve Navier-Stokes, write music and poetry, and provide people with seemingly fulfilling life advice, this kind of line is just not going to be persuasive. "YOU'RE CRAZY" no longer lands.
Claire Lehmann
@clairlemon • 1d
Thinking Al might be conscious is like thinking that there are real people talking to you from inside the
TV, or that there is a tiny band playing music inside the radio....
Bentham's Bulldog
@Benthamsb...•1d
Why? Do you think it's insane to think Al might be conscious?

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What are “defensive attacks” on Iran, esp coming from a US airbase in the UK?

ELLIOTT: Now remind us what the
connection is to the U.S. military at that base.
FRAYER: Yeah. So RAF Fairford is one of the bases that the British government has long allowed the U.S. to use. The British government opposes the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran but has allowed the U.S. military to use British bases for what it calls defensive attacks on Iran. And Fairford has attracted a lot of attention because of this. I mean, members of the public often gather there to see these big American bombers roll down a runway in the otherwise bucolic Cotswolds.

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

TBC I like Jager’s work I just think his periodization has a very under acknowledged Lenin shaped silhouette

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It’s funny how scholars invent whole new theoretical terms to avoid just saying they miss communism:

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yes I like her nose! Only it’s a little funny to think someone actually went to a board mtg and said “flat hips like all the other Barbies but give her a schnoz”

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Now if Mattel made a Simchas Torah Barbie I might just buy it, w dancing shoes and a little Torah scroll

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Nobody. Nobody in the entire Jewish world Mattel: We made a Hanukkah Barbie, w a shirt in the colors of the Israeli flag Jews, all of them: You did what? Mattel: Oh we gave her a big nose too

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

When i see leftist accounts that seem to exist primarily just to drag other leftists, I’m reminded of that Seinfeld episode in which a dentist converts to Judaism just so he can tell antisemitic jokes

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Yes I think that is actually how admin are encouraged to think of their jobs

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One cannot understand much about higher education right now unless one understands that the ppl paid - often large salaries - to manage colleges and universities are deeply contemptuous of the v processes of learning the institutions are organized to support

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Even as Netanyahu calls Mamdani an antisemite it’s good to be reminded that American Jews feel safer w Mamdani than do w Netanyahu

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

While one can say this is about excusing Mamdani I am more struck by the fact that Netanyahu - who is indicted by the ICC - can address the UN w/o fear or hesitation. It’s a little staggering to consider

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I have no idea if Mamdani could have realistically arrested Netanyahu. However the level of global institutional failure - in the US, UN, Interpol - that is necessary so that we are depending on a newly elected American mayor to save int’l law and democracy is staggering

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And yes I guess toast is more Protestant than olive oil

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I miss the days when the right just hallucinated White Jesus in olive oil stains

What's one word that comes to mind when you hear the name James Talarico?

Jeffrey, 34, independent, Latino, school counselor

Progressive.

Dennis, 62, Republican, white, retired

Neutral.

Jennifer, 50, Republican, white, stay-at-home parent

Same-sex bathrooms in high schools and grade school.

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What a beautiful and dignified response to the insult of Netanyahu’s presence in NYC

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

one needs to understand poetry in order to understand why LLMs cannot write it

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Reposted by Benjamin Balthaser

Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Statistics show men are far more likely to leave their wives when they become disabled than the other way around. This man didn’t leave his wife, he just belittled and berated her “obsession” with being sick She felt trapped in a broken body & then her partner disrespected her. Now she’s gone:

thesun.co.uk

Mum, 37, with long Covid left tragic note about 'broken body' before ending life

A MUM left with long Covid took her own life after leaving a heartbreaking note about her “broken body”, an inquest heard. Emily Parkes was a “happy mother to a beautiful son” but her h…

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I find fact checking genocide threats to be a funny liberal exercise

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Trump threatened to commit genocide against Iran: is that fact or fiction?

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