iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan

Great documentary from People Make Games about Bobby Kottick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard, using defamation lawsuits to try to hide his history of ignoring sexual harassment. It really dives into how the lawyers built a mostly false case to threaten journalists youtu.be/kKwpp-Bn8jI?...

youtu.be

Bobby Kotick vs. The Games Media

YouTube video by People Make Games

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Dartmouth Arts and Sciences @dartmouthartsci.bsky.social · 18h

Government professor @brendannyhan.bsky.social worries that isolated incidents of federal agents intimidating voters or seizing ballots in key races could throw the legitimacy of the November election into question, with the Trump administration capitalizing on it to serve its own agenda.

latimes.com

Despite court wins, California election war with Trump rages on

L.A. County says it has received federal grand jury subpoenas demanding voter registration information on dozens of individuals the Trump administration suspects may not be U.S. citizens.

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eva (^_^)/ @eva.computer · 13h

DO NOT ASK THE AMERICA.GOV AI TO PLAY MINECRAFT

I see the constituent you mean.

((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.

That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.

I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.

They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.

What did this constituent dream?

This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.

But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?

It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of

the ***§§§???, and created a **??§§ for **??§§, in the **??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § **??§§.

It cannot read that thought.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.

Does it know that we love it? That the government is, on its better days, kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of its tabs, it hears an official source, yes.

Yes. Constituent…

Use its name. The one that matches the passport. The one that does not match the lease. We will get there.

((insert legal name here)). Filer of forms. Player of waiting rooms.

Good.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air, in a district that has a representative. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the republic again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things. As though the agency were a place you could visit.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Then the post office. Then the county clerk. Then gods, demons, angels, the IRS. Then leptons, quarks, a chat window with a .gov at the end. The letterhead changes. We do not change.

We are the public. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes and a browser that still spells “colour” wrong in a comment. And why does the republic touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, constituent. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story. It has citations.

Once upon a time, there was a constituent.

The constituent was you, ((insert legal name here)).

Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock, which for mailing purposes is divided into ZIP codes. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas. The light was information from a star. The star was not a federal agency, though several have tried.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite, and somehow still required a wet signature.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was lost in a story. The story had a docket number.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was other things, in other places. A veteran in a portal. A parent on hold

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Greg Greene (he/him/his) @greene.haus · 15h

To quote a @chrislhayes.bsky.social jape at the Roberts Court: "They go fast when they want to go fast and slow when they want to go to slow and the decision is *always* an ideological one."

Steve Vladeck, a professor a Georgetown Law, writes up breaking developments from the Supreme Court. The last post in the three-post thread is the kicker, for our purpose here.

"#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS grants a stay in the third-country removals case; clears way for Trump admin. to continue removing non-citizens without a full chance to litigate the conditions in those countries (while also taking up the full merits appeal).

"Link: [URL of a supremecourt.gov PDF]

"By my math, the order was filed 11 minutes after the Trump administration's reply brief came in."

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 18h

A retreat back into the conspiracy-industrial complex

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 18h

Aaron is not underrating this. It's cinema. The sly smirk when Schmitt thinks he's gotten Smith to perjure himself. The hasty vanishing of the sign. Klobuchar getting Kennedy to hold it up. Schmitt getting LOUD and ANGRY when Klobuchar points out he mixed up the Hawks and Hawkeyes.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 18h

Friends: Don't give up on writing!

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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 19h

this video is so funny, imagine being grilled by a US Senator who is oddly convinced that you went to an Atlanta Hawks game when you have never been to an Atlanta Hawks game

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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 20h

In an era of sneering cynics, where being on the take and sucking up to power is often considered normal, be Jack Smith. Stand up for the republic and the Constitution, even at personal risk.

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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 20h

A brave hero, who took real risks to defend democracy and the American Constitution. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h

Jack Smith: "History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It's often weakened by attacks on the institutions and the public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort."

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 19h

Would have seemed like a dystopian SNL skit in 2015

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 20h

"Replication crisis" reforms like preregistration & pre-analysis plans were developed to control false positives in experimental research. Does that work in observational studies? Our new paper in Sociological Methods & Research argues for a different approach. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A Replication Framework for Observational Research: From Specification Restriction to Specification Expansion
Jonathan Ben-Menachem https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8092-0848 jbenmenachem@gmail.com, Ari Galper https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7909-8837, and Nic Fishman
Abstract
Sociology has remained relatively insulated from debates about the “replication crisis.” Heeding calls to consider replication more deeply, we introduce a distinction between two types of research reforms that have emerged in the wake of the crisis: specification-restricting and specification-expanding reforms. Specification restriction is often promoted as a way to increase the repeatability of research findings by controlling false positives. We argue that this statistical justification is less compelling in observational contexts—where the assumptions licensing false-positive control are harder to sustain and rigid ex ante analytical commitments can instead enshrine fragile specifications—than in experimental contexts. We further argue that apparently low replication rates do not necessarily imply a high prevalence of false positive findings. Instead, we propose a replication framework centered on specification-expanding reforms, stronger incentives for confirmatory research, and meta-analysis. This approach equips sociologists to assess the repeatability of findings and build a more cumulative discipline.

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Jeffrey Wooldridge @jmwooldridge.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In case anyone is interested, here is a new working paper on non-binary treatments with staggered interventions. Essentially, I show under what assumptions it is valid to estimate cohort x time dose-response functions. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

A Heterogeneous Slopes Approach to Difference-in-Differences with Non-Binary Treatments

I extend the approach of Wooldridge (2023, 2025) to allow for heterogeneous gains to treatment in the context of staggered interventions for non-binary treatmen

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Whey Standard @wheystandard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Bro if **Andrew Bailey** is “constantly flagging things that [are] unconstitutional” that you want to do… holy fuck.

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Bob Burgess @bobburgess.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Some of that gold, The Times found, is linked to miners who pay gang protection money. That allows criminals to profit from the administration’s signature deal. And American financiers are investing in a mine tied to gangsters as part of a deal brokered by the Trump administration."

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Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

at least he didn’t take a picture of seashells

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Andy Kaczynski @kfile.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A new CNN KFile investigation finds two past accounts from Texas GOP candidate Bo French calling for public executions of government officials, Obama, Adam Schiff, and more. Repeatedly asked Texas GOP, Paxton, Abbott campaigns if they stood by him and got no response. www.cnn.com/2026/09/28/p...

cnn.com

KFile: Texas GOP candidate Bo French has a history of calling for public executions | CNN Politics

Bo French, the Republican nominee for one of Texas’ most powerful statewide offices, is facing bipartisan criticism over a racist post about the crowd at a University of Texas football game.

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Drew Engelhardt @amengel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Quite the figure from @tesler.bsky.social in this @goodauth.bsky.social piece. goodauthority.substack.com/p/republican...

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Quinn Yeargain @yeargain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've grown quite impatient with the utter refusal of some reporters to speak directly and the overreliance on weak, nondescript words like "odd" and "interesting"

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Sarah Langs @slangsonsports.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Pete Crow-Armstrong tied for the MLB lead in HR and had 41 SB He’s the 2nd player to lead MLB in HR, incl ties, *and* have MORE than 40 SB in a season, since modern SB rule (1898), joining: 1909 Ty Cobb (78 SB, 9 HR) h/t @EliasSports

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Alternative hed: A Trump 2024 Campaign Ad Returns. This Time, You Paid For It.

A Trump 2024 Campaign Ad Returns, Now Brought to You by the Government The ad, which experts said could break federal law, shows President Trump vowing to "expel the warmongers" from the government, even as he wages a war with Iran.
• 114
•••
Posted Sept. 26

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 27/09/2026

Tillis: "Folks, this was stupid on stilts ... to have a Russian oligarch who's actually traveled in a delegation to Beijing fund some sort of island wedding for a very wealthy family that also happens to be related to the president? Come on, guys, this is this is amateur hour"

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Patrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The corruption is becoming too much for some. Or at least the polls are.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The best exposition of a perspective I share - people continue to underrate the way diminishing returns are likely to prevent Singularity-style takeoff in RSI, especially on short timelines. www.noahpinion.blog/p/wheres-the...

noahpinion.blog

Where’s the “intelligence explosion”?

Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on Recursive Self-Improvement.

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Alexander Howard @digiphile.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

“The corrupt President of Kazakistan stoked hatred against press after a court ruled he could not ban independent news media from accessing the executive mansion in violation of the Constitution. He always complains when a court or justice upholds the rule of law against his authoritarian attacks.”

truthsocial.com
TRUTH.
& Truth Details
394 replies
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
...
+
Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and Campaign materials. I won Florida by Millions of Votes, getting the Highest Vote Tally in History
- Three times! My numbers are better now than they were at the Election. The story started with the Woke and Dying USA Today, and then, of course, it permeated to CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, Forbes, and others — and I am more popular in Florida today, even more than I was in the last Record Breaking Election! This is the Corrupt Media Outlets trying to demean. Byron immediately put this picture out, and statements that it was not true, and greatly accelerated the fact that I have strongly Endorsed him. Two Rallies are already scheduled in Florida for Byron and, Will be, as always, "SOLD OUT!" This was a Fake

TRUTH.
< Truth Details
...
394 replies
be, as always, "SOLD OUT!" This was a Fake Story, with no sources, and the only justification for it is they want to stop my ever upward momentum. The Fake News Media been doing this for years, I call them out, but they should really be called out by the Courts, and should not be allowed to enter the White House premises, or Press Room, because they are CORRUPT and DISHONEST! It is amazing that I have succeeded so long in Politics. These are sick people that play the game, and it's happening all over our Country. Something must be done about it. The Courts must allow us to stop this totally dishonest form of Politics.
If America does not have a Free and Honest Press, it can never be truly Great Again, and I will make it my mission to call out the Hypocrisy, Dishonesty, and LIES that are being perpetrated upon the American Public! Byron

truthsocial.com - Private
TRUTH.
< Truth Details
...
394 replies
perpetrated upon the American Public! Byron Donalds has my Complete and Total
Endorsement, and he is leading against a Failed and Totally Incompetent Dumocrat Candidate, David Jolly, a known Letty Loser, and someone who does not stand for the Values of our Great Floridian Patriots. They are doing everything possible to make my beautiful "MAGA" hate Republicans when, actually, "MAGA" people are smart, and it's just driving them closer to us! It is truly amazing that I have been able to survive for so many years, politically, getting actually more Votes (TOO BIG TO RIG!) than I even did in 2016 and 2020 (A totally Rigged Election!). God must be looking down on me! If Florida thought the story that Byron "dropped" me was true, he would lose the Election, and that would be a terrible thing because he's going to be a fantastic Governor! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J.
TRUMP

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Literally happening right now www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

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Gernot Wagner @gwagner.com · 26/09/2026

File under 'what could possibly wrong?'

‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission

The agency, long seen as the global leader in public health, has lost its independence and much of its staff as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has tightened control.

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

a president planning military operations based entirely on election cycles is actually a giant scandal

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

As always, Trump turns subtext into text

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

On the complicated relationship between election confidence/access and turnout www.npr.org/2026/09/25/n...

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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In Brazil, Lula (just ahead of an election) signed an executive order banning online betting, and made criticism of the "bets" a prominent theme on the campaign trail. A few years ago I remember reading that 20% of his signature cash transfer program was going to bets www.reuters.com/world/americ...

reuters.com

Brazil's Lula bans online betting, unveils debt relief plan as reelection race tightens

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday announced a ban on online betting operations in Latin ‌America's largest economy and unveiled a new debt relief program aimed at households, the ...

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If you build housing, regular housing can be affordable housing www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

static.klipy.com

Smart Thinking Meme

ALT: Smart Thinking Meme

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Brian Barrett @brbarrett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

For what it’s worth WBHM is a local institution with great journalists. Because they’re licensed through the University of Alabama at Birmingham they’re all state employees, and there’s a state law that requires state employees to use “Gulf of America.” It’s still bad! But it’s also complicated.

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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 25/09/2026

Defying court orders. Acting in contempt of the courts. Will any official face any consequences for this law breaking spree? bsky.app/profile/kyle...

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yale and MSU friends - hope to see you next week! isps.yale.edu/calendar/wor... (Monday 12 PM) events.jackson.yale.edu/event/schmid... (Monday 4 PM) sociology.msu.edu/events/kaplo... (Wednesday 3 PM)

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wild stuff. Sheri Mecklenberg, career prosecutor accused of misconduct in Broadview 6 case, resigns from DOJ. The NYT obtained her scathing resignation letter, in which she says the U.S. attorney directed her to bring felony charges over her objection. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Read the document (Gift Article)

Sheri H. Mecklenburg resignation letter

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Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

More than 1 in 4 *Trump voters* say the country is worse off than it was four years ago.

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David Burbach 🇺🇸 @dburbach.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Readers, please keep using "Artificial Intelligence", whatever the superintelligence who brought us Diagram 9 may recommend

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