iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 10/09/2026

Wow - the incumbent mayor of Providence Brett Smiley just lost in the Democratic primary to progressive David Morales

AP election results showing David Morales beat Brett Smiley in the Providence Democratic primary for mayor

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 27/08/2026

Here is RFK Jr's letter to the Samoan PM, where he uses the words vaccine or vaccination eight times

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 17/07/2026

The AP did some digging and found extremely disturbing information about the ICE officer who killed a man in Maine. This person was hired as an agent of the US government apnews.com/article/ice-...

Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn’t believe him. She didn’t realize he’d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.

But hundreds of family court records obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk’s office detail years of allegations of physical and verbal abuse raised by his second ex-wife on behalf of herself and his daughters.
The ex-wife — whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retaliation — alleged that he had stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter, according to multiple requests for temporary protection orders. Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti in her hair, and during another outburst, he dragged his daughter around the house as she cried, she said.
“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” she wrote in an application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter which a judge granted in 2021.

In court filings, David Brouillette said that his second ex-wife had slandered him.

In late 2025, around the time he joined ICE, his ex-wife Ashley said he left a three-minute voicemail mocking her for taking out a restraining order against him. According to the message she shared with AP, he repeatedly called her “disgusting” and suggested that she and the other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.

“And all of you should have your f——--g throats cut,” the voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f——-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”

She said she cut off contact with him until Wednesday, when his picture began circulating online.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 19/05/2026

I find it hard to believe that parents in any significant number are subjecting their kids to endoscopies and colonoscopies to get an unwarranted inflammatory bowel disease diagnosis so their kid can get extra breaks during the SATs

“Several Manhattan private-school parents said another key to getting extra time-and unlimited bathroom breaks—is enlisting a gastroenterologist to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome.”

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 25/02/2026

This story about Epstein's devotion to chiropractic contains a fascinating new-to-me detail: "Elon Musk comes from a line of chiropractors."

Elon Musk comes from a line of chiropractors. His great-grandmother is believed to have been the first practicing chiropractor in Canada, and his antisemitic grandfather Joshua Haldeman was a lifelong chiropractor in Canada, the U.S., and South Africa. Chiropractic has gained increasing mainstream acceptance in the United States through the decades, despite a lack of supporting scientific evidence, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that chiropractic will grow by at least 10 percent over the next decade out of an apparent combination of an increasing number of Americans leading more static lives and an already threadbare healthcare system fraying further.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 05/01/2026

Does anyone know what animal made these tracks? Rabbit? Each track like this is 2-3 inches from top to bottom.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 16/12/2025

In my experience, the tests would include a siren followed by a message that you can hear indoors, even indoors off campus if you are close by. This is some of what the BrownSiren website says about the system:

If a life threatening emergency is identified where a campus wide BrownSiren activation is necessary, the Department of Public Safety will activate the system. The activation will consist of an alert tone and a voice message regarding the nature of the emergency. Additionally the University will utilize BrownAlert (web based notification system) and the web site to provide further information via telephone, email, or text messaging.
The City may activate their Reverse 911 System to provide the details of the siren activation to campus neighbors.
Students, faculty, staff, and visitors who hear the siren should seek shelter by immediately going inside of a nearby building.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 16/12/2025

Brown University has an emergency siren system that I hear regularly when it gets tested. I wasn't in Providence Saturday but people I have spoken to who were here did not hear it. Has there been an explanation of whether it was or wasn't activated? www.brown.edu/emergency/br...

Screenshot of the BrownSiren website provides "Examples of emergencies where the BrownSiren would likely be activated," including:
Hostile Intruder (Active Shooter)
Large Chemical Release near Campus
Natural Disasters (Tornado)

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 21/10/2025

AP found the wave of legislation on vaccines, fluoride and raw milk has appeared across the US, pushed by people with close ties to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society.

Three maps showing the 43 states where AP found anti-science legislation, including states with anti-fluoride bills, states with anti-vaccine bills, and states with bills increasing access to raw milk products.
Source: Associated Press analysis of bills collected by Plural and the National Conference of State Legislatures

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 12/02/2025

They followed up with this story today about a barber who has been detained. It has an editor's note at the end 👀 migrantinsider.com/p/ice-transf...

EDITOR’S NOTE: On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times republished our scoop from Sunday without attributing us, effectively stealing our work. So today, we put (SCOOP) in our headline—not to be insensitive to the sources we covered in this morning’s news story about a serious topic, but to make it even clearer that we had this story first.

Trouble is, NYT has no immigration editor that we know of—someone to politely email, that the Gray Lady may do better in the future. So instead, this morning we gifted a free, one-month, subscription to Migrant Insider to both NYT reporters who ripped us off yesterday—namely, Hamed Aleaziz and Julie Turkewitz—that they do better in the future.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 11/01/2025

Just look back at how Facebook started. It’s who he is www.thecrimson.com/article/2003...

Screenshot from the Nov. 4,2003, Harvard Crimson article that details the origins of Facebook:

Just 95 minutes later, at 9:48 p.m., he added another entry.

“The Kirkland facebook is open on my computer desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics,” he wrote. “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

Then, just before 1 a.m., a new post: “12:58am. Let the hacking begin.”

Starting with Kirkland and moving his way through the Houses, Zuckerberg described how he hacked into online facebooks one by one and put the photos onto his website.

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 08/01/2025

I clicked because I couldn't understand the impenetrable headline. It goes to a list of real estate transactions. It's not a story. There's zero context explaining what the popular shopping spot was. Why are so many posts from Gannett such dreck?

Screenshot of tweet from the Newport Daily News with the following headline: "Thames Street building housing popular Newport shopping spot sold for $4.25 million"

Article that shows a list of real estate transactions in Newport County, Rhode Island, including the $4.25M transaction the headline is apparently referring to. It contains no context about what the headline promises

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 25/12/2024

There is no Wegmans in or near Providence

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 02/12/2024

An AP investigation this year found more than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A chart shows a rise in people with a military background accused of committing extremist acts

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 02/12/2024

AP is now allowing us to add our Bluesky links to our author pages

AP author page showing a link to Bluesky

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 16/11/2024

A security manager for the District of Columbia National Guard flagged Trump's pick for DoD Pete Hegseth as a possible insider threat ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration because of a "Deus Vult" tattoo on his arm. Here is the email he sent (Redactions by AP) www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 16/11/2024

There’s lots of talk right now about how to describe Robert F. Kennedy’s stance on vaccines. What has he said? I took this screenshot of a video he put out in December 2021. These were stickers his group was offering to people. One says: IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 12/11/2024

Is there a tool to help me find the people I used to follow on Twitter, or the people who followed me? Any other tools out there I should try that are meant to help orient people coming here from elsewhere? In exchange for any info, here is a photo of my cat when she was a kitten. Thnaks!

An alert fuzzy kitten with big ears looks into the camera as she sits in a sunbeam on top of a couch

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Michelle R. Smith @bymichellersmith.com · 26/10/2024

👀 details from NPR in this report about extremism in the Marines. One of the Marines who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 went before a retention panel. Its members had this to say about Jan 6

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