iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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The Middle Ages in Modern Games @midagesmodgames.bsky.social · 19h

It's time! The Middle Ages in Modern Games Asynchronous Conference 2026 begins TODAY, October 5th, at 9:45am UTC+1 with our opening address to kick off a fantastic programme of three days of papers. Everything you'll need is in the live programme here: middleagesinmoderngames.net/mamg26/middl...

middleagesinmoderngames.net

Middle Ages in Modern Games, October 5-7 2026: Programme – The Middle Ages in Modern Games

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David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 20h

We will never again be a democracy if we don't get the big money out of American politics. There should not be any higher priority. davidrothkopf.substack.com/p/one-priori...

davidrothkopf.substack.com

One Priority Above All Others

We Must Drain the Poison Out of Our Body Politic If There Is to Be a Better World After Trump

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olive consumer's floating skull @machete.gay · 28/08/2026

i don't say y'all because my specific combination of accents makes it sound like i'm hiccuping but you will take howdy from my cold, dead hands

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

So a teaching thing that I picked up ages ago as a graduate student: I hand my TA at the start of the semester a printed set of guidelines for how I am estimating their time commitment (within the bounds of the time they're supposed to spend). Like, 'do not spend more than this amount of time.'

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I was on a podcast! I was on the Fighting Fascism Podcast to talk about the strange fascist obsession and deep misunderstanding of Tolkien, who despised the Nazis and would, I feel confident, have despised our modern techno-Nazis even more. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

podcasts.apple.com

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I had such a fantastic time co-leading the Games and Archaeological Play workshop with @mtrc.bsky.social at #fdg26 today! Here's some maps from the keepsake game activity I ran

My keepsake map of Nothing Beside Renains with letter stickers and tape

Mike Cook's keepsake map of a platformer with colour-coded details

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Our afternoon is kicking off with a talk by @duffadash.bsky.social about game preservation and the history of the Danish games scene, and a very special videogame character…

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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 22/07/2026

Arguably, the major question in American political thought is whether you agree with the authors of the 14th and 15th Amendments and their goals. Or if you agree with the post-Civil War Supreme Court that tried desperately to deny and suppress the radicalism of those amendments.

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ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories @romchip.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

The Video Game History Foundation (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social) is dropping a gift to us all with this massive new collection of E3 materials!

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Espooky Hispanic Pixie Dreamgirl @bocadelperro.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

6yo's last day of camp is tomorrow, so I'm having this feeling a little early this year.

A person on the beach watching a large wave crest in front of them. The photo is labeled "academics on August 1st"

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Laprofmme @laprofmme.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Note, this does not just apply to STEM. It is all federal research, including whatever is left of humanities, arts, museum, and library research via NEH, NEA, and IMLS 🗃️

@ federalregister.gov
Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance
An unpublished Proposed Rule by the Management and Budget Office, the Health and Human Services Department, the Agriculture Department, the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Energy Department, the Treasury Department, the Defense Department, the Transportation Department, the Commerce Department, the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, the United States Agency for Global Media, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Social Security Administration, the Housing and Urban Development Department, the National Science Foundation, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Small Business Administration, the Justice Department, the Labor Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Education Department, the Office of Natonal Drug Control Policy, the Peace Corps, the Election Assistance Commission, the Gulf Coast Ecosystem O

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Andrew Whitehead @andrew-whitehead.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Please check out & share this incredible new digital humanities archive w/ interactive map, the Black Church Burning Project. blackchurchburningproject.org It exists to identify & document every Black church & congregation that was burned, bombed, or otherwise attacked during the Civil Rights era.

Screen grab of interactive map of the Black Church Burning Project that identifies and archives bombings and burnings of black congregations in the Civil Rights era in the US.

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Jaroslav Švelch @electroslav.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Sharing this posting which could be a dream PhD for many: www.uni.lu/en/jobs/doct...

uni.lu

Doctoral Researcher in Historical Game Studies

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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Among the brilliancies in this essay is the concept of the “bureaucratic double bind”: an organization cannot function without its members exercising independent judgment, but it cannot acknowledge the judgment without undermining itself & being seen as “political.” open.substack.com/pub/artifici...

open.substack.com

Kill Chain

On the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children

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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Strong recommendation to teaching faculty to just say no to this stuff, even if you are AI curious/enthusiastic. This is meant to reduce faculty autonomy and capture human labor with automation. You're selling out your future self and the profession as a whole. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

insidehighered.com

Canvas Unrolls AI Teaching Agent

The new AI agent aims to save faculty time on “low-value tasks,” but stops short of fully automating grading. But some experts worry that the rise of agentic AI could lead to a dead classroom, where c...

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Florida Man, PhD @casusscribere.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Fun fact: the TX Railroad Commissioner is the state official in charge of monitoring oil and gas emissions (flaring) across the state. Something tells me this fellow, should he get elected, will not be the most zealous enforcer of extant environmental regulation.

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Curtis Frye @curtisfrye.com · 22/03/2026

US buyers can purchase GAME STUDIES: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD through Blackwells right now. Books ship free (and free of tariffs) and usually arrive within two calendar weeks. blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...

blackwells.co.uk

Game Studies

From Among Us to Minecraft, Catan to Dungeons and Dragons games and play are fundamentally transforming how we understand storytelling, education, identity, pol

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Teaching a dream course next fall.

ENGL 4559-002 - Language Models Small & Large
Matthew Kirschenbaum
This studio-style course will be a hands-on exploration of two enormously consequential language technologies: moveable type letterpress printing, as introduced by Gutenberg in the West in the 15th century, and so-called "Al," or large language models (LLMs), which in just a few short years have altered many of our basic assumptions about what it means to write. While no technical knowledge is expected or assumed, you should be prepared for hands-on work with both letterpress printing and digital tools. We will learn to set traditional wood and metal type and print using wet ink on different kinds of printing presses. We will also experiment with a range of different digital tools and Al models for creative and critical purposes, and will look at how other writers and activists are doing the same.
We will divide our attention between the two technologies roughly equally, and the course will also feature readings to help us conceptualize these two very different— but arguably comparable-moments in history. Requirements will include both a mix of short papers and a final project which makes use of letterpress and/or Al in a original and illustrative way. There will be several excursions both on and off Grounds. Please note this class meets only once a week and the nature of our work will mean much of it cannot be "made up." A commitment to an immaculate attendance record is absolutely essential.

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Brendan Keogh @brkeogh.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Our (@mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and I) book GAME STUDIES: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD is officially OUT everywhere in the world except the US for some reason. So here is an actual thread about why we wrote it and what we were trying to achieve with it.

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Люблю хлеб @thedansimonson.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Adam Curtis has pointed out through his work how we're in a fundamentally different time from the early 20th century -- how that was an era of mass movements, and we now live in an era of mass atomization. The Kirk thing was an attempt at mass movement politics, and those fall flat now

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Anyway, AI is a managerial technology that came out of fields where researchers act more like managers than researchers and this is not a coincidence. It’s fundamentally related to why certain people jumped at the chance to try to build certain kinds of systems that devalued (other people’s) work.

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 22/03/2026

Increasingly feels like they’ve managed to engineer a disaster that we have absolutely how is going to go.

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 22/03/2026

I want to make clear for a second with this comment, it’s not just the green dipshit in this particular thread, it’s the entirety of 21st century fucking politics doing this now. Republicans want manufacturing job where hungover man swings hammer, because of aesthetic.

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 22/03/2026

I’ve been resistant to calling Americans/developed world more broadly politicans/voters “decadent”, but like if you keep knocking loadbearing pillars out of your economy for aesthetic reasons because you don’t care about the consequences - then there really isn’t any other word to use for it

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 22/03/2026

The reason no American president was ever stupid enough to start a war with Iran is because there’s a big pile of natural gas in the Middle East and they’re turning it into fertilizer. But the administration of aesthetics decided that it can only good happen. And now, that pillar is getting bombed

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 22/03/2026

And personally, as an economist, I can handle being sneered at while - as one of the They toiling on spreadsheets - we try to keep the world going, shelves stocked, etc but congrats, y’all finally got what you want, you broke the machine! And we’re all trapped in it together as it bleeds to death.

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Critical AI https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/issue @criticalai-journal.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Nice to see colleagues in college writing recognizing that gen AI in the classroom is neither inevitable nor necessarily beneficial--as the research increasingly shows, quite the reverse! www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

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McBoo-lie @mcjulie.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

There is such a direct line from gamergate to all the evils we’re currently experiencing. We can’t let it all get pushed down the memory hole.

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 15/03/2026

Nature published another pile of trash i am trying to catch up on some of my reading but this one is getting under my skin so here’s a thread highlighting why this piece is either ill-informed or intentionally ignorant of a wealth of knowledge from embodied cog sci and related fields 1/

COMMENT
02 February 2026

Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear
The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.

theguardian.com

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI

As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large

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Vinicius Marino Carvalho @vinicius-marino.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

🚨NEW ARTICLE OUT🚨 My most recent paper on historical agency & games is available in open access! It deals with environmental studies, posthumanism, fantasy, the 'ontological turn' in the philosophy of history & my upcoming video-game, Galar. Quick thread on the contents 🧵1/6 #gamestudies #gtp

tandfonline.com

History and more-than-human agency in videogames

This article highlights how digital games and digital game scholarship can contribute to ongoing theoretical debates about more-than-human agency in history. Inspired by ecological theory, the more...

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Eugene Smelyansky PhD 🇺🇦 @eugene-smelyansky.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Understanding marginalization and toleration as a spectrum shaped by contingency and context, not as a binary, is extremely important. Many of the sources that depict the most horrific violence bear witness to some degree of toleration that existed prior to persecution. 1/

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Mike X. Nichols @mikexnichols.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

happy international women’s day

Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. The caption reads, “I love the kind of woman that will actually just kill me.”

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Secretary of Defense Rock @sodrock.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

And they say strategic bombing doesn’t work

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Jeremiah McCall (he/him) @gamingthepast.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Hey friends, it's been so long & I'm sort of flitting about intellectually post book. Anyone want to do me a solid & ask me anything about historical games? The usual - outside of ed or in ed, design or play, historical approach? You know I'll do my best for a thoughtful answer. Whaddya say?

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Jeremiah McCall (he/him) @gamingthepast.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Everything's coming at once. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with @partialhistorians.bsky.social Dr. G and Dr. Rad last July about my book Swords and Cinema and the way that Roman Warfare is portrayed in movies up to the 20 oughts. The podcast has now dropped.

partialhistorians.com

Special Episode - Swords and Cinema with Dr Jeremiah McCall - The Partial Historians - Ancient Roman History with smart ladies

We interview Dr McCall about the way that the Roman military and ancient warfare has been depicted in Hollywood movies.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Huge NYT article on the back story of those two weeks in March/April 2025 when DOGE illegally terminated hundreds of NEH grants. Gift link!! www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

nytimes.com

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

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Megan L. Cook @meganlcook.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Obviously, NEH grants never should have been clawed back in the first place, DOGE is a lot of crap, and all grants should be reinstated, but if you want to feel PARTICULAR rage about how half-assed and cruel the whole process is, read the AI rationale for terminating the TEAMS METS grant

Text in screenshot reads: "Does the following relate at all to DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with 'Yes.' or 'No.' followed by a brief
explanation. Do not use 'this initiative' or 'this description' in your response.The Middle English Text Series (METS) is now in its
32nd year of providing affordable and open-access critical editions of medieval texts for researchers and students. 106 volumes
have been published as of Fall 2020. This proposal requests funding to support the print and digital publication of 6 volumes, and
implementation of a re- designed digital edition to enhance and expand user access, support, and interaction. The primary
purpose of METS is to make available for scholarly use critical editions of the textual tradition of medieval Britain. The focus of
this project is upon vernacular texts from the 13th to the early-16th centuries that move beyond the 'canonical' authors,
expanding our understanding of and access to the multilingual and multicultural culture of a vibrant and global British Isles. With
its digital and print editions, the Series has a global reach and influence, with users from the UK, France, Italy, and Germany to
China, Korea, India, and Australia."

Text of screenshot showing the ChatGPT-generated answers to answers to the prompt "Does the following relate at all to DEI" (answer on the right) and the associated rationale (confusingly on the left). Rationale: "METS provides open-access critical editions
of medieval texts and expands
understanding of multicultural culture,
aligning with DEI values." Verdict: "Yes. METS provides open-access critical
editions of medieval texts and expands
understanding of multicultural culture,
aligning with DEI values."

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The Prize Papers Project @prizepapers.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

On Monday, at 1 PM, we welcome Casey Schmitt to our Ships & Seafaring Talk, where she will present her book "The Predatory Sea", a full-length study of the entangled history of captivity and colonialism using Spanish, French and English archives. Sign up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/ships-seaf...

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Eduardo García-Molina @egarcmol.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Happy to report that @alexvandewalle.bsky.social's and my article will be published in the forthcoming inaugural issue of the American Journal of Classical Reception. Hopefully it serves as an entryway piece for anyone interested in the intersection of games, epigraphy, and digital humanities.

Screenshot of article abstract and title: Inscriptions, Writing Cultures, and Epigraphy as Play in Video Games

Abstract: This article explores the intersection of epigraphy, archaeology, and game studies within the reception of writing cultures in video games. It argues that video games serve as a unique medium for experiencing ancient material culture, a medium wherein digital inscriptions act as intermediaries between designers and players for worldbuilding and immersive storytelling. We offer a cursory typology with which to research the variety of ways that historical writing cultures interact within both historical and fictive ludic settings: epigraphy in games (or the in-game representation of attested real-world inscriptions), epigraphy of games (or the fictional epigraphy creatively invented by and embedded in contemporary games), and epigraphy as games, where the act of deciphering, reading, and inscribing become gameplay mechanics that fosters a deeper, more active engagement with historical and fictional writing cultures. Ultimately, the article shows that these digital inscriptions shape player perception of historical "truth" and cultural depth, demonstrating that the interactive nature of video games provides a unique pedagogical space for experiencing the materiality of the past in an increasingly digitized world.

Keywords: Video games, inscriptions, epigraphy, digital humanities, museum studies, archaeogaming, worldbuilding

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Lady Emily ☄️ @ladyemily.nebula.tv · 04/03/2026

With Fire Red and Leaf Green on Switch now, there’s probably people playing Pokémon who have never played a classic 2D Pokémon game before, so just some advice: remember that holding down and B when throwing a Pokéball will help increase the odds of catching the Pokémon

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Ranged Touch @rangedtouch.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

A busy weekend pushed us out a day or two, but as of yesterday your podcatcher should have received the latest episode of GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES, in which we journey into the deep past with the debut issue of GAME STUDIES from the alien world of July of 2001 rangedtouch.com/2026/03/02/9...

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

📚 ☀️ The Summer School is a 5-day course, designed to foster critical AI literacies and to empower participants to develop ways of resisting or reclaiming AI in their own practices and social context. 1/🧵

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Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

prepping to try to explain to my AI & Society class what has happened since our last class early last week

In the News: what’s going on with AI and the Department of War…
Pentagon threatens Anthropic punishment (Axios)
Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War (Anthropic)
Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (Anthropic)
How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart (The New York Times)
OpenAI strikes deal with Pentagon, hours after rival Anthropic was blacklisted by Trump (CNBC)
Anthropic's Claude overtakes ChatGPT in App Store (Mashable)
Users are ditching ChatGPT for Claude — here’s how to make the switch (TechCrunch)
U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban (The Wall Street Journal)
Google employees call for military limits on AI amid Iran strikes, Anthropic fallout (CNBC)
Sam Altman says OpenAI is renegotiating with the Pentagon after an ‘opportunistic and sloppy’ deal (Fortune)

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