iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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James Poniewozik @poniewozik.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

the penne opticon

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Brandon Walsh @walshbr.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Remains my most controversial take, but sometimes you do need to just go to bed at 7:30PM.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Palantir is its own agnotology machine. Do not engage with their discourse, which throws spaghetti at the wall of media: every strand introduces a new kind of doubt. You try to consume & debate it but in the end all you are is tangled in spaghetti and covered with marinara.

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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

My latest. I’ve been watching the media coverage of the murders of Dr. Cerina Fairfax and Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer. One way media can fight back against male violence: If you kill your wife, you don’t get to be called a “husband” any more. You’re her killer. open.substack.com/pub/karenatt...

open.substack.com

If you kill your wife, you don't get to be a husband anymore

Some lessons from the media coverage of Dr. Cerina Fairfax and Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer's murders.

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Riley Black 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦕 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I will never, ever, ever use AI in my writing. From idea to the finished piece, it’s all human. I do not see the point otherwise.

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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

That Yale report on what's wrong with U.S. college saw some trees (high cost, unfair admission, etc.) but missed the forest: the 60-year right-wing crusade to undermine higher ed, from slashing budgets to stifling speech How to really fix college. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/yale...

inquirer.com

Why Yale’s term paper on what’s wrong with college gets a ‘D-’ | Will Bunch

An Ivy League university's report on the loss of faith in higher ed ignores what really killed the American Dream of college.

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

“Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation.” www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

forbes.com

Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live

Google wants its AI to see all the photos of "you and your loved ones." Billions of users must now decide.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I wonder if rampant AI use is going to change language patterns, in that people will start writing differently to look less like AI. Lots of phrases and writing habits (like the use of the em dash) are being re-coded as AI signifiers. You can pry my em dashes out of my cold, dead hands, but...

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Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

The author of this article refused to sign an NDA, giving up severance and healthcare benefits to tell this story. If you didn't read it already, read it. Because he refused, we may be able to stop the Kennedy Center from being sold for parts and turned into a gaudy MAGA fundraising warehouse.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

"the colleges that dominate the headlines are not the colleges that most Americans attend their core mission: to serve students from all backgrounds, at a price families can actually afford, prepare graduates for real careers and meaningful lives." www.geneseo.edu/enrollment-m...

geneseo.edu

The College Affordability Crisis is Real, but the Media is Looking at the Wrong Schools

Sturges Hall (Photo by Keith Walters ’11) Opinion By Costas Solomou, Vice President, Enrollment Management Published by the Office of Enrollment Management When Yale University released its Committee ...

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Nathaniel C. Green @nathanielcgreen.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Also, as I've said before, the faculty at large community colleges could totally do the jobs that faculty at Yale do, and a lot of faculty at ivies could not do our jobs for a single semester.

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Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

I want a "conference" where every academic cooks a dish for everyone and we all talk about our work casually while cooking. People can sous chef for each other. We eat and talk about our work in progress. You submit an abstract and a recipe.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

So what are our tricks for forcing ourselves to grade when 1) we don't wanna and 2) there are big distractions, of both the doomscrolling and fun varieties?

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 15/04/2026

Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Do you ever look at your calendar and realize that you made several mistakes a few months ago.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

As a (lapsed) cradle Catholic, I do not love the re-branding of Catholicism = Good in light of Vance's nonsense. It's not dissimilar to the recent TSA = Good spin when ICE was sent to airports. I like the new Pope well enough, but the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend. Bad is a spectrum.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Tulip bulbs. Just replace "AI" with "tulip bulbs" and that will tell you where we are.

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FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

TurboTax and H&R Block spent $7 million lobbying the Trump administration to kill Direct File. Both companies donated to Trump's 2024 campaign and inauguration committees.

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

More higher ed discourse like this please

Previously, in order to adhere to the norms of public discourse and to grant positive intentions even when I may disagree with methods or root values, I have strongly but (mostly) respectfully critiqued these sorts of educational initiatives, but those days are over.

**These people are my enemies.** I have only ill will for this project and wish them failure, because this vision for a future of postsecondary education is a recipe for mass immiseration and public disempowerment. Imagine a world where Microsoft, Google, McKinsey, et al ... get to determine what and how you learn from cradle to retirement.

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James A. Palmer @jamespqr77.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I suspect deep inside the brain of most scholars is the memory of the moment when they first discovered the thing that sucked them into their field, of who they were in that moment. We ought to try to keep in touch with it.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 11/04/2026

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. for the first time I can remember, there’s no supposedly obvious alternative path to reliable employment that our leaders can demand we pivot to. indeed, they’re not even bothering to try to offer an alternative - and scamming starts feeling like the only answer

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John Attridge @johnattridge.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Saving the English department by relabelling our chronological survey course "the eras tour"

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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Bloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Why do we even bother with endnotes--this is my personal pet peeve as a historian, I need to read the spicy, sassy, whiny footnotes immediately

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Reminds me of the time I boycotted reading Go Ask Alice in high school freshman English and just assigned myself a different book & wrote like a 10 p paper, just categorically refused to engage for reasons that I cannot now recall. A Top Ten On My Bullshit moment for me, TBH, but I feel vindicated.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 13/04/2026

Same goes for every "genius" academic or scholar.

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Christopher McKnight Nichols @cmcknichols.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Just confirming that Made by History will now be back up and running in the next few weeks with a new home and new partners at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Exciting! So, if you have pitches, now's the time to start sending them to madebyhistory@inquirer.com 🗃️ #MadebyHistory #HistoryMatters

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Can someone who's into dream interpretation please explain this recurring dream I have about trying to put in contacts but then keep they expanding and getting bigger and I can't get them into my eyes? I am very tired of this weird-ass dream.

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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

I don’t think a lot folks understand how massive Péter Magyar’s election was today in Hungary over Viktor Orbán. It was a massive 33% swing in votes. That’s insane. That would be like a Democratic supermajority being created in Congress overnight. Holy shit.

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Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Very unimpressed by pop neurodiversity influencers and their AI apologia. More bullshit claiming that anti-AI stances are classist and ableist and racist. Meanwhile, AI is built on exploited black labor, kills disabled people every day, disposesses the working class, and drinks all our water.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Or in ANY position of power. (Academia, fix yourself.)

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Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) @repstansbury.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

If you sexually assaulted someone, you should not be serving in Congress—[or as President]. Period.

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BladeoftheSun @bladeofthes.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Greta Thunberg is right.

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Just last year the university began the process of shuttering six majors, each of which has very similar enrollment levels.

The programs of study and their total fall 2025 enrolled majors are:
• African American studies, Bachelor of Arts (nine)
• Applied physics, Bachelor of Science (eight)
• Classical languages, Bachelor of Arts
(14)
• Gender, women's, and sexuality studies, Bachelor of Arts (12)
• Italian, Bachelor of Arts (12)
• Russian, Bachelor of Arts (10)

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Ken Jennings @kenjennings.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Winning campaign slogan here if anyone wants it.

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

What is this strange feeling? Could it be the tiniest stirring of hope?

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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 12/04/2026

Less than a week ago, there were several prominent voices on here saying that they were sure Orbán was going to cancel Hungary's election. And casting that as a preview of coming horrors here in the States. Well, Hungary had its vote, Orbán lost in a landslide, and he's conceded.

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Maria Farrell @mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 12/04/2026

So many of us are now textual Case Pollards, physically averse to pre-digested, mass extruded machine verbiage just as William Gibson's Pattern Recognition protagonist was made physically sick by fashion and brands.

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Catbus @catbus.phd · 12/04/2026

if you made a CEO work as a dishwasher for one week they would go mad like a Lovecraft protagonist confronting an unnameable entity in the cellar

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

We have entered the “you can’t kill me if I commit suicide” phase of American Decline

US President Donald Trump says the US Navy would immediately start blockading the Strait of ⁠Hormuz and would also interdict every vessel in international waters that had ⁠paid a toll to Iran.

https://aje.news/x545rk

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Courtney E. Thompson @cethompson.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

(this is literally how soft power works, and we used to be really good at it)

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 11/04/2026

i have read police reports where the investigator proudly explained how he used standard interrogation techniques on the survivor filing the report, got her to contradict herself, and then concluded that she was making it all up! the system does not work the way you want it to

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