iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Screenshot of a tweet by Henry Ford from 1908. It says: "i am a horse, and so r u"

(parody of a tweet by Sam Altman)

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Ayla Taylor @aylataylor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

My first zine is done! It is about how AI doomerism is marketing for AI companies and you can download it here! aylataylor.itch.io/whos-afraid-...

aylataylor.itch.io

Who's Afraid Of The AI Apocalypse? by aylataylor

Why "AI doomerism" is just Pro-AI Marketing

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My piece was stuck in production for a few months so it reads a bit outdated ... but nevertheless, the special issue as a whole is great: Hogan, M. (2026). "Rotting empires". European Journal of Cultural Studies, 0(0). doi.org/10.1177/1367...

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Ajuna Soerjadi 🌸 @ethicsofai.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

There is no way to use ChatGPT responsibly.

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dear @erc.europa.eu , we DO already have common standards & frameworks. 'AI' likes to pose itself as 'special' but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We already have established codes of conduct for research integrity. We just need to apply them. See below + more resources in thread🧵

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic
the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth
— the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding “informa-
tion”. At best, such output is accidentally true, but generally citationless, divorced from
human reasoning and the web of scholarship that it steals from. At worst, it is confidently
wrong. Both outcomes are dangerous to the ecosystem.
Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij, Marcela Suarez, et al. (2025, n.p.)
Knowledge production is supposed to be safeguarded by (inter)national codes of conduct for research
integrity (ALLEA 2023; KNAW et al. 2018). Such codes forbid, for instance, fabrication of data,
falsification of results, plagiarism, and, generally, distortion of the scientific record. Many argue that
new rules are required to regulate academic AI use, but pre-existing guidelines fit the bill (cf. Tafani

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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This should be reason enough to keep AI out of K-12 schools.

nytimes.com

A.I. Groups Are Spending Millions to Influence the Midterms

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Please try to reclaim your precious precious attention, at all costs. Do puzzles. Take walks without a phone. Dear god, try to read, almost anything that isn’t a manifesto will really do. You are going to need your brain.

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Ziggy West @ziggywest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It’s a warning that the decisions we make now will determine whether we have a free press and a functioning democracy in the years to come. It’s about Truthout’s survival but it’s also about the survival of the fourth and fifth estates as we know them.

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026

over the past few weeks several AI evaluation/cybersecurity experts have explained how what's happening is a result of human incompetence rather than "AI going rogue". I'm begging the media to show a shred of journalistic integrity and stop parroting what altman or amodei say

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Melanie Dusseau @melaniedusseau.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm over calls to "normalize" behaviors. Who wants to be normal? AI's "not going anywhere?" Until you drop kick it outta your life with no regrets. Be weird. Hang out with librarians. #EduSky #AIRefusal www.librarian.net/notoai/

librarian.net

How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

One of the biggest questions I get at Drop-In Time at the library (besides "what is taking up all my cloud storage?") is how to disable or avoid intrusive AI that shows up where people don't want it. ...

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 20/09/2026

I bought one of these for my office and I enjoy it every time I walk in the room. Get yourself some physical art by a cool human :)

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 19/09/2026

Do you want to read up on topics that are covered in the Ghost in the Machine documentary? I'd start with Disabling Intelligences by @fractalecho.bsky.social, who also covers the legacies of eugenics that the documentary begins with. My lengthy reading thread: tbsky.app/profile/cgsu...

tbsky.app

Lauren Woolsey (@cgsunit.com)

This will be my thread for thoughts while reading Disabling Intelligences by [@fractalecho.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qsavm6exsnbprmb2o5utdnst) this week. I'm all wrapped up in a f...

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 19/09/2026

Watched Ghost in the Machine this evening on PBS, and it's very much worth the time. The documentary gives a lot of useful historical context for the current moment and brings together a wide swath of trustworthy expert voices to weigh in. I recommend!

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 18/09/2026

This poem was shared in a group chat this afternoon and it's so good. Author: Samantha Bise, link to source: www.facebook.com/samanthalynn...

Poem by Samantha Bise, part 1: A student tells me I should teach how to write using AI as a tool. I tell him we don't use forklifts in the gym. Some tools can weaken us. This is less profane than what I really want to say to him: If you don't learn how to do the heavy lifting of thinking and writing, you will become an animal that survives eating only its own shit. Our words are what feeds the machine. AI becomes our mirror. When we only ever look at our reflection, the mirror becomes the meal. Soon we are eating what we already ate, chewing yesterday's language and calling it a new recipe. We harvest our own manure, dress it up as knowledge, and feed it to the system that feeds it right back to us. Mama and baby birds passing chewed worms from beak to beak. Never swallowing or digesting a thing, but calling it substance. A strange new carnivore. Not flesh eating flesh, but thought eating thought, until the words become marrow—I mean narrow. [Rest of Alt Text in second post]

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Tofystedeth @tofystedeth.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Honestly, even as a noted AI hater, an error rate that bad is likely so deliberate that you couldn't realistically describe as errors. That's just United AI-washing their normal deny everything for spurious reasons procedures.

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

25 years ago today, George W. Bush signed the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force into law. Barbara Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against it, warning it would be a blank check for forever wars. History has proven her lonely and courageous vote right.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 17/09/2026

Okay so I'm polyamorous with three established partners, and I didn't realize how luxurious it would feel to take myself out on a solo date tonight!

A happy hour cocktail with a slight pinkish color and a dried lime slice, along with some dishware and a candle in the background.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

We need to reach a place where we are not constantly circulating stories about how the AI-pilot project for X or Y was a disastrous failure bc we have collectively decided that people don't have to be guinea pigs in this utopian laboratory; & instead there are just places where "AI" doesn't belong.

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

AI companies sold C suites and lazy assholes on the idea that they invented magic beans but now that the magic isn't happening they're telling everyone they're actually deadly beans and only they have the antidote for the deadly beans.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 15/09/2026

I am so angry at so many greedy, selfish, awful men who have contributed to the path that got us here.

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Job Amaro @cooljbad.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

More and more recently, I've been wanting to say to colleagues "I wasn't asking Claude, I was asking you. I respect you, which is why I asked for thoughts, opinions, and insights. If you feel a chatbot can give good enough or better responses to my questions, then why are you here?"

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 10/09/2026

FWIW I don’t think that AI is an existential threat, nor on track to become one. I do however think that the leaders of the biggest AI companies, AI’s strongest boosters, and some of the folks who are most adept at using it to exploit others are actively hastening along OTHER existential threats.

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Ava Foxfort @ava.foxfort.net · 11/09/2026

Like. At a fundamental level, we should not as a society be reliant on growth stocks to prop up our economy. The drive to push up market cap and do a bag run instead of establishing into a healthy sustainable dividend producing business model is predatory and dangerous and causing so many problems.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

New (well, updated) anniversary essay on what really happened in New York City and the, well, hijacking of what that day meant by the Bush Administration to justify its wars at home and abroad.... www.meditationsinanemergency.com/9-11-the-c/

The Bush Administration did not want a heroic public. They wanted a cowed, obedient public and they set about creating one, telling people to stay home, to fear their neighbors and report them for anything suspicious, to go shopping (stupid shopping bags with American flags and "America: Open for Business" were everywhere while other things, such as civil liberties were being closed down), to accept a loss of those liberties in the name of wartime patriotism (and we are still suffering from that sabotage of our rights), to demonize Muslims abroad and at home (a wave of stupid violence against Muslims, and people who looked Muslim to haters, and even Sikhs erupted in the wake of the propaganda war). The first enemy they had to conquer was us, and in the years that followed people lost their jobs in heartland America for speaking out against the wars.

The administration wanted us to pretend that it was the military that protects us when the military was effectively useless that day, to pretend that rather than the act of a small terrorist sect this was an act of war that justified invading Afghanistan and then Iraq, which conveniently had a lot of oil that the administration (headed by oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) redirected to their cronies, as Trump has with Venezuela's oil. The government was reorganized to create the Department of Homeland Security, and the Third-Reich tones of that word homeland was noted at the time, and to create ICE.
It Could Have Been Different

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 11/09/2026

25 years ago, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people, including 2,753 New Yorkers. As we remember that terrible day, let us also remember the first responders, office workers and strangers who ran toward danger to help each other.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 11/09/2026

100% this. I was just reading chapter 5 of The Nerd Reich by @gilduran.com this morning (related text in photo), and it feels like Theranos was not a learning moment in the way normal humans with a moral compass might have wanted it to be.

Image of the book "The Nerd Reich" by Gil Duran. Text reads: Dr. Olivier Jutel, a critic of the VC model, says its main philosophy is "you should only invest in things that will give you a thousand-x return." To achieve profit at breakneck speed, VC firms often push company founders to engage in something called "blitzscaling." The term, derived from the Nazi warfare tactic of overwhelming an enemy with superior force, means pushing exponential growth at all costs, regardless of long-term consequences to society or the company itself. "For venture capitalists, the job has become not about finding companies that are creating breakthrough innovations that could spur large-scale value creation, but about pursuing power law returns that can make them very rich," wrote Catherine Bracy in World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 11/09/2026

If we don't even ask all our core science classes to cover aspects of climate change (a truly essential topic for students' futures), why are there so many higher ed folks who keep insisting that every class from English to Math include AI use training??

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The way AI is going to “kill everyone” is just by manufacturing consent for ever worse outcomes & conditions, like many governments do. It is a governing technology after all. And like bureaucracy it launders responsibility so the people & institutions who deploy it aren’t accountable for the harms

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

1. Science is a communal, human effort, which exists as an enormous conversation among scientists, sharing and challenging ideas and collectively building knowledge. >>

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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 09/09/2026

I do not believe that these guys are about to summon a world-ending superconsciousness from Nvidia graphics cards. But they either believe they can or want me to believe they believe they can. So I think "fuck them" is the only rational response

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 08/09/2026

"So, friends, every day do something / that won’t compute." -Wendell Berry allpoetry.com/poem/1262246...

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 08/09/2026

Can confirm. It's not too big a time commitment, and it's wonderful to ensure support for all the hardworking librarians who work there and make the selection decisions. I'm in year four.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Pedagogy is not some new, unsolved problem awaiting its Silicon Valley disruptor. If you want good teaching in any given subject, it’s there to be had. If you just don’t want to pay for it, then all we’re really talking about is how much you want something for nothing. That’s nothing new, either.

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Alias Messier @amampersand.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Last week, I provided students with my Reasons to Hate AI mini comic, & now you can have it, too. Thanks to @nsousanis.bsky.social for suggestions & so many for the accumulated info, esp. @emilymbender.bsky.social, @alexhanna.bsky.social, @karenhao.bsky.social , @dairinstitute.bsky.social.

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T Shea @tpshea.eurosky.social · 04/09/2026

Even my AI-skeptical colleagues keep telling me "it's inevitable, learn to live with it" but my friends, we each choose the future every day by what we accept and what we refuse to accept. As e.e.cummings once said, "there is some shit I will not eat." poets.org/poem/i-sing-...

poets.org

i sing of Olaf glad and big

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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I know it’s hard to watch all these beautiful things be carried away by time and see the wrong things growing in their place. But listen. Listen. We have to be the beautiful things now. It has to be us. It has to be us. Courage.

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Erik Hoffner @erikhoffner.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures & people who wish to live as machines.” ― Wendell Berry, "Life is a Miracle"

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Brooke @bkuhnhaus.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Oh Wendell Berry, another great elder become ancestor 🪔. So many favorite writings by him, holding this as reverence and passageway. “.. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings”. 📷: Guy Mendes.

A black-and-white photo ny photographer Guy Mendes of an older
white man named Wendell Berry, sitting on the Banks of the river. He’s wearing a collared shirt and Dungaree kind of pants with lace up boots and a baseball hat. His expression is open and peaceful looking off into the shoreline with a slight smile. He has a little dog, resting her head on his knee. Overlaid the photo is his poem. “To Know The Dark by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings”

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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Wendell Berry is gone after a long life. I dare you to read or listen to this and not be overwhelmed by something

onbeing.org

The Peace of Wild Things

A poem by Wendell Berry.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 01/09/2026

This recent "rule of 3" really broke me; there are so many bad people in the world and yet we lost so much talent with the incomparable Dolly Parton, the memorable Tim Curry, and now the wise Wendell Berry. My heart aches. I am thankful I shared a planet with these creatives for a while.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 31/08/2026

Canvas/Instructure: "This website is under heavy load (request timed out). We're sorry, too many people are accessing this website at the same time. We're working on this problem. Please try again later." Well, it's not like it's the 1st or 2nd week of school for nearly everyone in the US....

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ElizabethwithaZ @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The AI Literacy we get: "Here's a piece of software founded on theft, labor exploitation, and environmental devastation. It consistently produces bias and falsehoods, so be sure to use it ethically and responsibly!" The AI Literacy we need:

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Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org · 29/08/2026

the danger of real-world "AI" is not a Skynet scenario (much less a Matrix scenario), but turning the planet into a wasteland to serve data centers and putting everyone out of a job to enrich a very few. In other words, it's *always* powerful humans doing evil things to other humans.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Calls to abolish our carceral state are dangerous and unrealistic? OK, let’s talk about our carceral state. ICE has a quota of 2,000 arrests a day. Over a year, that maths out to 0.2% of the entire U.S. population. www.the-reframe.com/soon-you-too...

the-reframe.com

Soon You Too Will Be A Commie

Accepting a bully's framing won't save you a beating. Why solidarity is the best way out.

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Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.com · 26/08/2026

Nearly forgot to log into my PBS to watch Mary Oliver documentary, one of my other literary heroes! It's also on their YouTube channel.

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