iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr Clea Bourne

The Maybe @themaybe.org · 09/10/2026

Big Tech used to make glib promises about sustainability and moving towards a greener future. But today, Google is using more energy than ever—they added one New Zealand's worth of energy consumption between this year and last.

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jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Something AI is responsible for that doesn't get enough talk: How, when it scrapes a website to illegally steal everything on it, it uses up a ton of its bandwidth allotment, crashing it or racking up massive fees for site owners.

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Patrick deHahn @pdehello.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Never forget Jamal Khashoggi. Never forget Jamal Khashoggi.

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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

'The Westminster government’s contribution to funding domestic undergraduates studying in England fell in real terms from £8.9 billion in 2012-13 to just £3.3bn in 2024-25, a drop of more than 60 per cent, an analysis has found.'

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Paul Langley @paullangley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Pleased to contribute a co-authored essay with @andrewleyshon.bsky.social to this project. Also looking forward to reading the rest of the contributions, and participating in debates over FinTech which they spark

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

'In his [Ivison's] view, the government is avoiding the bigger issues of what universities are for and who should pay for them.' It would help if universities would ask (and answer) that 1st big question in public rather than just parroting government. That's what institutional autonomy is for.

researchprofessionalnews.com

To save UK higher education, start talking about knowledge - Research Professional News

Until debate on universities foregrounds their core purposes, their woes will deepen, says Margot Finn

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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Life on Low Pay 2026: The impact of low wages on UK workers www.livingwage.org.uk/life-low-pay...

livingwage.org.uk

Life on Low Pay 2026: The impact of low wages on UK workers

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?

Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

DoorDash spent $1.4M trying to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming mayor. This week's historic $131.5M enforcement action against DoorDash for underpaying NYC delivery workers shows why. Yet another reminder that the only thing that can beat organized money is organized people.

theintercept.com

DoorDash Spent $1.4 Million Trying to Stop Mamdani From Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why.

In a wage-theft settlement, DoorDash now has to pay its workers around 100 times what it spent trying to beat Zohran Mam

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Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...

fnl.mit.edu

How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think the "debate" about bringing iced coffee to job interviews is effective at distracting people from the really bad job market, the high unemployment rate for Black women, ongoing mass layoffs in tech and media, and how Gen Z workers are refusing to adopt many toxic aspects of corp work culture

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Dr Clea Bourne @cleabourne.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Hard agree. The AI doomerism is designed to bolster said balance sheets.

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

For some reason this sort of thing puts me in a more apocalyptic mood than warnings of the next killer AI www.ft.com/content/7f11...

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"Since the federal takeover, he spends four nights a week pedaling his bike up and down the same streets, recording agents as they arrest his neighbors. On the scene, he lists rights for people getting arrested and asks if they’d like him to contact anyone..." www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

washingtonpost.com

He worked at NASA. Now he tails federal law enforcement on D.C. streets.

A group that has tracked the activity of federal officers since the president’s crackdown has previously been private about the effort.

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Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 19/09/2026

Of all the ways I imagined Google Scholar going up in flames, being made inaccessible from university IP addresses due to AI-driven scraping wasn't at the top of my list.

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ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Worth noting, as Macklemore was banned by NFL owners in what will be dubbed "fighting antisemitism", that Kanye, who - sold merch with swastikas - said on Alex Jones that he idolizes Hitler - tweeted he was "going Defcon 3 on Jewish people" is currently on a multi-city tour of NFL stadiums

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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Open AI has hired Chuck Schumer's daughter to help them with government relations. I don’t like it one bit, and this kind of thing is a big part of the reason top Democrats have done such a poor job of turning the Trump family’s far more extreme corruption into an election issue.

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Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A reminder that a ban on social media for under 16s is also this inevitably happening to the rest of us.

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Paul J Davies @pauljdavies.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Private equity has been gummed up and struggling to sell investments for years - and yet 2024-25 saw record profits paid out to partners in the UK. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with a looming tax rise, could it? @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Chart showing carry earned and tax paid by UK-based private equity managers. 2024-2025 was a record for both.

Chart showing PE sales of UK firms by buyer type and value. 2024 wasn't a big year. but it had the largest share of sponsor to sponsor sales in the past decade.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

'When asked in a freedom of information (FoI) request who was using the largest sites and what for, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said it did “not hold the requested information”. The ministry has since been dissolved.' A bit Orwellian, no?

theguardian.com

UK government does not know what datacentres are being used for, FoI request shows

Lack of information raises fears over environmental impact of the AI boom

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Aruna Chandrasekhar @arunacsekhar.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Summer in Mumbai was brutal and endless. The monsoon's poster child was running out of water. In a dispatch for @equatormag.bsky.social, I wrote about living with extreme heat in a broken city and limits to resilience. With🔥 images by @ishantankha.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/cit...

equator.org

City of Sweat • EQUATOR

A vision of our overheated future on the streets of Mumbai

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Dr Clea Bourne @cleabourne.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Arguing exactly this in an article I’m writing now.

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Dan McQuillan @danmcquillan.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Fisher/Jameson said "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". And yet, that act of imagining alternatives is urgent; if AI tells us nothing else, it tells us that capitalism is actively imagining the end of us.

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Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 25/08/2026

A Wall Street Journal op-ed bylined by a hedge fund billionaire was flagged by Pangram as AI-written. The author admitted it, and now it seems the WSJ is standing by him. Per reports by @jeffstein.bsky.social & @maxtani.bsky.social

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dan sinker @dansinker.com · 24/08/2026

I drove thousands of miles across the country this summer and the number of data center cooling systems I saw being trucked across interstates was astounding. A few years ago, you’d see windmill blades pretty regularly. But this was orders of magnitude more. Every state. Everywhere.

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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

With AI companies increasingly hungry for workplace data to train their models, "there’s just a massive expansion of what counts as commodifiable data,” says D&S’s @cariatida.bsky.social. www.fastcompany.com/91593881/why...

fastcompany.com

Why Spirit Airlines' internal data has become a hot commodity for AI companies

Google, Micro1, and Mercor have all bid millions for the carrier’s internal data, as AI companies race to buy the records of how businesses actually work.

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Reposted by Dr Clea Bourne

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 22/08/2026

What will the Pentagon say? "We can win the campaign against the bond market from the air, sir"

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Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Happy 10 year anniversary of the best mic drop on Twitter. Hard to believe it’s been so long! Congrats @astrokatie.com

Katie Mack @AstroKatie
16h
Honestly climate change scares the heck out of me and it makes me so sad to see what we're losing because of it.

Gary P Jackson (RAT) @gary4205
@AstroKatie Maybe you should learn some actual SCIENCE then, and stop listening to the criminals pushing the #GlobalWarming SCAM!

Katie Mack @AstroKatie
@gary4205 | dunno, man, I already went and got a PhD in astrophysics.
Seems like more than that would be overkill at this point.

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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 09/08/2026

I love a longread that provides a glimpse into an industry I know nothing about (in this case, ice), and surfaces fascinating and surprising information!

texasmonthly.com

Inside the Billion-Dollar Industry That’s Keeping Your Beer Cold—and Saving Lives

Ice is essential in so many ways. So why does thinking about it give some of us a case of brain freeze?

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Antulio Rosales @antuliorosales.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I have a new piece out that synthesizes the past few years of research in Latin America on cryptocurrency adoption. The political economy of cryptocurrency in Latin America www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... in @econsocjournal.bsky.social. Thanks to @sshrc-crsh.canada.ca for their support. 🧵

tandfonline.com

The political economy of cryptocurrency in Latin America

This paper explains the political economy of cryptocurrency expansion in Latin America. Based on qualitative research and in-depth interviews, the paper explains the motivations that promote crypto...

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Dan "Mr. Bones and Me" Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

UC and UAW are sponsoring a bill to authorize a $12 billion bond offering for research funding. I have been barking up this tree since COVID but it's really only a rich private school here and there that have done it. Obvs you want the money without the debt but still a serious political advance.

edsource.org

University of California pushes for $12B scientific research bond to counter federal cuts

Amid federal cuts and funding uncertainties, the University of California is advocating for a state bond to fund scientific research projects at California universities.

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

it's always odd when "you should expose yourself to more diverse ideas" always means a certain kind of conservatism instead of like, Indigenous art, new fusion foods, math paradoxes, or the Dvorak keyboard layout

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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The long, doleful story of how the University of Kent sank. Can't vouch for all the details, but apparently it took 7yrs, £29m in restructuring and £2m in consultancy to accept the inevitable: effective takeover. My view? You can delay, but not avoid, the inevitable. shepwayvox.org/2026/08/05/u...

shepwayvox.org

University of Kent Financial Crisis: Cuts, Consultants and Merger with Greenwich

For six years the University of Kent cut jobs, closed subjects, sold financial breathing space and promised recovery. It spent £29.4 million restructuring itself and awarded at least £1.9 million o…

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Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

"Tenbury Wells ... the United Kingdom's first "uninhabitable" town, not because the water has made it physically impossible to live there, but because the withdrawal of insurance has made it financially impossible."

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Rob Isaac @rmi.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I’d love to know what people outside the industry think “data centre” actually means, because no one I know expects them to contain any jobs at all. As someone who has built several: any employee is a design flaw.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

watched the odyssey last night. film ruined by everyone speaking english instead of ancient greek.

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herman mark schwartz @thunen.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

even if only 1% has been skimmed, that's $130 million. 🌮 has famously said that he controls disbursements. kleptocracy gone wild. financial times 22 july 2026

The US has collected about $13bn of Venezuela’s oil money. Where is it?
Washington has given diverging accounts of where the earthquake-shattered country’s funds are going
financial times 22 july 2026

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

We had a prompt injection attack yesterday that I think was via using Google Auth to log into Claude (so, um, DON'T DO THAT). An API had been installed that was issuing commands to our inboxes and authoring emails - we managed to shut it down relatively quickly but watching it unfold was 👀

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PEIPolitical 🇨🇦 @peipolitical.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Eby: "I feel sorry for Americans. If you can't be friends with Canada, then you almost certainly do not have a friend anywhere in the world. And that is a very lonely place to be." #cdnpoli

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

furiously tapping sign

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

The Society for the History of Technology conference extended its call to late August, & this year’s conference will be all online. Details below if you’d like to submit. Also, I’m putting together a panel that has 1 or 2 more slots on it, so lmk if (1/2) www.historyoftechnology.org/annual-meeti...

historyoftechnology.org

2026 SHOT Annual Meeting (Virtual)

Visit the post for more.

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I needed this message again. Maybe you do too.

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