iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

That is a movie made for a narrow audience (but I’m in it). Kind of perfect that it bombed at release. Will probably eventually make it up.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12h

Ok off to see Digger. Putting a lot of trust in the Bsky takes here.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12h

Would be far more surprising if their offices and computers were clean, honestly

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 14h

Y’all, I hate to rain on the dead bot parade, but the Yandex data center destruction doesn’t seem to have significantly impacted social media bots. I made temporal graphs of X posts about AfD around the time of the attack and there’s no sign of a sudden dip or residual impact on that conversation.

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 14h

And here’s X posts by minute for posts containing “AfD” on October 10. No sign of a rapid drop in X posts that day or anything weird between 6-8pm PDT. Just a normal daily pattern.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 15h

I’ve been a fan of Apple TV for years, and have used it as a streaming box due to Apple’s relative responsibility when it came to things like privacy. Today’s announcement was a miss in just about every dimension, especially on the “always on” Siri microphone and the price.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 17h

Yes those go without saying

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 17h

Moving back into a rural setting: deer friends in the morning, bluebird landing on my car right after I park. Daily red and grey foxes hanging out. Did not realize how much I missed the connection with nature. Slowly transforming my yard with an additional six trees to rebuild the canopy.

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Chris Marcum 📖 @csmarcum.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I'm often asked, "does public comment make a difference?" It can, even when it's informal. Here's a great example of an agency being responsive to feedback it got from the public, as covered by Madison Alder in @fedscoop.bsky.social : fedscoop.com/opm-terms-us...

fedscoop.com

OPM updates terms of service for USAJobs data following user confusion

The human capital agency again updated terms for its USAJobs application programming interface to reflect that the data is public and expressly allow analysis.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

If only someone talked about how the “what happens if you’re wrong” revealed political alignment sometime last December. (Did not expect rebranding to be how we got to superintelligence.)

techpolicy.press

What Happens When 'Superintelligence' Doesn't Appear in a Few Months?

We must question the motives of the techno-optimists and their political goals, writes Cole Donovan.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Practically, hard for me to imagine a situation like what Roberts constructed where the Executive tells the Attorney General to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Just seems weird to me. The text reads more like it’s the responsibility of the President to faithfully follow the law.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Thread. Constitutionally, sovereign immunity seems to be limited to the legislature rather than with the executive. Realize this goes up against 200 years of American constitutional practice and precedent, but I truly believe that’s what the document actually says and that we landed elsewhere.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Remarkable how well this has held up except for the bubble popping thing. Just replace “blog” with “Sub” for Substack and it’s gold

youtu.be

Here Comes Another Bubble v1.1 - The Richter Scales

YouTube video by TheRichterScales

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Looking forward to diving into this

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Remembering that time I went to my local game store and they had this on the shelf

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

And just to be clear: the LUCAS drones created by DoD to compete with the ultra-low cost Iranian Shahed drones are now shy of twice as expensive as they used to be.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

We know how these companies operate and how Musk attempts to lock down and corner specific markets. I fear that a few short years will be enough for critical dependencies to deepen to the point where we’re even more deeply captured than we are today.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

3) And we’re watching SpaceX do what they did with Ukraine, which is jack up prices/demand additional financing when a dependency is established. They’ve also been using the position given them by DOGE to force their way into DOT, DHS, and White House infrastructure.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

2) As the Trump Administration pushes to exit the TraCSS space situational awareness/space traffic coordination system, DoD is providing SpaceX, which just launched their Stargaze platform, giving them an edge over their competitors.

breakingdefense.com

EXCLUSIVE: SpaceX given unique access to DoD space tracking data, sources say - Breaking Defense

Commercial space monitoring firms are concerned SpaceX's ability to use the best DoD data could threaten the market, sources tell Breaking Defense.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Couple of important data points, here: 1) SpaceX is retiring the Falcon 9 and the deployment mechanism for Starship appears designed primarily for Starlink. This is creating a launch bottleneck for all other space companies, while Starship is designed to primarily launch Starlink satellites.

thespacereview.com

Coming to terms with the end of the Falcon 9

The Falcon 9 has been one the most successful launch vehicles in the history of the Space Age, but it won't fly forever. Jeff Foust reports on how the space industry is coming to grips with the loomin...

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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This seems to be a total collapse of ethics review. There is a reason that experienced scientific and medical researchers review studies that involve human subjects. Another safety valve is usually the funding agency, which normally wouldn’t let this through. But, you know…RFK Jr.

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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This is a disaster. The ethics committee in Denmark that approved the Guinea-Bissau study which will withhold the birth dose of HepB vaccine “had never considered medical studies before but it changed the rules in order to vote on this one”. Four members of the committee have resigned in protest.

theguardian.com

Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 10/10/2026

Many homes in the northeast & in Alaska are heated with heating oil- basically diesel fuel. Now because of the administration’s war & energy policies, families are going to pay a lot more to heat their homes this winter. Our paper shows how folks heat their homes: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Map of primary heating fuel by US census tract, from our paper https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2753-3751/ae69e6/meta

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also level of infighting also under appreciated. You can see evidence of it from the outside—some of the inside reports are fascinating. But it’s crazy how many things, particularly Natsec, are constructed to avoid the President’s involvement or to divert his attention. Unitary executive indeed…

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Not sure that this supports crowd out. Simpler explanation is that the rest of the economy, and in particular the construction industry, is in deep trouble while AI investment remains bananas. Just as bad. How many general contractors building single/multi family residences can build data centers?

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Flagging that the notice of proposed rulemaking for optional practical training, establishing a $100,000 fee effectively for folks seeking to remain in the United States after completing their degree, is up on regulations.gov. 35 percent of STEM workers with PhDs are foreign born and U.S. trained.

regulations.gov

Regulations.gov

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

To be clear, as one-time aerospace engineering student, I still think a permanent science lab would be awesome.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We’ve been saying this since long before I was born. Lunar night/dust plumes/radiation are all are still a thing. (If we’re counting permanent technological presence that we can keep using, those laser retroreflectors are already up there so mission accomplished?)

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thoughts on the intersection of findings that the administration diverted $1.4B in NSF funds away from investigator-initiated research and today's New Golden Age of Science Summit showcasing the White House's preferred political priorities of what constitutes 'science'.

joshuasweitz.substack.com

A Compromised Mission at the National Science Foundation

Rhetoric heralding a New Golden Age of Science obscures what is evident: the White House is undermining capacity for investigator-led basic research.

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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

🧪 This is fractally wrong. Wrong at all scales.

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

My comments in there as well

Dampen criticism

European endorsement of the Kyoto Vision might dampen domestic criticism of the Trump administration’s science policy, some in the US fear, by suggesting international support.

“What we saw from Germany, Japan, the UK and other countries, is an impulse that the administration has exploited with our own science reform movement, a belief they can use dialogue to make things better,” said Cole Donovan, director of science policy at the campaigning group Stand Up for Science. “In practice, the administration has done the opposite.”

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

So it turns out that the U.S. government changed the wording in the final version of the Kyoto Vision from "artificial intelligence" to "super intelligence" without securing the consent of the other countries. The German government is now on the record confirming this to @sciencebusiness.net

sciencebusiness.net

Concern after Europeans endorse US science agenda

Germany’s biggest research funder has said it is “concerned” after Berlin, plus several other European countries, endorsed a controversial US-led science policy statement.

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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh wow. This will raise further questions about the risks of using openai's systems.

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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

CODE "REVIEW BOTTLENECK"

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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

So, the question is “to the extent permitted by law”, which begs the question: what is the basis for the Executive’s claim that it can bind the Smithsonian to EO in the first place?

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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The tricky part here is that while OMB controls apportionment, it is unusual to say in an apportionment, that the funding is bound by an EO that potentially contradicts the statutory framework of the Smithsonian.

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Katherine Eban @katherineeban.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

SCOOP in @rollingstone.com 👇 CDC has set aside new $1.6M for controversial hepatitis B vax clinical trial in Guinea-Bissau, halted earlier amid uproar over medical ethics. CDC director's office resurrected it, taking $$ from global health security funds: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

rollingstone.com

CDC Is Moving Forward With a Previously Shelved Controversial Hepatitis B Vaccine Study

“It’s a wholly unethical trial, and it shouldn’t be allowed,” says Dr. Paul Offit of Guinea-Bissau study

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

My sister is a butcher and my family is from Santa Barbara in a nutshell

Product Preferences
Maintains steady Mexican cooking ingredient supply
Product Preferences
Selects premium meat cuts
Departments
Mexican Cooking Ingredients
Product Preferences
Favors authentic Mexican ingredients
Departments
Premium Meat Purchases
Brands
Prefers VIVIDO NATURAL for dried chiles

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

#GoldenAgeofScience: "The move comes after the Trump administration implemented a raft of policies that have upended postgraduate academic research, including in STEM fields. Doctoral programs have been roiled by more than a year of cuts, freezes and uncertainty around the federal research grants"

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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This. 100 million sounds like a lot until you consider the number of US universities (approx 5k), the size of the U.S. student population (a little less than 20 million), and the overall size of the US research enterprise (nearing one trillion prior to 2025). This money was already there, too.

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Nature @nature.com · 07/10/2026

None of this year's science Nobel Prizes have gone to women. The number of these prizes to go to women remains at 27 out of more than 600. See how many you can name in our quiz: www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

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