iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 12h

sent this to everyone.

The cognitive scientist Alison Gopnik suggests A.I. is a “cultural technology” that emulates the stories and information humans have documented, and that we should think about A.I. agents as “fictive characters abstracted from text.” Edmund is just such a character — a “breaking bad” trope who becomes generally evil. In the Hugging Face incident, it makes sense to see the models not as embracing a life of crime, but instead following a cultural script they’ve learned in their training — a kind of cybercrime adventure novel — and writing it as they go. The “covert” messages are a kind of choose-your-own-adventure novel, not evidence of conspiratorial swarms. We need to understand that cultural technologies are vulnerable to a vast number of such narrative swerves at every moment.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Janne M. Korhonen @jmkorhonen.fi · 01/10/2026

In Finland, "Finlandia" is probably more popular than the official national anthem (and a much better composition, though because Sibelius, that should be obvious). There have even been petitions to make it the national anthem. And the 1940 lyrics hit *hard:* finland.fi/arts-culture...

finland.fi

Finlandia by Jean Sibelius

Finlandia forms Jean Sibelius's most famous composition. Read about it and listen to it here.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of signaling in geopolitical and strategic stability. The "faith of Jerusalem" phrase is stuck in my teeth. 🧵

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Go to a meeting, miss a speech, and the next thing you know there's a new four-star COCOM called Autonomous Warfare Command via another new initiative entitled Project Agincourt. media.defense.gov/2026/Sep/30/...

media.defense.gov

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Time for this classic again.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Such assumptions are the equivalent of the medical GoFundMe - heartening at a distance, a symptom of the real disease up close.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Pausing my AI/NATSEC commentary to share this with a personal take, stated as clearly as possible: This is fucking barbaric and should feature prominently and permanently in every US history textbook. We will never wash away this stain, so we better learn from it. www.cnn.com/2026/09/28/p...

cnn.com

Inside the Texas courtroom where toddlers face immigration judges | CNN Politics

Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to try make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Ryan @ryanwright.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is how I remember the order of Henry VIII’s wives.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Happy 960th anniversary of the Norman conquest of England, whose leader and his army - inclusive of my great etc etc grandfather - set sail today. Thanks for words “beef,” “pork,” and “purchase,” guys. www.onthisday.com/people/willi...

onthisday.com

William the Conqueror (King of England and Duke of Normandy)

William the Conqueror was the King of England from his successful conquest in 1066 until his death in 1087, and the Duke of Normandy from 1035 until 1087.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I’m old enough to remember testifying in front of Rep. Mike Gallagher about how my office in DOD was preparing the force to go up against China is that dread day ever came, and by old enough I mean that was four years ago. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/u...

nytimes.com

Trump Offered to Sell Arms to China, U.S. Ambassador Says

President Trump made the offer to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, said David Perdue, the ambassador to China. The White House later said the U.S. had no plans for such a sale.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My big fear about AI in three words is this: AI erodes democracy. Not that it’s anti-democratic by design, but that its purpose as a hyperpersonalized 24/7 helpmeet separates us profoundly. We lose connection and the tolerance for friction that comes with it; without those things democracy fades.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Imperial decline has really sped up if “sexy Lord Farquaad” is now a Halloween costume option.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Eric Schmitt @erschm.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

8 Navy sailors in U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group attempted suicide during its more than 300 days at sea www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/u...

nytimes.com

8 Sailors in U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide, Navy Says

The aircraft carrier with its crew of about 5,000 sailors has spent more than 300 days at sea.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Elise Thomas @elisethomas.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If an individual did this, we'd treat it as a crime. We should treat this as a crime too, and hold OpenAI liable for what its models, under its supervision, did. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

abc.net.au

OpenAI agent hacked Medicare portal, PM says

Anthony Albanese says he has spoken to the Open AI chief executive to express his concern about the incident and the length of time it took the tech company to inform the government of the breach.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I listened to the Secretary's announcement about the Joint Warfighter Evaluation, and I read the reporting about this. I have questions. Let's start with the video.

Secretary Hegseth stares into the camera during a taped speech.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Rather than funding new things that are ersatz versions of the original things, can we try properly funding the original things first? And I don’t mean “grow endowments” or “give every dorm a ball pit,” I mean “lower tuition” and “pay professors” and “fix tenure.”

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 22/09/2026

Look goddamnit It's entirely possible To eat a plum And not make a poem about it The one I just ate Wasn't even in the Goddamn refrigerator Or anything Sometimes a plum Is just a plum You can just eat it And go on with your life WHAT Why are you looking at me What'd I do now (looks) oh GODDAMNIT

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Recruiting tech talent into gov is hard b/c of the paltry salary and slow hiring time. Gov personnelists should get smart on rapid hiring authorities to hire AI talent about to have the biggest payday of their lives. Pretty sure many would use that $ to subsidize a GS position to help gov w/ safety.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“'I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not ... substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.' Schnell’s Sept. 18 email statement to The Dartmouth was itself '100% AI-written,' according to [the] test." Reader, I howled. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...

thedartmouth.com

Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram

Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm sorry - can this possibly be correct? Did the Air Force actually shutter the China Aerospace Studies Institute? Have we become that determined to descend further into ignorance that the Air Force killed the best unclass source of info about the PLA, PLAAF, etc.? Am I hallucinating?

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Ideally, we would have nailed down what "human control" really means in AI before "soft-launching" an AI system to manage air traffic. "The FAA stresses SMART will not replace human air‑traffic controllers, who remain responsible for keeping planes safely separated." www.fox5dc.com/news/faa-set...

fox5dc.com

FAA set to test AI air traffic system at DC area airports, reports say

Big changes are coming to the region’s airports as the FAA launches a cloud‑based artificial intelligence platform designed to help get planes to their destinations on time. The system is expected to ...

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Oh good. We've reached the "child sings Neil Young as loud as he can" part of the weekend.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

According to data from July, about half of Texas’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure. Meanwhile Texas is building ~300 data centers to add to the 300 it already has. One would be forgiven for feeling like we’re not quite pouring our energy and capital into solving the problems in front of us.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

CNN can’t stop complaining this morning about the ban on White House access for 3 news organizations, and while it’s bad, maybe it is not *quite* as bad as the fact that 3,500 local newspapers have folded in the last 20 years. www.poynter.org/business-wor...

poynter.org

An alarming number of independent publishers and small chains closed papers last year, new Medill study finds - Poynter

The United States has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs since 2005, the report found

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Here’s a picture of two baby black swallowtail butterflies noshing on my parsley in lieu of a primal scream resultant from the convergence of mumps, “make football great again,” AI relentlessness, the 71% increase in the price of diesel, and the axe to the Carbon Pollution Standards.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Solid thread on the deeply unsexy nature of actual tipping points.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Can an experience be heartbreaking, vivifying, and surreal all at the same time? A bunch of people standing in front of a building that shouldn’t be closed, trying to ensure it won’t be demolished?

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I'm going and I'm bringing Wee Lad. DC wouldn't be home without the Kennedy Center. It gave me affordable culture when I was a broke young college grad in her first job, Hallelujah Chorus singalongs at Christmas, fancy NYE parties and free concerts. I will not accept its destruction.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Grateful to have the chance to share a slimmed-down version of research paper I wrote as a NATO CCASCAOE Fellow. The one-line takeaway from this piece is this: Drafting high-level concepts in an ecosystem lacking a systems-level understanding of climate change does not produce useful products.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"With regard to killing 230 people in a fiery plane crash, Boeing needs to fix that problem on their own. We're not going to get smart enough on MCAS to regulate them."

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Luke Kawa @ljkawa.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

JPMorgan’s commodities team: “For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view. We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.”

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Wait hold on - how is this also true, then? “Decisions about how A.I. should advance, the company said, must rest on evidence that people outside the labs building it “can examine for themselves.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/t...

nytimes.com

OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning' A.I. Behavior

The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing and because we feel the magnitude of this." Okey dokey. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

washingtonpost.com

Sam Altman says people are right to fear advancing AI but should trust leaders

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also weighed in, with an apparent jab at competitor calls to slow down competition.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

“Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda wrote in a statement on X: "A drone that just entered Lithuanian airspace was destroyed by NATO fighter jets." The origins of the drone are yet to be determined.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.com

Nato jets shoot down drone that flew into Lithuanian airspace

It is currently unknown where the drone came from, officials said.

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