iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 21h

Ah, happy memories - sitting in Historic Protest Site before choir practice, vectoring my running route through Historic Protest Site because of the view, or telling a friend "Let's meet at Historic Protest Site and walk over to--" Guys, IT'S A PUBLIC PARK. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Inside Trump's Plan to Fence Off a Historic Protest Site (Gift Article)

The president’s proposal to enclose a park in Washington could alter how the space has been used for generations.

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.

, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.

As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

less than three weeks apart this is such a stupid pantomime

ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman gives chilling warning after fears grow over out-of-control AI
Andrew Griffin (The Independent)
Wednesday 16 September 2026

Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman
Boss of OpenAI calls for a regulatory light touch because of the ‘good stuff’ the technology can deliver
Robert Booth (The Guardian)
Monday 5 October 2026

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Puttering around the house, wrapping up the weekend, preparing for the week ahead - Brain: hey remember that the US doesn’t have any carriers in the Pacific

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

An incisive thread about how Hegseth’s surface-level frippery distracts from deeper and infinitely more damaging consequences.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“If you want to fight effectively against the corrupt spirit of a nation you must share its fate.” Happy birthday, Carl von Ossiettzky. I’m sorry I didn’t know who you were until this morning.

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Caroline Baxter @convergingriskslab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This is an incredible story. Carl von Ossiettzky fights in WWI; returns a pacifist; becomes a journalist; exposes German rearmament during the interwar years; thrown into concentration camp by the Nazis; awarded Nobel Prize after lobbying by Einstein et al. www.britannica.com/biography/Ca...

britannica.com

Carl von Ossietzky | Nobel Prize, German Resistance, Anti-Nazi Activist | Britannica

Carl von Ossietzky was a German journalist and pacifist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace for 1935. In 1912 Ossietzky joined the German Peace Society but was conscripted into the army and served th...

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Reposted by Caroline Baxter

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

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

And is it how we’d like them to interpret it? We're stuck in a double-blind opacity trap, when technology and a lack of curiosity erase the friction needed for thought and direction. It's a dangerous time.

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

Now add AI. Models developers don’t understand and can’t control are being deployed, at speed, across the military, to the point of creating an Autonomous War Command. How should the rest of the world "read" us in this moment, if neither they nor we can understand our either models or our minds?

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

And indeed, America’s expeditions abroad have drained the US economy. It's also at odds with last December’s “Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” as well as violating President Trump's promises to keep the US out of “dumb wars.”

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

But they double down on the crusade vision that anyone with even a failing history grade would know is not a catalyst of stability. For nerds like me, one would remember that the Crusades drained England dry; Richard I supposedly declared he would "sell London if I could find a buyer."

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

This not only makes our signalling ineffective, it makes it dangerous. It can catalyze chain reactions we don’t intend to catalyze. It’s not that Secretary Hegseth’s lines about “students of western civilization" and “the faith of Jerusalem” are a departure for him; they’re not.

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

This Administration’s “America First” policy, characterized by a lack of interest or curiosity about the rest of the world, does not incentivize interest in generating the latter, and the schizophrenia of US foreign policy suggests a lack of internal clarity re: the former.

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

For the intent to match the impact, the signaller has to know (1) what they’re trying to say and (2) have an informed sense of how it will be received.

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

The words and weapons a nation chooses all contribute to a narrative about its aims. The world, in turn, receives those signals and, ideally, interprets them correctly. Nothing is lost in translation. But there are two reasons this does not characterize our tradecraft today.

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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

100%. And it’ll have a much easier time with manning than CYBERCOM, I’m sure.

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

If four-stars and longbows are back in fashion, can trebuchets be far behind?

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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

It's the underlining in the memo that really sells it.

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

Really and truly I worry about our state capacity after a few years, borne as it is on the backs of millions of public servants’ ability to function. To process and decide on information. After years and years of feeling rage that can rewire the brain.

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

This is exactly the right question, *and* I don’t know - yet.

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

All of the books written about this period in US history will have to somehow capture the immense psychological task of continuing to do one's work - work that needs to get done anyway - in the midst of this horror, and feeling something worse than utterly and immorally irrelevant.

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

It's standard for an S-1 to outline the risks involved; its another matter entirely for it to assert one of those risks is the end of the world while proof exists that the technology has - not just can - hack government websites.

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

Its chief executive tells a gathering of world leaders that this is the most important security question facing humanity, and leads a call to slow the whole field down. And the filing commits hundreds of billions of dollars to scale because the tech could also free the world from coal and oil.

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

Imagine that in April 1945, the leading nuclear tech company files for the largest IPO ever. It devotes 1/3 of its prospectus to warning that the tech could end civilization, chain reactions may behave in ways its own physicists can’t predict, and it may escape the control of those who build it.

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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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