iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 17h

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads:

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 12h

I feel like the debate about what parts of AI are good and what parts are bad should wait until we solve the worldwide crisis caused by the fact that almost of all of its evangelists in both tech and govt are morally, intellectually, and ethically unequipped to oversee it, when not downright evil.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 14h

wonderful reminder of the funniest dynamic of the mayoral race, where sliwa clearly liked mamdani and was delighted to see him humiliate cuomo also, more politicians should do this! get your flu shots!

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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 20h

This is a guy that the media has promoted a dozen times in the last few years. He was on Bill Maher's show two weeks ago as a reasonable conservative.

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Warren Terra @warrenterra.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There are things that muddle the issue. I genuinely don't know whether Kirsten Gillibrand is on the take or it's ideological capture, she's been socialized by crypto fraudsters so much that she just thinks they're good and normal and of course they sincerely saw the very real potential in her son.

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Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰 @urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“No they really believe it” is a way better heuristic for understanding political actors than “they are on the take” 9 times out of 10. Sometimes beliefs are downstream of materialism and political economy. But these relationships are more complicated than “bribes”

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For a long time I've wanted a sense of how trump has or hasn't interacted with chatbots (we know he posts a lot of slop sure). And this TIME anecdote about Grok arguably leading Trump into war is just extremely bracing

Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him. In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

The text spam has only started getting truly unmanageable in the past couple of years.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

They could start by not asking for your phone number, which they don’t legally need.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

And while it’s not ActBlue that is *directly* responsible for the scam texts — it’s the campaigns they provide your data to who turn around and sell it, and they could just as easily do that with a direct donation — they absolutely need to do more to protect the donors who use their platform.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

Many campaigns don’t have a direct contribution option, at least not for ordinary small-dollar donors — you’re forced to use ActBlue.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

Replying “STOP” to a text doesn’t even stop texts from that organization — it only stops texts from *that specific number*, and all of these fundraisers have effectively unlimited numbers they can text you from. www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

“Once you’re in the system, you’re in the system,” Peace said. There’s really no way out of it entirely, he added; “If you just say, ‘Stop,’ yeah, that number has to stop texting you, but whether it’s that organization or another organization that’s leveraging that same data, [someone] is going to try to reach you.”

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

The worst of it is, it’s not even Talarico or Ossoff’s campaigns sending the texts! It’s third-party scammers, who pocket up to 90% of each contribution!

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Alyssa S. @drsepinwall.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If I want to donate to someone & the require me to give a cell phone… I close the page and don’t give them any money. It’s such a mess!

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

Which, as ActBlue well knows, DOES NOTHING because once the campaign you donated to has been given your personal info, they will immediately turn around and sell it to predatory scammers, and the texts and emails will never, ever stop.

If you want to stop receiving emails from a group, you can usually find an “Unsubscribe” link at the end of most emails.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

ActBlue could actively combat this by not including a field for your phone number. They don’t need it, it’s not required, but people often don’t realize they can just leave that field blank. Spam filters for texts are still less sophisticated than spam filters for email, which is why they want it.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

It’s not the only reason, of course, but imagine if you bought one magazine one time, and then your phone was forever after blowing up with texts from every other magazine in existence saying “If you don’t buy this magazine, our rival publishers will kill this dog.”

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 02/10/2026

The unceasing, unstoppable deluge of spam texts is honestly an underrated reason for the Democratic brand being in the toilet.

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you need to send a fundraising email with the header “We know you’re not an ATM” maybe it’s a sign you ought to reign in the grifter consulting firms that are alienating supporters with a constant stream of panhandling spam to raise money that mostly gets poured back into their own coffers?

Dem fundraising email headed “We know you’re not an ATM”

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Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

People whose knees hurt are not amiable.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Calling Vance "the most ordinary man imaginable" is so softly savage, you have to admire it.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Pretty clear to me there’s a very good case against this man for mass murder, and I’m saying that in as measured a fashion as I can. He’s order the killing of 234 people under no plausible war or legal justification. I am skeptical he will ever face legal accountability for til his but he should.

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Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Latest WSJ poll: "63% want to pause AI development 61% want a billionaire wealth tax 59% want Medicare for All 57% want a $20 minimum wage 58% want to end U.S. military aid to Israel" This is the center of the country politically. it is time all adjust to this political spectrum, esp. media.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026

i think cox should spend less time weeping about polarization and more time working to convince his co-partisans not to abandon pluralism and liberal democracy

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

If you see this post a vampire that isn’t Dracula. Philly Joe Jones as the Bebop Vampire. (*Not* Dracula. *For* Dracula.)

Philly Joe Jones, Blues For Dracula album cover

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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"If Warren G. Harding had kept his hands off Teapot Dome, gas would be under two dollars a gallon."

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Nayan Ramachandran @thetrin.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026

Oh my god, AI is the anti-life equation.

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Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Reading, and writing, are holy. I love reading novels because they tell me something. They say: "this is what someone believed enough to dedicate months or years of their life to say." This is just as true for the trashiest pulp as it is for the highest literature.

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pork, cheese, broccoli rabe @garlicbuffalo.gobirds.biz · 30/09/2026

the funniest part about this is that claude doesn’t have a separate feature called “vinyl mode” this guy is just giving premade prompts to feed to the normal chatbot

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Something remarkable is happening: James Talarico is running an expansively pro-immigrant campaign in Texas, a state Trump won by 14 points, speaking in Biblical terms about our duty to "the stranger." And it's resonating. That's seismic. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2160...

newrepublic.com

In Texas, Something Seismic Is Happening—and It’s All Trump’s Fault

Thanks to the economy and ICE, Trump has lost Texas Latinos. And James Talarico is developing a humane pro-immigrant message that’s resonating—even in this ultra-Trumpy state.

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Casey Michel @cjcmichel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is similar to the big lesson of Russia's war in Ukraine: you can't worry about what dictators claim are things that "humiliated" them. They're going to claim they were "humiliated" no matter what, as with Putin. You have to act in your own national interests—and in the interests of democracy.

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Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I also think about Elon saying Biden's DOJ wouldn't prosecute Sam Bankman-Fried because he was a Dem donor... followed by Biden's DOJ nailing SBF, who now posts about how awesome Trump is so he can get a pardon.

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Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

About a decade ago, Levandowski (of Waymo and Trump pardon infamy) founded a religion dedicated to the worship of an AI godhead. Did anything ever come of that? I can only find references from 2017.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/09/2026

Trump is standing like no human has ever stood before

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

Even Warren questioned this choice at first, until we revisited Hampton’s original!

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

But in every other version — including every vocal version — this note is performed as the b7th. (A Gb in the original key of Ab.) This also works, and gives a bluesier inflection, but I strongly prefer the uplift of Hampton’s original natural 7th.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

In the original key of Ab, this note is G, the leading tone of the key. Lionel is quite insistent about this, playing a G every time in this spot in the form. I really love this choice, and it works even better with the lyric, giving a the impression of light in an unexpected place.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

No I'm talking about the note on beat 3 of the 12th bar — in vocal versions, it’s the “I” in “I could see the midnight sun.” In almost every other version, this is played/sung as scale degree b7. But Lionel plays the *natural* 7th here, brightening the line. (“The major lift,” as it were.)

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

This led me to an interesting note choice in Hamp’s original — and no, not the clam in the third bar of the first A, where he leaps up an octave (B to B) instead of the tune’s signature major 7th (B to Bb). (All respect to Lionel, that’s clearly just a whiff.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzk7...

youtube.com

1947 Lionel Hampton - Midnight Sun

YouTube video by The78Prof

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

I also did a deep dive into the history of this song — the Lionel Hampton-Sonny Burke one, not the Zara Larsson one — when I was writing my arrangement for Warren Wolf and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P8u...

youtube.com

WARREN WOLF | Frankfurt Radio Big Band | Jazz | Vibraphone | full concert

YouTube video by hr-Bigband – Frankfurt Radio Big Band

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

Congratulations, Suno, you’ve invented Slop Pandora.

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Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 30/09/2026

Wait, wasn’t Suno supposed to be a creative tool? Your AI songwriting partner?

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Kip Manley @kiplet.myatproto.social · 30/09/2026

Ah, running the infinite personalized music feed through the earbuds, when the most transcendentally ethereally perfect passage plays, my God, it's beautiful, he wants to hear it again, he wants to share it—but what was the prompt? Nothing he tries seems able to recreate that haunting perfect sound—

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Can we go back to this part of the Schmitt poster: at best, what were these texts supposed to show or prove? i thought they’d be some mention of the Hawkeyes, however dumb they’d have been, but no, not even that. You couldn’t make them more boring if you tried.

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Weird the AI didn’t catch that

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