iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rested for 45 minutes, which helped. Then hit up a friend for hugs. Then therapy. I’ve been seeing my therapist for 25 years now, and it’s incredibly soothing to be with him. Today I lay down on the carpeted floor for a deeper sense of grounding. Parking says mood stable. Plan to be in bed by 8:00.

Photo of a blue car closely parallel to the sidewalk. Shifting, and particularly rising, mood affects my proprioception. I can’t park like this if my mood is unstable.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 29/09/2026

Euthymic but frazzled and I’m not loving our brain right now. Had to get up early (4 AM) for work this morning and wish I had been able to sleep in.

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My IRL friends call me Chris @christyceeck.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Canadians deserve a voice in our country's direction -- and no matter what the CEO of Canada Inc. believes, our voice wasn't a one-and-done in a polling booth on April 28, 2025. #GiftLink 🎁 #CdnPoli www.thestar.com/gift-redeem?...

Carney has been keen to grab the lectern and discuss lofty issues — from Canada’s place in the world to the nature of global co-operation itself — at international forums such as the World Economic Forum and the European Parliament. But rather than merely address global policymakers and CEOs, he should talk to Canadians about these issues, too. Because the world can’t be changed by one man operating the machinery of one government: change comes from whole populations acting in common purpose.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 26/09/2026

Was reminded this week that I can have a brutally honest tongue. Most of the time I try hard to be compassionate and kind, but sometimes I will say what I think and feel without any sugar coating. Made worse by the forethought and intention behind words that will cause harm because they are so true.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 25/09/2026

The things you do when your barber is away...

selfie of me in a teal t shirt smiling at the camera. i have buzzed my hair off. i have a full grey beard, a moustache, and am wearing back glasses

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David @davidmordecai.com · 25/09/2026

Is it real, or is it AI? Do I care? No.

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Joe Pierre, MD @psychunseen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Blogpost #187: AI Chatbots Aren't Intelligent, Much Less "Superior" They don't think, feel, or know anything either. Let's stop saying they do. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psyc...

psychologytoday.com

AI Chatbots Aren't Intelligent, Much Less "Superior"

AI chatbots don't "think," "feel," or "know" anything. Let's stop pretending that they do.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 22/09/2026

🌱 From last week's Chrysanthemum and Dahlia society show at the Toronto Botanical Gardens

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026

Organize *with* people, not *for* them. It’s different

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David @davidmordecai.com · 22/09/2026

So I come home today to an envelope with a membership card for the Ontario NDP. I am a member of, and monthly donor to, the Federal NDP. This feels presumptuous 😅

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026

AGAIN! You do not need to fear "superintelligent AI" "going rogue" & killing humans, when HUMANS keep putting regular, everyday shitty-assed, extremely error-prone "AI" into potentially life-&-death-crucial systems. It does not have to be "powerful" to do that! It can do that & still be very shitty!

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Actually, the Democratic mayor of NYC meeting with the Republican President of the United States is *not* remotely comparable to the Democratic House Minority Leader meeting with the unelected, unappointed, unofficial grifting son-in-law of the president.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It's interesting to me that these guys put so much energy into refuting (what they think we meant by) "stochastic parrots" and maybe not as much into refuting the (solid) research connecting "AI" to eugenics, racism, and fascism. >>

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David @davidmordecai.com · 20/09/2026

“one of the things Trump did well was to talk about how the economy was rigged. What’s become clearer, as Trump built a gilded ballroom and billionaires lined their pockets, she said, was that the president and his friends were the ones doing the rigging.” Yet 30% still support him. 🤷🏽‍♂️

theguardian.com

‘People are pissed off’: anger at the elite and the establishment is fueling this year’s midterms

Coming midterm elections are starting to be framed not as right versus left but instead the ‘well-fed versus the fed-up’

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Rav @rvbdrm.com · 20/09/2026

I don’t know why this is happening, but please enjoy.

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Erica Ifill @wickdchiq.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

“Being both Black, zionist, AND a neoliberal is crazy...”

Post from blerdwithoutfear:

I just watched Symone Sanders and Eugene Daniels tone police and chastise Hasan
Piker about respectability politics for almost 1 hour and 20 minutes...
Got no smoke for Israel's genoice of Palestianians, the Republican party killing affordability, actual fascism, people having to live on the streets, or any other actual problems in the world, but got plenty of ammo for a Twitch streamer because he was more correct than he was polite.
Being both Black, zionist, AND a neoliberal is crazy...
CLOCK IT with SYMONE & EUGENE

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𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐞 🌵 @davidleegardens.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Potting Up Cactus Seedlings | Demonstration + Timelapse

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Citizen.Coping @propcazhpm.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

This Frida Kahlo painting is as damning and instructive as it is profound. #ArtSky

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/09/2026

Every now and then I see myself referred to as an "AI Denier" and I want to be clear I acknowledge "AI" exists, it's just I think it's a massive energy drain, created from theft, implemented poorly for inappropriate tasks by loathsome tech executives who get hard at the idea of the rest of us dying

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Trevor 🇨🇦 @trevorsideas.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Canada Post gets a lot of undeserved negative coverage of late but I have used their services many a time without complaint. UPS, on the other hand, is ALWAYS a problem. They cost more, they have hidden fees, they misdirect shipments, and their customer service is horrid.

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Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It still blows my mind that AI is being used for anything as serious as war

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David @davidmordecai.com · 19/09/2026

Just was dreaming that I was at an amusement park with my sister. She had left me alone for a bit. In the distance I was watching a ride called the hanging gardens with gondolas suspended in the air and while I was watching the whole thing fell apart. Ugh.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Pope Leo’s funniest moments are when he temporarily forgets that he is a global public figure being watched constantly and is simply Bob from Chicago quietly saying “what the fuck” over and over in his head without bothering to keep his face from showing it

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Andrew Dyer @andrewdyer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Now all we need is a Rubella outbreak for the antivax trifecta

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Karla Ortiz @kortizart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

“An astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and the “largest theft of labor in human history” is what a Microsoft executive privately said about GenAi as shown in newly unsealed court filings. And these court filings get worse. These execs knew all along the immense theft they committed.

404media.co

‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft

"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."

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David @davidmordecai.com · 18/09/2026

Watching PM Carney address the issue of associate EU membership, apparently off the cuff, on the news and it’s one of those times when I appreciate his strengths as an uber-bureaucrat (not a dimension of his personality as a leader that I generally see as a strength).

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Relentless extractive capitalism devoid of care resources? Ongoing collective trauma that we refuse to acknowledge because there might be implications for extraction? You don’t say.

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My IRL friends call me Chris @christyceeck.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"It could end up being “a generational turn away from the United States” I don't think it is a 'could' so much as a 'will'. #GiftLink 🎁

And even if the gesture by the E.U. ends up being more symbolic than substantive, it shows how Mr. Trump is upending global relationships in ways that will be difficult to undo.

“We should see this action from Canada and the E.U. as a direct consequence of Trump’s actions and rhetoric,” said James Batchik, a deputy director at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. “The rhetoric around making Canada the 51st state, and the threats against Greenland, which are still highly, highly, controversial and remembered in Brussels, are really reminders for both sides that the United States is not necessarily that trusted ally that it once was.”

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Actually absurd that he won’t step down at this extreme point. Complete elder abuse

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Seems bad when the people in charge of overseeing our nukes say shit like this.

Brandon Williams, Under Secretary of Nuclear Security @ENERGY and @NNSAnews Administrator:

The era of primarily emphasizing Stockpile
Stewardship is over.
Going forward we will be defined primarily as an organization focused on weapons production.
7:17 AM • 9/14/26 • 28K Views

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David @davidmordecai.com · 14/09/2026

Among many other things, this means that the price of gas is likely to be higher than it has ever been right before the US midterms.

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Emathion 📯 @emathion.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The French made a short film about what could happen after all immigrants would follow the ‘white, angry old man’s’ advice to go back where they came from.

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 13/09/2026

An AI flyer is a brown M&M test. If your event or business is cutting corners by using an AI flyer, where else are you cutting corners? What else are you cheating out on? Why should I be bothered to go somewhere you couldn't be bothered to promote with a little of your own personality?

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David @davidmordecai.com · 13/09/2026

I love this thread. One thing I will say is that in my experience Jamaican women do not need this pep talk. 😂

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David @davidmordecai.com · 13/09/2026

My mother, @refracting.bsky.social, has been reading her poems to me probably from before I was born, and six decades later my whole body will still quiver with joy and excitement to hear her. This is from The Book of Mary... [My mother standing at a podium reading from one of her books.]

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

With my mom, @refracting.bsky.social, and Olive Senior, for "Voices from the Jamaican Diaspora" at the Toronto Botanical Gardens. At these things, I get asked "so, are you also a writer," and especially with the hubbub about LLMs, the question reminds me that narrative is foundational to our lives.

Me crouching behind, and with my arms around, my mother and another woman who are sitting behind an author table with their books in front of them on the table

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

One of the things that being bipolar has taught me is that connection to others and their support can sustain sanity when I am also having unusual experiences of consciousness at the edge of psychosis. It's disturbing to witness this happening to people enthralled with anthropomorphizing machines.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

Good lord. I find it good to be mindful of how I interact with bots and AI but that's about me and consistency in my own conduct, not AI having rights or feelings. AI rights support the disrespectful and destructive approach the tech broligarchs are taking towards the environment and the rest of us.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

Hard to believe it’s been a quarter of a century, a third of an average life. Most of us can remember where we were when we learned about the crashes. My memories are also of visiting the site the following December. It was still smouldering, and a turn of the breeze would bring the stench of death.

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

From puppy time this morning with Owen the Great Dane!

A selfie of me and a fawn great Dane. We are both looking at the camera and you can see the sun lightning our eyes I'm smiling and wearing a Tilley hat

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David @davidmordecai.com · 12/09/2026

One of my housemates (who is a close friend) is going deaf (and won't suffer discussion of the topic). His husband is both very emotional and very opinionated. There are times when I am very glad we have suites at opposite ends of an 1,800 square foot condo.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 10/09/2026

I started translating the announcement into plain English, but got too depressed to continue before I even reached the most pernicious parts in the "full letter" linked.

Dear Colleagues,
The U.S. National Science Foundation was established in 1950 to keep American discovery at the frontier. That mission has not changed. But the political landscape has. So it all ends. Now.
We've heard this message clearly from researchers across disciplines and settings. Science today is no longer a straight line from laboratory to application. We aim to cause maximal harm to universities by diverting funds elsewhere. Rather than investing public funding to generate massive positive externalities, we prefer allowing billionaires to set the scientific rese agenda . Someone—you’ll never guess who—convinced us to pour what money we do spend into AI.
To meet this moment, NSF is embracing a portfolio approach, where much more of our funding can be diverted to industry. We are expanding who carries out NSF-supported work and how, to enable ambitious, multidisciplinary inquiry at the scientific frontier, where frontier is defined as what we want to fund. We will find and support exceptional students and early-career researchers, at the stage when research creativity is high, so long as they US citizens of the right kind. Our new Office of Metascience will implement unproven methods to make a show of assessing the effectiveness of new initiatives, and more importantly will leverage that Gold Standard Science bullshit to eliminate programs in geosciences, basic biology, all aspects of social science, and anything else that makes the Christian right uncomfortable.
We’e already pretty much gutted the entire agency. Funding is at a near stand-still, and the agency has become unresponsive to researchers to a degree that was unimaginable only two years ago. We know none of this succeeds without you, NSF's staff, reviewers, awardees, students, and partners across academia and industry. NSF's role is to create conditions for exceptional science to happen more often and more frequently. We are redoubling our commitment to do so through these efforts.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 04/02/2025

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

thebullshitmachines.com

INTRODUCTION

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David @davidmordecai.com · 10/09/2026

This and the thread it is from: “It is dangerous to distract ourselves with a fantasized AI-enabled utopia or apocalypse which promises either a ‘flourishing’ or "potentially catastrophic" future [1]. Such language that inflates the capabilities of automated systems and anthropomorphizes them…”

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