iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Donna Haraway, of course, not Nick Harkaway! 😆

I came to these idea’s via eg Harkaway’s ‘situated perspectives’ and should read more Mishra et al., thanks!

It’s a black-crowned night heron morning, I guess! bsky.app/profile/debc...

000

Oh hey thanks someone at TU Delft for putting a scan of the editorial I was thinking of online: filelist.tudelft.nl/TUDelft/Over...

filelist.tudelft.nl

Also I am a middle-aged intellectual woman with a solid right cross so I‘m pretty sure I *could* take Elon, it’s just that I’m not stupid enough to make decisions on that basis.

As I’ve written elsewhere, if you pride yourself on your intelligence and discernment, one very important reason to be aware of societal and your own implicit biases is that it keeps you from saying ahistorical, easily falsifiable, or just plain stupid shit.

Always dinner for black-crowned night-herons, wading into the hunt when other birds are asleep

I have a soft spot for the black-crowned night heron, because I first saw one in the Charles River while walking to MIT twenty-odd years ago and was, “what is that?” Seeing them in the city is such a wonderful indicator of how the river’s been cleaned up. www.cambridgeday.com/2021/10/02/a...

cambridgeday.com

Black-crowned night-herons live in Massachusetts wetlands, calling “kwok" in the darkness as they fly at dusk to their hunting sites. Then they stand at the water’s edge or wade into shallows and wait...

040

Reposted by Deb Chachra

John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Put a reminder on this, I loved her first booK INFRASTRUCTURE. Approachable without being simplistic, a genuinely fun read on some very crunchy stuff.

25216

[also though it was funny that the exterior shots didn’t look like California to me but still looked kind of familiar? and then learned it was shot in Vancouver like, the month I moved here]

140

Right? I also loved the use of the Payola$‘s “Eyes of a Stranger” although I can only find it hilarious that a song that I identified immediately is apparently the quintessential ‘lostwave’ track, which is why it was used.

I think there is a second cat in the shadows on the other side of his right leg...

040

Thank you! It really is a complement/follow-up to HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS (thinking about matter and bodies, vs energy and networks), in part because I always get asked, “so what about lithium?” I’m pretty excited I get to dig into these ideas in a sustained way.

140

Thank you! I’m really excited I get to spend some time digging into these ideas.

010

Reposted by Deb Chachra

Pedestrian Fatalities Associated With Halloween in the United States

Your spooky season reminder that there is a ~40% jump in pedestrian fatalities on Halloween compared to control days (and a 10x increase in risk for little kids). Closing streets is a great idea. It’s also an excellent night to avoid driving if you can. Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This study examines 42 years of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data to establish whether Halloween is associated with an increased rate of pedestrian fatalities.

310240

Also this, of course — unsurprisingly, I’m interested in the same sorts of issues but for educational pathways and experiences (eg apprenticing in the trades for young women) bsky.app/profile/erin...

060

Conversely, there are a lot of smart kids in college who’d be happier working with their hands (I’ve taught lots of them) but AFAICT we don’t have great pathways into the trades, especially not for women/NB people. I dream of a Climate Corps-backed analog of my college for the energy transition.

0111

Yeah, I’m assuming that’s the same mechanism that Seattle is using, and I suspect many more cities have block party permits than advertise them as Halloween closures.

020

Pedestrian Fatalities Associated With Halloween in the United States

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This study examines 42 years of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data to establish whether Halloween is associated with an increased rate of pedestrian fatalities.

310240

Reposted by Deb Chachra

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

look, if you're worried about being remembered, don't try to pursue immortality or whatever, the smart move is to start selling substandard copper and then make sure anyone who complains deposits a physical copy of that complaint in a site that will later be archaeologically significant

231194153

Reposted by Deb Chachra

APTN News @aptnnews.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Memorial Cloth is a 60-metre commemoration the honours the names of thousands of children that died as a result of residential schools in Canada. It is displayed each year as part of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation event on Parliament Hill.

215799

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

@hjm.bsky.social @drhypercube.bsky.social I'd just like to make sure you see this (Millennium Falcon!) -- the artist is Tom Deininger. bsky.app/profile/jona...

192

Reposted by Deb Chachra

Today in Canada we observe Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, also known as Orange Shirt Day to honour the Indigenous victims and survivors of residential schools and their families. It’s a good day to read the TRC list of 94 calls to action and think about progress we still need to make.

indigenouswatchdog.org

Calls to Action - Indigenous Watchdog

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada believes that in order for Canada to flourish in the twenty-first century, reconciliation between Ab...

04517

Reposted by Deb Chachra

Josh Hadro @hadro.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How do you show a whole digitized book in one thumbnail? Modern books have illustrated covers, but in research collections the cover is often a plain library binding. So I made Flipbook: hover over a book from any #IIIF source and flip through its pages. hadro.github.io/flipbook/ #GLAMsky 📚📜

49630

Reposted by Deb Chachra

Jenny Holzer @jennyholzer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

DEVIANTS ARE SACRIFICED TO INCREASE GROUP SOLIDARITY

12316

Mass. startup transforms old electric car batteries into better-than-new ones

There’s a bunch of research and startups in this space, but this is the one I‘m most familiar with — recovering the lithium and other elements for reuse. There are so many good reasons to never dump EV batteries. www.wbur.org/news/2022/01...

wbur.org

A Massachusetts startup has an innovative method for recycling lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. The company says the recycled batteries are cheaper and perform better than new ones. Th...

012

Reposted by Deb Chachra

Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 30/09/2026

This is a photograph of the edge of one of Saturn's rings, looking down from above. Those spiky dark shapes are shadows. Shadows of giant towers of ice and dust grains clumped together that rise up to three *kilometres* above the 10-m thick rings.

A series of bands cross the image from left to right, brighter at the bottom and darkening towards the top. A band of empty space is at the top of the image. About a quarter down from the top is a complex pattern of jagged, spiky shadows cast onto the rings. The icy towers casting the shadows are seen here at a highly oblique angle.

16475132

I mean — there’s been a bunch of new historical scholarship (like in the last 20 years) that reflects the experiences of colonized peoples, and a lot of that is truly fucking horrifying. I am confident that future historians won‘t be daunted by studying our times.

150

oh my goodness you are in for a TREAT

I like this piece (and it explains a lot about teenaged-me loving Forsyth’s DAY OF THE JACKAL) but I admit to being a little sad that GROSSE POINTE BLANK doesn’t feature in it. :)

3111

Rover Leaves Tracks in Morse Code | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Meanwhile, the Mars rover has tires that say ‘JPL’ (in Morse code) *because* they are expected to skid: www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/rover-l...

jpl.nasa.gov

131

Tom Larkin @tomlarkin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

That is the weirdest looking stray cat I’ve ever seen. :)

010

Reposted by Deb Chachra

We’ve spent many, many hours over the past few months searching the rock pools of Cornwall for a rainbow sea slug. Today, we finally found one! Absolutely worth all the time we’ve spent - it was truly breathtaking.

27941307

I am not a historian but I *know* enough historians (also enough eg social media researchers etc.) that I fully expect it will be viewed as fascinating and infinitely rich. *admittedly, there might be some selection bias around the kinds of scholars who hang out with *me*

130

The thing about being me is that you think i) non-toxic batteries for biomedical applications are cool as hell, and ii) a world where dead batteries get tossed onto a compost pile instead of being e-waste is even cooler.

1364

The thing about having a radiologist friend like @gammacounter.bsky.social is that you will learn, in incredibly well-documented detail, how dangerously life-threatening swallowing button batteries are to kids. [link via @pazsays.bsky.social, who also got to hear about it]

1258

When I was doing research on solitary bees, I got my doctor to write me a prescription for an epi pen to carry with me because I realised I’d be out in the field with students, a mile or so from our cars, and if someone turned out to be allergic to bee stings, we’d be >30min away from help.

030

I’ve been fully brainwormed by @anthonymoser.com’s observation that Altman only has three facial expressions, so now whenever I see a photo, I note which one it is (here: ‘processing bad news,’ with overtones of ‘saw a ghost’; the third is ‘jackass’).

0187

Thanks, Paz. I gotta admit, I knew @gammacounter.bsky.social would have direct experience, but I was unprepared for just how dangerous button batteries are. I do want a future where dead batteries get tossed onto the compost pile instead of being e-waste.

230

Well, I still have to write (most of) it so I think you probably have time. :)

000