iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There's a warnin' sign on the road ahead There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them So I try to forget it any way I can

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I show the ad on the left in one of the classes I teach at @defcon.bsky.social. Students often haven’t seen it, and aren’t aware of the countercultural ethos underpinning the early personal computer movement or the way that Apple in particular once marketed itself to people who “think different.”

Political cartoon juxtaposing an Apple ad from 1984 showing Apple smashing the system vs Apple in 2026 kissing Trump’s feet.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I don’t often post on Xtwitter, but when I do, its usually to remind the conservatives who remain there how trashy the people they are empowering really are. #hegseth

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I sent this note to my Senators regarding the Prairieland sentencing.

The letter is too long for alt-text.

It seems clear that this country's future will be darker than it's recent past.

What is the point of writing you? I'm honestly not sure. Maybe I'll get a carefully written form letter back representing a collective position of the Senator's office, and it may or may not relate to what I've written here.

As a citizen I am, in part, personally responsible for these sentences - they were issued by a system that structurally represents me. I want my dissent to be noted. Perhaps it is like yelling into a tsunami. If we were better people we would have a better country.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

This morning @foreignaffairs.com sent out a link to an article by @pkrugman.bsky.social published in 1997 that is relevant to the AI era, which describes hand wringing about job losses due to technological progress as a “failure of imagination.” www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/199...

Suppose that you had approached an economist in 1840, when most Americans were farmers, and textiles dominated the still small manufacturing sector, and informed him that 150 years later some two percent of the labor force would grow all the food and less than one percent produce all the cloth. And suppose you had demanded that he explain what everyone else would do for a living. He could not have given a very good answer, but he could with justice have argued on general principles that the economy would find a something useful for them to do. (Global glut advocates tend to focus in particular on the loss of jobs in manufacturing and find it hard to imagine that the service sector could make up for that loss. Yet we have already seen how it can be done, since the U.S. economy is already overwhelmingly a service, rather than goods, economy. As a Russian émigré‚ neighbor put it, “I don’t understand this country—it seems very prosperous, but I don’t ever see anybody making anything.”)

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

A valuable perspective from Pope Leo on the architecture of social media: www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

The search for truth is an essential element of democracy, which is itself a means of contributing to the common good. When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened. After all, democracy does not consist of rules and procedures alone, but above all of a solid concordance with the facts and a genuine commitment to the good of individuals and society as a whole. Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism.

For this reason, those who control digital platforms and means of communication have a considerable ability to affect the collective imagination and to present a particular vision of reality as desirable. Such power should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth and respect for human dignity, so that the culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance, but rather a setting in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature.

Our first task is neither to demonize nor idolize technological tools, but to utilize them on the basis of a fundamental principle, namely that truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence. We must therefore promote an ecology of communication. On the level of public policy, this entails establishing norms so that the decision-making behind content selection and its development becomes more transparent and protects personal data. Regarding social and cultural aspects, this requires a strengthening of intermediary organizations, serious journalism and forums for debate, where reasoned argumentation and verification carry greater weight than immediate reaction."

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I was told that everyone at the #nokings protests is an idiot and Trump certainly never characterized himself that way.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

A group called Islamic Cyber Resistance “313 Team” claimed responsibility for the DDOS attack on Bluesky.

A screenshot of a post on X which says:

Islamic Cyber Resistance Axis
@Mhwear98

Translated from Arabic

The Islamic Cyber Resistance #313_Team executed a massive attack targeting the Bluesky platform's API application programming interface—Bluesky is a social networking site—where the attack led to the disruption of post visibility and other malfunctions, including the shutdown of the app's registration panel. This means that the social networking site is now completely collapsed and unresponsive.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

We need way more science fiction immediately because the world is going to be completely weird in a matter of months and no one knows how to be anymore.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Republicans have spent years dismantling systems that track and fight foreign information operations because its “censorship.” www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justi...

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

This is the most Orwellian thing I think I’ve ever seen from the United States Government. www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Alito’s dissent, man … he accuses the court of “legislating from the bench” by assuming that Congress intended that President’s use of the military be *lawful.* How dare these crazy judges assume that Congress wanted the President to comply with the law!

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Astrokatie (repeatedly): Everyone who uses AI to illustrate powerpoint slides is an idiot who doesn’t care about the accuracy of the things they are saying. Me: Why are you making that assumption? People use AI to illustrate slides because they can’t afford a graphics design team. Astrokatie:

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

AI enabled police, prosecutors, judges, and jailers.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Have you considered the possibility that absolutely nothing is actually real?

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

My weekend was brightened by this tree, standing in a vacant lot in downtown Atlanta - a life carved within a temporary space, under constant threat, but lived beautifully. A source of joy. One day, some developer with build on this lot, and the tree will be gone. I am thankful for this moment.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Is this bad? Because it seems bad. Anyway, I’m sure it will only go this far and won’t go any further.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

For my friends, everything! For my enemies - the law!

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

I honestly don’t get it. I looked this speech up yesterday in an attempt to understand. This is the key paragraph. Each line is a realistic, if unintended, consequence of a specific view that Bork held. Politicians often make hey out of the unintended consequences of policies they oppose.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Come see our talk on Friday at @defcon.bsky.social! This talk explores the dark potential of modern tech platforms, the things companies and their products are structurally able to do, whether or not they intend to.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

When torture was uncovered at Abu Ghraib, at least the Administration acknowledged that this was wrong, and that there should be accountability. That is the key thing that has changed.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

This essay get right at the heart of the matter.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Economist: “America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain” www.economist.com/science-and-...

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

I’ve seen a lot of video of these two humans (in the top photo) and I’ve never seen them this joyous, even when they win.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Hey everyone, look! Trump has identified a specific domestic industry that you can boycott if you don’t like him!

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

“It was the collective refusal of men to be discouraged by this relentless sequence that is important.”

It is customary to look on Dunkirk as a series of days. Actually, it should be regarded as a series of crises. Each crisis was solved, only to be replaced by another, with the pattern repeated again and again. It was the collective refusal of men to be discouraged by this relentless sequence that is important.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Two months in and we’re already at the “no Americans in Baghdad” phase of reality denial.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Fantastic advocacy by CREW resulted in this ruling which repeatedly calls out Elon Musk on his bullshit. Pump this right into my veins!! I now have a couple of CREW t-shirts on the way.

According to CREW, such an order is necessary because—despite Mr. Musk’s insistence
that all USDS’s actions are “maximally transparent” and that he doesn’t “know of a case where
an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization,” Elon Musk Appears With
Trump And Tries to Claim ‘Doge’ Team Is Transparent, Guardian (Feb. 11, 2025), https://www.
Case 1:25-cv-00511-CRC Document 18 Filed 03/10/25 Page 35 of 37
36
the guardian. com/us-news/2025/feb/11/elon-musk-trump-doge—USDS personnel “are not
operating transparently and may well be ignoring their preservation obligations under the FRA.”
Mot. for PI at 39. CREW points first to USDS’s use of non-governmental systems to conduct
official business. For instance, USDS employees acknowledged using Signal, an encrypted
messaging app with an auto-delete function, during the presidential transition period and into the
new administration, as recently as February 27. Schleifer & Ngo, supra; Patterson, supra. Musk
has also used the social media platform X to solicit job applications for USDS and to poll the
public about courses of action that USDS is considering. Kate Conger, Elon Musk’s X Becomes
Weapon in Government Cost Cutting, N.Y. Times (Feb. 4, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com
/2025/02/04/technology/elon-musk-x-doge.html.
CREW also notes reports that USDS employees have refused to identify themselves
when requested to do so by career officials, further suggesting that the agency is operating with
unusual secrecy. Sarah Cahalan et al., The People Carrying Out Musk’s Plans at DOGE, N.Y.
Times (Mar. 6, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/27/us/politics/doge-stafflist.html. Indeed, Musk tweeted that a poster who published the names of USDS employees
“committed a crime.” Peter Suciu, supra. USDS also allegedly installed an “illegally connected
server” at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s headquarters to store personally
identifiable information about executive branch employees.

Moreover, President Trump’s subsequent executive order directs
that agencies “shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead
assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled.”
90 Fed. Reg. at 9669. This order grants the USDS Team Lead the power to keep vacant career
positions open unless an agency overrides their decision. And the order appears to contemplate
that this authority will be exercised independent of the President.
Second, Musk and the President’s public statements indicate that USDS is in fact
exercising substantial independent authority. At its inception, President Trump trumpeted that
USDS would have the power to “to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess
regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump), X (Nov. 13, 2024, 6:21 AM), https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/18
56658569124262092. Musk, too, indicated that USDS would take aggressive action to pursue its
agenda, explaining that USDS was focused on three areas of reform: “regulatory rescissions,
administrative reductions and cost savings.” Musk & Ramaswamy, supra. In the same article,
Musk and Ramaswamy also suggested that USDS would have the power to identify regulations
due for the chopping block. Id. More recently, Musk noted publicly that he plans to use USDS
to reduce the federal budget by $2 trillion. Gangitano, supra. Presumably, such a staggering
result would require more than mere advice. Musk also took credit for the cuts at USAID,
boasting: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Elon Musk
(@elonmusk), X (Feb. 3, 2025, 1:54 AM), https://x.com/elonmusk /status/18863073168042639

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Here’s the sign I made. I’m also an ActBlue funder. Elon Musk should get off Twitter, sit for a Senate confirmation hearing and get legislation passed to cover his impoundments, and if he can’t get those things, then he doesn’t get his cuts. Period.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Pressure can be effective. Elon Musk reauthorized some food aid after this exchange with Jon Favreau. Elon is an asshole, and dead children are an obvious, foreseeable consequence of “feeding USAID to the woodchipper.” Keep highlighting real world consequences! www.cnn.com/2025/03/03/p...

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

After cutting funding for scientific research and aid for starving children, they are going to transfer our tax dollars directly to crypto grifters:

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

The Melian Dialogue academics.wellesley.edu/ClassicalStu...

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

On the topic of system level deception strategies, here is an entertaining example:

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

What is it going to take to meet the “showing of harm” threshold needed for a TRO against Elon Musk operating without Senate Confirmation?!

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Every time I see an Elon Musk tweet I hear the narrator of the 1980’s Isuzu commercials echoing in my head.

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Tom Cross 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @decius.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

President Elon cancels research into education because he doesn’t want us to make data driven education policy.

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