iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John D. Bikefeller

Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 16h

That ys great! The starte ys an Earthe Quake -- Foweles, Serpentes, An Aeroplane -- And Lenny Bruce nys not afrayde

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How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 02/10/2026

Listen: I don’t want to minimize the danger of high e-bike speeds. But if the problem here is that stores sell e-bikes that can drive faster than legal limits, then where’s the story about how literally *every car dealership has been doing the same thing for decades*?!?

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Hidden cameras show some stores unlocking speed limits on e-bikes, selling e-scooters that go up to 120 km/h | CBC News

A new hidden camera investigation by Marketplace shows how some stores are selling e-scooters and e-bikes with top speeds much higher than provincial speed limits and with recommended rider ages young...

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Erik Loomis @erikloomis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This Day in Labor History: October 2, 1968. The Mexican military slaughtered students protesting in the Tlateloco Plaza at the edge of Mexico City. The Tlateloco Massacre demonstrated the complete corruption of the Mexican Revolution’s ideals!!!

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

Seriously, unless you're going to call me a "scientist" for helping my son with his class volcano project and call me a "physician" because I applied a band-aid successfully, please please PLEASE stop calling any random crank who shits out a book about the past a "historian"

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Runs with scissors in the dark @tevistickles.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This Capybarra is just exhausted.

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Do yourself a favor and read this for your local elections before you fill our your ballot. It's really useful now and will be really useful after the election.

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Amateur Expert Opinions @amateurexpertop.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

i'm becoming more convinced that Angine de Poitrine, specifically, exploding worldwide represents a "fuck you!" inflection moment/movement toward these greasy dweebs who want to artificially de-skill music & other arts

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Brandy Schillace @bschillace.brandyschillace.com · 29/09/2026

I was negotiating with one of my medical providers, as I needed to delay a thing till I made some money (explaining that I was pitching a new book as we speak). She said: “Why don’t you just become a social media influencer? That’s how everyone sells books.” Now—you probably know the answer. But: 2/

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward

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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!

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Sleestak @sleestak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

and behold a pale horse. and the name that sat on him was death. and hell followed with him

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Alexander Jabbari @ajab.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Honored to give a talk next week at the University of Chicago in the lecture series in memory of Frank Lewis

What Does Grammar Do? Some Answers from Persian Philology

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Elias G Saba @egsaba.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What a headline, lmao. Two of every fact!

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Analysis of 200,000 films released between 1994 and 2023 found that on average, films written and directed by women make higher profits, even though their male counterparts are routinely awarded bigger production budgets www.thetimes.com/article/64f9...

thetimes.com

Show me the money? Films directed by women make the most profit

But research also finds every movie of the past 30 years with the biggest production budget was directed by a man, leading to renewed allegations of misogyny

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John D. Bikefeller @desirepathtarjuman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Proposal: all academic job & similar applications should require a photo of your conference & department tote bags. Prove that you're REALLY part of the profession and how. (Currently hanging chez moi: Iranian Studies x2, IU Bloomington Comp Lit, AHA, Picatrix (bag to advertise a book apparently)

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LOWρUFO 🇺🇦🇵🇸🌍 @lowrhoufo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My higher-ed reform policy is basically: 6 year undergrad, big cheap state schools, let professors fail a lot more students, throw enough money at all the other problems this creates. Failure is normal, you do not need to worry about scholarships

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Star:Line Chicago @starlinechicago.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

No one's hurt more by the "CTA's for the city, Metra/Pace are for the suburbs" mentality than Far South Siders. We need to be able to use the right-sized tools for our regional transit demand regardless of wherever the city/suburban line happens to be drawn, which is why NITA needs to be bold.

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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

… if we don’t discuss how the attack on cultural studies was about PURPOSELY undermining the effectiveness of humanities None of this matters Cultural studies did this got successful and admin didn’t like the result and then sacrificed them to the right And their “colleagues” watched

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利大英 @gblee.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

#China #photography #1980s #Buddhism As promised here's a second series of photographs of Buddhist cave art: photographs of Buddhist statuary from Longmen which was close to Luoyang which became the capital of the Northern Wei (386–535) state. www.gregorylee.net/people-and-p...

As promised here's a second series of photographs of Buddhist cave art: photograohs of Buddhist statuary from Longmen which was close to Luoyang which became the capital of the Northern Wei (386–535) state.

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Laprofmme @laprofmme.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

100%. A bait & switch, because devaluing the humanities is an ideological project, not a budgetary exercise. If they did the tuition math honestly, they would have to recognize that humanities departments are “profit centers” and they can’t have that. So “students” becomes “majors,” and voilà

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ebikes-international @ebikesinternatl.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Another Huge Turnout of Cyclists for Critical Mass Ride in Toronto in Support of Bike Lanes #safecycling #saferroads tinyurl.com/4akerdcd

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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026

Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.

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Amy Elizabeth @amyelizabeth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's delightful how the book The Ming Dynasty Under a microscope has NOT been translated into English, but HAS been made into a prestige tv show with excellent subtitles. We're reading a different book (The Confusions of Pleasure) while watching and discussing the show.

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

That's because the anti-intellectualism of the populists and Far Right is in direct contradiction to the basic foundations of any civilisation

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Brandy Schillace @bschillace.brandyschillace.com · 25/09/2026

Funnier if you mistakenly think his collar are hands and he is either plugging his ears or doing a ‘felt cute, might delete later’

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Isaac Samuel @rhaplord.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Two centuries before the formal abolition of Slavery, an African prince from the kingdom of Ndongo (modern Angola) spearheaded an international legal case against Spain, Portugal, and Italy, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-africa...

africanhistoryextra.com

The African origins of Abolition: African Anti-Slavery Laws in the Atlantic World.

Abolitionism succeeded thanks to the struggles of many movements, some of which were global, while others were local and emerged from pre-existing Anti-slavery laws in pre-colonial Africa that sought ...

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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 23/09/2026

please to see that my latest academic article is out now: "Ghost in the Machine. Crusade Medievalisms in the 21st-century United States" I take on the ghost of Samuel Huntington and some right-wing tropes in scholarship open access so free to read --> www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

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André Loez & podcast Paroles d’histoire @andreloez.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Unpopular opinion Histoire de France : quelqu'un qui serait capable de réciter dans l'ordre tous les rois / présidents depuis les origines, mais sans connaître l'enquête linguistique de 1863 ou les réalités qu'elle illustre, ne connaît et ne comprend en fait rien à la trajectoire historique du pays

carte tirée du livre d'E Weber sur l'enquête linguistique de 1863 montrant un grand nombre de départements non francophones (sud, ouest, est)

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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In 1863, how much of France actually spoke French?

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It ys the seasoun of decoratif gourdes, ye knaves

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Block Club Chicago @blockclubchi.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The Origins Of Chicago-Style Giardiniera. V. Formusa Co., now Marconi Foods, was founded in 1898 by Sicilian immigrant Vincent Formusa. Its brand of the sandwich condiment is the standard-bearer in Chicago. buff.ly/KEy4rug

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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I think we’ve finally discovered the actual much discussed “problem with academia.” People like this in charge. Full stop.

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Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD @mbonsma.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In a massive dataset of over 10,000 cities around the world, the strongest association with distance travelled by cycling was not climate, topography, or even infrastructure - it was *gasoline prices* doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Figure 3 from "Global health and climate benefits from walking and cycling infrastructure" by Adam Millard-Balla, Monisha Reginalda, Yasmina Yusufa, and Christopher Bian. The figure shows factors associated with distance travelled by cycling and walking, arranged in order of effect size. For cycling, the largest effects are gasoline prices, GDP per capita, rail service, steep terrain (negative effect), minimum temperature (negative effect), population density, and bicycle lanes. For walking, the largest effects are population density, gasoline prices, bicycle lanes, and maximum temp (negative effect).

Fig. 3 Caption: Factors influencing active travel. Each coefficient represents the impact of a one-SD change in each variable on the share of kilometers traveled by cycling (A) and walking (B). For each city-level variable such as density, the model estimates a separate coefficient for each country. The shaded area shows the distribution of country-level coefficients; for density, for example, the effect on walking ranges from about zero to ~0.11, excluding one outlier. For country-level variables such as gasoline prices, there is only a single coefficient. Variables are ordered by the size of their absolute effect in the median country—density and gasoline prices have the greatest impact on walking and gasoline prices and income (GDP per capita) on cycling. The minimum temperature variable shows the marginal effect of both the linear and squared terms.

One might expect climate to have a major impact on active travel, and many studies highlight the impact of weather on daily and seasonal travel decisions (9, 25). However, in our model, there is a negligible association between precipitation and the mode shares of walking and cycling. Hotter temperatures decrease walking but have no effect on travel by bicycle. Colder temperatures only reduce walking and cycling in colder climates (SI Appendix for further Discussion). At the national level, gasoline price has the largest association with the share of travel by active modes. A one-SD increase in the price per liter (equivalent to US $0.40) is associated with a ~1.0 percentage point increase in walking and a ~0.5 percentage point increase in cycling—notable given that the mode share of cycling across the entire dataset is just ~0.9%. These findings echo a large volume of research that shows how vehicle travel declines in line with rising fuel prices (26). Gasoline prices also have an indirect effect in promoting denser, mixed-use development (27).

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

So this week we've learned: 1) The AI goons CONFESSED they were committing the biggest theft in history. 2) The data centers really are sucking up all the energy during an energy shock. 3) AI almost caused a World War.

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John D. Bikefeller @desirepathtarjuman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

FWIW I have run across one person who really fit that description, and they were just an atrocious person ethically and in other ways, and apparently not actually that successful in research.

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Bill Corbett @billcorbett.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

As a pragmatic centrist, I read the Niemöller poem differently. After each group mentioned I pencil in what percentage of the population they are, and if it’s a small number I cross off their names as disposable. Poetry is fine but math wins elections!!

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John D. Bikefeller @desirepathtarjuman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Like when Kermit the Frog appears in an evening talk show or something it's very clearly tongue-in-cheek. It would be pretty disturbing if say Jim Henson went around acting like Kermit was a real dude and never breaking character.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026

You are— most likely, post childhood— not being tricked into thinking the traditional cartoon is a real person. All "tilly norwood" is is that attempted trick.

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Nomi Claire Lazar @nomiclairelazar.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

If your research is publicly funded, those funds were not so you could scratch your own intellectual itch, but so the public, who paid for the work, could benefit from it. But scholars so closely associate work w selves that it feels like vanity to trumpet the results. It is not. *It is duty.*

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Shana @shanamd.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I am SORRY for sharing something that was posted on the other place, but this is too good.

The future pope at a party with a caption “they don’t know I’m the future pope”

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."

bu.edu

New Learning Outcomes Announced | English

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Soren Spicknall @sorenspicknall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Photo thread: coupla days in Milwaukee

A photo shows a public walkway railing in the foreground and a midrise contemporary housing complex a couple blocks away, rising over the top of shorter buildings closer to the camera. Further away is a taller residential tower, simple and rectangular in shape with lots of balconies poking out from its facade.

A photo of an old three story cream brick building, its facade mostly covered in ivy, and a small wooden vestibule jutting out towards the sidewalk partially blocked by a tree branch.

A photo of a little white-painted single story brick corner building in a leafy neighborhood, probably originally commercial in purpose but converted into a small house with friendly light green shutters, flower boxes, and paint accents.

A photo shows lanes of a highway in the foreground and part of a highway information sign looming at the top of the vertical scene, with a two story early 20th century apartment building visible on the other side of the highway past a basketball court.

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Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 16/09/2026

Nihar Shah did a heroic experiment for TMLR: he spent 20-25 hours over two weeks interviewing authors of seemingly low-quality submissions about their own papers. He confirmed what we all suspected: people submitting these papers have *no idea* what is going on in them.

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Tom Flood @tomflood.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“Wear a construction vest when walking”

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A friend of mine works in AI and thinks bad things are about to happen. He sold his home and moved his family out the country. He said that if you own a home in a walkable San Francisco neighborhood near a taqueria with good veggie options, you should sell your home for super cheap right now.

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The Misty Miss Christy @tmmc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963 by Bisa Butler 2018 / Cotton, silk and lace / 61"x78" Photo taken at Katonah Museum of Art

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