iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 9h

Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.

8951541303

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Shreya Chowdhary @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social · 16h

Communities are already contesting AI hype—and winning! They show that AI hypers' proposed futures aren't inevitable fates we must adapt to, but ongoing political projects open to contestation. Our paper offers a playbook for challenging hype & wresting back control over democratic futures.

111

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Shreya Chowdhary @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social · 16h

We propose an alternative approach for resisting AI hype: contestation: disorganizing institutional alignment around AI & building collective power to pursue alternative futures. We suggest tactics that AI opponents can use to undermine hypers' legitimacy + build collective political agency.

131

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Shreya Chowdhary @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social · 16h

New #AIES paper w/ @benzevgreen.bsky.social & @tisjune.bsky.social - "Deconstructing AI Hype: A Playbook for Resistance"! Read here: shreyachowdhary.net/files/decons... We argue that AI hype is a problem not because it misdescribes AI, but because it facilitates AI entrenchment.

1138

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 22h

So many questions, all of which speak to the credibility of the Carney government & its overall strategy for managing the Canada-US relationship. 1 “In a statement to CBC News, GAC did not deny that it had concerns with describing the U.S. as a foreign interference threat.” Why not? It clearly is.

cbc.ca

Canada yanks sponsorship of disinformation conference discussing U.S. as a threat | CBC News

The federal government has withdrawn sponsorship of a European disinformation conference that includes panels discussing the U.S. government as a foreign interference risk.

713861

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 21h

“She asked the powers at NASA to let her add a safeguard to prevent that error in a real flight, and they laughed it off as too unlikely… When an astronaut did make that blooper during the Apollo 8 mission, it caused necessary navigational data to vanish, and they called Hamilton in to get it back.”

81022308

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

camhcom @camhcom.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

1577

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Skype a Scientist @skypeascientist.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We at Skype a Scientist are deeply troubled by the closure of the Academy of Natural Sciences. We urge you to contact Drexel University Leadership and Academy interim leader Trish Wellenbach to urge them to reopen the museum. President Merlo president@Drexel.edu Trish Wellenbach tw958@drexel.edu

a block of text with a statement that reads We at Skype a Scientist are deeply alarmed by the decision of Drexel University leadership and the Academy of Natural Sciences Board to close the Academy’s public museum.

Skype a Scientist is based in Philadelphia with deep roots in our city. Making science accessible, in particular for Philly’s children, is a top priority for our organization. We operate in community centers, at street festivals, and at the intersection of science and art. For the last 10 years, we have worked to engage a broader coalition of Philly residents to care for our local biodiversity.

Our program does not exist in a vacuum. The work that we do, alongside environmental education centers, our museums, classroom teachers, and more, create an ecosystem of connections with science. The loss of any part of this fragile ecosystem is detrimental. The Academy of Natural Sciences grounds biodiversity education in Philadelphia. With grand fossil halls, historical connections, and engaging exhibits, it is a place where many Philadelphians develop a love of science. Loss of access to this space cannot be tolerated.

We are living through an erosion of public education, particularly in the life sciences. Philadelphia cannot afford to lose our flagship biodiversity museum.

We call on the leaders of Drexel University and the Academy board to reverse their decision to close the Academy’s public museum. The children of Philadelphia and future generations of Philly-made scientists are counting on you.

0225115

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

NYT tech reporter sings the praises of Meta Muse. It can do everything for you! Even set your fantasy football lineups! My dude... you know that's called "cognitive surrender," right? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/t...

"To test Muse, I experimented with it nonstop for two weeks... I had it perform dozens of day-to-day tasks, including (...) setting my fantasy football lineups."

911189164

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

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

"I belong to a cult. Someone did some research that undermines the core tenets of my cult and came up with a catchy phrase that makes it harder to recruit more people to my cult. This makes me sad."

Screencap of tweet on X from @jackclarkSF (Jack Clark):

"stochastic parrot" was a mimetically-fit cognitive virus that spread from 2021-2025; it temporarily blinded many gifted people to the nature of AI progress, burning up crucial years in which they could have helped think through the response to the situation.
7:34 AM · Sep 20, 2026
·
115.1K
Views

341601364

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

When you hear a fantastical story about AI, you should ask yourself, "How does this serve the political project of AI?" Because, as others have pointed out, that's what AI really amounts to: a political project.

41281309

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Clark retrofitting Musk's "woke mind virus" to any concept that doesn't fit his mental model of AI research is a good example of the way that "AI" functions as a political project with bizarre ideological component.

213432

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 21/09/2026

As Alex notes in this thread, AI doesn't "democratize" science. Rather, it compels scientists to rely on anti-egalitarian means of directing their attention.

322364

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Present & Correct @presentcorrect.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Typology of Pedestrian Walking Symbols walking-men.com/product/hood... Via @kottke.org

26811255

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 21/09/2026

"We didn’t so much lie to you as tell you stories that were untrue. We hoped the stories would add magic to your childhood and reassure you that capitalism is a fair system for everyone, instead of one in which some people can’t afford insulin while other people are Jeff Bezos." buff.ly/KM3opmg

mcsweeneys.net

Son, You’re Old Enough to Know the Truth, There is No Such Thing as the “Invisible Hand of the Market”

“You’ll probably hear this soon enough from the other kids on the playground anyway, so I might as well tell you. Santa isn’t real, the Tooth Fairy is imagin...

4501145

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Why do white men become white nationalists? Interesting new empirical results in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ere we show with three national surveys of non-Hispanic white adults (conducted from 2021 to 2025) that support for white nationalism is (1) higher among white people encountering personal hardship and local social distress, consistent with strain theories3,16; (2) unrelated to local racial composition or recent demographic change, complicating status threat accounts4,17,18; and (3) elevated among white people with close friendships primarily online, consistent with theories of extremism driven by online mobilization7,10,19.

6388154

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 13/08/2026

🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....

Cover of my new book, Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and The Radicalization of a Tech Idealist.

There are two concentric circles in the book, the left being circuits in black an white, and the right being a bunch of dots with orange accents. The cover background is cream. And the words are written in black except for "Un" which is in orange.

762204767

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 14/08/2026

Two married professors and their son are being held in ICE detention, despite being legal permanent residents and having no criminal records. All, apparently, because their mom/MIL was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before they were even born. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

thenation.com

One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention

My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

2721881175

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 14/08/2026

"US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal. DHS sent undercover agents to meetings and infiltrated chats of groups opposing Trump’s immigration crackdown." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com

US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal

DHS sent undercover agents to meetings and infiltrated chats of groups opposing Trump’s immigration crackdown

02514

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Michael Zimmer @michaelzimmer.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I’ve followed Zuckerberg closely for many years and was knee-deep into the Facebook Papers stemming from Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing. Jeremy Strong seems to nail the part, but The Social Reckoning doesn’t seem like a compelling way to raise awareness of what happened, or why it still matters.

021

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 07/02/2024

ME: nothing in this world could hoist me right now MY OWN PETARD:

132333

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Looks like he’s going with “Foreign Interference from China” to start. Get your own Bingo card to play along. bingo.cip.uw.edu/s/dd05af37-5...

bingo.cip.uw.edu

"Rigged Election" Bingo

Spot the tropes before they spread — can you get BINGO?

27116

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

We help you get started in this blog post, highlighting several rumors — based on common rumor tropes — that are already spreading about the primaries, explaining what the rumors are, where we’ve seen them before, and how they mislead. uwcip.substack.com/p/rigged-ele...

uwcip.substack.com

“Rigged Election” Bingo: 2026 California Edition

An interactive game to spot misleading and near-predictable election integrity rumors

1276

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

‘dialectics’ is grad school for ‘there’s two of them’

3194199

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Replies are off so QT even though I find it less generative of discourse: I wrote a book abt Twitter, I promise not wanting to legitimize Nazis/Musk are good enough reasons. And there are others: e.g. threats outlined in this study jumped exponentially after musk takeover & dismantling of t&s team.

amnesty.org

Why Twitter is a toxic place for women

As a company, Twitter is failing to respect women's rights online.

32546101

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Amyville Hoyrror @amyhoy.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

first they like to pretend the brain is a computer but actually it’s a moist sack of goo-meat awash in electricity and chemicals now they’re pretending it’s weird that neurons aren’t acting like solid state transistors, where 1 zap in 1 place means the same thing no matter how many times you do it

1222254

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

When I first started using DuckDuckGo a few years ago it was not as good as Google search. It’s now far better than Google search. Unfortunately this is mostly because Google search has gotten way, way worse, not because DuckDuckGo has gotten so much better.

111035172

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 23/05/2026

www.theringer.com/2026/05/22/n... jesus THANK YOU

1. "They were blocking my path." Not an excuse!
2. "They were touching my car." Not an excuse!
3. "They disagreed with my politics." Not an excuse!
4. "They were rude to me." Not an excuse!
5. "They kept asking me hard questions and filming me with their phones, and I'm a powerful man who's used to being treated with deference." Buddy! You cannot ram your Cadillac into a pedestrian just because you're an easily flustered rich guy! This is so obvious!
At least, I used to think it was obvious. That was before the president of Cornell backed his car into a group of students and got away with it scot-free.

4742188

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Mark Ripley - Games Industry Dinosaur @markripley.com · 16/05/2026

Leaked image of new Apple EV.

EV on its roof, with charging cable underneath; reminiscent of Apple Magic Mouse.

1895783757

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

The Onion @theonion.com · 16/05/2026

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

theonion.com

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

201817316

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

This article is clearly some flavor of rage bait, but (after I stopped sighing at the tone and the contradictions in the argument) it did make me think. www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/dear-... So as one of those lazy, technologically-impaired, boring professors, here's some thoughts. 🧵

timeshighereducation.com

Dear educators, Gen Z here. Could you please teach us like it’s 2026?

Learning has changed drastically in the past five years, but teaching practices haven’t caught up. From your students’ perspective, here’s how to adapt

117819

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

📖 “We are facing an increased risk of avoidable illusions as more research activities are delegated to large language models (LMM) (…) Thinking for ourselves is hard and error prone but worthwhile - and there are no shortcuts to understanding.” — Nicole Cruz (2026). 2/🧵

doi.org

Illusions of Understanding from Outsourcing Thinking to LLMs - Computational Brain & Behavior

Computational Brain & Behavior - Some illusions of understanding are an inevitable part of the research process, while others can be avoided or overcome by careful critical thinking and...

25115

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

joannad-c.bsky.social @joannad-c.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Attention philosophers, x-philosophers and moral psychologists - I'm hiring! Two, 3-year research fellowships on an interdisciplinary project in the Philosophical Moral Psychology Lab at the Uehiro Institute, Oxford. Pass it on! For more info and to apply: tinyurl.com/mrwwuyaw

media.tenor.com

a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

ALT: a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

14134

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Ghoulothy @landbeforetim.myatproto.social · 01/05/2026

Bring back the ancient knowledge

Things you read on a blog might make you angry. They might upset you. Stop visiting that blog. Don't waste your time posting comments. Move on and find a new blog. There are so many fun blogs on the Internet. You'll easily find a better one.
There is always another fun new blog to read online.

56165097379

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

We're coming, DC! @emilymbender.bsky.social and I will be talking about our book The AI Con on Monday, hosted by the Center for Digital Ethics and moderated by Laura DeNardis. Hope to see you there! events.georgetown.edu/digital-ethi...

events.georgetown.edu

Book Talk with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna on their book The AI Con

Join authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna for a conversation about their new book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Futur...

04412

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

fuuuuuuck

On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.

As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in.

“They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he said.

11636091383

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

How do concerns about AI shape people's sense of community & information trust online? CAT Lab surveyed thousands of redditors in @askhistorians.bsky.social to find out. Our survey is special because we surveyed viewers, commenters, and banned accounts. (1/🧵) www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

reddit.com

From the AskHistorians community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the AskHistorians community

1108

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

The most interesting finding from our survey with @askhistorians.bsky.social is a relationship between someone's belonging and a sense of AI use. The more someone thinks AI is being used, the lower they rank their sense of belonging. This may help explain how AI contributes to community collapse.

Finally, we were interested in the relationship between AI use and perceptions of community culture, like affective commitment and information quality. So again, we ran a regression analysis and, as above, are summarizing the results below. Positive and negative results are statistically significant, neutral are not. Because we’re doing statistical tests, these could only reliably be run with data collected from the random sample. The first table reports on community attachment and the second on information quality.

12814

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

ProPublica @propublica.org · 21/04/2026

We asked people who lived in homeless encampments that were cleared out in city “sweeps” to write about what object was the hardest for them to lose. “They took my baby pictures and my moms obituaries,” a man in California wrote. (Published Dec. 2024)

projects.propublica.org

“I Have Lost Everything”: The Toll of Cities’ Homeless Sweeps

Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so th...

31951428

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

11341512055

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

“Google has created a misinformation crisis. Studies have shown that people tend to trust what AI tells them without question…Another experiment found that users still listened to AI when it gave them the wrong answer nearly 80% of the time—a grim trend the researchers dubbed “cognitive surrender.”

16509269

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

In Chapter 13 of my book Copaganda called The Big Deception, I explained why falsifying intentions of those in power is always key to propaganda. And why subtle claims like this are such effective propaganda, particularly against professional class liberal intellectuals: bsky.app/profile/equa...

525858

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

My hottest “I have no data to back this up” take is that phones aren’t making young people less happy. What’s making them less happy is living in a world where everyone is having their reality defined by recommendation algorithms that can only care about whether something keeps you watching.

Young adult happiness is falling. Percent of young people who are pretty or very happy has dropped from 88% to 76% over the last 15 years after having held fairly steady between 1980 and 2010

483106871544

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 09/04/2026

Sam Altman has a new plan to make money from generative AI: he wants intelligence to be treated like water or electricity — and we’ll all have to pay him for it. His chatbots are degrading people’s ability to retain information and think critically. Now he wants to sell smarts back to us.

disconnect.blog

Make ‘em dumb, sell ‘em smarts

Sam Altman wants intelligence to be a utility that you pay him for

38972345

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Thoughtful comments from several scholars about what SCORE findings do and do not mean in this Chronicle piece. [Soft paywall - just need to create a free account.] www.chronicle.com/article/lots...

chronicle.com

Lots of Social Science Didn’t Replicate. Does That Mean It’s Bunk?

Scholars are debating the results of an effort to assess hundreds of papers’ credibility. Where some see failure and cause for urgent reform, others see reason for hope.

072

Reposted by Dominic DiFranzo

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

This new Nature paper (using old models) illustrates the point of my latest Substack post on AI interfaces. AI did a good job diagnosing medical issues, until users had to interact with chatbots, then the interface led to confusion & worse answers My post: www.oneusefulthing.org/p/claude-dis...

3468