iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 10h

“No, Sam. I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass.”

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

bit weird given the play is written in early modern English but I'd pay to hear Ēalā Rōmēo, Rōmēo, for hwȳ eart þū Rōmēo? Wiðsace þīnum fæder and forsac þīnne naman; oþþe, gif þū nelt, swere mē þæt þū mīn lēofa sīe, and ne bēo iċ nā lenġ Capulēting.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The last post on this thread needs to be: "I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name"

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New: An "expert witness" in a $61 million lawsuit over an industrial explosion that killed three people and destroyed 200 homes used ChatGPT to write his report for the court. He prompted ChatGPT to "show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding" www.404media.co/show-how-3m-...

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

This. We need to be able to talk about how someone like Vought is a Christian, but has absolute garbage theology. Without having public conversations about theology, we end up shouting isolated Biblical passages like it’s going to be some big “gotcha” move.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

The White House seeing a slight crypto rebound and seeing if they can convince people to “Buy the dip.” There’s a non-zero chance the next release contains “President Trump calls on all diamond hands Republicans to hodl.”

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

As Karl Marz said in his hit song, “You make me feel like I’ve been locked out of the means of production.”

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Well, it looks like sandwich shops in New Haven are going to have to get “pomodoro” and “soppressata” off their menus.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

I just got done watching a truly horrible movie at Sundance ("The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist"). It was introduced by the Sundance programming rep as having "a strong sense of informational integrity", but it's hard to imagine a characterization more off the mark. A long thread 🧵>>

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Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Sometimes someone writes to my intermittent @newyorker.com advice column and sets me up in a manner resembling Payton alley-ooping Kent www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

THE FOOD SCENE
HELEN, HELP ME: ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF CHEESEBURGERS
A New Yorker food critic answers questions about burger toppings, beef tallow, and the subjectivity of memory.
By Helen Rosner
January 18, 2026

How do you approach the sweetness of
pickle relish on a cheeseburger? Does it
complement or compete with ketchup? There was a legendary place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that used to do mustard, relish, and ketchup, and I can't for the life of me decide if I loved it, or if I just loved being there in the middle of the night eating it. — Brian K., N.Y. C.

Honestly, I've never really considered pickle relish to be one of the hamburger's totemic toppings.
Sliced pickle rounds, certainly; spears on the side, without a doubt. But relish, that finely chopped, neon-hued, marmalade-textured stuff? To me, that's a hot-dog thing-which I mention here not to issue judgment but rather to illustrate how distinct my own personal associations are from your own. Herein, I think, lies the answer to your real question, which is not actually about the sweetness of the relish. The question of what toppings make a burger great, while we're eating it, is both technical and trivial, having to do with the nature of the patty and the bun, the mood of the establishment serving it, the sensibilities of the person eating it, even the time of day or night or life.

Regarding the substance of the burger itself, the same accoutrements that might show a slim, lacey-edged smash patty in its best light—a little slick of mustard, a few circles of raw onion, and a melty cap of American cheese, say-might be too flimsy against the brawny heft of a half-pound bar burger that can sustain degrees of sweetness, richness, and piquancy (your barbecue sauces, your secondary meats, your nontraditional cheeses) that would suffocate a smaller patty. But what you're really asking, I think, is what makes a burger great not as it's being eaten but as it lives on in memory.
Or, more to the point, how can we know that our memories of happiness are true? I spend an inordinate portion of my professional life creeping around in my own psyche, untangling knots of nostalgia and pleasure and, god, so many emotions, not least self-love and self-loathing, all of them unavoidable colorants of any bite I take. I give myself the task of locating some sort of unassailable, uncontaminated truth: that this dish of dumplings, or that cocktail, or such-and-such restaurant is actually, inarguably, wonderful. It's impossible, of course, and more than a little absurd, but it's so irresistible, isn't it, to attempt to discharge the burden of our own experience?

Was that burger you ate from the Tasty, in Harvard Square? I think it must have been, and it's been nearly thirty years since that perfect little sandwich shop closed forever. I imagine it was a simple construction: a bun, a patty, a slice of cheese, ketchup, mustard, relish. But you created it, just as much as the white-capped guy standing at the grill did. The mouth and brain and cascade of sensations were yours. There is no true burger per se, lurking behind your experience of it; it didn't become the burger you ate until you ate it.
It's a ludicrous idea, this notion of an objective culinary truth, but it's even more ludicrous that we're so quick to doubt our own taste in pursuit of it. Just as I go looking for proof that my rapture— or, at times, misery—at a given meal has nothing at all to do with me, here you are wondering whether you should append an asterisk to your reminiscence of a long-ago cheeseburger, one that you could never eat again, even if the Tasty were still up and running. Why question a recollection of sweetness, even of the pickle variety? You did love the relish. And you love the person you see in your memory: a young man, awake in the middle of the night, a burger topped with relish in his hands.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or alice in chains

Batman Forever: Music From the Motion Picture

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Andrew Israel Ross @aiross.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Merry Christmas! My state of the field essay on the history of sexuality in Modern France was published in open access yesterday by @frenchhistory.bsky.social. Check it out at academic.oup.com/fh/advance-a...

academic.oup.com

Review article: the history of sexuality in modern France

Sometimes, when I explain that my research expertise lies in the history of sexuality in modern France, the follow-up is some version of a question: ‘so I

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Symeon Stylites would like a word. Probably several words actually.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

I heard about this book on @lollardfish.bsky.social ‘s This Guy Sucked episode, and I’m very excited to dive in once my grades are in

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

The problems are all the basic functions of everyday life that, we will be told, can be done by Good Responsible Not-Gen AI. And that’s just (say it with me again!) a permission structure for eviscerating public services & core forms of human negotiation that are necessary to a functioning society.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Something to keep your eye on. Popular discourse is starting to turn against AI, so new frameworks are being built to continue selling it. We are about to see a flood of media that qualifies AI: “Gen AI” is bad and overhyped but “predictive” or “analytic AI” is responsible and good. +

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

“Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.”

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Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Recently, Blake Gutt and I had the great fortune to sit down with @eocieslik.bsky.social & record a converation for the Whiplash pod with @maxwellkuzma.bsky.social on medieval trans & genderqueer saints--and why they matter today, more than ever #MedievalSky 🗃️

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

It was as if a million right-wing and centrist pundits suddenly cried out and were suddenly silenced.

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 20/11/2025

The Punctuation Collection™️

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Marsilius of Padua has entered the chat

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Maybe it’s the medievalist in me, but the pope’s next move is exceedingly obvious: place the US under interdict. Nobody gets the sacraments until everybody gets the sacraments.

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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

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Safiya Umoja Noble, PhD @safiyanoble.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

This is one of the best analyses of the total grift and scammery of AI in education I’ve seen, and it is a MUST Read: “Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI - defector.com/higher-eds-r...

defector.com

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector

If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message. “Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began. So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

"Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here."
Anna Bower
Monday, October 20, 2025, 5:40 PM
Share On: f X inK My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about
the Letitia James grand jury.

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Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Hello friend!!

A white hand holds a hardback book, Towards an Accessible Academy, edited by Alexandra R. A. Lee, Hope Doherty-Harrison and E. R. P. Champion

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

This is the moment the “30-50 feral hogs” guy has been waiting for.

Canada’s giant 600 pound super pigs are invading the US - too smart, too tough, and nearly impossible to stop

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

So I'm prepping a slide for a class wherein we're using an excerpt from Einhard's Life of Charlemagne to talk about primary source analysis. I was looking for some estimates on Charlemagne's height when I came across this gem from Google AI.

Is Barack Obama a descendant of Charlemagne?
AI Overview
Yes, Barack Obama is a descendant of Charlemagne, the 9th-century Holy Roman Emperor. While many people of European ancestry can trace a connection to Charlemagne, a 2012 genealogy study by Ancestry.com and other efforts by genealogical historians confirm Obama's direct lineage back to the emperor through various ancestral lines.
How is this possible?
Shared Ancestry: Due to the extensive intermarriage among European royal and noble families over the centuries, many people with European ancestry are related to Charlemagne.
Unifying Ancestry: This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "unifying ancestry" or "universal ancestry," where populations in a specific region share a common ancestor from a distant past.
Barack Obama's Lineage: Research has detailed Obama's path of descent, including his connection to the first American president, George Washington.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 08/09/2025

I respect Anil so I want to talk seriously about harm reduction and public health messaging. First let me acknowledge that yes, many regular, not-super-online people are trying out AI tools. Of course they are! It's been aggressively pushed into everything and given heavy institutional support.

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Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Oh 😮 ! In Our Time is a programme solely committed to intellectual broadcasting, and it’s enormously popular. Melvyn Bragg is a titan, and his stepping down is the end of an era

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Aside from the fundamental misunderstanding of fascism, can we fucking stop labeling modern anti-science as medieval? This isn’t a pedantic point. At the basic level, RFK Jr’s brand of anti-vax bs doesn’t exist without social media. But more importantly…

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

“Instead, Robertson said, voters are distracted by the political noise of President Donald Trump’s policies, while the real drivers of grocery sticker shock—labor shortages and tariffs—continue to tighten their grip.” Those “real drivers” are the results of his policies.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

I, for one, welcome our robotic failsons.

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

I’m saving this for my “why study the humanities” talk for the incoming first-years. If you’re wielding your humanities education as a cudgel against others, you’ve failed your humanities education. Unless it’s against fascists. Then, swing away.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 08/08/2025

Premium Newsletter: The enshittification of AI has begun. With GPT-5, OpenAI has cut access to all other models, reducing the value of even their $200-a-month subscriptions. They join Anthropic in screwing their customers over by making their products worse. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

wheresyoured.at

The Enshittification of Generative AI

Thanks for subscribing to Where’s Your Ed At Premium, please shoot me an email at ez@betteroffline.com if you ever have any questions. Yesterday, OpenAI launched GPT-5, a new “flagship” model of some...

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

I think a lot of sound, reasoned critiques of this document will be forthcoming in the next few days. I’ll just add this: in the most charitable reading I can muster, the doc seems to endorse use of ai because it is inevitable and here to stay. I’m not so sure. 1/2

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Dr. Verena Krebs @krebsverena.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

...and it's out! "‘People and Things Have Always Been Mixed Up’: Notes on the So-Called Global Middle Ages", my very short essay for the Journal of Medieval History's 50th-anniversary special issue, is now published; limited free access at the link below! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RAEXD...

tandfonline.com

‘People and Things Have Always Been Mixed Up’: Notes on the So-Called Global Middle Ages

This essay takes the 1429 execution of a Persian merchant in Mamlūk Cairo, sent by a Christian king in the Horn of Africa to procure relics in Latin Europe, as a point of departure for reflecting o...

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

They can’t just bring themselves to say “too much capitalism is not good,” so they call it something medieval.

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Hector Diaz @iamhectordiaz.com · 08/05/2025

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

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WOR$T GIRL IN ACADEMIA @medievaliste.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

very offended that none of my friends have texted to ask me what it means that the new Pope is an Augustinian

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

GASP IS HE MEETING WITH THE SYNODAL WAY BISHOPS IN GERMANY?????? GUYS GUYS THAT’S THE WHOLE BALLGAME

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

"Oh yeah; all right; Take it easy baby; say the Mass all night; He was an American pope"

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Genuine question: does this mean that some of the investment capital they raised now converts to debt? @edzitron.com

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Brandon Parlopiano @doctorfuriosus.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

It’s not a misunderstanding; it’s a willful perversion. If one thinks they can sit Miller down, explain his error, and expect him correct himself, then they profoundly misunderstand the moment and the Republican party’s enthusiastic embrace of fascism.

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