iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 14h

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Peter Butler @peter-butler.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

here's their sort of logic at work either AI will kill us all, or AI will solve climate change so climate change isn't really a problem bsky.app/profile/rach...

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My favourite dad game is turning The Wheels on the Bus into a naptime call and response game based around animal sounds. When the little boy is too sleepy to tell me what sound the elephant on the bus makes, that means he’s ready to be put down in the crib.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It really has been a while since we’ve had a new good ol’, corn-fed, made-in-the-U-S-A cult, so there’s something morbidly fascinating about seeing one explode into moment in time when people lack the context to recognize it for what it is.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I never thought of myself as a moralist, but now that I'm being subjected to a dozen gambling ads every hour I'm ready to go smash up a casino like a 1920s temperance crusader.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It is, I have to say, incredibly annoying that AI safety includes both some quite serious risks, some plainly massive economic and political force, and, yes, some genuinely serious people, but mixed across it some very bizarre cults with the most deranged ideas you have ever seen in your life.

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Justin Ling @justinling.ca · 17/09/2026

Over the last two weeks in Europe, I heard lots of solidarity around Trump's threats against Canada — and painfully little recognition that the American president is an existential threat to Europe, too. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

thestar.com

Justin Ling: On his latest trip abroad, Carney needs to warn Europe: Trump is coming for you next

During my own recent Euro trip, I kept meeting people terrified by the U.S. president's autocratic turn yet blithe to the threat he poses to them.

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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Americans serving cope in response to Max's use of "mandate" here. Like, yes, Trump did not win 50%+1 of the vote. YOU STILL RE-ELECTED HIM AFTER A COUP, WORDPLAY CHANGES NOTHING

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Elizabeth Sandifer @eruditorumpress.com · 15/09/2026

The problem is that "while you weren't looking the tech industry was comprehensively taken over by a cult based around a piece of Harry Potter fanfic" is self-evidently an absolutely ridiculous claim that can't possibly have happened, which is a real problem given that it 100% did happen.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

To understand how someone can keep working at a project they sincerely believe has a 10%+ chance of killing everyone on this planet, you have to understand that they sincerely believe the balance of that 100% is that they find the fountain of youth for themselves, personally.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

When I was a kid, I thought Caligula's horse was a story about the unique oddness of one Roman emperor.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/09/2026

yeah, this stuff is far from my area of expertise, but i have yet to see anyone convincingly explain how the causal chain is supposed to operate here. it feels like the "AI will kill us all people" spent too much time watching Terminator 2 and the Animatrix.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm teaching myself a golf swing. Today was great; I was all over a range marker waaaay beyond my distance. So far, I needed to check. Tonight, I can report, in this year of our Lord, 2026, the marker I hit is 3D-modelled in Google Earth & an accurate 175 to the mat. The internet is *wonderful.*

A blue cone from a Google Earth image, representing a driving range marker.

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Emily St. James @emilystjams.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

No “it’s not REALLY a comedy!” discourse has confused me more than the “Widow’s Bay isn’t a comedy” discourse. Few shows have made me laugh as much as that one and from a wide variety of joke types!

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Whatever you may feel about the validity of the AI risk discourse, it is so deeply *funny* that this is the guy these AI CEOs need to jump to their side at this moment.

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It seems to me like recent advances in renewables and medical technology are as likely to transform human civilization as AI but the former two sectors have less flamboyant hype men.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I'd love for someone to provide a coherent explanation of how they believe LLMs are meant to cause human extinction. Like, by what plausible mechanism do they do this, and how?

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14/09/2026

Elsewhere on Bluesky folks are noting that The Kids These Days aren't much into Douglas Adams. As someone who is much into Douglas Adams (and in fact wrote an intro to new edition of his works) allow me to remind folks that it's not actually surprising when The Kids aren't into decades-old stuff.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The Ontario Review Board has ordered Waypoint Centre for Mental Health to take a series of actions to address the harms caused by locking Andrew Azevedo up in psych. isolation for five years. Andrew is one of the men at the centre of Jacques Gallant’s remarkable ongoing investigation for the Star.

thestar.com

The Star profiled Andrew Azevedo’s five years in isolation. Now his Ontario hospital has been ordered to take action

The Ontario Review Board has ordered Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care to implement measures "recognizing the harm done by seclusion."

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That’s good Bluesky

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It’s a small thing, but I wish BlueSky had an easy polling tool. Sometimes you have thought you want to do a temperature take on, y’know?

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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I think the discourse on AI risk has far too quickly moved beyond the question of to what extent this is sleight of hand from people who've proven themselves untrustworthy on exactly this issue. Like, my 4-year-old kid has started saying "bruh," and we can all agree that is *far* more concerning.

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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Oh man, this story is big, and kinda wild. Too much to excerpt out but I think my favourite detail is that Trump's idiotic antagonism of Italy's Meloni has been to Canada's direct advantage.

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Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

After the NBA smashed the Clippers, @pablo.show was asked over and over, do you feel validated? He wanted to say no. But after growing up in a crumbling media environment, and after pouring so much into his Pulitzer-winning podcast, he struggled to admit: yes, he did. www.thestar.com/sports/rapto...

thestar.com

Pablo Torre uncovered the Kawhi scandal and won a Pulitzer. He’s still searching for something more

The Los Angeles Clippers-Kawhi Leonard cap circumvention case as presented on “Pablo Torre Finds Out” has been his masterpiece. It’s only part of his story.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is a good example of how you need quite a lot of detail of how these systems *actually* work to understand what the risks are, and how over-indexing on sci-fi can lead you a bit astray on what the future looks like

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Wait, is Cyle Larin the second best striker in England?

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

“Seriously but not literally” is one of the most damaging received idea of our time, man.

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

W/o getting drawn into the "seriously or literally" / "it'll never happen" trap, we need to stomp *hard* on the continuing effort to undermine Article 1 power of the purse by saying that this or that revenue stream makes something outside the normal budget process. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

nbcnews.com

Lutnick says Trump’s $5,000 checks for Americans wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds

A top White House official suggested Congress would use a budget process to fund them. Vice President JD Vance had said tariff revenues.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I genuinely think heads should roll at the city over the choice to grant this permit. In part (not the largest part) because there is zero chance the city permit was anywhere close to worth the value of this airspace as a literal goddam billboard over the most expensive real estate in Canada.

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Toronto Star @thestar.com · 11/09/2026

Rosie DiManno writes: A quarter-century has passed since then. An entire generation has grown up with no real memory of the strutting twin towers, ugly monoliths on the Lower Manhattan skyline, yet they represented American power and ambition and modernity, pillars of strength, seemingly inviolable.

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How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 11/09/2026

Someone on Reddit filmed an aerial drone advertisement in the night sky in Toronto and if this is real, it needs to be banned immediately. #TOpoli

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John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

ooh, rare case of a local commercial use that's federal jurisdiction

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Imagine this being your life for just these six hours. Ontario's Waypoint Centre for Mental Health care has long deemed it standard practice for ill people like Jake Gordon to be locked up alone, continuously, in rooms like this one — with nothing to do but pace. For Jake, it was five years.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Ban this. Holy crap. Ban this and then shame the people who coceived of, designed and OKed it. www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/...

reddit.com

From the toronto community on Reddit: Toronto downtown right now, drone show?

Explore this post and more from the toronto community

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

PSA: Wasting your time on the conspiracy theory that Digger, the upcoming Tom Cruise movie, is actually a secret musical is a more fun and overall more constructive use of your time than worrying that the robots they’re feeding sci-fi novels may one day kill us in a plot out of a sci-fi novel.

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Ben McKenzie @benmckenzie.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is literally a plot point in “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis. Written in 1935, it predicts the rise of a fascist populist who promises each family $5,000 per year if he’s elected.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It is a deeply weird thing to work for a project and also go around telling people you believe your work could wipe out humanity. And not weird like ominous and threatening weird — it’s ridiculous weird. Like, no serious person would do that and then say that. It’s *laughably* unserious stuff.

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

imagine being a menswear writer and having to go back to writing about this fall’s best socks after reading anthropic employees say AI might destroy humanity in a few years

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

When Ontario's Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care keeps its patients in locked isolation, this is what it looks like. Jake Gordon, who has schizophrenia, lived like this for five years. Another man has been in seclusion for 20 years and counting. Remarkable journalism from Jacques Gallant.

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Toronto Star @thestar.com · 05/09/2026

🎥 Watch: Jake Gordon, a 30-year-old Toronto man with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, lived in isolation at Ontario’s only maximum-security psychiatric hospital for five years. This surveillance footage offers a rare glimpse into his life being held in seclusion.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

this is actually worth listening to. not because it's that more insane than most other stuff. but it's a window into how he understands trade. and he understands in the sense of having no idea how anything works.

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Damien Moule @damienmoule.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I get annoyed by the sheer scale of the mismatch. 2025 had the lowest number of homicides in Toronto in 40 years (during which our population increased by a third), and 2026 is on pace to be 20% lower than last year. Just an enormous unprecedented drop, and people are trying to drum up fear.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

With all due respect to the Americans who sincerely feel otherwise, this is who you are.

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67 Sound @67sound.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I’m not sure NBA fans in general understand how much Raptors fans are enjoying this. They blatantly cheated to steal Kawhi, they lost a generational superstar in the pursuit, they won exactly nothing, and the franchise is ruined for the next decade. Perfect.

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