iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We’re gonna need a hearing about this hearing www.ms.now/news/eric-sc...

Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The lessons from Schmitt’s failed VP launch? The MAGA comms world built around Trump’s charisma and shamelessness doesn’t work nearly as well with anyone who isn’t Trump.

spinclass.substack.com

Spin Class Case Study: How Eric Schmitt's VP Launch Died on the Hawks-Hawkeyes Mix-Up

The comms operation behind a failed VP audition

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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Who could have guessed that the man who did not recognize boundaries to his own health and safety, and who smashed his own face bones with a hammer to achieve "perfection," would not recognize the boundaries of others? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...

nytimes.com

Clavicular, ‘Looksmaxxing’ Influencer, Charged With Raping a 17-Year-Old

The influencer, whose real name is Braden Peters, is accused of giving the girl alcohol and having sex with her when she was unable to give consent. One of his lawyers said he was innocent.

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Joshua B. Hoe @joshuabhoe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

On so-called "Trump TV" True and great call-out by @emilyhorne.bsky.social - it is their already existing YouTube channel with a new branding spinclass.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

What’s different about now and when Trump banned the Associated Press over its refusal to use “Gulf of America?” It’s not because that was tolerable and this isn’t. It’s because Trump was strong then and is weak now. It’s because institutions only push back on Trump when they think he’s weak.

spinclass.substack.com

The Trump White House Press Pool Story is More Complicated Than It Seems

Yes, Trump is weak. But don’t glaze the White House press corps for finally showing the tiniest bit of spine.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Compliment time: a dear (dude) friend texted an idea for a Christmas present for my husband: I saw [thing] and thought he’d love it.” Highest of fives for men 1) seeing their friends’ unique quirks, and 2) doing the emotional labor of thinkin about/planning for holiday gifts months out.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Such a great story about the power of moms, community, and unionized collective bargaining

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

“Wow, you guys really went nuts after that thing happened.” Lessons from my Gen Z students on the historical memory of September 11

spinclass.substack.com

What I’ve Learned from Teaching 9/11

And what my Gen Z students have taught me

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NBC4 Washington @nbcwashington.com · 09/09/2026

Charlie Kirk’s nonprofit Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist, which claims it uncovers the most radical left wing professors from universities that are known to suppress the conservative voices and advance the progressive agenda," has been taken down.

nbcwashington.com

Turning Point USA's Professor Watchlist is down. Instructors describe its impact

This week marks one year since the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. While the nonprofit he created, Turning Point USA, is still working to engage young conservative voters ahead of the m...

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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Just want to say that these lunatics accused me of being a *secret CIA agent* while DataRepublican is literally working for the govt while pretending to be an ordinary influencers, & receiving leaked docs. The Trump admin is running ops, as they say, but for real. Every accusation is a confession.

Konstantin Toropin
@KToropin
G...
The Pentagon confirms -
"Ms. Pounds serves at the Department of War as a Special Government
Employee."
AF. AF Post •
@AFpost • Aug 21
Jennica Pounds, aka Data Republican, a Department of War employee, alleges that Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers is attempting to "entrap" Pounds by providing her with information to "leak" under the guise of offering her a
"scoop."

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Casey Michel @cjcmichel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Loved doing this interview with @emilyhorne.bsky.social and Spin Class for my book UNITED STATES OF OLIGARCHY, all about this Age of Oligarchy, how American wealth inequality is a national security threat, and how I'm still optimistic about where we're going. spinclass.substack.com/p/spin-class...

spinclass.substack.com

Spin Class Interview: Author Casey Michel on the New U.S. Oligarchy (And Why He’s Still Optimistic for the Future)

“The pendulum has swung so far in their favor. But here’s the thing about pendulums: they always swing back.”

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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Don’t get me wrong, this isn‘t Jon‘s fault, good on him for finding an attack that works. But it’s so incredibly bleak that this is a more effective line of attack than Epstein and Iran simply because the media gets bored easily and always needs a new shiny toy to get their attention.

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Eli Bishop @errorbar.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I know these weren't the only people doing the thing, but I do hope this is a sign that it's not really a viable business model & that others will continue to go away. I get a little spike of rage every time I'm searching for something and land on one of these bullshit sites.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

A week ago I wrote about Prism News, the tiny VC-backed Israeli start-up behind 200+ AI pink slime “local news” websites. My piece was based in large part on reporting from IPR and other local outlets. Today Prism’s websites are down, seemingly forever. 1/3

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

“Burden-sharing! Make your own weapons! Wait, where are you going, I’m STILL SPEAKING.”

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 11/08/2026

Doing the whole flight with no signal and/or no callsign was an option! That's what they did at earlier stages of the flight. Changing it to AF1 is using the crew, staff members and journalists as bait for the aggressor allegedly making the serious threat.

An ADSBx map showing the aircraft flying without a signal out of Ankara, and then turning on ABS-B Out with no callsign. It later falsely switched to AF1.

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Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News @froomkin.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Metastasizing AI slop pink slime “news” company has the gall to ask “What if Bloomberg, Vice, and CNN were born today, with zero humans, zero legacy, and infinite AI scale?” From @emilyhorne.bsky.social. spinclass.substack.com/p/the-tiny-i...

spinclass.substack.com

The Tiny Israeli Start-Up Behind Hundreds of AI Pink Slime News Sites

Part 1 of the Spin Class Case Study of Prism News

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Meet Prism News, a VC-backed Israeli startup that makes hundreds of “pink slime” sites that push out AI-scraped and rewritten news articles, bylined by “AI journalists” with fake bios. Prism outed the redacted name of an underage abuse victim. It also pitched a journalist back his own reporting.

open.substack.com

The Tiny Israeli Start-Up Behind Hundreds of AI Pink Slime News Sites

Part 1 of the Spin Class Case Study of Prism News

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Blanche’s “assurances” have all the legal heft of Brett Kavanaugh pinky-swearing with Susan Collins that Roe was settled law

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Kaz @amkaz.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

FYI for anyone who doesn't know about "The Midwesterner" | Spin Class Case Study: I Caught POLITICO and the New York Times Laundering Pink Slime "News" by @emilyhorne.bsky.social spinclass.substack.com/p/spin-class...

spinclass.substack.com

I Caught POLITICO and the New York Times Laundering Pink Slime "News"

How the sexist backlash to AOC and Gretchen Whitmer at the Munich Security Conference led me to a scammy "local news" outlet pushing a coordinated right-wing narrative

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

“Trump is trapped between accepting utter failure in Iran and an escalation that he knows he can’t win. Those are his two options, and they both end in humiliating defeat. His constant message shifting is him casting about for a third option that doesn’t actually exist.”

open.substack.com

How Do You Cover a President Who Doesn't Have A Strategy?

Another day of free-associating about potential war crimes in Iran

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

"If Trump followed through on threats to attack Iranian power plants, you'd likely see a mass humanitarian crisis that would affect tens of millions of people." On the pod, @emilyhorne.bsky.social and I on why media shouldn't treat his sociopathic threats as bluster: newrepublic.com/article/2136...

newrepublic.com

Trump’s Rage at Iran Takes Truly Scary Turn, and Even MAGA Is Unnerved

As Trump’s threats of escalation in Iran worsen, a former State Department official explains why the deeper dynamics surrounding the trap ensnaring Trump are so alarming.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Cutting money that provides food and health care but spending $300 million to permanently deploy the military to the streets of the capital in times of peace is tinpot dictator stuff

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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

DoorDash trying to end home rule for 700,000 people over a TWENTY CENT FEE

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

“The president’s role at a dignified transfer should be to honor the fallen by facing the costs of his orders. But instead, Trump is using a dignified transfer ceremony as a warm-up act for a MAGA campaign rally, where he’ll surely continue to lie about the true costs of his Iran war.”

politico.com

Trump’s split screen: War and campaigning

The president began his day observing the final return of four American soldiers and spent the afternoon rallying his base.

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Ernie Smith @ernie.tedium.co · 27/06/2026

The usage of “says” is just so messed up. He's not claiming it happened, the police confirmed it. Do better NYT

Pete Buttigieg Says He Was Separated From His Children After 'Swatting' Tip

The former transportation secretary recounted being kept away from his 4- year-old twins overnight after an anonymous report accused him of posing a threat to them. The police said the report was false.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

“Isn’t this supposed to be a party? Where’s the fun? Where’s the community? No one is even laughing, much less singing or dancing with strangers. There was more joy in the DMV when I last renewed my car registration.”

open.substack.com

MAGA Can't Buy Good Vibes

Why the Knicks and World Cup are winning the Joy Wars and the Trump UFC weekend spectacularly failed

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

One of the weirdest parts of this moment is how the military insists on portraying truly dishonorable missions, ones that would have been resisted by better civilian leadership, as honorable deployments worthy of celebration:

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Free DC @freedcproject.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Members of the Arkansas National Guard deployed to DC took a Free DC flag like a war trophy. This image was taken from a video released by the Arkansas National Guard. We do not know where they got the flag pictured here but it is a symbol of opposition to everything this deployment is about 🧵

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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Absolutely crucial piece of research on misinformation in local news on Facebook, X and Nextdoor by @smfthinktank.bsky.social Full report is here (www.smf.co.uk/publications...) but these are some key findings:

2 in 5 local Facebook groups and over four-fifths of X searches featured at least one piece of misinformation in their last 1,000 posts. Of 19 Nextdoor locations studied, 3 were found to contain misinformation.
Nearly 1 in 26 (4%) of news related posts on Facebook were misinformation; on X the ratio is over 1 in 4 (28%)
Places in local authorities with no or limited local news outlets (e.g. ‘news deserts’) had nearly 3 times as much fake news as a share of all posts as average on Facebook groups, albeit based upon 12 groups worth of data.
Conversely, places with a relatively high number of local news outlets (‘news oases’) have half as much misinformation as average, again based upon a limited sample (13 groups).
Places with local elections, on average, saw more misinformation in the run up to polling day than they did earlier in the year. Misinformation as a share of all posts increased from 0.12% to 0.15% (26% increase) and as a share of news grew from 8.2% to 12.9% (56%).
The rate of misinformation seen across four Gorton and Denton local Facebook groups was 26 times higher than in the wider Facebook analysis – 3% of 1,000 posts were identified as fake news, compared to 0.1% nationally. This is driven by far more news related posts on these groups, and a near doubling of the share of them being classified as misinformation.
Three in five misinformation posts (61%) in places with local elections in the week of the vote related to national politics or council issues, compared to 28% in the wider national analysis earlier in the year.
1 in 5 ‘fake news’ (19%) posts analysed on Facebook groups related to local issues, including planning, transport, local services and council politics. Our case studies revealed how planning applications could be misinterpreted into the “council selling off the beach”, or how local authority communications can be faked.
A third (32%) of misinformation found on X was anti-immigration or Islamophobic, far ahead of the next most common, h…

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Pathetic. Trump is privately demanding his advisers find a way to reach a deal with Iran that TV commentators will compare favorably to Obama's 2015 deal, per the Atlantic. On the pod, @emilyhorne.bsky.social is good on how this perfectly captures why we're stuck: newrepublic.com/article/2114...

newrepublic.com

Trump Rages over Iran Setbacks as Leaks Reveal His Seething Obama Envy

As fresh leaks make Trump look even more incompetent on Iran, a former national security official explains why the specter of Obama’s nuclear deal is haunting him—and why that screws the rest of us.

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Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

An experienced, well-connected investigative reporter with a great reputation, personal loyalty, and nothing but time is a formidable enemy to assign yourself.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

1. This is very, very, very bad and dangerous. 2. Lemonade: yet again, the second Trump admin reminds us that no woman should ever feel imposter syndrome again. Ever.

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

My take on the DNC 2024 autopsy report is that Trump created a slush fund for January 6ers that’s bigger than the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Translation: I’m invading Cuba over Memorial Day weekend

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

2 big reasons Castro is being indicted today that have nada to do with what’s *actually* happening in Cuba: 1) the USS Ford came home a few days ago after a year+ deployment (including VZ) 2) May 20 is what US-based Cuban conservatives consider to be Cuba’s independence day (most Cubans don’t)

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Emily Horne @emilyhorne.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Shredding Trump family crime permission slips should be a Day One action for every 2028 Dem. Who is the rural diner voter whose big kitchen table issue is “Eric and Don Jr. should never get audited?”

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@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

We have reached peak 'Iran was about to nuke the US so please ignore those high prices making it harder to feed your family.' Most Americans aren't buying it but the GOP has run out of other excuses so here we are:

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an appliance is making a weird noise that isn't on youtube @jesseltaylor.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

it's fascinating that in the midst of a historically unpopular presidency driven almost entirely by voluntary choices made by a rapidly declining president with an adversarial relationship with the press, we see a complete dearth of "gop needs to change course" thinkpieces and coverage

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Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

AI in academia conversation is completely warped by how only professors platformed to write about it are tenured at elite schools. What works in a 12-person Princeton classroom has basically no relationship to your average college's 40 person online class taught by an underpaid adjunct...

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