iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is my favourite Borges story.

The Witness by Borges and translated by ANTHONY KERRIGAN

In a stable lying almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with
gray eyes and a gray beard, stretched on the ground amidst the animal
odors, meekly seeks death like someone seeking sleep. The day, faithful to
vast secret laws, continuously displaces and confounds the shadows in the
wretched stable. Outside stretch the tilled fields, a deep ditch filled up with
dead leaves, and the tracks of a wolf in the black mud where the woods
begin. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. The bells calling to prayer
awake him. In the kingdoms of England, the sound of the bells is already
one of the customs of the afternoon, but the man, while still a boy, had
seen the face of Woden, had seen holy dread and exultation, had seen the
rude wooden idol weighed down with Roman coins and heavy vestments,
seen the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he would be
dead and with him would die, never to return, the last firsthand images of
the pagan rites. The world would be poorer when this Saxon was no more.
We may well be astonished by space-filling acts which come to an end
when someone dies, and yet something, or an infinite number of things,
die in each death—unless there is a universal memory, as the theosophists
have conjectured. There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ
were closed forever. The battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with
the death of some one man. What will die with me when I die? What
pathetic or frail form will the world lose? Perhaps the voice of Macedonio
Fernandez, the image of a horse in the vacant space at Serrano and
Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

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Noel Healy @drnoelhealy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The assault on US universities didn't start in 2025. Our new paper traces the decades of corporate capture that made it possible, and why climate research is a primary target. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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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.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 16/09/2026

More than any higher ed development in recent memory, institutional subsidies for AI at R1 universities prove that austerity is a choice. It is not “too expensive” to invest in a humanities research infrastructure; rather, it is a choice that R1 universities make not to & subsidize AI instead.

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emsandford.bsky.social @emsandford.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

at a big planetary science conference this week, and I cannot express how dispiriting it is to see senior scientists present slides plastered with AI slop images. One talk this morning had a potato-shaped Jupiter and a Saturn that wasn't centered in its ring system. What are we doing here?

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 04/08/2026

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia It's been a year & people tell me they've changed their mind, feel safer now to sign, etc. So I'm sharing it again for them. We're almost at 2k & anybody from anywhere can add their names. openletter.earth/open-letter-...

We call upon you to:

• Resist the introduction of AI in our own software systems, from Microsoft to OpenAI to Apple. It is not in our interests to let our processes be corrupted and give away our data to be used to train models that are not only useless to us, but also harmful.

• Ban AI use in the classroom for student assignments, in the same way we ban essay mills and other forms of plagiarism. Students must be protected from de-skilling and allowed space and time to perform their assignments themselves.

• Cease normalising the AI hype and the lies which are prevalent in the technology industry's framing of these technologies. The technologies do not have the advertised capacities and their adoption puts students and academics at risk of violating ethical, legal, scholarly, and scientific standards of reliability, sustainability, and safety.

• Fortify our academic freedom as university staff to enforce these principles and standards in our classrooms and our research as well as on the computer systems we are obliged to use as part of our work. We as academics have the right to our own spaces.

• Sustain critical thinking on AI and promote critical engagement with technology on a firm academic footing. Scholarly discussion must be free from the conflicts of interest caused by industry funding, and reasoned resistance must always be an option.

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Katherine @wordwatcher.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

“Self-Portrait” by Haruka Kawakami

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

As someone in this picture I find it a little odd that @natureportfolio.nature.com chose this image to illustrate the point. We were very careful when choosing a slogan for our signs that it be scientificly defenceable. "Science says New Oil & Gas = Death" is a plain statement of fact 🧵

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 12/06/2026

Dave Eggers, on NPR's Wildcard with Rachel Martin: www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...

"This is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine write for them to express themselves. But I say like you are one of one unprecedented in the history of human evolution. There's only one of you. …There's never been you in Ever, and there never will be another one of you. So to give your voice to a machine, to say 'speak for me, I'm going to be silent and I'm going to tell a machine to express myself or to tell my narrative,' is such a crime against yourself.

"It's so dystopian, beyond anything I could do in a dystopian novel— and I did a lot; I never saw this coming— would be an entire generation tempted and too many of them acquiescing to the the silencing of their own voice in favor of a bland unthinking machine to voice their souls.

"But if you can tell them, 'even your roughest drafts, even your most disjointed seeming thoughts are going to be valid; and your voice is essential; the human chorus is incomplete without your voice; and I'm going to listen to whatever you say, even the rough drafts, whatever; I want those; I want to see it all," then we can make sure that that they're heard and that they feel like there are humans out there that want to hear that voice and not the machine processed voice.

"…Good lord, we're at a really scary time, you know, but every adult has to be that person. Every teacher, every parent has to be the one saying, 'Do not do this.' Your voice is the only thing that you have naturally. It's the one thing that nobody can replace. So let's hear your truth. Even if it's raw, even if it's unpolished, even if it doesn't come in the five paragraph essay or whatever. Like, let's let's have it straight from you."

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emsandford.bsky.social @emsandford.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

That's me in the mirror That's me in the mir ror That is my reflection

A tortoiseshell cat crouched on the counter, looking at her reflection in a mirror hanging on the opposite wall

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

"For our administrations, then, AI is another method to privatize the public good of education, not just in the sense of who owns the institution but in the social atomization of the collective educational enterprise," writes Daniel Greene.

aaup.org

What Does AI Do?

The economic and political problems of “cost disease” in education have created a powerful incentive for the adoption of AI.

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Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Witness the mesmerizing murmuration of starlings in Italy, a stunning display of nature's coordination and beauty as they dance through the sky in unison.

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False Knees @falseknees.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Venus

Two chickadees sit on a branch, one says: "Whoa! Look!" indicating a light in the sky over the horizon. The other one says: "Pretty!" The first one says "Do you think that's Venus or just a bright star?". The second one looks nervous, stumbling "Oh... uh... yeah it's probably Bemus"

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emsandford.bsky.social @emsandford.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

evening murmuration over Leiden, 26/02/2026. the jackdaws and I watched till dark

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jack the nonabrasive @karabaic.org · 18/02/2026

Ursula Le Guin wrote a response to this kind of nonsense years ago. Read it instead. www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about...

ursulakleguin.com

Ursula K. Le Guin — Ursula on Writing: A Rant about "Techonolgy"

Ursula K. Le Guin on the presence of technology in her work

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Defector @defector.com · 26/10/2025

Colleges' AI policies appear to be part of a broader effort to snatch away decision-making power over teaching, learning, and research from subject matter and pedagogy experts and give it to donors and administrators. 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…

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m @keptsimple.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

like so many products to come out of silicon valley in the last decade or so, AI is a legal innovation masquerading as a tech innovation. the legal theory seems to be that AI is entitled to everything but liable for nothing.

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Jonathan W. Gray @elmcitytree.blacksky.app · 10/03/2025

Tomorrow in NYC will be sunny & pleasant. This will be important.

A flyer for a protest tomorrow which reads

Monday, March 10
4PM
Jacob K. Javits Federal Building
26 Federal Plaza, NYC
EMERGENCY MOBILIZATION!
RELEASE
MAHMOUD KHALIL
HANDS OFF
OUR STUDENTS ICE OFF OUR CAMPUSES
MON. MAR 10 • 4PM

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Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Let's not mince words: Mahmoud Khalil was abducted and disappeared, without consideration of rule of law, by an authoritarian regime intent on crushing dissent and criticism. Free Mahmoud Khalil.

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Scientist Rebellion Netherlands @scientistrebellion.nl · 21/02/2025

Lately we are witnessing an unprecedented attack on science in the US. These attacks also affect the international scientific field and other communities. This is not an isolated event, and Europe is moving to the same direction. ❤️‍🔥 We invite everyone to sign our science solidarity statement!

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Erini Lambrides @eriniastro.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

alert! we're organizing to help folks in astronomy + planetary sciences who've lost their jobs without warning, or have important DEIA initiatives that suddenly lost funding please share with your networks!! #extragalactic #exoplanets #astronomy #cosmology

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/01/2025

In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪 🧵 1/26 drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...

nazi germany & physics
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, PhD
Department of Physics,University of Washington, Seattle
APS April Meeting, January 2017
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945

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