iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I don’t know if I want Jon Ossoff as president but I do like that every time I turn around he’s calling someone a Nazi and then just smiling handsomely. I think we deserve that energy.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 22h

I feel so sick over this I don’t even have words.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There are many reasons I wouldn’t be good at politics but one of those reasons is that the mean commercials would hurt my feelings. :(

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oliver has like six actual beds to choose from but his favorite place to sleep is the toy basket after he’s dumped all the toys out. Cats!

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Do we need to be worried about this plague situation because I’m already having a pretty busy year between the dissertation and struggling with fascism and I just don’t know if I have enough bandwidth to add another thing

010

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

People really do contain multitudes.

010

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is genuinely horrific. The article contains some potentially triggering language so take caution if reading.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I’m not enthusiastic for a single person I’m voting for this time around and it’s mostly fine, I still vote reliably and I don’t need to be excited to do the work, but it is a bit of a bummer. I really do dislike Amy Acton though and that might be a first. I’m usually indifferent at most.

100

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

What’s funny is that Maine is also mine even though I’m an Ohioan.

010

Reposted by Erin 🎃

ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026

The government *still* isn’t tracking how often immigration agents detain U.S. citizens. We are. 500+ Americans have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or held against their will in Trump’s second term. Our tally is almost certainly an undercount. THREAD (content warning: violence) ⬇️

9660053434

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I do wonder what it’s like to be a Maine citizen who votes reliably blue in every presidential election but every six years toddles into the voting booth, contemplates their choices, and pulls the damn trigger for Susan Collins. Like what happens with your brain there?

100

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Pro tip: the Morningstar fake chicken patties are better than the real chicken ones

010

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Been a while since I had to do the Sunday scramble to find a reading for Monday morning class but I have to stay I didn’t miss it at all.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

One thing about me is that if I’m ever late for something then you know something catastrophic has occurred because I don’t mess around with punctuality and I am endlessly baffled by those who do not share this compulsion.

010

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If I had to pick an ungettable state to put money on it would always be Kansas because even though 99% of the time they’re predictable there’s that 1% where they do something wild.

000

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Today I wrote about the botched execution of Christina Pike and how the death penalty must end, in all situations, with absolutely no exceptions. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

Tennessee attempted to kill Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday night but they botched it. They gave her a dose of phenobarbital, it did not kill her, so they gave her a second dose of phenobarbital which also did not kill her. Witnesses said that Pike was kicking her feet, knocking off sheets, and showing signs of obvious pain. Eventually she fell into a state of semi-consciousness and at various points was heard snoring by witnesses. The botched execution spanned more than two hours from the beginning of the lethal injection protocol to the time it was halted and Pike was transported to the hospital.

Pike is said to be in critical condition in the hospital. There is a good chance that she sustained severe brain injuries by virtue of her respiratory and cardiovascular systems being subjected to massive doses phenobarbital for over two hours which likely led to prolonged oxygen deprivation to her brain.

How did this happen? There are any number of theories. One possibility is that the people conducting the attempted execution failed to properly tap a vein, which may have been more likely due to a condition Pike has called thrombocytosis. If so, they probably just pumped the phenobarbital into her muscles and surrounding tissue. It's also possible that the phenobarbital used by Tennessee was degraded or substandard due to pharmaceutical companies' refusal to sell such drugs and drug administration equipment to death penalty state prison authorities, which leads them to pursue questionable substitutes from compounding pharmacies and suppliers. Those are just theories, of course. There will be an investigation into all of this and we'll find out more eventually.

But the specifics of this don't matter much to me. All of it just underscores how wrong and evil and depraved capital punishment is and how it should be abolished everywhere immediately. With absolutely no exceptions.

I’ve long opposed capital punishment in any and all cases. There is nothing — no fact, no argument, no sufficiently depraved or horrifying a criminal or crime, hypothetical or otherwise — that will ever change my mind about that. I’d oppose the death penalty even if it was not discriminatory and arbitrary, which it absolutely is. I'd oppose it even if our system was incapable of legal or factual error, which it obviously is not. Indeed, it makes errors all the time, and there have been several cases in recent years in which states have killed innocent people. While legal errors can cause extreme hardship in cases that don’t involve the death penalty, once you’ve killed someone there are no take-backs. Utah just released a man who spent 37 years on death row after they discovered that he was innocent.

But like I said: I oppose it in all cases. Even when guilt is not in question, as is the case with Christa Pike, who admitted what she did long ago. I simply think that it is illegitimate to give humans the legal right to end the lives of other human beings. That's especially true given the manner of political power, how it is obtained, and how it is employed in this country.

I do not think that the purpose of our criminal justice system should be retribution or the satisfaction of blood lust. We can and should incapacitate criminals by locking them up. We can and should rehabilitate criminals who are capable of being rehabilitated while they are locked up. We should do what we can to deter future crime, but in so doing we must acknowledge that the death penalty does nothing to deter crime. We should not, as a society, be in the revenge business, which is what the death penalty is really about.

The State of Tennessee tortured a human being for two hours on Wednesday night and quite possibly inflicted traumatic brain injuries upon her. There is nothing that justifies that. There is nothing that justifies the state from taking the life of a human being.

1219341

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Too Big to Fail @toobigtofail.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What the fuck are we even doing as a society

96011

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’ve been seeing this anti-Brown ad on YouTube nonstop with a woman talking about how she was forced to transition as a minor and i always suspected the whole thing was BS and according to Reddit she’s from Texas, went on puberty blockers at 17 and had a mastectomy at 19. When she was an adult.

211

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They’ll do this again, maybe tomorrow or the next, but they’ll do it again until they succeed. When the state wants to kill someone they’ve proven over and over again they’ll keep at it until it’s done and nothing, not morality, not questionable trials or evidence or even innocence will stop them.

100

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Whatever one’s opinion of the death penalty in the abstract, the particulars of how it’s implemented and who it’s applied to in the US are moral abominations

181079193

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“A lawyer for Christa Pike said executioners have administered two syringes of lethal injection drugs to Pike but that she remains alive and breathing.” It’s been over an hour.

44758239

Reposted by Erin 🎃

ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

i have now reviewed, as promised, what I think of the Todd Achilles campaign's chances, and I think there's legit path for him. we talk about it some below

78210

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Thinking about the staffers today who marched down to like the FedEx store with their little usb drive like “we’re gonna make a poster!” all excited like it’s a book report they’re sure they aced and it turns out the teacher assigned Frankenstein but they did twilight.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

He’s just moving through life as republicans always do, lying to save face, but you gotta assume tonight when he’s laying in bed that whole thing will play on a rotation in Schmitt’s head.

120

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Kelly @justkelly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Cornell victim has been doxxed on X. So worried for her. I hate this planet.

854220539

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I feel kind of bad for inadvertently starting a dogpile on someone. In my defense I just mildly corrected them and they doubled down and then I got pretty pedantic and now everyone is yelling at them even though they never even responded to my second reply.

100

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Cats are familiar with the concept of sneezing since they do it too so I don’t know why every time I sneeze Oliver stares at me like I’ve lost my mind and Annie starts yelling at me.

110

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I wonder how much happier everyone would be if instead of getting angry online they took up a hobby like knitting or macrame or pretty much anything other than sending death threats because they don’t like a lukewarm take

010

Reposted by Erin 🎃

journeyman folklorist @aniceburrito.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It’s fucking me up that the word elevate predates the invention of the elevator but the invention of the escalator predates the word escalate. It’s complete madness

111078157

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I can’t sleep so I’m thinking about how I took a random urban policy class in college that I thought would be boring and now I start conversations with people like “have you thought about how sidewalks can demonstrate socioeconomic status and community priorities?”

100

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“Words have meanings” is a phrase so overused that it, ironically, has no meaning for me anymore.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Looking around my living room at my cute autumn decorations and realizing that I’ve turned into my grandmother. I always knew it was coming, but I did think I had a few more years.

020

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Love Hypothesis is cute. Solid Saturday afternoon romcom.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Listen, I love my cats, but I’ve been sharing my living room with a spider who keeps appearing and disappearing for over a week now and they have done nothing to help with this nightmare. What is the point of providing for these so-called predators if they won’t do anything to contribute?!

110

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Realistically this is harm reduction in its purest form. For instance, Joe Manchin pissed me off regularly but we were undeniably better off with him than Jim Justice. It’s not a great system, but it is the one we have.

120

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

IMO one of the most important local elections in the country (boltsmag.org/prosecutor-a...)

"Long before Trump began sowing unfounded doubts about the 2020 presidential race, Republicans in Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, were notorious for their selective enforcement of election laws and for the harsh prosecution of Crystal Mason, a woman who mistakenly thought she could vote while on probation and was sentenced years in prison.

DA Phil Sorrells, who came into office after the 2022 midterms, has continued that legacy. He helped launch a task force to police local elections, and he continued to prosecute Mason even after an appeals court overturned her conviction in 2024. This fall, he filed criminal charges against Lon Burnam, a former state lawmaker who was expelled from a public meeting and forcibly arrested for speaking out against a GOP plan to dramatically reduce polling places.

Sorrells faces Democratic challenger Tiffany Burks in a competitive rematch of their 2022 election. Burks, who has worked as a prosecutor in the office, has signaled a very different direction from Sorrells on such cases. “We are talking about a county where they are doing everything that they can to suppress the vote,” she said in an interview last month.

She is currently representing Burnam in court, and she said last month that her “first item on business” as DA would be to drop the county’s efforts to reinstate Mason’s conviction. (That won’t be necessary after all: Texas’ highest criminal court ruled in favor of Mason and against Sorrells on Sept. 24, upholding Mason’s 2024 acquittal.)"

330188

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I can’t believe this dumb tiktok argument has broken containment but for the record I don’t think this is entirely true for many hiring managers. HOWEVER for every 10 hiring managers for whom it isn’t true there’s the one where it is and frankly it just isn’t worth the chance for an iced coffee.

100

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Is this what the gop texts look like because I find the Dem ones enraging but at least so far none have made me think someone is standing outside of my window with a knife and a voter registration clipboard. www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfu...

reddit.com

From the mildlyinfuriating community on Reddit: I keep getting threatening texts

Explore this post and more from the mildlyinfuriating community

001

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The clips from that Elizabeth Holmes documentary really has me questioning the sense of a lot of people because you can pretty clearly click the crazy right away with that woman.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Gobbling up doomerism to build a bulwark against hope because I can’t handle another election night where I feel blindsided.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I find the lesbian bar story annoying because it’s clearly just a local story that is now going to be held up as an example of overzealous lefty politics in like, a cornfield in Iowa when it’s actually just a handful of people in MA with Very Strong Opinions.

001

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Shout out to the woodpecker who stopped by just long enough to drive my cats into a frenzy and then peaced out after its job was done, leaving me to deal with the aftermath.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’m know this was conducted before the corruption story broke but Susan Collins is truly a cockroach, she always rises, and I am endlessly baffled by her chokehold on a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican president in decades. She’s evil!

100

Reposted by Erin 🎃

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

1. They caught this in time! It won't keep anyone from voting. 2. This happened bc TX lets you register to vote when you get your driver's license online. The DL office's web portal didn't send people's info to county voter roll registrars properly.

6413143

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I hate Susan Collins so much that I think I might be happier on election night if she loses than if Husted does. And he’s my (terrible, awful) Senator. I hate her so much though. Can’t be healthy.

020

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you want a snapshot of the state of Congress I’m watching old House speeches from 2017 and half these people are dead.

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Harlan Coben is the James Patterson of Netflix

000

Erin 🎃 @erinpolisci.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Made the rookie mistake of stopping at the expensive crunchy grocery store while hungry to look for something for dinner, ended up spending $40 on like, organic apple flavored air, and I still didn’t get anything for dinner.

000