iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Fiona Polack

Sarah J. Martin @eatingpolitics.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Job - please share widely! Canada Excellence Research Chair in Comparative Democratic Resilience in the Global South. Research focus - grassroots movements, Indigenous sovereignties, and racial justice campaigns contesting and transforming public institutions www.mun.ca/vpacademic/m...

Text: We're hiring. the Department of Political Science at Memorial University invites applications to the highly prestigious Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) Program with a specialization in Comparative Democratic Resilience in the Global South. Closing Date: December 14, 2025. QR code and image with a picture of the Memorial University campus in the background.

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

We’re at Congress! Come visit us upstairs at Expo.

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Amanda Bittner @bittner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Some folks at MUN have started a petition to raise the issue of chronic de-funding of education with the government. Sign it!

A poster that reads Memorial University at a Crossroads: 100 Years later, with a QR code that leads to a petition to protect Memorial University as a comprehensive university.

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

St. John’s friends, if you want to vote early head to: Bally Rou Place 370 Torbay Road, Suite W310 Monday to Friday: 9 am - 9 pm Saturday: 9 am - 6 pm Sunday: 12 pm - 4 pm You can vote at this Elections Canada office until April 22. I dropped by today and the process was very straightforward.

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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Good to see the current @aupresses.bsky.social Pres, Anthony Cond, Dir of Liverpool UP, reiterating UPs’ commitment to bibliodiversity. Tho also noteworthy that no US UPs are quoted. UPs don’t just sell books to uni libes but are at unis being targeted. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

insidehighered.com

Academic Publishers Braced for Slowdown as Trump DEI Purge Bites

Defunding of diversity-related research may deter American university libraries from buying titles in contentious topic areas, publishers fear.

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David Moscrop @davidmoscrop.com · 04/03/2025

Easy to lose this in the noise of the day, but the prime minister of Canada just said the US president, leader of the global hegemon, wants to soften us up economically so he can annex us. That is one of the most remarkable statements, and realities, in our history.

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Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation
First, clarity on distinguishing AIs:
Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem
As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use).
Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work
Generative: ChatGPT & Co.
You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content.
Why is this delegation of work problematic?
3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement.

(Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.)

1) AI and ethics
Mass theft of all and everything
«learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators.
Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …):
«correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted).
In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes.

2) AI and (un)sustainability

Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI.
Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs.
Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry.
Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development.

3) AI and intellectual engagement

First, what learning is (or should be) about:
The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge,
But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain.
The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations
This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI.
Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all.
They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS.
If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.

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Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

This is happening, right now. The great "arribada" (arrival) of mother Olive Ridley sea turtles on the Odisha coast, where they dig sand-nests & lay their eggs, driven by ancient instinct. Heart-lifting, magnificent, moving: part of a geography of hope. 🎞️ by Bivash Pandav via my friend Yuvan Aves.

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Next time you walk into your favourite Canadian indie bookstore, we invite you to seek out a book (or two or three, or...) published by a Canadian-owned press. There are so many excellent Canadian-owned presses publishing incredible books. You can't go wrong!

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@bookhugpress @bookhugpress.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Book*hug Press is proud to be an independently owned & operated Canadian company. We're also proud to be part of Canada's vital indie publishing community. Like our indie publishing colleagues, we champion Canadian voices & stories and produce & print our books in Canada. 🇨🇦

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Christopher Dornan @chrisdornan.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Here's the speech if you haven't heard it. 13 minutes of your time. Share it with your American friends and neighbours, because they won't see it otherwise. Circulate it in Mexico and Denmark, France and the UK, Panama and Germany, Poland and Estonia, and especially -- especially -- Ukraine.

youtu.be

Trudeau: Canada will retaliate with 25% tariffs on $155B of U.S. goods

YouTube video by CBC News

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Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 02/02/2025

Canada’s biggest labour organization is calling on the federal government turn off the taps, “cutting US access to critical Canadian resources—including electricity, lumber, critical minerals, oil, and gas—until the tariffs are lifted” 75% of Canadians support restricting US access to our resources

canadianlabour.ca

Cut Off U.S. Energy and Resources Now: No Electricity, No Critical Minerals, No Oil and Gas | Canadian Labour Congress

WINNIPEG – Bea Bruske, President of the Canadian Labour Congress, issued the following statement today: Donald Trump’s reckless tariffs are an attack on Canadian workers and our economy. With 2.4 mil...

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Such an exemplary literary biography.

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Alex Marland @alexmarland.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

I've got 3 funded studentships for oustanding applicants to join Acadia University's 12-month MA in Political Science program for 2025-26. Students will write a thesis on Canadian political leadership. Apply by February 1! #Leadership #CanadianPolitics #MAProgram #GraduateFunding #AcadiaUniversity

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University of Manitoba Press @umanitobapress.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Calling all editors! University of Manitoba Press is hiring an Acquisitions Editorial Assistant. If you have excellent research and communication skills, familiarity with scholarly writing, and experience in book publishing, we want you on our team!

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Wondering how this has played out in all those abandoned settlements around the coast of Newfoundland. The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear?

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

The fight to prevent Tasmania’s Franklin River from being dammed in the 1980s inspired the composition of songs including “Let the Franklin Flow.”

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Here’s a terrific looking tenure-track job in environmental literatures universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?...

universityaffairs.ca

Search Jobs — University Affairs

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Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · 28/10/2024

we are also now hiring a professor in environmental media studies! open rank! please share, please apply. I am so thrilled at the prospect of having another colleague---> jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

jobs.colorado.edu

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Thanks for this. Please add me.

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

The Pacita Abad underwater trapunto work at the AGO is mind blowing.

Two large trapunto paintings of colourful underwater life

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 14/02/2024

This is rather wonderful. poetry.arizona.edu/blog/dear-bo...

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Fiona Polack @fmpolack.bsky.social · 16/01/2024

Tenure-track position in Black Atlantic Decolonial Literatures available at Memorial University. accute.ca/2024/01/15/j...

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