iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Susanah Grace @susanahgrace.bsky.social · 3h

I just found out that CHVLR has a tag on AO3. That's fucking wild. Something I made has a tag on AO3. archiveofourown.org/tags/CHVLR%2...

archiveofourown.org

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 6h

100% this. The monoculture is truly dead. We all live in different worlds/sphere of influence. This is why the GOP attempt to center Hasan Piker has failed so spectacularly. Only chronically online degens even KNOW that name. Most people couldn't give less of a shit about some niche streamer.

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Éibhear Ó hAnluain @eibhear.gibiris.org · 05/10/2026

Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaase tell me that all those "you should need a government ID to access the internet" people are rethinking this position now. [We know they aren't. Ed.]

The first two paragraphs of the linked-to story:

"Denmark has suffered a major data breach that has given unauthorised individuals access to names, addresses and personal identification numbers belonging to about 8.8 million people registered in the country’s central population database.

"The breach occurred after unidentified individuals misused a private Danish company’s legitimate access to search the Central Person Register (CPR), the government said in a statement Monday."

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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 13h

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

As we join the great theoretical scientist, he is deep in thought. So still, quiet and focused that he might almost be asleep. But inside that brilliant mind, what new idea is forming? What certainty is being meticulously interrogated? What ingenious theory is ready to change our world forever? (the scientist snores lightly) Ah, it seems he actually is asleep. And that's fine. Science is hard and not every day can be a success. We will come back another time.

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The original Google search algorithm that was wizard magic was machine learning. Same with videogame enemies learning flocking techniques and figuring out how to beat you based on your tendencies. LLM stans fucked this up just let the scam artists define what AI is now because they are dumb.

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Alice Dryden @huskyteer.co.uk · 05/10/2026

There was a lot of interest in this - I've now made it available on my website! #FurryWriting huskyteer.co.uk/focus.html

huskyteer.co.uk

Space Vixens: The fuzzy border between speculative and furry fiction

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sulucamas.bsky.social @sulucamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Cardinal West is consistently excellent, but daaamn, they’re cooking here. Well worth your time if you’ve existed in this, our world, for a few decades.

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Stop Killing Games @stopkillinggames.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The EU Kids Act will make private servers illegal as it stands now. Read up on the Act yourself: hub.edri.org/index.php/s/... Contact your MEPs, tell them to scuttle this bill, and sign the Stop Killing Internet Initiative to ensure the protection of our digital spaces: eci.ec.europa.eu/066/public

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Evening/dinner watch: Star wars, empire, and how Star Wars functions(or functioned) as a national epic for American Empire. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lao6... Cardinal West doing cool videos again!

youtube.com

My New Empire

YouTube video by Cardinal West

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Inspired by getting this signed last night, I took the day to polish off @davidveevers.bsky.social 's astonishing 'The Great Defiance'. It tells a story of a huge swathe of the early modern world in its encounters with, and resistance to, British Empire - and in so doing enriches every angle. (🧵)

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Hence, every inaccuracy in a nostalgic feel-good image will substantially alter the accuracy of our memories of those things. Ask it for images of a loved one we no longer have photographs of, and we will unknowingly forget our loved one's face - it will be replaced with the AI image.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Memory is fragile. Every time a memory is accessed, what you're currently doing/seeing/experiencing influences that memory every other time you bring it up. This is why traumatic and major events, which demand a particular kind of focus, tend to be clearer. -->

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

youtube.com/shorts/JEqTe... Absurdly relevant to things I have encountered lately.

youtube.com

Conniving Corporate Companies

YouTube video by Pat Mandziy

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's a beautiful thing. I am very, very eagerly waiting for your next!

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I seriously recommend this one to novelists out there. Every other page drips with details and the hints of events so fantastical they could power hundreds of plotlines. Just a fantastic, fantastic book. Thank you again, @davidveevers.bsky.social ! (And check your DMs!)

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is, as you can probably tell by the number of post-it flags that imply it's going to take me weeks to type up some notes for this book, easily my favourite piece of non-fic I've found in the past ten years. Easily. It has inspired a thousand thoughts about new stories to write.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Squabbles for power in the Indian Ocean take on the character of organized crime families, if we're willing to place ourselves alongside a corrupt East India Company governor who's gone so native the English send a man after him, almost a version of Heart of Darkness.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Caribbean battles between plantation owners and indigenous peoples take on the scale of a national epic, despite the populations involved being dwarfed by a single european city, if we dare view it over the shoulders of two half brothers at war, born to English and Kalinago mothers.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The true tragedy is allowing ourselves to view empires as an axis mundi world and culture orbit, when in truth, the center of the world is wherever we stop and look. And that place, wherever it is, matters... Even if you can't see that from where you are right now.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's possible to view empire as evil - and we learn the depths of depravity. Heroic, and we discover the absolutely incredible challenges empire faced against horrific rivals. But truth is always muddier and more interesting than that.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

GO SIMON! What a brilliant event, getting to hear about Piratical States and the way this fab book is shaping conversations in world history, Indian Ocean history, history of capitalism, & of empires. You’re gonna want to read this. Get your (library’s) copy here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

Picture of an extremely full Royal Asiatic Society venue of people listening to a brilliant panel

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

youtube.com/shorts/JEqTe... Absurdly relevant to things I have encountered lately.

youtube.com

Conniving Corporate Companies

YouTube video by Pat Mandziy

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 24/09/2026

Last night I planted an olive tree at Gracie Mansion with Palestinian families from Gaza. May peace be our future.

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Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I can say this already, for folks who do want to teach this into their classrooms the piece by Jesús has four fantastic principles at the end which I could happy incorporate. My own position of refusal comes from a different place but if we're going to do it, let's proceed as he has outlined.

blog.royalhistsoc.org

The Machine’s Silences: Teaching History with AI | Historical Transactions

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There's an ethos I like but find hard to articulate of gardening one's writing practice - building the garden bed where it can flourish - not attempting to work on it directly. I think that fits better for a lot of people.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Have had cause to re-read Helen Sword's article on dismantling the dogma of writing every day being the only way to write. (www.scribd.com/document/483...) Writing methods and practice have to be bespoke to you, which means you have to spend a little time learning about how you work best.

scribd.com

Client Challenge

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Okay. The ruined pirates line won me over.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I'd better hear some great jokes, else I'll feel cheated.

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Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

'History is a Human Craft'. In piece about ethics, our classrooms and AI, I suppose I've put up my barricades and drawn my lines. I suggest 8 'considerations' before we do any teaching with AI. This is part of a new @royalhistsoc.org short series on 'AI and History Teaching' in Transactions.

blog.royalhistsoc.org

History is a human craft | Historical Transactions

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I like to think it's a rare example of the tangibility of the concept of planting a tree to protect and shade people not yet born. Which makes destroying such a thing look so very different depending on how far into the past and future you look, or if you only see the present.

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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

guy who fell into a coma after the last episode of fawlty towers wakes up and looks at the internet

5 panel comic

Panel 1: Purple Guy looks at a laptop and says “boy o boy! I wonder what my comedy hero’s up to”

Panel 2: A tweet from John Cleese that reads “This is where the Arabs were ahead of us

By castrating all their slaves, they made sure that there were no descendants who could claim reparations”

Panels 3-5: Purple Guy slowly closes laptop with a mystified look of revulsion

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Mando @mrmandolino.itch.io · 22/09/2026

MOM LOOK I'M ON ROCK PAPER SHOTGUN

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Olive trees can live for literal centuries. It is possible to be a hereditary olive farmer tending trees planted by your forebears in the middle ages. There are olive trees reputed to have been living for thousands of years. Olive trees are special. Really, really special.

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

As someone with a portion of blood from the euro end of the Mediterranean, specifically an olive/wine area... ... I have a story I want to write about burned olive trees, about revenge, about how groves take decades to set up and run for generations afterward, but... Boy howdy, it'd be political.

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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

England is a made up thing. It has no basis in the ineluctable laws of nature. Its extent is defined by Edward II getting his arse handed to him. Athelstan conquering York. The Welsh of Cumbria were incorporated, the Welsh of Gwynedd were not. It is a political idea, an aspiration - not taxonomy.

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Emily✨ @emilyoram.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Always a treat to be reminded of an old friend

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Alice Dryden @huskyteer.co.uk · 23/09/2026

Finished painting this tiny forest prince! Thanks to @foozzzball.bsky.social for help and advice, and to @adsomenk.bsky.social for introducing me and my wallet to @crookeddice.bsky.social.

A miniature clearly based on Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin from the 1980 Flash Gordon film, dressed entirely in green and pointing some sort of futuristic crossbow. He's mounted on a base cut from a branch, and displayed on a tree in woods.

Another view of the miniature, taken at a different angle so we see the green stuff lovingly glued to the base.

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Hovering Skull @hoveringskull.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This September, as a tactical rpg nut, I am: [ ] playing Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. [ ] playing Zero Company. [x] recreating the cast of Twin Peaks in XCom2

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Alice Dryden @huskyteer.co.uk · 23/09/2026

I have an article on #FurryWriting in the latest issue of Focus, the magazine of the British Science Fiction Association! www.bsfa.co.uk

Cover of Focus magazine featuring an abstract image in yellow, black, red and blue. The contents list includes Furries, Pitching, Witches and Huckleberries.

Photo of a magazine page. It's a diagonal crop but it's possible to read the title, which is Space Vixens The fuzzy border between speculative and furry fiction.

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Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 22/09/2026

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” crazy how much Mamdani speaks my language

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

There's an element here of unintentionally objectifying a character's actions in a way that just... rings super, super hollow if used to try and vary word choice. One of those things where, composing it, you think you're doing one thing, but to a reader, you're miscommunicating another.

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Elf M. Sternberg @elfsternberg.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

In a study of doctors in Poland, using an AI for three months, then ceasing to use it, resulted in a 20% loss of skill and accuracy. Cognitive systems are metabolically expensive. When your brain knows there's a substitute, it resents not having access to it.

medium.com

AI Took Something From Doctors and Nobody Noticed. The Lancet Caught It. Here Is the Story

A landmark study in The Lancet measured what happens to a physician’s diagnostic instincts when the algorithm is switched off. The findings…

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