iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Garrett Merz

sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

don’t take advice from people who have long forgotten what it’s like to be precariously employed

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Kassandra Jo Tomaras @raconteuse.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

There is an exhibit of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. One of the installations invites viewers to waltz in pairs on an impromptu dance floor framed by lights. Espose led, and Kid 1 took some lovely pictures of us, but I am visibly weeping in all of them.

291

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Kyle Cranmer @kylecranmer.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I've been thinking about the Rubik's cube in 4D. I found an old java version from by Don Hatch and Melinda Green and decided to ask claude to port it to a standalone web app that can run in your browser. You can play it here: theoryandpractice.org/cube4d/ Blog: theoryandpractice.org/2026/07/four...

0104

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

We'll see if it takes, but I seem to have finally won the trust of my neighborhood crows

180

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Bat 🦇 Borus @matthewborus.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Non-tenure-track contract faculty at NYU went on strike this morning after over a year of bargaining (capped by a 24-hour+ marathon session). Big crowd of @uaw.org members and supporters, incl lots of students. They’re picketing over pay, workload, AI, a voice in faculty governance, & more.

4656172

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Opinion Editor @ Bluesky @dly.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

while you were studying the blade, I was also studying the blade. we have the same blade exam and I want to do well.

342288452

Reposted by Garrett Merz

old roadside pics @roadside.xor.blue · 28/02/2025

it'll do motel office, jonesborough, tennessee, 1987

342699

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Beautiful Women Updates @aoife.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

immaculate heart of mary except instead of the heart it's midland plate 45

0173

Reposted by Garrett Merz

the milfwaukee road @cartilagehead.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

“wurlitzer” is the perfect name for a company that made Contraptions

2418

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 12/02/2026

Wisconsin's upcoming governor's race has big implications for trans rights. The state senate today passed a set of anti-trans bills that Governor Evers is likely to veto. But if the Evers, who's retiring, is replaced by a Republican, they're sure to come up again. spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee...

spectrumnews1.com

Wisconsin State Senate debates several gender-related bills

Some Democrats believe the bills are part of an effort to legislate transgender people out of the public eye.

46323

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

At the airport and saw a mouse scurry from under a maintenance door onto a jet bridge. Hope he makes his flight

0140

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Jonathan Mertzig @mertzigzag.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

That is quite a sunset…

Swirling clouds in a light blue sky over a snowy landscape with a fiery orange and pink horizon.

A rippling bright orange stream below gray clouds.

0122

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Dexter Patterson aka Wisco Birder @wiscobirder.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Still riding the joy from our first ever BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin photo exhibition at the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee. Grateful for the community, the love, and everyone who made it possible. Just the beginning! 🐦🖼️🫶🪶

0363

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

My position on taking action. And on the important space between everything and nothing.

And everything is flawed, if you want to look at it that way. The analogy that has helped me most is this: in Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of them said, I can’t rescue everyone, therefore it’s futile; therefore my efforts are flawed and worthless, though that’s often what people say about more abstract issues in which, nevertheless, lives, places, cultures, species, rights are at stake. They went out there in fishing boats and rowboats and pirogues and all kinds of small craft, some driving from as far as Texas and eluding the au- thorities to get in, others refugees themselves working within the city. There was bumper-to-bumper boat-trailer traffic—the celebrated Cajun Navy—going toward the city the day after the levees broke. None of those people said, I can’t rescue them all. All of them said, I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it. And they did.

181319505

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

"The process by which specific features emerge during denoising remains an open question. To investigate this, we propose a new architecture we call the Feature-Hierarchy Quantized Wasserstein Hybrid Generative Adversarial/ Diffusion Sampler (FHQWHGADS), and probe its behavior in the limit of... "

120

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Moon is out, sweater is on, and baby it is AMTRAK TIME

0120

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Man in Business Suit Levitating @dfeldman.org · 03/12/2025

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

1494

Reposted by Garrett Merz

E Mills 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🍉 @millbot.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

“I can see why all these people without heads wouldn’t be good for a community, and might be a cause for abandonment.” Love a droll researcher.

091

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Gailey 🍉 @sarahgailey.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Today's Love Letter is a stunning meditation on birdwatching and the loss of a friendship, from the one and only @amalelmohtar.com stone-soup.ghost.io/love-letter-...

stone-soup.ghost.io

Why I Need the Birds

A Love Letters Feature by Amal El-Mohtar - November 2025

5346145

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

I'm at the KITP in Santa Barbara this month and ran into the great workers of @afscme3299.bsky.social fighting for a fair contract - solidarity!!! If you're a UCSB worker, join the picket line if you can!

050

Reposted by Garrett Merz

jeremy kaplowitz @jeremykaplowitz.com · 12/11/2025

people hate AI, but they don't actually understand what it is. for example, you know the most famous AI program? that's actually an example of AI! the more you know

tiktok comment: "Not at all. I think a lot of people are traumatized with the term AI and don't understand it. You use ChatGPT right? It's essentially the same thing."

11956160

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

WORT is one of the gems of radio, I haven't heard anywhere else like it. They do it all - feminist news, 30s big band, a midnight "anyone from the community can run a show" block... toss em a few, if you can!!!

081

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 16/11/2025

If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.

4544711156

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

An activity possesses trajectory, and, anticipating a form, trajectory anticipates an end. - Donald Revell in “Better Unsaid: On Poetic Fragments” per the formal energy that arises from a trajectory

081

Reposted by Garrett Merz

SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

I’ll be done aurora-posting soon. But I wanted to add: Columbus is a big city with vibrant immigrant communities. Word spread that you could see it from the dam, so by this substorm there were ~50 people up there with me. Shouts of joy and awe in so many languages, a memory I’ll forever treasure

819619

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Zoë “Baddie Proctor” Quinn @unburntwitch.com · 02/06/2025

If you’re wondering what a “least weasel” is, they absolutely live up to the name. This is the least amount of animal you can have that can still meet the bar for “is weasel”

A least weasel. It fits in the palm of the hand.

7853041304

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

sometimes an Oxford comma can make all the difference

What we're watching: A new take on
"Frankenstein," a lavish legal drama starring Kim Kardashian and a Tracy Morgan-led spinoff.

16979001193

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Sat in on a really interesting talk yesterday where the speaker basically said that we *could* be building data centers to have an extremely low environmental impact- waterless cooling, solar power- but we're not doing that because the Powers that Be are racing to Beat China

070

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Nina Marotta ☢️💙 @mrschief7.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

The WPA is my Roman empire. So many first-hand accounts of enslaved folks, early settlers, native Americans, etc that are so invaluable today wouldn't have been recorded with it. I'm amazed at how we figured this out 90 years ago and then just abandoned the idea...

2131

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Cian 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (he/him) @cbdawson.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

It's striking that relatively small orgs like @carpentries.carpentries.org and @python.org are standing up for what's right, while so many much larger orgs with deeper pockets are quick to acquiesce and throw their communities under the bus. They are pointing the way for the future of science.

0207

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Steven J. Gibbons @stevenjgibbons.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Every time I post a picture of a seismic signal, I am using #python software. Please read this thread from @python.org (I here have screenshotted the three posts that I think contain what you need to know.) I applaud the Python Software Foundation for taking this stand.

Screenshot of thread on Bluesky from the Python Software Foundation

312152

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Diana Cai @dianarycai.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Fisher meets Feynman! 🤝 We use score matching and a trick from quantum field theory to make a product-of-experts family both expressive and efficient for variational inference. To appear as a spotlight @ NeurIPS 2025. #NeurIPS2025 (link below)

Fisher meets Feynman: score-based variational inference with a product of experts

1469

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 19/10/2025

the Muppets have been real quiet since the Louvre heist

204176563973

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Superconducting Supercollider Funding Cancelled

030

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Rosebud Ben-Oni @rosebudbenoni.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Two new Atomic Sonnets in Cream City Review :: Whenever I think of the element Europium, I think of Ultravox’s “Vienna” and is dedicated to my dear friend Jared Harel. As the element Indium, ALLEGEDLY it gives a high-pitched “scream” when bent, o the soft girl era she is.

0136

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Liz Neeley @lizneeley.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

And now UVA!! www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025... MIT, Brown, Penn, USC and now UVA have all rejected the loyalty oath “compact” for “excellence” in higher ed. Five of nine! (I wonder if this decision was final before today’s planned meeting www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...)

cavalierdaily.com

U.Va. rejects Trump administration Compact for Academic Excellence

The University has rejected the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which he received from the White House and Department of Education Oct. 1, according to a community statement rel...

219051

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Question for the anglophiles- if Prince Andrew stops using the "Duke of York" title, does York still *have* a Duke?

310

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Scott 𐚁 🦇 Cave 🦇 @hellabarnes.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

a common buckeye butterfly on Symphyotrichum grandiflorum

a 70s colored butterfly with multiple eye spots on vividly purple aster flowers

0305

Reposted by Garrett Merz

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 17/10/2025

great now I want an ancient baptismal jacuzzi for the yard

61419

Reposted by Garrett Merz

𝙴𝚟𝚊𝚗 @atremblingsky.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

"why am i so goddamn tired all the time lately" wonders guy who has wildly overburdened themselves with activities and obligations

161

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Cool fact I just learned: the CMS detector at CERN (@cmsexperiment.bsky.social) sits on the site of a 4th-century Roman farm that was rediscovered during the excavation of the cavern! www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/may-...

symmetrymagazine.org

An LHC detector's old Roman roots

Particle physicists probe uncharted territory for remnants of the early universe. But that is supposed to occur after their experiments turn on.

050

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Legitimately starting to think @francescahongwi.bsky.social is Wisconsin's Zohran. Met her earlier this week and have not felt this fired up to go knock doors for someone since the Bernie campaign.

050

Reposted by Garrett Merz

WomanAstro @womanastro.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

OTD in 1847, 178 years ago, America's first woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell, discovered a comet. She was presented with a gold medal for her accomplishment by the king of Denmark. #WomanAstro #WomeninSTEM #WomeninScience en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/1847_...

en.m.wikipedia.org

C/1847 T1 (Mitchell) - Wikipedia

062

Reposted by Garrett Merz

drewtoothpaste @drewtoothpaste.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

"the one year clock" my invention from a few years ago

hey, what's today's date?
looks like... a little past october

11559