iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.

ironholds.org

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 15h

Made the mistake of reading a long post from this dude on Twitter about nonconsensual sex that I thought was going to be an extended metaphor for AI adoption but it was actually just him justifying his favourite fetish 🤢

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 16h

Thinking back on this piece from nine years ago and while I think it nailed a lot of important things about sexual harassment, in retrospect it also helps explain why a lot of powerful people thought dismantling the republic and making us all poorer was a price worth paying to stop #MeToo

hypatia.ca

The Al Capone theory of sexual harassment

We developed the Al Capone Theory over several years of researching and recording racism and sexism in computer security, open source software, venture capital, and other parts of the tech industry…

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 16h

Notable cooling of Jordan's official relationship with Israel that isn't driven by widespread popular revulsion so much as its perception of its own interests: -Netanyahu's increasing isolation -Fears of refugee flows from Syria and/or the West Bank -Fears of Israeli destabilization campaigns

ammannet.net

Jordanian Columnists Outline Scenarios of Confrontation Between Jordan and Israel | موقع عمان نت

Jordanian newspaper columnists have expanded their analysis in recent days of the possibilities of escalation between Jordan and Israel, following King Abdullah II’s address to the United Nations Gene...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 23h

The Trump administration's illegal kidnapping and detention of Mahmoud Khalil will perhaps be seen as one of the more pivotal moments which accelerated the change in elite, and especially elite youth opinion on Palestine.

nytimes.com

A Quietly Shattering Memoir by a Man Detained by ICE for His Beliefs (Gift Article)

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and former Columbia graduate student, offers an account of his ordeal and explains why his work continues.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 17h

10/17/23 is specifically the date of the al-Ahli hospital bombing when the IDF killed upwards of 500 Palestinian civilians. Western media collectively agreed that it was prudent to cast doubt on the reported casualty figures, so "Hamas-run ministry of health" became a thing.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 21h

Would argue that it's the government that lacks credibility here: "You're a free market now" *Caps tuition for over a decade despite inflation "Make it up on international students" *Makes country inhospitable for immigrants* "Compete for funding" ...

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 22h

Worth noting that one of the main reasons why women are excluded from education in societies we generally think of as more backwards than our own is because of fears of rampant sexual violence. Excluding women is an unacceptable solution, but is pretending this isn't a problem really better?

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I remember when I was doing research on the 'marriage crisis' in the Middle East, a couple of elders once scoffed at the very idea. One guy asked if I knew what "doesn't deserve the hoof" meant and then explained, 'at a feast, the best meat goes to the most honored guests and so on...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This Labour government could have responded to the genocide in Gaza in so many ways, instead they cut aid. This is a dereliction of duty.

Stuff of nightmares UK cuts aid to Un Gaza food operations by 78%

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Is it good when your university is so overflowing with students that the timetabling people consider it a victory when 90% of the students could fit in the room?

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There's something darkly fascinating about the idea of a technological revolution that is a net drag on efficiency. It upends a lot of what we think futurology should be. But you can see a sort of inexorable logic to it...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

On similar lines, if we’re not careful: A. Scientific journals will only accept submissions from established researchers working within institutions. B. Data we’ve spent ages making open will be hidden to avoid the expense of continued download by bots.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Speaking of institutional cowardice, these frat bros were given essays to write as punishment for sexual assault at the same time that students were being expelled for protesting a genocide...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

James Ryan @jdryan08.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

NYC spends approximately $200,000 a year for every inmate in the corrections system. It spends about $27,000 a year for every student enrolled in CUNY.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Seems like it should be part of the "are phones ruining the kids" debate that every marker of teen mental health has improved since 2021 www.cdc.gov/yrbs/youth-h...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Abu Aardvark @abuaardvark.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We haven’t even begun to see the impact of the region’s wars on political stability

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Sumita Pahwa @sumitapahwa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is one of the best depictions of the challenges of parenting in the US I've seen on here.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

As an anthropologist, I think the idea of young people as "digital natives" works if we see them as analogous to any other sort of natives: they know what they know and they're experts on their own experience, but haven't a clue about what scaffolds all of that, like explaining water to a fish...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“Evolution has not “shaped” the minds of men and women in the biologically deep-rooted way Stewart-Williams suggests – that shaping is an ongoing process. Any scientific account that neglects this is likely just wrong”

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

In Medias Malone @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

For decades, parents complained that foreign students were taking their kids’ places when actually they were expanding US higher ed. Anyway, now that the bull has trashed the china shop, people will ask who let the bull in

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The fact that Reddit will no longer let me read the whole thread in a mobile web browser.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Miriam Matthiessen @miriammthsn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Really excited to be part of this @rethinkecon.bsky.social book discussion with @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on her wonderful book The Corporeal Life of Seafaring. It will take place next Wednesday, September 30th, 4.30pm CET. You can register here: rethinkeconomics.org/events/book-...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“If the crisis is caused by the funding model, why are workers only fighting its consequences?” The #UKHE permacrisis needs a national response. tribunemag.co.uk/2026/09/brit...

For years, sector employers, represented represented by the Universities & Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), had already laid the ground for such an escalation: during national negotiations, they repeatedly claimed that casualisation, workload and equality could not be resolved at the institutional level. As the financial crisis deepened, senior managers and UCEA itself went further, arguing that the underlying funding model was unlikely to change and that redundancies were therefore unavoidable. In other words, these issues could not be resolved by institutions themselves, with meaningful progress instead ultimately requiring state intervention.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The sad thing is that this idea even persists in the academic literature--especially when it comes to the uptake of digital technology in the Middle East. There's this idea that the tech is fundamentally anti-statist and liberatory until it's somehow tarnished through contact with authoritarianism..

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A defense of association fallacies by the same publication that published the quote: "it is possible to kill children legally.”

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The thesis that democracies might go a bit wacky once the real issues are dealt with intrigues and terrifies me

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Is it possible that a majority of voters in advanced Western democracies simply lack real problems?

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Oh wow so the internals are BAD bad?

Mike rogers on Twitter:

The war in Iran needs to end to bring costs down — but Michigan families can’t afford to wait.

Here’s what we can do now: place a temporary embargo on Diesel exports. American energy should provide relief to American families first.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026

ngl I was stunned by this article's cite to a study showing that 5.4 million children & teens in the US have family caregiving responsibilities @jessicacalarco.com has done lotsa interesting work on how the US uses women in lieu of a social safety net but I had no idea how much labor falls on..kids

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Priyamvada Gopal @priyamvadagopal.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

We are insufficiently outraged by the bloodbath at Edinburgh. Solidarity with colleagues subjected to this vandalism.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Was curious what the German equivalent of using Dearborn as a slur would be...

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Once again thinking about the time Abdulmalik Al-Houthi compared the Saudis to a cow being milked by Trump...

The cow of Al-Haloub, because of how much they milked her, her arm started to hurt and hurt her...

Al-Haloub, with all his strength, this is trump's grip on Al-Haloub.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"boy let's not talk too much" hits different now

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Euan @euan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

not mentioned in this screenshot but appearing later in the article is that the US is sharing details of the deportees with the Iranian government, despite many of them having fled after resisting the regime that the US is ostensibly fighting a war to remove

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Ed Sheeran's big song is written so generically and inoffensively that we don't even get to find out what type of body he's into...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Damn man. It's weird for leaders in occultation to make one feel old, but he looks like a fresh-faced sophomore in that compared to now. I've been spending a decade watching this guy give incredibly long sermons.

A photo of Abd al-Malik al-Houthi from today

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Once again thinking about the time Abdulmalik Al-Houthi compared the Saudis to a cow being milked by Trump...

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Consensual non-consensual sounds like a perfect distillation of the tech industry...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Yuval Abraham's excellent articles about the AI-assisted bombing of entire apartment buildings have been online since 2023. Here is one from 2024 that describes "Where's Daddy?," an algorithm designed to locate and bomb targets when they were at home.

972mag.com

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local C...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Michelle Goldberg @michellegoldberg.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/o...

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The discursive void left behind by standing for nothing and having no clear convictions is filled in with talk about "disavowing Hasan Piker." A politics of pure stance-taking with no substance.

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"Why won't the left take this industry's demands for state regulation at face value?"

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

People are baffled by why anyone would attack lifeguards, but there's actually a very interesting hadith about this: it says that basically the most truly enviable thing you can do is help other people...

I heard the Prophet (ﷺ) saying, "There is no envy except in two: a person whom Allah has given wealth and he spends it in the right way, and a person whom Allah has given wisdom (i.e. religious knowledge) and he gives his decisions accordingly and teaches it to the others."

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

They're testing the waters and Burnham and his government are all but saying they welcome the years of lead.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Hughes

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/fact...

Here is Trump on 9/11 bragging that Trump Tower is now the tallest building in Manhattan

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The repressive logics of the Al-Assad regine that forced this guy to do this aren't really so different from the logics behind programs like PREVENT, as if reading too much ibn Taymiyyah is going to make you go and blow something up...

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"Gutting anti-discrimination policies for most minority groups while supercharging them for Jews is hypocritical... It turns civil rights law into a political protection racket... The largest campaign against antisemitism in American history has also been its supreme trivialization."

nytimes.com

Opinion | For Trump, Jews Are Proving to Be a Very Useful Tool

Debates about Jews are never just about Jews.

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