iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Heather Burns

Maria Farrell @mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 3h

Mission accomplished. Silicon Valley's favourite "reformer" shuts down CHT activities that forced tiny changes to his Big Tech funders (litigation) and keeps only those that get him into high status rooms. When an individual's vanity and an entire industry's strategy of predatory delay collide.

conversationalist.org

The Prodigal Techbro

Prodigal tech bro stories skip straight from the past, when they were part of something that—surprise!—turned out to be bad, to the present, where they are now a moral authority on how to do good…

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 5h

Do you know how much I hate how badly you and I are both unemployed and destitute. (rhetorical question)

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Maria Farrell @mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 6h

Remember the 2019 Christchurch Call, a call by Western govts and Big Tech to "end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism"? It was a response to livestreamed mass-murder by a far-right loner. Which platforms will stream Hegseth's blood + circus?

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Reposted by Heather Burns

William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 14h

Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 19h

I mean, how can National Melon Day not send you over the edge en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon_Day

en.wikipedia.org

Melon Day - Wikipedia

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 20h

It’s been 23 years and I’m currently having the same giggle attack I did the first time I saw it.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 20h

I also was given an English language translation of his self-written holy book, as depicted above, yes it was in those pink and green colours. I put it on the receptionist’s front desk in case anyone was sad and needed to read the inspirational words of glorious leader.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 20h

And here is the actual calendar. It was a diplomatic gift in my job in DC at the time. I had it taped up at my desk for those moments when I needed to have a silent giggle fit, though the person who gifted it to me did so with religious reverence. Yes, he renamed months after himself and his mum.

The most glorious calendar in all existence

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Credit to the US for making the point the conference was trying to make about US foreign interference in European democracies for them, and bringing more attention to the conference and its themes than they could have possibly hoped for. www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

politico.com

EU, Canada and Lithuania pull out of disinformation conference after US pressure

The Trump administration was bothered by panels that referred to the U.S. as a disinformation threat.

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Lauren Dobson-Hughes @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Flydubai pilot was deep into manosphere content, routinely used derogatory sexual slurs about women, and wanted a tradwife Misogyny is a gateway drug www.ft.com/content/a92b...

ft.com

The online life of the Flydubai attacker

[FREE TO READ] Co-pilot of flight 1073 gravitated towards the ‘manosphere’ and expressed misogynistic views

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I occupy the very strange corner of internet where a review I wrote of a German film went top 5 on HN overnight for no reason whatsoever. 🤷‍♀️

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I recently saw ATPM on the big screen and it hit even harder.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

One of the fun things about being a 1990s dialup web person is that your silent RSS feed achieves far more impactful reach than any algorithmic promotion could.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

You forgot the point where the reaction that GenX gets from millennial colleagues is asking whether we’d like a referral to something called the “disability and wellbeing service”, as if a few talking therapy sessions about “gratitude” would sort the nutcase harasser knocking on the front door.

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Vittoria Elliott @telliotter.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

SCOOP: Last week the National Design Studio announced a new AI website, America.gov. Turns out some NDS workers are on loan to the government and are actually employed by a newly formed nonprofit, founded by the general counsel of SpaceXAI who is himself a DOGE alum. www.wired.com/story/myster...

wired.com

A Mysterious Nonprofit Run by SpaceXAI’s Top Lawyer Is Paying the Salaries of Government Workers

The National Design Studio has been something of a successor agency to DOGE. A WIRED investigation finds some of its members are on loan from a nonprofit run by SpaceXAI’s general counsel.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Being on the receiving end of some particularly unique batshittery myself (for which the guy who showed up at my house in August was only a *side story* in the saga) I have become particularly sensitive, and angry, about how the harasser gets the sympathy and the protection and the victim does not.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Finished this - what an outstanding exposition of how the Trump administration is the product of MLM scams and the lobbying that deregulated them, and that the 21sr century American dream is just gaslighting grounded in grift and self-help woo-woo. 99p just now too. amzn.eu/d/0htoBQA0

amzn.eu

Amazon.co.uk

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Maarten Schenk @mschenk.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

An example of FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference) in action at the @disinfo.eu conference? Apparently someone in the U.S. did not agree with the topic of a session named "USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back" and applied pressure on the sponsors...

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

what’s wrong babe don’t you like your ai slop vending machine phone case

an ai slop vending machine in a shopping centre

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

You know an idea is bad if even they are saying “whoa hold on a minute”

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There’s a reason the AV lobby wants it to be passports bsky.app/profile/heat...

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Graham Smith @cyberleagle.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Refreshingly thought-provoking, well researched piece.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I haven’t had a proper HR meeting since 2003. Everywhere I’ve worked since then had no HR function at all, just payroll and pensions or bad bosses marking their own evaluations.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I’m so very sorry to hear that. In my case, there’s no separate HR person/role, so my manager also conducted my exit interview; stating the obvious, this isn’t just marking your own homework, but marking your own exams too. The board (which is equally oblivious) is somehow fine with this.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Fun fact: after I wrote that post, I had my exit interview, where I was assured I'd receive multiple written follow-ups on my feedback about what a clusterfuck the organisation is and how miserable it is to work there. After I closed my laptop, I never heard a word from them again. Ever. They lied.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Me, 2021: describes openly racist age verification providers licking their lips at the possibility of using their products to identify and ban foreigners from the internet in Britain 2026: Rupert Lowe is an investor in an age verification provider theuglygame.wordpress.com/2026/07/15/p...

theuglygame.wordpress.com

Prophets without profits

The government’s favourite provider of child protection software, SafeToNet – a perpetually loss-making firm run by recently born-again Christians – has finally filed its long-delayed accounts. The…

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

On my last day at this awful job, 17 Sep 2021, I went out with a blog post titled "Papers Please: nationality checks for the British internet?" www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/papers-... The Times, 5 October 2026:

NO ID, NO ENTRY: Social media users will be required to submit passports, drivers licenses or other “hard” forms of ID to prove they’re old enough to use platforms under plans being considered by ministers, the Times’ Steven Swinford and Ben Clatworthy report.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

what did I warn youse was going to happen, chapter 56921

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

(Weirdly, I decided to pass a rainy Sunday by re-watching the utterly brilliant TV adaptation of “Station Eleven”, so my brain was already in eschatological mode before I got this email.)

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Luis Villa @lu.is · 04/10/2026

Thinking about what it would look like to run this as an exercise for Wikipedians.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The question probably sounds sadistically cruel, but ... this is how wargames work.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

As someone who inhales speculative fiction, I am in awe of the @techpolicypress.bsky.social weekly newsletter’s creative provocation exercise: draft a two-minute policy memo, via voice message, on “Why, How, and When to Abandon the Internet.” Don’t tell me, btw. Think it for yourself.

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Reposted by Heather Burns

TJ McIntyre @tjmcintyre.com · 03/10/2026

How many local models does the Pope have?

Pope Leo XIV • @Pontif... • 17h
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce.
There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack th Show more
→ 3.3K L62K
• 316K
ıll 15M
Spectro
@Spectromachina
X.com
Pope, would you please shut the fuck up about matters you do not understand?
You're not an Ai influencer, no one elected you, and you have absolutely no weight in this debate and you're being used as a mouthpiece to sway public opinion. how many local models do you run?

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Glasgow: the UK AIDS quilt is on display at the Tramway until tomorrow. You should go.

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Rob 🏳️‍🌈 @rotster.net · 02/10/2026

Genuinely if ‘Prevent’ started monitoring white boomers on Facebook instead of brown people at colleges and universities it might actually catch some terrorists.

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