iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 10h

I'm frustrated by this article for many reasons. Firstly, writing is often the *culmination* of thought—of grappling with ideas, synthesizing information, and working to deeply understand a topic. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think. (Gift Article)

If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I went to Cornell and worked at Penn State, where this hazing death happened a few years before I started. Shutting down individual frats and holding individuals accountable is not enough. The entire system has got to go. abcnews.com/US/penn-stat...

abcnews.com

4 Penn State fraternity brothers sentenced for pledge's hazing death

Four former Penn State University fraternity brothers have been sentenced in connection with the 2017 death of a pledge during a booze-soaked hazing ritual.

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026

The before and after it's even more haunting.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ha I just learned on the Great British Baking Show that dachshunds are called “sausage dogs” in the UK.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Xingu owl, which is endemic to the region of the Brazilian Amazon where I do my research 💚💛🦉🤍💙

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It’s been a week between news of possible closures of 16 MPLS Public Schools & UMN having to cut its budget by $225 million. As a colleague said: “I’m an MPS parent & this week has been austerity at home, austerity at work. I want to know that people still believe in public education from K to PhD.”

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is great for the University of Oregon, but this story comes the same day UMN announced a $225 million budget cut. This is why philanthropy is not the answer—the stability (and even survival) or organizations should not have to depend on the goodwill of billionaires. fortune.com/2026/09/24/b...

fortune.com

Billionaire Nike cofounder Phil Knight gives $1 billion to his alma mater: ‘This is no time to abandon’ higher education | Fortune

Phil and Penny Knight are funding a new engineering college at the University of Oregon, the largest known gift to a U.S. public flagship university.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yet another example of how AI can be useful *once you already have deep knowledge and experience in a field* whereas using it as a student actively prevents the acquisition of that knowledge. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | A.I. Has Made Me a Better Doctor. It’s Made Med Students Worse. (Gift Article)

I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — and less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts.

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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

🧵 with the readings from my Sociology of Climate Change class this semester

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Much to my shock given everything else he did, Reagan created the Office of Minority Health in response to Black-white health disparities. Fast forward to today when RFK Jr. is using the Office’s funds for his own personal security. heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-...

Yesterday, Liz Essley Whyte of the Wall Street Journal reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. funded enhanced security for himself by taking funds from the department's Office of Minority Health.
Whyte notes that the Reagan administration created the Office of Minority Health after a landmark report showed that Black life expectancy in the U.S. was shorter than white Americans' and that Black babies were more likely than white babies to die.

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snackerü @snackeru.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Greetings from the terra cotta cat and rabbit sculpted onto Folwell Hall at the University of Minnesota.

A terra cotta cat on a mostly brick building.

A terra cotta rabbit on a mostly brick building.

Folwell Hall at the University of Minnesota with two red arrows pointing at the locations of the terra cotta cat and rabbit.

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is heartbreaking to read: “Najya was asking what I’d accomplished by not choosing the “best” school for her. And the honest answer is, I don’t know. When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.”

nytimes.com

In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

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Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 18/09/2026

I spend my week crossing london on a bike and increasingly that means cycling alongside Wayve/Waymo robotaxis. it’s uncomfortable. they give you so much space, don’t do a close pass while accelerating as lights go red. So unnerving if you cycle on assumption everyone’s mental and wants to kill you.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Journal editors: I just got an R&R with 3 reviews, and some of the reviews seemed a bit off to me and requested a LOT. I put text from each review into Pangram, which is supposed to be a high quality AI detector, and it appears that 2 of the 3 are AI generated. How do you handle stuff like this?

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

New species alert! The tilcayo tiger cat, found in the Bolivian cloud forest.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16/09/2026

Today, with backing from the ACLU, Kelton and twelve other named researchers filed a class action suit against the NIH under director Jay Bhattacharya for censoring their research and violating their First Amendment rights.

aclu.org

Researchers Challenge NIH Screening of Grants for Disfavored Viewpoints | American Civil Liberties Union

Class action lawsuit seeks to stop censorship and termination of federally funded scientific research

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

One of the main problems is under-enrollment. Among the MANY reasons I love Minneapolis is that I will send my kids to our zoned elementary, middle, and high schools without thinking twice. Same is true for many neighborhoods. And yet, so many families opt out. www.startribune.com/minneapolis-...

startribune.com

Long-awaited Minneapolis district transformation proposals could close 16 public schools

The school board is reviewing three proposals, each set to shutter more than a dozen schools, to right-size a district facing chronic enrollment and budget woes.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

A friend of mine was put on administrative leave from her job in the federal government for over a year, making her full salary to do literally nothing. And then, out of the blue, she was called back to work. What efficiency! www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/u...

nytimes.com

Federal Employees Were Paid $9.5 Billion Not to Work in 2025 Under DOGE Effort (Gift Article)

As part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s program to shrink the federal work force, paid administrative leave costs rose by 435 percent.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Belo Sun gold mine—which could be built in the Amazon near the Belo Monte Dam that I study—would be the largest open-pit mine in Brazil, create a tailings dam the size of 14,000 Olympic-sized pools to store mine waste, and threaten multiple Indigenous groups. sumauma.com/o-caso-belo-...

sumauma.com

O caso Belo Sun chega ao Supremo - SUMAÚMA

A Procuradoria-Geral da República pede à corte que suspenda ‘com urgência’ a licença de instalação de Belo Sun. O pedido é assinado pelo vice-procurador da República e está sob os cuidados do presiden...

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Jonathan C Slaght @jonathanslaght.com · 15/09/2026

super easy to make sure you're registered to vote, Minnesota

Graphic showing that I am indeed registered to vote

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Sarah Gollust @sarahgollust.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I dunno, there’s a lot of bad and scary news here. Maybe instead you want to see our cat PJ chilling at one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes yesterday? (Yes we brought our cat to the lake. Why, you ask? Why not?)

A grey house cat relaxing on a gravel beach in Minnesota with the lake behind her

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is it. Learning is a beautiful struggle. “All of us who teach at MIT will need to be prepared to help students understand both that the process of education is necessarily a productive struggle, and that the most important product of their education is not a GPA or a diploma but themselves”

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Last summer I was in the midst of chemo for breast cancer and had to get an echocardiogram to make sure the chemo wasn’t damaging my heart. I got a bill for nearly $1,200 for one line item—speckle tracking echocardiography—which my insurance denied, saying it was “experimental”. 1/4

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Minneapolis gets better and better. I was sad when Sun Street Breads closed—we went almost every weekend—but this far exceeds what I expected to replace it. And also, a local bookstore is opening a few blocks from me. My dream come true! mspmag.com/eat-and-drin...

mspmag.com

Coming Soon: Evergreen Café from Pastry Chef Shawn McKenzie

McKenzie is taking over the old Sun Street Breads space and opening an Oregon-informed, Pacific Northwest-accented café that promises to be the biggest baking news of our year.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

As I tell the students in my sustainable development course: Just give people money, and trust them to use it how they see fit!

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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 11/09/2026

the prospect north loop data center in the old star tribune building is dead. legacy has terminated its purchase agreement for the site there’s been a lot of organizing by north loop residents against this, hope many take this as their entry to being civically active

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

"Tree ring data shows that wildfires burned regularly in the Boundary Waters through the early 1900s, but then abruptly stopped, after indigenous people were removed from the area and the U.S. and state governments began extinguishing all fires that started." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

mprnews.org

Why the devastating Boundary Waters wildfires are critical for a healthy Minnesota forest

The wildfires that burned 70,000 acres of the canoe wilderness this summer left behind a charred landscape, but also set the stage for a rebirth of northern Minnesota’s boreal forest.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Quite a cute bird from the Brazilian Amazon.

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Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"We choose to decline to volunteer our judgment as peer reviewers when the representation of a paper we are provided with suggests that the prose is predominantly AI-generated." jhullman.github.io/author_accou...

jhullman.github.io

Reviewer Commitment to Authorial Accountability

A commitment by peer reviewers to decline review invitations when a submitted paper's prose appears to be predominantly AI-generated.

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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Nearly 70 Democratic and independent members of Congress are calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to work with the Israeli government to help secure the release of a prominent Palestinian doctor who has been held in custody for more than 500 days. abcnews.com/Internationa...

abcnews.com

69 members of Congress call on Rubio to help secure release of prominent Palestinian doctor

Nearly 70 members of Congress called on Sec. Marco Rubio on Thursday to work with the Israeli government to secure the release of a prominent Palestinian doctor.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

In my statistics class today, the majority of students were taking hand written notes in notebooks made of actual paper, and it brought me so much joy!

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Anyway. Data politics are the cataclysmic danger. AI is mostly just a mid tech attached to a speculative finance scheme. Anything it can make dangerous is already dangerous enough to kill us.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Dam removal for the win! Ecosystems can rebound incredibly fast after a river is reconnected. Nature is amazing.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 04/09/2026

China's net greenhouse gas emissions *fell* this past quarter. Why? Because rapidly expanding electric vehicle use is putting a serious dent in oil demand. We could do that too. But we're not. We have the slowest EV update in the developed world, thanks to Trump.

carbonbrief.org

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions fall in Q2 2026 due to plummeting oil use - Carbon Brief

China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2026, as oil consumption plummeted amid the strait of Hormuz crisis.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

As a 4th generation New Yorker, I am deeply offended.

My NY Times dialect map telling me I talk most like someone from New Jersey.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

We hunted for recycle artist Thomas Dambo’s trolls in Detroit Lakes, MN!

Long Lief troll sculpture with my husband for perspective

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

We just drove through Aldrich, MN, population 35. According to the NY Times extremely detailed election map, in the 2024 election there were 18 Trump voters and 6 Harris voters. Fascinating, and also I’d love to talk to those 6 people!

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Ye Old Mill is so very bad, yet bizarrely intriguing.This astute article makes me glad to have experienced its glory. “There is something sincerely lovely about Ye Old Mill’s obstinate and somewhat baffling refusal to be in any way exciting. It is perhaps the lamest ride one could imagine.”

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Mni Sóta Makoce. The land where the water reflects the skies. 🩵💚🩵

A view of Fish Trap Lake with the sky and clouds reflected on the water.

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Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 02/09/2026

Nepal is demanding climate compensation from the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases after deadly floods in the country killed more than a thousand people and left even more missing

bloom.bg

Nepal Seeks Climate Compensation From China, US and India

Nepal is demanding climate compensation from the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases after deadly floods in the country killed more than a thousand people and left even more missing.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I love me a good art deco movie theater. This one is in Little Falls, MN.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Another Minnesota State Fair in the books. As Bonnie Raitt once sang: “Won't you come and take me home? I've been too long at the fair Lord, I just can't stand it anymore”

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Ayana Elizabeth Johnson @ayanaeliza.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

What If We Get It Right season 5 begins NEXT WEEK with my ace co-host, climate OG @billmckibben.bsky.social 🎉 We’re bringing on the best of the best to get to the bottom of what’s at stake for the planet this November. Subscribe, follow, listen — and most importantly, get ready to hit the polls! 🗳️

tiktok.com

Surprise! What If We Get It Right season 5 begins NEXT WEEK with my ace co-host, climate OG Bill Mckibben 🎉 We’re bringing on the best of the best to get to the bottom of what’s at stake for the plane...

TikTok video by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

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Inclusion Chick @inclusionchick.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

We do Date Night by bike all the time. It’s the best! I 💙 #Davis, #California Other trips by bike: ✅ Farmer’s Market ✅ Parks ✅ Library ✅ Movie Theater ✅ Grocery Store ✅ Doctor or Dental Appt ✅ School and Work ✅ Restaurants, Coffee Shops, Ice Cream It’s possible AND wonderful!! 💙🚲💙

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