iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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BREAKING NEWS: “Do geese see God” is a palindrome

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ACARS Drama @acarsdrama.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Air to Ground Message: THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS WOULD LIKE ME TO PASS ALONG THAT THE GALLEY CART IS COVERED WITH ANTS. Area: Washington DC, USA Type: Airbus A220-300 A: #a64a1cc29e5 F: #f08f1cc5b3f

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Emmanuel Carrère, Kolkhoz.

In my baccalaureate exams, which I took in 1975, I got a 4 in philosophy. To put that into perspective, 10 is a passing mark, 14 to 16 is very good, and 4 is a straight fail. But you have to ask: philosophy isn't maths, so a 4 in it is absurd: why not a 5? Why not a 3? Why not a O, for that matter? Without telling me, my father approached the Paris School Board and after some time was able to view my exam paper. The marker had written: 'insufferable pedantry'.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 29/09/2026

I did GCSE Russian at school and our teacher showed us a Russian map of the UK. Friend and I got mildly hysterical when we managed to transliterate one placename as "Niukasl-apon-Teyn".

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Endangering another during a journey by sea; criminal damage; carrying an offensive weapon; possession of a bladed article; conduct endangering ships or individuals; unlawfully and intentionally destroying a ship breaching section 11 of the aviation and maritime security act;

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🪬🌙🐈‍⬛Pythia Uidliua🐦‍⬛⭐️🧿GNOTHI SEAUTON ♐️⚕️🍷 @krymsynreine.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Late 2nd-century statue of Glycon. (National History and Archeology Museum, Constanţa, Romania) who is a snake god that seems to have originated in Macedonia #pagansky #witchsky #occultsky #archaeology #serpent #glycon

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Am very very much enjoying The Rouse and have just stopped reading for a second to yell about how much the word “qualiaphagic” pleases me

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My god is that Peter Guillam moonlighting from the Circus to do the v/o for WHSMITH? Wheels within wheels.

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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What’s really peculiar about the “rapture” theology is that it’s based on a really convoluted and selective reading of scripture, dates back no further than the 19th C, is rejected by the Orthodox, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed, and is basically contradicted by the Apostle’s Creed. But…

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Christopher Burlinson @cmburlinson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

There are building works on my staircase, and this ghostly list of previous inhabitants emerges. Trevor Jones was a German lexicographer and Bletchley code-breaker; Thurston Dart a musicologist; Harry Creswick was university librarian; Cameron Wilson taught French; Freddy Britain was a classicist.

An old list of inhabitants of C Staircaae in Jesus College Cambridge.

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Instagram’s trying to sell me Mr Rogers outfits so hard this year

An apparently AFAB model wearing slim oatmeal trousers, a stripy tie, white shirt and an unbuttoned long bright red cardigan. I’m pretty sure they’re wearing comfy slippers too but they’re not visible

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

10:48 am, Basel. Me and my migraine are well, thank you. We are currently researching experimental investigations into vigilance. The blinds are down. Distant electronic music and a black redstart outside. An internal voice whispering, ruefully, "chocolate and bright sunlight are your enemies."

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Tom De Ville @devilligan.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This is on our extremely right wing media and every single MP in a position to speak out against it who has backed away from doing so.

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Andrew Male @andrewmale.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Help! Stop! Trapped in loop watching this. Stop. Cannot stop. Stop.

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Lane Stellmaker @hipcrimevocab.net · 16/09/2026

Which is to say: you as a human are frightfully and wonderfully made, your consciousness is sui generis and cannot be artificially replicated, and science fiction's preoccupation with a Titanomachia between biological life and machine life is just retelling our early myths in new forms.

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Shepseskare in Love @upfromsumdirt.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026

charles wright

ARCHAEOLOGY

The older we get, the deeper we dig into our childhoods, Hoping to find the radiant cell
That washed us, and caused our lives to glow in the dark like clock hands
Endlessly turning toward the future,
Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, the day after that, all golden, all in good time.

Hiwassee Dam, North Carolina

Still 1942,
Still campfire smoke in both our eyes, my brother and I
Gaze far out at the lake in sunflame
Expecting our father at any moment, like Charon, to appear
Back out of the light from the other side,
low-gunwaled and loaded down with our slippery dreams.

Other incidents flicker like foxfire in the black
Isolate distance of memory,
cross-eyed,
horizon-haired.

Which one, is it one, is it any one that cleans us, clears us,
That relimbs our lives to a shining?

One month without rain, two months third month of the new year, Afternoon breeze-rustle dry in the dry needles of hemlock and pine.
I can't get down deep enough.
Sunlight flaps its enormous wings and lifts off from the back yard,
The wind rattles its raw throat, but I still can't go deep enough.

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Well this has utterly broken my brain, not least in terms of experimental design www.cell.com/the-innovati...

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 15/09/2026

The U.S. AI industry is being run by a batshit rationalist sex cult, and no, I am not being hyperbolic - they’re genuinely Like That:

Erin Redwing
@realizingerin
I went to an rationalist/EA Al doomer event last night with the goal of meeting someone who could calmly explain to me the argument for how they get to the conclusion that Al will kill everyone.
Because these are rationalists, I expected to find people who could lay out a serious extinction pathway, walk through the assumptions and intermediate steps, identify choke points where negative pathways could potentially be regulated, and entertain disagreement about where their assumptions might break down.
My experience was the exact opposite.
The people I spoke to seemed psychologically unable to entertain the possibility that their conclusion (that Al literally kills everyone, which was a point that many would not even budge on) might be wrong.
Their most extreme conclusion was treated as an axiom.
I had multiple people walk out of conversations with me when I questioned their inevitable extinction premise.
At one point during a panel, the moderator asked everyone in the audience who was still skeptical of Al doom to raise their hands. About half the room did. He then told all of the skeptics to leave the panel and go with one of the speakers, who would answer their questions separately. They filtered out all the skeptics, and continued the panel only with the subset who accepted their extreme position.
I genuinely felt like a heretic just for questioning whether superintelligent Al inevitably leads to the extinction of humanity, or entertaining the possibility that the future might actually turn out well.
That does not mean Al safety is fake. Obviously there are serious questions about rapidly advancing Al systems and what happens as they become much more capable. Those are exactly the conversations I went there hoping to have.
But what I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult. These people are not rational. They are deeply afraid, they reinforce that fear in one another, and they have become so emotionally committed to apocalypse

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If a generative AI CEO is telling you something, take it with a grain of salt the size of an iceberg. So if they want regulation now, it is more likely something to do with finances than an immediate existential threat. These dipshits do not care about existential threats other than going bankrupt.

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Lord grant me the confidence of a guy who @s William Gibson to answer a question Gibson wasn't asking about AI /wintermute expression

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Good morning from me and a Basel jay

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Fix Your Heart or Die. @petrochemicsoul.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thinking about "plus they'll probably have to deal with Godzilla at some point".

"Tried to watch 'Shin Godzilla" on the plane only to realize by the end of the movie that it actually a drama movie called 'Tears for you'. Words can't describe the feeling of watching an incredibly sad movie while constantly thinking: 'Damn... This is depressing. Plus, they'll probably have to deal with Godzilla at some point too...'"

What follows are four screencaps (presumably from "Tears for You"), showing a smiling woman (subtitled "I really love you."), a distant image from above of axwonsn in a white dress (subtitled"Thank you... for raising me."), a short-haired person weeping, and finally, an apprehensive woman (subtitled "living happily.")

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Colson Whitehead @colsonwhitehead.com · 27/07/2026

Welcome to the party, pals

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Sitting in an Italian cycling cafe in Basel listening to a particularly turgid cover of In a Gadda Da Vida and trying to catch up with three months of mainly unanswered emails

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 09/09/2026

the irony is just astonishing, which makes it even more bleakly funny that these people seem incapable of recognizing it

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Micah @rincewind.run · 09/09/2026

a lot of people have trouble believing they are serious, because it is a ludicrous thing to say out loud, but as far as I can tell anthropic at least genuinely believes: 1. someone is going to build a machine god that might kill us all 2. we should build it first so we can minimize the risk

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 07/09/2026

Yelling "stop the boats!" as I charge in to rob this NatWest at gun point so that I can later call the Home Secretary as a character witness and the BBC will spend two weeks telling all my potential future jurors how legitimate my concerns were.

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Dr Anke Marsh @ankemarsh.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Just so we are clear: The 83yo priest on the left is a terrorist. The balaclava-clad men on the right are protestors with legitimate concerns

A photo from the BBC of an older woman, with grey hair, being led away by police.

A photograph of a line of men in black clothes and balaclavas blocking the port at Dover.

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Gregory Norminton @gregorynorminton.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The chief vectors of the fascism ascendant in Europe are the richest man on Earth via his social media platform, the Presidency of the United States, and the Kremlin. A multi-pronged assault on liberal democracy and liberal democracy seems incapable of rising to the challenge or even recognising it.

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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Good morning Spanish 'Ghost Train' fairground attraction, circa 1950

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Harry Saddler @harrysaddler.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Gonna find the people who colourise old black and white films and get them to put this jumper on Rocky

A grey tracksuit top with a line drawing of a smiling bat with fangs and the words “Microbats of Melbourne” written under the bat.

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, wearing a plain grey tracksuit.

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Goodnews @goodnews.computer · 04/09/2026

Take a break from being depressed that everything you love is being destroyed by slop for a moment and let me tell you about the beautiful symbiotic relationship between graffiti writers, train yard workers, and model train enthusiasts.

A hand holding a model train with a replica of the same graffiti on the full scale train car behind it.

A model train with two graffiti pieces on opposite sides.

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Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Going through my granddad's diaries. At 9am on NYD 1992, he was queueing outside Texas Homecare to buy a new toilet seat. He then drove home, went back to bed for 3 hours, watched The Guns of Navarone, had dinner, watched Taggart then got back in bed to write his diary. I envy most of this.

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

If you’ve read Prophet: Adam and Rao (HT @sinblache.bsky.social)

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BSFWriters @bsfwriters.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

And we'll say it again-

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do?” --Wendell Berry

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Sin Blaché ♣️ @sinblache.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I just found out that "on the nose" means something entirely different in the UK??? I was just going to go my whole life without knowing that they think that it means "exactly right"?

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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

FFS, @Guardian. Max Pemberton is NOT an expert in #ADHD, he's a psychiatrist specialiseing in older patients, with a bizarre agenda against #Neurodivergence, a regular column in the Daily Mail, and a dangerous TV show to promote Remember when you had actual experts regularly writing for you?

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I have to leave the country in four days. I have a thousand things to do, of which about sixty are super-urgent. Unfortunately I also have ADHD. Spent all morning polishing three brass kitchen lampshades which I last polished eight years ago.

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Helen Macdonald @hjm.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

“There’s a car going up the B3351”

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/

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