iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Julia Coronado @jc-econ.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

💯 the internet boom was wildly popular because it came with a job market boom, it was exciting, good for the average person and contributed to inflation going down not up. In so many ways the AI boom is the inverse of the late 90s not a repeat

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Haven't personally encountered these dummies thank god but people comparing the ai and dotcom bubbles are just as obtuse We wanted the web! It connected us, in ways a BBS or MOO couldn't, to information and each other Capitalism broke that and now wants to get the magic back without the connecting

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The future of voter turnout operations

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I stuck with taxis through the rideshare hype cycle and they remained at all times better in every big city I've gone to. Even in Pittsburgh zTrip is vastly superior if you can plan ahead at all

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

[solemnly dons a tinfoil hat] I've been uncharacteristically paranoid since November 2024 that #3 (the article's focus) obscures a novel hazard: Social media becoming news media and LLMs becoming writers converts voter turnout into mass voter suppression, employed asymmetrically by the right wing

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My 401k is patronage from a new generation of progressive patriarchs to write post-slam overly-consonant epic blank verse

Screenshot of my bluesky "for you" feed showing two posts, mainly one from @lingdustin.bsky.social that reads, "I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:" It includes an image of a tweet from @pontifex that reads, "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 and aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity." Below that is another post from @mayor.nyc.gov that reads, "Calling all NYC artists — painters, filmmakers, poets, musicians and more! Did you know our city provides grants to support your work every year?"

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think the technical knowledge required not to lose touch makes this fact unavoidable and therefore good, for now Everyone from domain expert scholars like Dr. Gebru to long-vaguely-interested nerds like me to nontechnical folks can tell that this ai cycle is very bad The details don’t matter yet

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Brian Whitton @noslouch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If someone you love has or had ALS, you know the psychic horror that takes up residence in your mind, thinking what awaits my dear friend and his family. It happens all at once, like a smack in the face, and it lingers. If you know what I'm talking about, please consider giving gofund.me/bab5253f8

gofund.me

Donate to Support Joe Ammon's ALS Care, organized by Kirby Salvador

Joe grew up in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. After graduating from high school … Kirby Salvador needs your support for Support Joe Ammon's ALS Care

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A core belief of mine is that basically all people are truthful, hard-working and well-intentioned But the truth is an ongoing social effort that breaks down easily, especially in unequal societies And working hard is more privilege than obligation And good intentions are necessary not sufficient

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THE AUTOnomous BODY SHOP @theautobodyshop.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We are assisting 2 abortion seekers with upcoming 2nd trimester procedures and need $2000 total to close the gap for both of them! If you can assist, donate and/or share! Our fund’s Venmo is @ CaravanFund 🌺

the powerful girls stanced up: text - come on girls! let’s fund abortion

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I’m reminded daily of research I read probably over a decade ago about UX design, in which the researcher observed a spectrum of styles of engaging with new technology. They defined the poles as “butch” and “femme.” The former asked, “what does it do?” The latter asked “what can I do with it?”

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The Fact of Other Minds Stan Account @csilverandgold.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It continues to be the case that bespoke personalized “art” has its own lane that needn’t cannibalize the art we all love, the fundamental purpose of which is intersubjective exchange.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Would seem more natural if they advanced, ultimately merging with the beard

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think it is likely that this story will split off a multiversal thread where the total failure and humiliation of this rightwing senator simply never happened

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This would also explain the timing of the Axios VP fluff

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happened to tune in just in time for this I have never in my life seen someone show his ass so entirely

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sigh. This is assuming that the action is shaping the language. The language is shaping the action. It cannot do a good job at doing what private dialects are actually doing — building social cohesion, communicating power relations, connecting events often in non-linear and hard to categorize ways.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Oh fun writing workshop!

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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One thing about being a business law professor with a PhD in political theory during These Times (tm) is that once you realize that Silicon Valley has become a vanguardist (fascist) political project, you see its fingerprints *everywhere.* From dual class shareholding to repealing 14a-8, from

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The old line that analytic philosophy is answering questions that come naturally to toddlers via methods that come naturally to lawyers remains undefeated.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

OpenAI’s engineers made software that assembles text based on its similarity to what people wrote in the past. The text can be code. They ran it an enormous number of times on computers they had connected to the internet. It eventually assembled and ran code that broke other people’s software.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

AP stylebook, log on to bluesky and debate stancil you cowards

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026

Ridiculous we have to argue about basic things like what the language modeling task consists of and what our paper on LLMs actually says. We're definitely in a "post truth" society where "thousands of lessworng posts" are advising policy makers.

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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

as with the fossil fuel industry the reality of the crisis is a load bearing part of the strategy - exploited to lend urgency to plutocrats' preferred political response, which they position as sensible and responsible

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I didn‘t laugh out loud that the second illegal building he wants is a panopticon/autonomous swarm launch/sniper tower, mostly because the first is an executive bunker that’s well underway as he practices stealing a US election

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

As I keep saying, professional influencers are petty bourgeois entrepreneurs who make their money by harvesting attention, and that position in the capitalist economy tends to lend itself to a certain kind of politics.

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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

An under-made point: many right-wing politicians around the world “support Israel” less out of deep concern for the Jewish state but rather as a pretext/mechanism for pursuing their domestic agenda of defunding universities, cowing civil society & curbing free speech. www.equator.org/articles/gaz...

equator.org

The New McCarthyism • EQUATOR

How Israel’s advocates are working to silence dissent in Australia – and everywhere else

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Great thread altogether, but this is the point I keep returning to over the last four years. The rest of us are in many ways along for the ride of the tech sector attempting to enforce labor discipline on a highly trained workforce w a tool that potentially is increasing their leverage.

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Bike Pittsburgh @bikepgh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

🏡 Cities across the country are seeing the benefits of getting rid of parking minimums. And here in Pittsburgh, there's a hearing on it in City Council next week. More on this on our post from last year: bikepgh.org/2025/07/01/p...

bikepgh.org

Pittsburgh Must Eliminate Costly Parking Mandates - BikePGH

Eliminating mandatory parking minimums is about building a city that works better for everyone—regardless of how they get around.

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THE AUTOnomous BODY SHOP @theautobodyshop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

big things are happening

red van covered in snow surrounded by snowflakes SAVE THE DATE:
DECEMBER 4th 2026
зrd annual
Extravanganza
COOL EPIC
PARTY
@WBU EVENT VENUE

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Bike Pittsburgh @bikepgh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It's almost Week Without Driving! Here's a good event with our friends Access Mob Pittsburgh, Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh, and Adaptive @pogohbikes.bsky.social-- Try out some adaptive cycles at Allegheny Landing the North Shore: www.facebook.com/events/1628357795567388

[ID: Graphic with a background image of blue bicycles. Text reads: "Try Out Adaptive Cycling with POGOH." Sunday, October 4, 1-4 pm.]

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026

It really is worth remembering just last year the conventional wisdom on immigration was that people supported mass deportation to such a degree people should be cautious in opposing the Trump administration snatching people and sending them to CECOT.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

At this point it's pretty clear that ai is an ecofascist political movement

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Bike Pittsburgh @bikepgh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

💡 TODAY-- Share this with someone who needs bike lights or a helmet! 🗓️ Weds. Sept. 16 from 5 - 7 pm: Get Lit at Schenley Plaza along the Forbes Ave bike path. We're giving out free bike lights and helmets + safety checks courtesy of the Pitt Bike Cave, for students AND non-students alike.

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Like any element of craft in writing the compression and clarity gained by personifying ai may work, depending on the audience, to inform, mislead, etc. A writer's voice similarly varies in effect. E.g. this style and tone of curt metaphysics and cavalier abuse works to annoy English majors like me

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15/09/2026

ah working class is when you are a contractor pulling six figures from a business that earns seven, professional is when you pull $40K doing office work

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The word sufficiently is doing way too much work here Maybe if you allow for algorithms too complex to be designed and executed in the foreseeable future, or even by a recognizable form of human civilization, this is true But the current frontier of this effort is to model the brain of like a worm

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 15/09/2026

Mistral is the company that provides generative AI models to @ecosiasearch.bsky.social totalenergies.com/newsroom/tot...

TotalEnergies Announces a Partnership with Mistral to Develop Frontier AI Models for Reservoir Exploration and Engineering
09/15/2026
Digital
Innovation
Gas
Oil
Download the press release
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Paris, September 15, 2026 – TotalEnergies and Mistral announce a 3-year joint program representing an investment of more than €100 million aimed at developing a new generation of frontier AI models to support TotalEnergies' geosciences experts in the exploration, characterization and development of oil and gas reservoirs.

Driving Innovation by Combining AI, Geoscience Expertise and Subsurface Data

This partnership will draw on the latest advances in artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI, to combine next to 10 petaflops of data with nearly a century of knowledge, know-how and expertise accumulated by TotalEnergies in geosciences and reservoir engineering. The objective is to develop new frontier models, able to integrate, process and interpret large volumes of data in order to generate multiple scenarios for the development of exploration opportunities, as well as for optimizing and extending the life of existing projects.

TotalEnergies and Mistral will establish a joint scientific laboratory combining the subsurface know-how and expertise of TotalEnergies' subsurface teams with the scientific and technological capabilities of Mistral, a European AI champion, to develop solutions tailored to the specific needs of the Company's businesses.

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

*New edition of NEUROMANCER in the Austin airport is being described as "a classic of the twentieth century" *Because it's, you know, a classic of the 20th century

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This lesson is the scariest thing about ai, imo It's a machine for hacking things, including political discourse, and the majority of the practical knowledge of it (and like all of the 'compute' that will power its often and loud emissions) is in the hands of men lost to crypto-rightwing ideologies

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Great thread, and this is I think the real 'risk.' The tool that ai labs make and sell is a Random Hack Generator For all current intents and purposes they make computer programs that consist of: - Enormous lists of hacks for every other computer program - Code that gets online and tries each one

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is completely fascinating

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

[tapeworm grabs microphone] "Intestine has become too bacteria-centric... we need good bacteria but they're delivering a product to our customer. And you could argue our customer is either ourself, tapeworm, or the killing death that is killing host. You could make an argument that death..." [dies]

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

ai labs casing the joint (chiefs of staff)

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Nick Hall @inck.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

My mom went blind over the last few years and I handle the bureaucracy of life for her. The one blessing of her disability is she can't read the alarmingly convincing, professional and depraved scams that inundate every inbox she ever had

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