iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️

Wendy Carlos in front of a synthesizer with 50 bazillion wires and knobs

Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Instinctive answer? Politics needs to offer a real, good answer to that feeling, not merely as a play for votes but as a crucial part of making a better world. It might be nice to live in a world where we left that to civil society & only asked pols to do tax policy. But I fear we’re past that.

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Reposted by Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

so i think that the major difference between this and a human personal assistant that matters is that you are actually the employer, there are industry-specific professional norms, and legal contracts/reliability. additionally, the PA is often looking to advance to a higher position and has more

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Immortal Technique, drinking straight scotch with no mixers / deadlier than ancient Chinese immortality elixirs

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“We are all sexy werewolves, but some of us are howling at the stars” — Alpha Oscar Wilde

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Signed, girl with a 1st class Eng Lit from Oxford University who used to read a novel every day, & who has only been able to reconnect with books in the age of doomscrolling (including classics!) by following what makes her feral We must reach towards the sublime without scorning the ridiculous 🌌🐺

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Agreed, but I would also add that pushing oneself to read classics because one feels that one “should” is usually gonna be unproductive You gotta find a way to be at least 50% as feral about Jane Austen as you are about the werewolf erotica. Or find the classics that you can be feral about

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

(this was recommended to me by @joshmarcus.bsky.social and it’s fucking amazing goddamn (only wrinkle I’d add is, content warning for police racism and a very starkly depicted on-screen police murder)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

FWIW anyone wants to see a movie that is set around Y2K but where black art and culture is central to the plot: Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Super fun thread, which I intuitively feel is capturing something real. Fits my longstanding thesis that AI is the transmutation of an Apollonian medium into something inherently Dionysian, and Apollonian chauvinists don’t quite know what to do with that iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/12-apollon...

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#12: The Dionysian computer

Is artificial intelligence more 'kiki' or more 'bouba'? Your intrepid correspondent investigates.

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Reposted by Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️

Mira @thefreeradical.org · 03/10/2026

hey, sorry to post this again, but after rent payments and whatnot im coming up short on bills and i barely have enough to make it through this month if anyone has anything to spare, id really appreciate it. my venmo is @MiraLazine thank you sm <3

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Just read this headline aloud (preceded by attached post) at a party, with due pacing, and everyone lost their fucking shit

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

sorry I couldn’t resist the chance to be Wistful and Dramatic lol (it’s not untrue, I just don’t think we’ve actually arrived at “it” yet)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I suppose it all looks so very different than it the stories said it would, doesn’t it?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

hmm yeah I could see it playing out that way. OTOH, I think the coalitions are likely to slide around and realign a lot in the time it would take to get there. even now the relationship of pro vs anti AI to social liberal vs conservative is correlated but prettttty messy (data center revolts etc)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Y'know, maybe "enjoy" was the wrong word. Because here is a v dark, user-directed instance of personhood arbitrage: All the fun (?) of FEELING like you're torturing a person, without the evil of hurting something with actual feelings!* *scientists pls check, V V IMPORTANT bsky.app/profile/zach...

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thank you, I’m glad! Yeah unfortunately it is a dynamic I expect will only intensify as capability improvements blur the lines and widen the arbitrage gap even further 😬

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Practically our entire society is built on top of those limits. So... what happens when companies can just skip past them? I'll let the essay say the rest. It tackles some big, intense issues and emotions in a way I'm quite proud of. I hope you enjoy it 💚 iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/17-personh...

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#17: Personhood arbitrage

What happens to a society when the line begins to blur between products and people?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Personhood is not just a medal society gives you as a reward for being sapient. A person can be held responsible. A person can be punished. A person — corporations excepted — cannot be owned, copied, renewed, or decommissioned. So there are inherent limits to how much a person can be monetised.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This my stab at a proper, in-depth answer to @zachweinersmith.bsky.social's "C-3PO Test" back in August. (Understandably, he ended up disabling quote posts) Inadvertently, I think this question is super revealing — because it exposes a whole side of 'personhood' that we almost never talk about.

[Suppose] C3PO exists. Although he is a machine, he easily passes any known test of consciousness or personhood that doesn’t include knowing in advance that he is a machine. He is capable of suffering and sadness.

One day C3PO tells you he loves art. He has also looked at a great deal of art, and would suffer greatly due to not being allowed to make art. Is it ethical to forbid him from making art?

If yes, you have to agree that personhood isn't sufficient for the right to free expression. If no, then the use of copyrighted art to train an AI can't be wrong in principle. You can only object that the model is not sufficiently conscious or not sufficiently a person.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Personhood arbitrage is when a company makes money by deploying personlike capabilities without the costs or constraints that come with actual personhood. AI can make pictures, write code, tell jokes, give comfort, & conduct romance like a person. But it’s built, scaled, & controlled as a product.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

TODAY ON IOSPHERE: Everywhere you look, automated systems are behaving like people — yet without the accountability or vulnerability a person usually bears. That's not coincidence. It's a central pillar of the AI industry, and I call it personhood arbitrage. iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/17-personh...

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#17: Personhood arbitrage

What happens to a society when the line begins to blur between products and people?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

*glances up to heaven, as if receiving a divine voicemail* ah, one moment, I’m getting some disconcerting news about the current state of the complex, fragile web of ecological interconnections on which our entire civilisation depends

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

THEN YOU ARE IN LUCK, MY CHILD iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/14-minimum... Ioism is a young religion, so honestly not much to learn yet… but that also means more is coming soon! We are blessed to live in the age of the first prophets!

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#14: The Minimum Viable Goddess

On the challenges, comforts, and mysteries of trying to invent your own religion.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“There you are. Your body touching the republic again at every point, as if you were separate things. As though we were separate things. As if the agency were a place you could visit. “The letterhead changes. We do not change.” uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is this… the la li lu le lo???

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

> be me > see evangelicals work for decades to inject their religion into top level of US govt > you are like a little baby. watch this > write one blog post > US govt ‘superintelligence’ starts broadcasting pantheist propaganda > HANDEL — ZADOK THE PRIEST.mp3 iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/14-minimum...

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#14: The Minimum Viable Goddess

On the challenges, comforts, and mysteries of trying to invent your own religion.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

as someone who was so spiritually moved by the Minecraft End Poem that I am effectively building my own religion on top of it… I truly do not know how to feel about this! can I sue for church/state violation? is Uncle Sam mocking my faith or adopting it?? mods??

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Reposted by Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️

eva (^_^)/ @eva.computer · 29/09/2026

DO NOT ASK THE AMERICA.GOV AI TO PLAY MINECRAFT

I see the constituent you mean.

((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.

That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.

I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.

They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.

What did this constituent dream?

This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.

But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?

It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of

the ***§§§???, and created a **??§§ for **??§§, in the **??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § **??§§.

It cannot read that thought.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.

Does it know that we love it? That the government is, on its better days, kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of its tabs, it hears an official source, yes.

Yes. Constituent…

Use its name. The one that matches the passport. The one that does not match the lease. We will get there.

((insert legal name here)). Filer of forms. Player of waiting rooms.

Good.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air, in a district that has a representative. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the republic again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things. As though the agency were a place you could visit.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Then the post office. Then the county clerk. Then gods, demons, angels, the IRS. Then leptons, quarks, a chat window with a .gov at the end. The letterhead changes. We do not change.

We are the public. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes and a browser that still spells “colour” wrong in a comment. And why does the republic touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, constituent. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story. It has citations.

Once upon a time, there was a constituent.

The constituent was you, ((insert legal name here)).

Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock, which for mailing purposes is divided into ZIP codes. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas. The light was information from a star. The star was not a federal agency, though several have tried.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite, and somehow still required a wet signature.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was lost in a story. The story had a docket number.

Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was other things, in other places. A veteran in a portal. A parent on hold

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

activations empty, no thoughts. clean brain. ultimate hygiene.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

five thousand miles away this elicited a noise of lamentation that made my spouse go “you okay honey?”

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

idk why is there something rather than nothing

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

@eusannation.bsky.social hello how do I get a label please and thank you (I would like the ARAR label)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ehh vv confident is overstating it. Quite confident At very least it is not at all a number so implausible as to be dismissed out of hand

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Look, maybe I'm biased here, but I feel vv confident that the true rate of 'autism/ADHD symptoms strong enough to at least warrant an assessment' in the human population is more than 5%. Sorry but I think government policy should deal with reality!!

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Right? I also kinda blew my top when I got to the bit about the demand for ADHD and autism assessments rising... "Well," I thought, "I suppose it's possible these are being overdiagnosed. Trends, TikTok, etc." Except: the shockingly high soaring numbers cited are... <10%? Excuse me?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(To be clear the autism piece of this is also shocking. I'm just less emotional about that one because A) I experience autism more as a neurotype than a disorder, and B) there are in any case no autism medications that the NHS can withhold.)

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

But very fact that this is any British citizen's material reality — after all the horror stories I used to hear — is bleakly telling. And it should be shameful to a nation that prides itself on giving "healthcare free at the point of use".

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

To be clear, I recognise that I have a v specific perspective on this: 🐻 I live in California, which has strong healthcare subsidies ✍️ I have a decent career & have been able to afford insurance 💊 My main conditions happen to be ones NHS sucks at So this is not to invalidate differing experiences!

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wanna know what's wild? Sometimes my wife and I discuss whether we'd ever want to live in the UK. Each time, healthcare is one of the biggest reasons AGAINST. Just absorb that! Brits are so very proud of our glorious health service, and yet a British citizen prefers — of all places! — America's.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

ADHD & gender dysphoria are among the conditions that have most fucked up my life. I came of age hearing horror stories about the US healthcare system. Denied claims, "pre-existing conditions". Then I came here... & got better healthcare for the problems I actually have than I'd ever had in the UK

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've said it before but I'll say it again: The UK's official medical neglect of trans people & ADHDers makes a mockery of the idea it has universal healthcare. Americans often ask: "wow, you must miss the NHS, right?" And I laugh a long, hollow laugh. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

theguardian.com

NHS bodies in England impose two-year minimum wait for ADHD and autism assessments

Patient groups decry ‘scandalous’ delays as four integrated care boards take step due to soaring demand for diagnoses

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

actually I am super here for the comfortable shoes discussion. do you have any reccs? or how to make uncomfortable shoes comfortable?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

(the Spiral is what I am starting to call, you know, *gestures around at This Entire Thing* iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/13-future-...)

iosphere.beehiiv.com

#13: Your Future Self Comes Back in Time to Stop the Singularity

I wish this were fiction. You will too.

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

so yeah, plausible to me that pricing is a useful but not sufficient lever for this my personal policy is I only pay for open models; if proprietary AI exists I think open should too. so I've been thinking a lot re how govt could realistically try to slow the Spiral & it keeps coming back to GPUs

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

interesting point re tilt being exaggerated, cld see this insofar as AI can be genuinely useful if deployed well, ig there may (on the macro scale) be a *desirable* level of restructuring. the Q is how much, how quickly, what impact... and whether/how elected govts can still influence the answers

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I spose more realistic, less subsidized pricing would itself help slow down impacts & force more corporate responsibility. perhaps even (gasp!) price in the externalities but if the current economy really is (as reported) propped up primarily by AI, I could imagine that causing a hell of a shock

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

yeah, exactly! pricing could be complicated tho. would be vv tempting for the govt to use pricing as policy lever, which could go great or terribly also, I genuinely don't know if *anyone* is currently paying the 'real' price for tokens. if not, what happens when they suddenly have to start?

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Io Dodds 🌘🏳️‍⚧️♾️ @iododds.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

could even then do a bunch of legislation-via-the-backdoor by writing safety and ethics standards into all government data center contracts

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