iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

I’m rarely on here these days, but glad that people are talking about Mazzy Star!

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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

What continuously shocks me is so many people have so little pride in what they do.If you have a PhD you trained for at least 5 post college years to acquire expertise in a field.When you’re asked to review its’s to tap that hard won expertise. Why would you think a machine an adequate substitute?

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Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

This is such an excellent point and media should be reporting it this way. (This is in reference to Miller’s preposterous but still dangerous claim earlier today about the executive branch considering suspending the writ)

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no. @joles.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

applying for jobs again

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question).

an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question:

"there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask.

it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same.

it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.”

there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price

for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face."

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whetstone @whetstone.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

With alt text. The kicker comes at the end and it takes a bit to get there, but I tried to describe the rather dry layout leading up to it very clearly because the contrast of dryness to horror is very important to how the image lands for me.

XKCD comic titled PhD Timeline

It's a graph titled "US PH.D PROGRAM TIMELINE" showing the PhD process as written steps outlined down the left with the corresponding proportion of coursework versus research on the right. The steps on the left begin with enrollment and proceed as normal through "meet with advisor," "research proposal," "qualifying exams," "propose dissertation," and "research and write dissertation." The coursework v. research graph shows that research begins with the research proposal and then increases sharply around the time of qualifying exams until the candidate's doing nothing but research when they start working on their dissertation.

The last two steps of the process ("submit dissertation" and "defend dissertation" have been scribbled out in red, with an alternate set of steps written in instead: "get grabbed off the sidewalk outside your home by masked government agents," then "be whisked out of the state before a judge has time to intervene" then "????"

It's not part of this image, but the bonus text you get by hovering over the image on the XKCD site says "Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago."

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Please repost: Here is a freely available diplomatic transcription of Katherine Philips's autograph Tutin manuscript, created by my former student Washington Pearce. I hope this will make Philips's poems available to broader audiences. scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub/3...

scholarsarchive.byu.edu

Poems by the Incomparable Mrs K. P. (The Tutin Manuscript)

Katherine Philips (1 January 1631/2 – 22 June 1664) was an Anglo-Welsh Royalist poet and translator. Philips authored over a hundred poems on female friendship, theology, politics, and the nature of s...

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

scholarsarchive.byu.edu

Poems by the Incomparable Mrs K. P. (The Tutin Manuscript)

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

A US citizen with a learning disability who has just suffered a medical emergency asks a CBP officer for directions outside the emergency room. He ends up detained in an icebox for ten days and has the assistant secretary of DHS lying about him to the public at large. popular.info/p/us-citizen...

Tricia McLaughlin &
@TriciaOhio
0...
The narrative being pushed about Jose Hermosillo is false. On April 8, Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson and stated he had entered the U.S. illegally through Nogales. He said he wanted to turn himself in and completed a sworn statement identifying as a Mexican citizen who had entered unlawfully.
He was processed and appeared in court on April 11. Afterward, he was held by the U.S. Marshals in Florence, AZ. A few days later, his family presented documents showing U.S. citizenship. The charges were dismissed, and he was released to his family.
This arrest was the direct result of Hermosillo's own actions and statements.

In an interview with Popular Information, his first with any media outlet, Hermosillo said DHS'.
's account was false.
According to Hermosillo, he was visiting his girlfriend's family in Tucson from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several hours before his arrest, Hermosillo was transported to a hospital in Tucson by ambulance after suffering from a seizure. He has a New Mexico state ID, but did not take it with him during the medical emergency.
After being released from the hospital following treatment, Hermosillo did not know how to return to where he was staying.
He approached the Border Patrol officer because he was looking for someone to help him. "I saw a car, and I askled] him for help," Hermosillo said. He told the officer that he was staying in Tucson.

"You"
re not from here. Do you have your
papers?" the officer said, according to Hermosillo. When the officer asked where he was from, Hermosillo said he told the officer,
"New Mexico." The officer then accused Hermosillo of lying. "Don't make me lout] like [I'm] stupid," the officer said. "I know you're from Mexico." After that, Hermosillo said, he was arrested.
Hermosillo said that he never told the officer that he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, or entered the country illegally. And he would not have said those things because they are not true. He signed the transcript released by DHS because the officer ordered him to "sign everything." But Hermosillo did not read it, because he cannot read.
According to Hermosillo's girlfriend, Grace Hernandez, Hermosillo has learning disabilities and can only write his name.
Hermosillo said he did not graduate from high school and dropped out after the 10th grade.

The officer also signed the document, which said Hermosillo "read" the document or had
it read to him. But Hermosillo said no one read him the document.
Other documents created by the officer have inaccuracies. For example, the criminal complaint says that Hermosillo was detained
"at or near Nogales, Arizona." But Hermosillo was detained in Tuscon, which is more than 70 miles from Nogales. John Mennell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Border Patrol, said that it was an "unintentional" error.
Hermosillo said he was detained with about
15 other men in a cell at the Florence Correctional Center. He was served only cold food. He said he contracted the flu because
"they have it cold in there and everybody's getting sick." Hermosillo said he requested medicine but was not provided with any.

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

The Trump admin has been instructed by a judge to restore the legal status of 133 international students. Their status had been revoked for, among other absurd and egregious reasons, *traffic violations.* abc7.com/post/ice-rei...

President Donald Trump's administration has until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to reinstate the legal statuses of 133 international students, according to an order granting temporary restraining orders on behalf of those plaintiffs filed in a U.S. District Court in Georgia on April 18.

The federal judge overseeing the case, Victoria M. Calvert, issued a TRO requested on behalf of students, all of whom claimed their student statuses had been unlawfully revoked.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU and other groups in the Northern District of Georgia, is among several that claim Immigration and Customs Enforcement "abruptly and unlawfully" terminated records on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a database that the Department of Homeland Security uses to monitor non-immigrant students.

The lawsuit claimed that by terminating these records, ICE is ending a student's status and making them deportable.

"DHS's act of unlawfully terminating SEVIS records appears to be designed to coerce students, including each Plaintiff, into abandoning their studies and 'self-deporting' despite not violating their status," the lawsuit said.

Some of the students represented in the lawsuit are nearing graduation or are enrolled in work programs.

Many of the plaintiffs had been charged with traffic violations, and in some cases minor misdemeanors, but later had their charges dropped. Others, including "Jane Doe #12," have never been arrested or cited for any traffic violation.

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Andy (he/him) @eprenprof.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Here’s a description of @matthewsteggle.bsky.social ‘s work that can be read by an interested public. The rest of us will await the grainier details in the journal Shakespeare.

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Matthew Steggle @matthewsteggle.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

So I've got this article which should be coming out in the journal _Shakespeare_ any moment now, but in the meantime - Briefly, it's about a C17 letter preserved in the binding waste of a book now in Hereford Cathedral.

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

“The wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was forced to move to a safe house with her children after the government **posted their home address** to social media.” 4/23/25 newrepublic.com/post/194289/...

newrepublic.com

Abrego Garcia’s Wife Forced to Go Into Hiding Thanks to DHS Slip-Up

Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife says she fears for her safety since the Trump administration deported him to a prison in El Salvador.

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 18/04/2025

If you think you can't make a political issue out of "people shouldn't be grabbed off the street and put in a foreign gulag forever," maybe consider getting out of politics/punditry. And these aren't technical slogans: they appear in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution (twice).

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

"but it's mostly hard because of people like RFK" covers so many things, unhappily.

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

“In an age of uncertainty, we can’t predict the specific profile of a productive workforce. But recruiting according to immediate demands risks becoming anachronistic fast.” So, employers, demand government funds the arts & humanities. We spend our entire first year unteaching by-rote learning.

At first I thought the issue was workplaces. But that isn’t it. Employers in fields from finance to advertising, technology to medicine, are deeply concerned for bright, ambitious young people, whose prospects appear constrained by an education too tightly fitted to yesterday and not adaptable enough for tomorrow.

When I spoke to Michael Spence, president of University College London, he knew exactly where the problem lay: criterion-based assessment. This teaching method, familiar to most students in exam-based testing, judges work according to pre-determined criteria. It assumes, Spence says, “that the assessors know that one right answer. That is rarely true of real life.”

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

A student just presented me with a beautiful, hand-bound copy of his diplomatic edition of Katherine Philips's Tutin manuscript (which should be available digitally soon). It's one of the most beautiful and thoughtful gifts I've ever received from a student.

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soleil ho @soleilho.com · 09/04/2025

really feel like writing something on how steep tariffs may destroy restaurants that depend on imported ingredients to replicate non-American flavors—and thus spark a movement toward more conservative, blander food scenes throughout the US

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Some of us have been shouting this into the void for a long time now, but in this case, the abyss doesn't seem to be looking back at us.

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Chris Warren @chriswarren.info · 04/04/2025

1/ I need to say something a little more personal about the NEH. A 🧵

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Andy (he/him) @eprenprof.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I love the work Chris does and hadn’t thought of how much of it is possible only because of the @nehgov.bsky.social ‘s support. It is so sad to see the NEH hacked to bits by a chainsaw in the chaos that has been unleashed. Call your representatives and ask them to save the NEH (and the NIH, NSF, SSA

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Nicki Washington, Ph.D. @drnickiw.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

If you are an NC resident and voted in November, please check if your name or the names of any family areone of the 60K votes being challenged. If so, confirm ASAP with your Board of Elections. You only have two weeks. The website to check linked in the reply. www.newsobserver.com/news/politic...

newsobserver.com

NC Court of Appeals gives over 60,000 challenged voters 15 days to prove eligibility

The majority wrote that, even though they have the authority to completely throw out the contested ballots, they decided to instead mandate a cure period for most of the challenged voters.

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Walter MOONdale @dabenner.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Once again Vance's claim that we should not sympathize with Garcia but with the people victimized by MS-13 refutes itself.

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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 01/04/2025

The administration says that criminal immigrants can be deported to a foreign forced labor prison without a hearing that could determine if the person is actually a criminal or actually an immigrant and that if it makes a mistake it can’t be rectified because the person is now outside their control.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

When you find yourself basically going "blah blah blah why are you talking so much about innocent guy sent to a gulag, get over it," your sense of humanity has been fundamentally broken and you've lost the plot. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not.

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

In a Studio Ghibli film, nature itself would revolt and either destroy ChatGPT or remain red-eyed and furious until we did.

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

I think this every time I teach Hobbes, but yes. (Also quite a time to be teaching Milton's The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.)

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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 26/03/2025

An international graduate student at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, the university’s president said. The university was told that the student’s visa had been terminated. nyti.ms/4hRzPq1

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Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov · 26/03/2025

This arrest is the latest in an alarming pattern to stifle civil liberties. The Trump admin is targeting students with legal status and ripping people out of their communities without due process. This is an attack on our Constitution and basic freedoms — and we will push back.

abcnews.go.com

Tufts PhD student on visa arrested by immigration authorities, school says

Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai.

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Milton's Eve, speaking about my inbox/to-do list: what we by day Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, One night or two with wanton growth derides Tending to wild. —Paradise Lost 9:209-12

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Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Current mood in humanities academia: deciding what you're going to memorise for your future as a Farenheit-451 style postapocalyptic human book tramp

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

My daughter still talks about that one!

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Fun fact: this will literally be what the rest of their lives are like without pronounced social transformation. Eventually, the people who are not open to that will be a small minority! But it would be nice if we did something before, like, the 2040s.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Meet Gracie Himes, age 20. Her goal: Fight cancer by developing new medicines. On March 3, her dreams were shattered when Trump admin cuts hit West Virginia University, which rescinded her PhD program offer. www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Columbia University used to be called King’s College. They renamed it after we had a revolution here because we didn’t want a king.

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ACLU @aclu.org · 11/03/2025

The unlawful detention of Mahmoud Khalil is one of the most extreme threats to free speech in 50 years. Trump is sending a message that people who speak out will be punished — but we have a message for him, too. We'll see you in court.

nytimes.com

Opinion | This Is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare

Mahmoud Khalil’s detention is a frightening sign of an authoritarian slide.

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

The way this works is that you either defend Khalil's First Amendment rights, no matter what you think about his specific views, or else you acquiesce to a totalitarian dystopia where the government can disappear people for expressing opinions opposed by the regime. There's really no middle ground.

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Cameron Hunt McNabb (she/her) @chmcnabb.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

If you want to support and defend the disability community, you can call your AG with respect to Texas v. Bercerra and its attempt to repeal section 504. 5calls provides a script, if you want one, and also alerts you whether your AG is part of the lawsuit or not. 5calls.org/issue/sectio...

5calls.org

Defend Section 504: Protect the Rights of People with Disabilities ⭑ 5 Calls

Republican Attorneys General are attacking a 50-year-old law that protects disability rights. Texas v. Becerra is a case in federal court brought by …

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

And addressing complex geopolitical issues through literal handwaving.

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Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Under this theory, Marco Rubio can expel Canadians who say “you should stop threatening to annex Canada.”

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

You're going to be tempted to engage in discourse focused on what Mahmoud Khalil said--was it actually antisemitic? Did he endorse Hamas?--and I cannot encourage you enough not to do that. It just doesn't matter what he said because you should not be detained and deported over what you say, period.

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

NEW: White House says the arrest and deportation of student activist & legal US resident, Mahmoud Khalil, is a blueprint for more. The final line here is chilling. The White House specifically says Khalil was not breaking the law. No evidence, no due process, no crime. He was just disappeared.

Indeed, a White House official told The Free Press that the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations against other students.

Khalil is a "threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. "The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law," said the official.

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Jason Kerr @jakerr35.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

For the record, I am not ok with the US government disappearing people whose speech it doesn't like. Free Mahmoud Khalil.

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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 11/03/2025

UPDATE on Mahmoud Khalil from his lawyers and his wife: "Today I spoke to Mahmoud and he is healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament." (Legal team now includes ACLU, CCR.)

For full alt text, follow pastebin link in next post. Partial text:

Amy E. Greer, attorney for Mahmoud Khalil provided the following update this evening:

First, importantly, today I spoke to Mahmoud and he is healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament. He also greatly appreciates, and, typically for him, is moved by the extraordinarily broad and steadfast support he has received from a variety of communities that understand what is at stake. He is in ICE custody in Louisiana, and arrangements have been made for local attorneys to visit him today and tomorrow.

The remarks by government officials, including the President, on social media only confirm the purpose – and illegality – of Mahmoud's detention. He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent in violation of the First Amendment. While tomorrow or thereafter the government may cite the law or process, that toothpaste is out of the tube and irreversibly so. The government’s objective is as transparent as it is unlawful, and our role as Mahmoud’s lawyers is to ensure it does not prevail.

Today Mahmoud's legal team, which includes Kyle Barron, CLEAR, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Amy Greer filed a motion to compel in federal court in the Southern District of New York, as part of the habeas corpus petition filed on his behalf over the weekend, seeking an order requiring the government to return to New York for any immigration proceedings.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

1. You feel powerless? Don’t know what you can do to resist the rise of fascism? Here is an answer: Good Things. Fascism inflicts pain and harm as a matter of doctrine. Kindness, care and conviviality defend us from it. The more we build community, the less it can take root. 🧵

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