iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by JD Shadel

I think if you want a demo of the mechanics of how AI doom-hype detracts from the climate push, listen to this Al Gore interview w/ @heatmap.news, where he dismisses the climate impacts (using a spurious comparison, imo) but treats the chatbot doom as serious and real heatmap.news/podcast/shif...

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 18h

when I do something that’s very typically me, I’ll chuckle to myself “oh how Shadelian of you”

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Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 19h

It's kind of wild how many businesses whose entire model is convincing you to give up convenience and affordability in exchange for a more ethical option are going all-in on AI and completely shooting themselves in the foot.

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 22h

feeling ready to take an evil job, make a shit load of money, then quit and tell everyone how evil my job was (this is an evergreen subtweet)

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Olivia Pinnock @oliviapinnock.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This. This is the hill I will die on.

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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 28/09/2026

Somehow "the guy who buys struggling publications and fills them with fake journalists that publish thousands of articles of AI slop to overwhelm google? turns out he goes way back with Ghislaine Maxwell, the collaborator of Jeffrey Epstein" feels like the ultimate and most exhausting 2026 sentence

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 29/09/2026

in Q4 i am moving my Friendships tier to a dynamic pricing model for social occasions where we divide the bill for, say, lunch based on a variable percentage I calculate by asking myself how much fun I’m having when the card reader arrives

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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Aidan O’Brien @aidanobrien.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Meta can ban: - Adverts for a Virginia Woolf play because of “feminism” - Ads for a documentary about Elon Musk. Meta seemingly cannot ban: - Generative AI Child Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse Material, adverts and content.

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 27/09/2026

I asked AI to help me rewrite the Bible. “Jesus didn’t just cry. He wept.”

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 26/09/2026

before there were polycules there were ☞ manicules

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 25/09/2026

“their first album of new material in nine years” TOO SOON

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I started researching ML before I built a synth, but you can get a great intuitive understanding of interaction within a generative system by building a modular analog synthesizer and watching how your components interact, and seeing what surprises emerge and what stays predictable as you scale up.

Steve Porcaro of "Toto" with a wall-sized modular synthesizer - basically a massive nest of tangled wires -- the Polyfusion 'Damius'. Photo by Jim Gardner - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesthephotographer/120916737/

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026

really hope this can be replicated across every single meta office around the world

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This kind of smart sustainable urban infrastructure is illegal in most American cities

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 22/09/2026

Me pausing my music so I can smell more clearly

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21/09/2026

incredible

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 21/09/2026

One of my favorite party tricks is telling people Pumped Up Kicks is actually a breezy little ditty about a school shooting if they know that then I tell them the Rebecca St James connection, but if we get to Rebecca St James and people know who I'm talking about ... sign I might need to exit party

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 20/09/2026

As a journalist who has extensively covered travel tech, I do find it really strange that the positioning of pervert glasses is, “so you hate feeling tethered to a computer in your pocket??! OK! then let’s strap one on your face!!! Tired of screen time? Then let’s put apps in your line of sight” 💀🪦

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 19/09/2026

If you don’t want fascism, then we have to fund anti-fascist media. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the roots of the rot in public life, and so much of it comes down to the ways that evil people have done a far better job of funding evil media and promoting evil media platforms at all levels

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 18/09/2026

I agree with Al Gore on a whole lot of things but he's profoundly wrong on almost everything he says in this piece, and is adopting fossil-fuel industry style talking points that he's previously criticised A short thread on why............. www.ft.com/content/ba94...

Al Gore downplays AI threats and touts its climate potential
Former US vice-president argues in favour of technology to help with green progress

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 18/09/2026

there’s like a 10% chance that garlic bread kills us all because it’s so good we just won’t stop with the garlic bread like we’ve gone super intelligent and merged bread and garlic and who can resist it when it’s buttery and crisp from the oven?? why isn’t Bernie Sanders talking about that!!!!!!!!

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Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I really need journalists to learn that every time OpenAI or Anthropic or xAI says that their model has broken containment and could destroy humanity that it’s a marketing pitch by companies running out of cash with high overheads and no profitable business model wanting more investment.

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 17/09/2026

can almost here the decolonial cats amongst themselves “WE ARE NOT ‘NEW’ YOU SPECIESIST!! WE HAVE BEEN HERE LONG BEFORE YOU ‘DISCOVERED’ US MEOW!!”

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026

What a lovely conversation I had with you all and a breath of fresh air. thank you for having me.

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 16/09/2026

Shadel traces how GIFs became a visual language of the early web, from decorative images to avatars and “under construction” signs. The Wayback Machine and GifCities help preserve millions of these artifacts. #Books #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive @jdshadel.com

Three frames of an "under construction" animated GIF

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 16/09/2026

GIFs became a defining part of the early web, including the ubiquitous “under construction” signs that marked unfinished pages. 🖥️ JD Shadel looks at what these fleeting images can teach us about preserving digital culture. 📚 Read for free or purchase in print: archive.org/details/vani... 🧵

Book cover titled “Vanishing Culture” on a teal background. Pixel-art style graphics show a VHS tape, open book, film reel, chain link, and vinyl record dissolving into digital fragments. At the bottom, a cursor icon points to the word “SAVE,” alongside an archive-style building icon, evoking digital preservation.

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 16/09/2026

i bookmarked this take

Screenshot of a TikTok post that reads:
macklemore gotta be the first rapper where we gotta separate the art from the artist but in reverse cause we gotta separate his good ethics from his really bad art

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 14/09/2026

As a journalist, it is absolutely infuriating watching colleagues cover the discourse around “AI” and “existential risk” *and not mention the literal existential threat* (ie, the climate crisis—something we already know how to solve).

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 14/09/2026

Journalism ethics are always centered around the flourishing of an informed citizenry and thus democracy itself. ie journalism must be inherently anti-fascist. Every journalist is antifa. This is why I, a journalist, have been absolutely flabbergasted with the past decade of “both sides-ism”!!

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 14/09/2026

I know this is so extremely obvious but there is no sci-fi existential risk posed by “AI” if tech companies who design, develop and deploy that product stop building data centers, so they could … stop building data centers if they really believed their own stories

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 12/09/2026

HR: “so marketing would like to give you all this money if you agree to quit your job and then tell everyone you quit your job because you’re worried our product is going to kill humanity” me: “how much money” HR: [redacted] me: “that number needs to begin with a three” HR: “sign here, bad boy”

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 11/09/2026

It takes 0.0001 seconds to realise the AI-bros are lying about "extinction risk" as a marketing trick, given how none of them seem bothered about the deadly fossil fuels they've become obsessed with using to power their data centres.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It bugs me that we're normalising the idea that there's something wrong with long documents, or that they're not "worth" our time. There is huge value in careful thought, in detail and nuance, in exploration, and in the experiential journey that goes alongside that.

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The Breakdown AB @thebreakdownab.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

BREAKING! "Saddle Lake Cree Nation is asserting its Treaty rights and jurisdiction to provide safe refuge for those seeking and providing gender-affirming care. Any Albertan will be able to access gender-affirming care on Saddle Lake Cree Nation reserved lands and territories"

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 09/09/2026

the difference between an average joe in his flop era and an “ai” ceo is a few trillion dollars invested on vibes

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

If you pre-order @timnitgebru.blacksky.app’s book right now maybe it will go to number one on the NYT best seller list and we might finally have a sensible AI conversation in the mainstream media for once in our lives www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U...

simonandschuster.com

Deep Unlearning

Timnit Gebru, one of the fiercest voices in the world speaking truth to power, chronicles her journey as a refugee and Black woman in STEM—deliveri...

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 08/09/2026

If you're going to pay writers the same rates you paid them 10, 20 years ago, then at least have the grace to give us a free subscription so we're not paying forevermore to access our own articles!!!! I will always defend paywalls!!!!! I also think it's absurd I'm paying the pub that underpays me!!

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 08/09/2026

I think a really really basic amount of solidarity you can show with climate workers, analysts, writers, experts and advocates is not sharing links to posts that are clearly 100% AI generated (ie: based on plagiarism from the work of all of us doing it using our hearts and our heads)

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 04/09/2026

Friends, I have to issue a heart felt apology. The Cookie Monster is real. A bunch of people have sent me photos to prove it. I sincerely apologize for using that analogy. It's like the time I called Muskrat Elmo. Muskrat is nothing like Elmo. We love Elmo. I promise to do better!

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 02/09/2026

Somewhere right now a team of very well-paid people are in a tense meeting deliberating if the services drop-down on their new website will be labeled "Solutions" or ... "Services"

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 02/09/2026

"Good evening only to the ladies and the diverses"

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 02/09/2026

I love Not-Ship!! Fact check me!!

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

i’d like to report a mass murder

Perhaps it has been his guilty conscience regarding his position at MIT along with a hubristic overestimation of his own capacity for individually grasping the essence of any global matter that led Chomsky to saddle himself with the task of producing counter-propaganda rather than searching for truth; perhaps it was the idea of himself as an American statesman trying to advise policy rather than an international organizer that led him to prioritize a friendship with someone who could provide access to figures like Ehud Barak and Steve Bannon over consideration for his victims. Whatever the case, Chomsky's lasting legacy will be the impressive feat of having combined the worst aspects of just about every leftist and progressive tendency: anarchists' lack of economic theory and class analysis, Marxist-Leninists' defense of state atrocities and insistence on viewing politics as a global chessboard, and liberals' elitist disdain for the masses' ability to be trusted with interpreting information.

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 31/08/2026

seeing the screenshots of this article has reminded me of this one date I went on a decade ago with a recently announced bisexual guy who seemed to have really gotten into Chomsky after he broke up with his girlfriend and I recall the date was me listening to a lot of Chomsky but yes he was obvs hot

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 28/08/2026

one thing i love about "AI" is that it makes me want to log of social media more than ever 🙃

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 26/08/2026

When I was 13 my pediatrician told me I took life ”a little too seriously.”

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 26/08/2026

*new PR strategy dropping*

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JD Shadel @jdshadel.com · 19/08/2026

#JournoRequest: I’m on assignment for Condé Nast Traveler and am curious to hear from a few travelers who have used the Timeshifter app. Is this you? Email me: jd at jdshadel dot com (shares appreciated ta!)

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