iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 05/10/2026

This claims differently. www.americanscientist.org/article/a-wi...

Screenshot from the linked article:

The telegraph engineers noticed that when a dash emerged from the cable, a dot rushed right behind it, making a message hard to understand. The electrical signals underwent signal retardation, whereby they spread into weaker and longer pulses, which relegated the engineers to the time-consuming work of confirming and repeating messages. Edward O. Wildman Whitehouse, a medical doctor turned ill-informed amateur electrician, was the cable’s chief science advisor and quarreled with Lord Kelvin on how to resolve this problem.

Kelvin knew that transmitting signals underwater would not be easy because the doctrine of squares applied; that is, the speed of the message decreased as the square of the total length of the wire. Kelvin’s approach was to make signals shorter (and he was ultimately proven correct). Whitehouse’s thinking was to amplify the signal by increasing the voltage. His solution proved disastrous. When Whitehouse tested it, he roasted the cable and it never worked again.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 04/10/2026

As with many things, this depends on what the "other side" is.

Screenshot of a famous 2015 tweet by Robert Jones, Jr.:

"We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist."

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 04/10/2026

3. Abigail Spanberger winning Virginia in 2025 after clearly stating her opposition to state bans on trans athletes in the face of Earle-Sears's "Spanberger is for they/them" ads. 4. John Ewing winning the mayoral race in Omaha NE by mocking his opponent's obsession with trans people using toilets.

Ad from John Ewing, Jr.'s 2025 Mayoral campaign in Omaha NE: "Jean is focused on potties. John is focused on fixing potholes."

The images show Jean Stothert peeking her head under the door of a bathroom stall and John Ewing, Jr. next to a pothole.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 03/10/2026

thebulletin.org/premium/2026... thebulletin.org/2026/10/ai-d... thebulletin.org/2026/05/ai-c...

"AI in the information ecosystem and its impact on nuclear escalation"

By Herbert Lin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March 12, 2026

"AI doesn’t need ‘superintelligence’ or evil intent to start a nuclear war"

By Paul Slovic & Herbert Lin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 2, 2026

"AI can chart a course to disaster faster than humans can notice"

By Hiranya Peiris, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 25, 2026

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 03/10/2026

But... Clinical use of AI for note-taking, diagnosis, and advise produces clinically dangerous errors 22% of the time. This feels like the latest in a long history of attempts to improve numerical productivity in healthcare by increasing quantity and decreasing quality. www.arise-ai.org/report

* 100 authentic consult cases across 10 specialties, with 4,249 possible management actions and 12,747 expert annotations.

* Across 31 LLMs, potential severe harm occurs in up to 22% of cases, and errors of omission account for 77% of severe harms (failing to recommend critical tests or treatments).

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 29/09/2026

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula.

David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon in The Hunger

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 25/09/2026

When older people pretend to be outraged at young people about *checks notes* iced coffee. Boomer lawyer announcing to the judge, "I'm prepared to go forward with it. I'm here live. I'm not a cat." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Ca...

Screencap from the 2021 "internet cat lawyer" incident.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 21/09/2026

Alas, he really did this. www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/w...

Screencap from the linked NY Times article

Kary Mullis, after grabbing a piece of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, dove head first off the platform, expounding on the virtues of LSD and astrology and expressing his doubts about global warming, the ozone hole, and H.I.V. as the cause of AIDS. On the latter point he was following the lead of Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who still insists that AIDS is caused by recreational drug use and even by one of the pharmaceuticals used for treatment.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 21/09/2026

This is really good. The anger and defiance drive it, and the analysis is spot on.

Screencap from the reskeeted blog:

There are people who can’t just turn back, who can’t become unreal whenever it's convenient, and they’re the ones who suffer most — now, then, always. I don’t know what I’m trying to do by reminding you of this. Many of you know it already. What I’m asking, I guess, is that you do the seemingly unthinkable: Actually, really believe all the shit you believe, whether or not it’s safe to believe it, whether or not you get anything in exchange. What’s true is true, and what’s right is right, and if someone was a human being yesterday, they’re still human today, and their life still has value, even if nobody wants to hear it. Don’t change your tune just because everyone else has. Raise your voice. Keep right on singing my favorite song.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 19/09/2026

For more than a decade, he's been known nationally as the worst Congress person. Even the right-wing National Review called him a "sordid" "disaster of a Congressman" and called for the GOP to replace him. www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/tenn...

He had a whopping six affairs on his ex-wife and supported her decision to get two abortions before their marriage. A doctor, he had affairs with two patients and prescribed one of them drugs. The Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners fined and admonished DesJarlais for this misconduct. He actually taped himself pressuring one of his mistresses to get an abortion, and then — when word of the tape leaked — lied to his constituents, claiming that the conversation “was recorded without [his] knowledge.”

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 16/09/2026

This morning at #Vanderbilt: multiple cars parked in the bike lane (there were more that you can't see here because they were behind me), a police car parked behind them & doing nothing. I wish VU would actually care about keeping bike lanes open for bicycles instead of using them as free parking.

A photo of the bicycle lane on Vanderbilt PL, showing two cars parked in the bike lane, blocking it, and a Vanderbilt Police car parked behind the two cars, doing nothing about the fact that they are obstructing the bike lane.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 15/09/2026

Also: In real dollars, NSERC funding is down about 25% in the last five years.

Chart of Canada's NSERC budget, showing that it's declined from $1.2 billion to $0.9 billion in real 2007 dollars, between 2020 and 2026.

From https://can-acn.org/science-funding-in-canada-statistics/

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 15/09/2026

People at #Vanderbilt treat marked bike lanes as free parking. It's pretty much like this every time I ride my bike to and from campus.

Three parked cars blocking the marked bike lane on Vanderbilt PL, Sept. 14, 2026 at 5:10 pm.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 13/09/2026

Consider Andy Beshear, who explains that when he vetoes Anti-LGBTQ bills, even constituents who don't support LGBTQ rights recognize that Beshear's commitment to his values means that they can also count on him to support jobs & other things that affect them. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/o...

Screenshot from the linked opinion piece by Andy Beshear:

The Democratic Party must show the American people that it cares about creating a better life for each and every American and re-earn the public’s trust about its focus and its direction.

None of this means we abandon important values and principles. As governor, I have vetoed numerous anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and anti-choice bills, yet I still beat Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate last fall. That happened because even if some voters might have disagreed with the vetoes, they knew the next day I would be announcing new jobs, opening a new health clinic or finishing a new road that would cut 20 minutes off their commute. They knew my focus and effort was on their daily needs and that our gains as a commonwealth would help every single one of our families.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 12/09/2026

Big AI as Godfather: "the offer that you can’t refuse ... [is] that rare treasure which is the friendship of Vito Corleone. It’s tragic & unfortunate for all ... that [the] offer is rudely declined, necessitating the decapitation of a prized racehorse." www.programmablemutter.com/p/how-should...

Screenshot from the linked blog post:

When OpenAI’s Sébastien Bubeck offered help, collaboration and credit to an outside mathematician whose approach to solving a major problem he had gazumped by onboarding millions of dollars of compute over a few days, he says that he framed his offer in terms of “working together” to make “something good.” When the mathematician threatened to go public, Bubeck reportedly asked “[w]hy would you ruin your career?,” but he was most certainly asking in sorrow rather than anger. When Tom Hagen conveys the offer that you can’t refuse to the movie producer in Godfather I, he is, after all, presenting that rare treasure which is the friendship of Vito Corleone. It’s tragic and unfortunate for all concerned that his offer is rudely declined, necessitating the decapitation of a prized racehorse. With just a little more mutual understanding, all that unpleasantness could have been avoided.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 12/09/2026

Yeah. I have colleagues (who are spectacularly brilliant & successful researchers) land positions in the Netherlands and Canada. But also, the Netherlands shut the entire Earth Science department at Vrije Universiteit, and Canada's NSERC has cut funding by 25% since 2020.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 11/09/2026

I'm not going to try to change your mind. We can have different opinions about the story. But it can be helpful to read this interview with Jemisin about why she wrote the story the way she did. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/12...

Screenshot from the linked interview, with Jemisin explaining what she was thinking when she wrote "The Ones Who Stay and Fight":

And, of course, as a black person, I’m part of a group of folks that doesn’t really have a whole lot of generational wealth. With Le Guin’s story, at the end of it, she’s suggesting that the only way to create a society that is a better place is to walk away from this one or to go off the grid. That’s not really what she’s saying, specifically, but that’s what a lot of people have concluded. But no, you’ve got to fix it, especially when there’s nowhere to walk away to. You go anywhere else in our current world and you’re either being completely exploited by capitalism or somewhat exploited by capitalism. So, I mean, it’s just a question of what kind of suffering you want to put yourself through.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 10/09/2026

Stop the presses and start writing your Pulitzer acceptance speeches. It turns out that Warner Bros cartoons are fiction! Who knew?

Screenshot of New York Times headline, "Photo of road runner snagged by coyote shows that cartoons were a lie."

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 10/09/2026

Women cyclists defend the trans woman who beat them in a race, saying she beat them fair and square. www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...

Screenshot from the linked article:

“We refuse to be falsely presented as victims in a manufactured controversy driven to further alienate and marginalize those most vulnerable within our community, in service of rampant and harmful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation,” the letter reads. “We speak for ourselves: inclusion makes our sport and community stronger. Everyone is welcome here. Trans women are women.”

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 09/09/2026

Yeah. The energy use is so low that you can get a scientific calculator that runs off a PV that's a couple of square cm.

Photo of a Casio fx-280 solar-powered scientific calculator

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 06/09/2026

@miss-fern.bsky.social, you need this. www.instagram.com/p/DGiCe9hIbxf/

Video of Charlotte Wainwright rebinding the book, _The Fern World_.

https://www.wainwrightbookbinding.com/

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 05/09/2026

It is stunning to realize that among US Republicans, more say that large corporations are bad than say that labor unions are bad.

Chart from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/01/from-businesses-and-banks-to-colleges-and-churches-americans-views-of-u-s-institutions/

It shows that 35% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats think unions are good for the US, whereas 32% of Republicans and 26% of Democrats think big corporations are good for the US.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 23/08/2026

It's literally this, every single day.

Cartoon by Barry Deutsch in four panels:

First panel, A man with white hair sitting behind a desk tells a seconnd ma in a jacket and blaWe're dropping your column. Many readers think you're just too extreme." The man in the beard replies, "I have been silenced!"

Second panel: The man in the beard is standing behind a lectern in a large packed auditorium, shouting, "I have been silenced!"

Third panel: Front page of the Washington Post featuring a large photo above the fold of the bearded man, and a banner headline "I Have Been Silenced"

Fourth panel: The bearded man on Fox News, on TV. An off-screen announncer says, "... Here, with his new book, 'I Have Been Silenced.'" and the bearded man saying, "I have been silenced!"

Below the cartoon, a marginal drawing of the cartoonist saying, "It seems..." and the bearded man shouting, "Stop silencing me!"

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 23/08/2026

In a move that will surprise no one Log Cabin Republicans have removed all references to trans rights from their mission statement and officially become an LGB without the T organization. www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

An Adam Tots cartoon in seven panels.

First panel: A man in a white polo shirt shakes the hand of another man in a dark gray "LGB without the T" shirt who is holding a "Gays Against Drag Queens" sign. The man in the white shirt says, "We did it! We finally outlawed all the trans people and drag queens! Thanks for your help!"

The man in the "LGB without the T" shirt replies, "Happy to be of service!"

Second panel: The man in the "LGB without the T" shirt asks, "So who are we going after next?"

Third panel: The man in the white shirt looks at the other man.

Fourth panel: The man in the "LGB without the T" repeats, "I said who's next?"

Fifth panel: The man in the white shirt looks at the other man.

Sixth panel: The man in the "LGB without the T" asks, "Who..." and trails off.

Seventh panel: The man in the white shirt looks at him, smiling.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 21/08/2026

Neil J. Young's "Coming Out Republican" is a useful historical study of this stuff.

Image of the cover of Neil J. Young's "Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right": It shows a man's chest, dressed in a suit. A navy jacket with a rainbow flag pin on the left lapel over a white shirt and a solid red tie.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 21/08/2026

The point of much science fiction, if it has a point, is not to predict the future, but to comment on the present, using imagined futures to provide enough distance from the familiar that readers can recognize how weird a lot of things are that we take for granted as "the way things are."

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 14/08/2026

There was nothing wrong with telling bigots that they should be ashamed of themselves.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 12/08/2026

It was ever thus, whereof memory of man runneth not to the contrary. "In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776). www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3...

Screenshot from the Project Gutenberg edition of Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1, Part iii.

"If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either are, or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching."

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 12/08/2026

"Vanderbilt University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors... said in a statement that it was concerned to see Vanderbilt 'act as a test case and model for the Trump administration’s new educational authoritarianism.'" www.chronicle.com/liveblog/her...

Screen shot of the headline from the linked Chronicle article: "Vanderbilt AAUP Skewers Campus's Declaration of Principles and Trump Letter"

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 10/08/2026

"[Because of] the neoliberal project to 'protect' property and markets from democracy.... NIMBYism, rooted as it is in property rights, is often the only form that democratic objection can take in the current era, substantively or ideologically."

Screenshot from the article in the quoted post:

As is often the case it's probably best to see Silicon Valley and the Californian Ideology not as exceptional agents of change but as the apotheosis of a broader shift in politics and the economy since the 1970s—the reaction and retrenchment of capital and the neoliberal project to "protect" property and markets from democracy—of which deindustrialization is one cause and symptom. ("AI," such as it is, is something like the apotheosis of the apotheosis.) I've seen a lot of complaints that the data-center backlash is just another form of NIMBYism—but of course NIMBYism, rooted as it is in property rights, is often the only form that democratic objection can take in the current era, substantively or ideologically. If you didn't want people to be able to stop the construction of data centers in their back yards, you probably shouldn't have enshrined their property rights so thoroughly, not just in the law but in their own common-sense understanding of the world!

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 09/08/2026

Lots more university faculty get fired for politically liberal speech than for conservative speech. www.vox.com/policy-and-p...

Chart from the linked article, showing the number of university faculty fired for their political speech, broken down by the political orientation of the speech.

The chart runs from 2015–2017 and shows that at the beginning, similar numbers of faculty were fired for liberal and conservative speech, but by 2017, roughly three times as many were fired for politically liberal speech than for conservative speech.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 08/08/2026

Just waiting for a new one from goatse.ai

Screenshot of https://goatse.ai.

There is an animated wireframe rendering of a rotating torus with grasping hands to the left and right, which tug on the torus when it aligns with them.

The text reads:

Greatest Of All Time Security Evaluations.AI
GOATSE.AI

Offering the best in class AI Penetration Testing
framework for multi agents discovering and exploiting Gaping Security Holes.
As a stretch goal we aim to achieve ASI

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 06/08/2026

We've been doing it among ourselves at lot... (Haaretz, 2017) www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

Screenshot from the linked article in Haaretz, from Sept. 18, 2017, by Judy Maltz:

Hed: Huge spike in number of Israelis 'un-Jewed' by Chief Rabbinate in past two years

Dek: Trend appears related to new practice of re-examining and revoking religious status of citizens already recognized as Jewish.

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 06/08/2026

And the relationship between age and vulnerability to H1N1 flu (such as 1918) comes readily to mind: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Jonathan Magnolia Gilligan @jmgilligan.org · 03/08/2026

An interesting paper about the relationship between preferences and goals. leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/mcgrawp/pdf/...

Screenshot of the abstract from the linked paper, Caleb Warren, A. Peter McGraw, and Leaf Van Boven, "Values and preferences: defining
preference construction," Wiley Interdisc. Rev. Cognitive Sci. 2, 193–205 (2011):

Extensive research in the values and preferences literature suggests that
preferences are sensitive to context and calculated at the time of choice. This
has led to the view that preferences are constructed. Recent work calls for a better
understanding of when preferences are constructed and when they are not. We
contend that the answer to this question depends on the meaning of the term
constructed. Constructed can mean that a preference changes across contexts. If
construction is synonymous with context sensitivity, we contend that preferences
are always constructed because context influences nearly every aspect of the
judgment and choice process. As a motivating example, we show that preferences
are influenced by goals and goals are highly context sensitive. Constructed,
however, can mean instead that a preference is calculated or formulated during
the judgment and choice process. If construction is synonymous with calculation,
we contend that many preferences are calculated and the more important question
is to what degree preferences are calculated. We review the literature that shows
that the degree to which decision makers calculate preferences is influenced by
goals, cognitive constraints, and experience.

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