iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(And incidentally, lately I think the aspects of AI text slop I find most irritating are the aspects that also make TED talks often very irritating to me. That constant "this will blow your mind" affect. Perhaps we have TED to blame, in part?)

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The one-sentence paragraph. The "X is not only Y. It is Z." The excessive anaphora. Oh crap, this complaint about LLM-generated slop text sounds like LLM-generated slop text. (But I can't be the only one who finds it excessively irritating—right?)

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Not selling books (yet!), but meeting people and having fun.

Banner advertising the Ithaca Is Books Festival

My half of our book table in the author's tent of the Ithaca Is Books festival. Copies of my poetry book (To Leave for Our Own Country) and my edition of The Holy Earth by Liberty Hyde Bailey are on display.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Will be at the Ithaca Is Books festival on the Commons tomorrow from 12-2, with these bad boys (including Wendell's great foreword!) and a stack of my own poetry book.

Two stacks of the centennial edition of The Holy Earth by Liberty Hyde Bailey, foreword by Wendell Berry, edited by John Linstrom, in a cardboard box

A square of text surrounded by hand-drawn-looking artwork, saying: "Ithaca is Books Festival. Find me at the Book Fair Author Tent! Sunday, September 13th, 12-2 pm."

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I know I don't have a ton of Ithaca-based connections yet, but if this does reach anyone in that slice, please consider stopping by to say hello between 12 and 2 this Sunday in the "Bank Alley" on the Commons, in front of the History Center in Tompkins County!

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“The effort needed to solve problems is often… instructive.… Now, A.I. can solve questions without really getting any value out of them… like having machines that can lift weights for you at the gym.” Dear mathematicians: please sit down with the writing instructors www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/s...

nytimes.com

OpenAI Says It Has Cracked One of Math’s ‘Millennium Problems’ (Gift Article)

The company’s announcement is the most dramatic sign yet that artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming the field of higher mathematics.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

“And so I go into the woods. […] I feel my life take its place among the lives – the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead – that go and have gone to make the life of the earth.” www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...

theguardian.com

Wendell Berry, US author, farmer and environmentalist, dies aged 92

Author and Kentucky native, who celebrated the farming world of his home state and warned of the excesses of industrial society, died at home

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Love you, Wendell. Rest now. Your life has prepared our lives.

Wendell Berry's poem, "A Vision," as framed and hanging on my wall

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

… "possible. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s vivid phrase - ‘colonizing the mind’ - is not metaphorical. Our cerebral territory is a physical space of conquest.” -Matt Seybold Read it at the link above, and engage in resistant neuroplasticity praxis.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

… "co-dependent, and preferably institutionalized. Unwittingly perhaps, Wolf’s research also showed that one of the surest strategies for amassing autocratic power is what I call deliberate deliteracy: the destruction, restriction, and monopolization of the infrastructures that make mass literacy …

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

…"But, she concludes, the effortful mass-production and maintenance of reading circuits in the brains of community members is a necessary precursor to collective conscience and therefore to democratic governance. This mass-production and maintenance is not automatic. It is laborious, …

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

“In the final pages of Reader, Come Home, Wolf confesses that she ‘could never have imagined that research about the changes in the reading brain, most of which reflect increasing adaptations to a digital culture, would have implications for a democratic society.’… open.substack.com/pub/theameri...

open.substack.com

Neuroplasticity As A Praxis

We Can Read Our Way Out Of Autocracy

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

"One person’s medical event is another person taking their shirt off because things have gotten serious. Your great-grandfather probably called that Tuesday."

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

So excited and grateful to be joining the team at @ccetompkins.bsky.social to pursue this project—starting next week!

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

"Liberty Hyde Bailey, the influential horticulturist and educator often called the Father of American Horticulture, wrote that gardeners should cultivate 'that happy peace of mind which is satisfied with little.'" –Terry Armerson for the UC Marin Master Gardeners ucanr.edu/site/uc-mari...

ucanr.edu

Growing with the garden, small spaces offer big rewards | UC Marin Master Gardeners

Whether upscaling from an apartment or downsiz

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

"I once asked an old gardener how much land he had & he said with pride that he had one acre; & he added, 'It is a wonderful acre; it reaches to the center of the earth in one direction and it takes in the stars in the other.'" –Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Harvest of the Year to the Tiller of the Soil

White piles of cloud mountains drift below a field of blue criss-crossed by telephone and electrical wires, rimmed along the bottom and sides by tree foliage

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Reposted by John Linstrom (he/him)

The Ron-ting of Hill House @grandrevans.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Let my friend John talk your ear off (affectionate) about Liberty Hyde Bailey and then go support this project!

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Updates! Given our progress, Cornell has given us more time to raise funds; a $675,000 grant application has been submitted; and I am officially Director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Center Project. All this and more in our latest newsletter (consider subscribing!): eepurl.com/QoTwnLpW_7

A picture of me holding my poetry book at its launch at the Climate Museum in New York City, April 2024. A colorful mural is in the background, and I'm talking into a microphone on a stand.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Sell that robot! With thanks to Shel Silverstein (in Falling Up)

The text of Shel Silverstein's poem "My Robot," from the book Falling Up, with an illustration of a robot lounging in an easy chair with a drink while a crouching human approaches with a tray of refreshments

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Reposted by John Linstrom (he/him)

Theo Priestley @theopriestley.net · 28/07/2026

Fucking hell as if receiving automated rejection letters for jobs wasn't bad enough.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

It sounds like you and Bailey are on the same page!

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other."'" –Liberty Hyde Bailey (a scientist), from The Seven Stars (1923), pp. 130-131 3/3

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

immediate and demonstrable. Yet the mystic, if sensible, makes the nearest approach to real solutions. I cannot forget the speech of Socrates as he waits the fatal cup, as Plato saith in the immortal Crito: "This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the […] 2/

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

"'Is it not the fault amongst us, also,' continues Questor, 'that we are in danger of losing our mysticism? The hard realities, I fear, drive out the spiritual meanings and these meanings have lost standing. We have little patience with intangible ideas, wanting those that are evident, […] 1/

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

MARCO RUBIO: Iran's policy is an eye for an eye. The president's policy is a head for an eye. JESUS CHRIST: You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Image courtesy Cornell University, via the link above.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Williston claimed never to have missed a meeting during his student years. Bailey, club founder, is seen above standing at the far right. More about Williston's time at Cornell at the following blog post, including a full scan of the letter quoted in our last post: blogs.cornell.edu/sipshistory/...

blogs.cornell.edu

David A. Williston ’98 was the first professionally trained African-American Landscape Architect in the U.S. | SIPS history in photos

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Follow-up to yesterday's post about David Williston, first professionally-trained Black landscape architect whose work shaped the campuses of many HBCUs. This photo shows Williston, fourth standing from left, with the Horticultural Lazy Club in 1896. Williston was the first Black member of the club.

A grayscale photograph of a group of young men standing in front of what appears to be a barn. To the far right is a man in his 40s.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Late in life, accomplished Black landscape architect David Williston wrote that his professor Liberty Hyde Bailey “inspired me to study plant life, and I am happy to state that I was a student of his for more than 60 years.” Williston's remarkable story should be better known in its own right.

Grayscale head shot of the dapper David A. Williston, as described in the post

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

"Democracy is the process of evolution; it is always relative; it is forever in the making." –Liberty Hyde Bailey, from What Is Democracy? (1918), p. 89

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

And you can read more about the project, which I am thrilled to be a part of, here: www.bailey-center.org

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Big news time: I'm moving cross country to Ithaca, NY, with my family to try to save the historic home and herbarium/greenhouse complex of Liberty Hyde Bailey and leverage it for the public good, doing work at the intersections of climate and democracy. More here: open.substack.com/pub/johnlins...

An image of a bird on the edge of a rooftop singing toward the rising sun. This is a Substack ad tile, featuring the post title, "Moving to Ithaca in Search of Deep Gladness, Deep Hunger," and the explanatory tag, "On leaving the tenure track and learning to follow my own vocational advice."

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

We have some savings but they're all from Mo. (I still have undergrad student loans.) Moving to work a TT job at a SLAC ironically ate 1/4 of the savings away in two years. Would've been more if she hadn't gone back to work shortly before our second girl was born early this year. Yay "life of mind"!

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"I realized that I did not want to wake up at 35 and have no money saved,' said Ms. Gullo[, who is 28]." Weep for me, child. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/r...

nytimes.com

A Third of Young Adults Still Live With Their Parents

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

One of my biggest academic publications appeared early this year while off social media: an edition, with my introduction and endnotes, of the "Corrected Edition" of the long poem Outlook by Liberty Hyde Bailey. A long-time dream (since 2012 or so), submitted over 2 years ago, finally in the world.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Current project related to being back on here: stop whenever encountering a post that seems primarily about communicating self-righteousness and unfollow the account that shared it. This may take awhile, but I think it will go a good way toward making the platform less frustrating for me.

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Reposted by John Linstrom (he/him)

WIRED @wired.com · 02/07/2026

New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline amid the suffocating presence of Big Tech.

wrd.cm

Inside the Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against Big Tech

New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline amid the suffocating presence of Big Tech.

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Reposted by John Linstrom (he/him)

Jeff (Hot Type) Jarvis @jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

We have reached the age of scare quotes around "life." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/s...

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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Everybody in the "climate space" (which means everyone on earth...) needs to understand these mind-blowing figures. Google's "total electricity consumption jumped from 31 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 to 43 TWh in 2025." In ONE year. The AI corporate arms race is eating the world.

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John Linstrom (he/him) @johnlinstrom.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Coming back to the Sky of Blue, after about a six months' hiatus, for professional reasons (more on that later). Updates incoming. I look forward to reconnecting a bit. Thanks to friends who reached out and/or returned my calls/texts this year.

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