iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

No two words send AI industry advocates into fits of rage more than "stochastic parrots." The question is: Why? Why do they get so worked up over this particular critical framework time and time again? I sat down with @emilymbender.bsky.social, one of the coauthors of the original paper, to discuss

bloodinthemachine.com

The two words the AI industry hates more than anything

I talk with computational linguist Emily M. Bender, co-author of the influential 2021 “stochastic parrots” paper, about why AI industry leaders can’t stop seething over the term.

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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Right then, our turn What's your fake Star Trek academic paper

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The correct term would be "Ye Olde English"

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James Poniewozik @poniewozik.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Been reading about Paramount's promise that an outside body will ensure CNN's editorial independence, and man is it wearisome to be the sole person on Earth who remembers anything that happened more than 10 years ago www.theguardian.com/business/200....

theguardian.com

Wall Street Journal committee claims Murdoch broke agreement

A special independent committee accused the press baron of breaking agreement to protect editorial integrity

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Brian Stelter @brianstelter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Many — I suspect most — viewers and readers feel lost when they hear phrases like “pacing the frontier” and see references to the “Hugging Face incident.” And they wonder about the motives of the people in positions of power...

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Seems like this was partly a sincere reaction of shock/dismay to getting a taste of your own medicine from a Democrat/Black guy (distinct yet overlapping) then became a more cynical post-hoc rationalization for, well, everything that happened afterward. Anyway, if used against JD, no one will care

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

And Obama 2012 attacks on Romney were notably a traumatic experience for many on the right, or at least that's how it is now remembered, as some kind of shockingly vicious, cruel, underhanded gutter politics, in spite of its relative tameness and predictability.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Published on the six-month anniversary of the war, when other outlets are putting out "quagmire" pieces. Only sources are US officials. Notes, in passing, that outside analysts cannot verify an increase in traffic. etc. etc. Embarrassing.

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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Were I still teaching, I would assign for week one Tom Rosenstiel, co-author of the most commonly used text, "The Elements of Journalism." For week two, we read "The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy." www.cjr.org/analysis/sho... By week three we're in the thick of it.

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Trump has threatened to sue the left-leaning @americanprogress.bsky.social (CAP) and its donors over a study it published questioning the benefits of his National Guard deployment. I'm proud that Cato's president is speaking out against this act of intimidation. "We stand with CAP." /1

Cato Institute graphic with text "Disagreements on matters of policy should be settled through open inquiry, evidence, and debate -- not threats designed to silence criticism. We stand with CAP in defending the fundamental American principle of free speech." -- Peter Goettler President and CEO Cato Institute with picture of Goettler

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

standard. SCOTUS allows Trump to continue to create literal facts on the ground while they 'consider' his his meritless challenge. nothing is more important than reforming the court and ending its corruption.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Seems not just tone-deaf but risky at this point to align your rogue institution with the ballroom, possibly the most politically/symbolically toxic Trump project after the Iran war

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Richard Tofel @dicktofel.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Questions, some of them skeptical, for Tom Rosenstiel on his just-published and important book, The Next Journalism. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter dicktofel.substack.com/p/what-the-n...

dicktofel.substack.com

What The Next Journalism Should Be

A conversation with Tom Rosenstiel

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

A lot of questions beyond "who did this?" Was this an academic experiment? If so, how was it developed/approved? If not academic, what were they trying to accomplish on behalf of whom? If not really an experiment at all, what was its real purpose?

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

“My first day on the job, I fucked up.” That’s the lede to this CJR account of my 4 months in Utah, where I worked as a junior editor. I wanted to see what’s changed since i left local journalism a few decades ago. A lot of things are different. But not everything. www.cjr.org/first_person...

cjr.org

The 69-year-old rookie.

I was a fifty-year newspaper veteran and a journalism professor. Then I joined the Salt Lake Tribune as a junior editor.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

interesting to learn nancy mace had the first line of mrs. dalloway tattooed on her. the first line, of course, sets up the scene of mrs. dalloway buying flowers for her dinner party, where she would wrestle with her homosexual memories of, and desires for, her friend sally.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

We need a full accounting of what it all was actually about

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Very insightful, particularly on the important role of the press as a source of independent verification of the president’s whereabouts, which the country – and White House – need in place if disaster strikes

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Mark Follman @markfollman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

My new investigation into a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT reveals numerous red flags—and some very disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before his attack on Florida State University www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0... 1x 🧵

motherjones.com

Inside a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT

A year of chats reveals glaring red flags—and disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before a rampage at Florida State University.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The appeal of free markets and personal liberties

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Tom & Lorenzo @tomandlorenzo.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I think the scholar had interesting observations about the popular entertainment but that critiquing popular entertainment from a scholarly perspective is bound to result in harsh assessments because the criteria and language for one perspective doesn't map well to the other

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

"disruptively"

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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/07/2026

Fascinating ethical failure here: metrophiladelphia.com/stories/will... I am always suspicious of any story about AI because tey seem to over-0index for being written by AI. But in this case it is an advertorial: 1/2 metrophiladelphia.com/stories/will...

metrophiladelphia.com

Will AI Text Detectors Become Obsolete as AI Writing Gets Better? - Metro Philadelphia

AI text detectors were introduced to help identify content generated by artificial intelligence and these tools were considered an effective way to distinguish between human and AI-written text. …

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Jonathan V. Last @jvl.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Worst part of the new @status.news report is that the Bari Weiss team appears to get its view of what is actually happening in the world from Twitter. They were asking Vega to include things that *weren't real* b/c they didn't know any better. www.status.news/p/cecilia-ve...

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

exCUSE me??????????? I take a week off and there’s a KIDNAPPING?!!?!????????

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Bari Weiss once again faced with the irreconcilable contradiction of practicing responsible journalism and carrying out the Ellison mandate deadline.com/2026/07/trum...

UPDATED with ABC & NBC plans, 12:51 PM: ABC News and NBC News said Thursday afternoon that they will carry Donald Trump‘s primetime address tonight only on their respective streaming sites, ABC News Live and NBC News Now, and not their broadcast networks.

[Highlighted] CBS News has yet to reveal its coverage plans.

NBC News said it will air a special report on the network after the speech. ABC News will monitor the speech and will break in for a special report depending on developments.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I do wonder if the effect of having so much power and now being able to throw it around much more freely than at any point in the past is so intoxicating they may opt to stick around, despite the risks.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Maybe show this purported original image in context, if it exists, rather than an unreliable AI summary.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 08/07/2026

absolutely insane story, and yeah, just looking at this chart... with the exception of maybe two people, this entire class was cheating like motherfuckers

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

All the more appalling because the average on the in-class final was a record low, suggesting a more pervasive influence of AI beyond the midterm in degrading the learning process

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

An interesting thing just happened ... and while my full account will appear in CJR Friday, I want to take note of it now. Start with this NYPost/Fox story that ran Sunday. Note the headline (including typo). Illegal immigration caused house prices to rise 30%! web.archive.org/web/20260705... 1/

web.archive.org

Biden’s illegal immigration surge triggered 30% rise in home prices, $ 20% in rents, Fed paper finds

The paper describes 2021 through 2024 as an “unprecedented boom” in illegal immigration.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Thank you Tyler Cowen (“vibes” was at the time – July 2024 – less a rationalization of fascism than a few “savvy” observations of politics from the Mark Halperin school mixed with wishful thinking) marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

marginalrevolution.com

The changes in vibes - why did they happen? - Marginal REVOLUTION

Clearly it has happened, and it has been accelerated and publicized by the Biden failings and the attempted Trump assassination. But it was already underway. If you need a single, unambiguous sign o...

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Well, that’s terrible in all respects. Sorry to hear and good luck on your next moves.

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Josh Fischman @jfischman.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

An eventful week at Scientific American. Owner Springer Nature rushed to sell SciAm 3 days before the staff overwhelmingly voted to form a union, and laid off a lot of people. Including me. I got to work with amazing writers during my time, people who made me better. Thank-you list in comment below:

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Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Did DoD just admit in a court filing that it used xAI's Grok Gov Model to hit the girls' school on the first day of the Iran war? Based on some passages flagged by @rgoodlaw.bsky.social in DoD's recent filing in NAACP's case against X, it looks like it did 1/

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Say The Thing Tee @saythethingtee.com · 20/06/2026

It appears Grok killed the schoolchildren in Iran, in tandem with a US military under Pete Hegseth who DGAF. Remember when Anthropic said 'No' to Hegseth's demand that they allow the DoD to use Claude to kill autonomously, with no human oversight? Check out this timeline:

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Political news still applying a completely ossified structure to events that left it behind about 10 years ago

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

The press is ensnared by the contradictions of outmoded conventions (scrupulous fairness to disingenuous/bad faith actors like Vance; the president as Man of History deserving of respect and deference; Republican/MAGA performative aggression as political winners; "savvy" framing)

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Dan Kennedy @dankennedy.net · 16/06/2026

News sites are the new newspapers: People are abandoning them for social media: Looking at the new Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report. www.niemanlab.org/2026/06/news...

niemanlab.org

News sites are the new newspapers: People are abandoning them for social media

Facebook for news is on the rebound, impartial news isn't dead, and other findings from RISJ's 2026 Digital News Report

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I wonder if there will be serious resistance to symbolic acts of detrumpfication. Once he goes, leaving various disasters in his wake, taking names off things will be broadly popular and (like Bush II) he won't have a lot of defenders

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

From a political communications standpoint, kind of brilliant. "Court packing" sounds bad; "we have the wrong number of justices" is a simple and compelling way to put it; makes you think, why do we have this (arbitrary/path dependent) number that doesn't represent a majority of the country

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Wondering when / if we're going to see some reporting from inside the FBI on these investigations and the recent course of agency corruption: are agents assigned based on MAGA sympathies, are straight-arrow types in FBI keeping their distance, etc.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Some stray thoughts on gap-filling. Take them for what they are 1. Gaps in archives are not like rips in clothing; they don't have a well defined and wholly known, or in the broadest sense wholly knowable, shape or extent. You can't cut a patch for them or fill them with putty and smooth them over.

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Which explains the category error of expecting her to boost TV ratings using the same approach

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Appealing to a certain strain of mediocre white male grievance was instrumental to her success, and it seemed like if you could do that you maybe had to be smarter than your targeted audience. But the CBS experience proves otherwise..

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John McQuaid @johnmcquaid.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Like entropy, seems like the loss of independence here does not/cannot run in reverse

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