iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 01/10/2026

I'm not sure if y'all saw a CNN report on how the US had almost started WW3 with China based on fabricated information generated by a chatbot, claiming that a Chinese vessel was carrying components of nuclear weapons. That was an "existential threat" to humanity www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender

The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals

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Matthew Guariglia @mguariglia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The NYPD hired their first statisticians to use math to find crime in *1916*---predictive policing and AI in governance are often exacerbating deep-seated problems and to address them we can't just address AI, we also need to address the bigger issues.

A new yor times article from 1916. Headline: "Arithmetic used to detect crimes" and the subhead "police department employs it with success through bureau of statistics."

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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

You’re right—that plane shouldn’t have gone there. That’s my fault, and I should have made sure there wasn’t a terminal in the landing path. Would you like me to call emergency services, or assist with lining up takeoffs?

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 04/09/2026

Oh my god, this is AWFUL

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Great to see the two biggest public school systems in the US applying AI restrictions. And yes, both can go even farther!

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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Anyone who has conversations about AI with friends, neighbours, family, peers, colleagues.. must watch this:

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

*obligatory August post*

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Floodlight @floodlightnews.org · 27/08/2026

NEW: Thermal drone footage shows the Microsoft-backed DataOne AI data center in Vineland, NJ is running dozens of gas generators. None of them have permits. A Floodlight visual investigation with @us.theguardian.com:

floodlightnews.org

One of East Coast’s largest data centers accused of ‘violating federal law’

Thermal drone footage shows DataOne — the Microsoft-backed AI data center in Vineland — is powering its operations with dozens of unpermitted generators

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Gabriel Malor @gabrielmalor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

9th Cir. holds that Kalshi is not exempt from state gaming regulations for its event contracts involving sports betting. Remands for further consideration of its election contracts. Huge blow to Kalshi. Over 90% of its trades in 2025 were sports related. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

You had me at "take turns guessing the author" 😂😂😂 "Write down the most common intrusive thought that keeps you up at night, but don’t include your name. Then choose a table leader to read each thought aloud and take turns guessing the author."

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

"Instead, his legal team says that the wagers were not financial instruments subject to regulation by the United States’ Commodities Exchange Act but rather good old-fashioned international betting that the US has no authority over."

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Of course Tropical Storm Dolly would bring the rain that is needed without the destructive wind speeds. "And my tears keep falling down As steady as the rain"

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

An excellent article by @annahelhoski.bsky.social on catastrophic risk and prediction markets, featuring ideas from me along with some other people who think it is a good idea to bet on disasters (I do not) www.nerdwallet.com/finance/news...

nerdwallet.com

The Business of Betting on Natural Disasters - NerdWallet

Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allow users to place bets on events like hurricanes and earthquakes, raising ethical and safety concerns.

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Such a brilliant and beautiful essay. "To understand Dolly, you have to read her as a writer. Writing her own story was the most radical, precise way to define herself in a world that kept trying to fit her into a box."

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I am giving a paper on the financialization of weather and climate in online prediction markets at the @finandsoc.bsky.social conference. My cynical take is that growing these markets is a bid to convince regulators that it is not just all about betting on sports & crypto prices (just 97%...)

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Dave Jorgenson @davejorgenson.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

hoping for an alternate ending where he lives to 100

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Ansley Erickson @ansleyerickson.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Loved learning about Dolly Parton via this podcast series from a few years ago: www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dol...

wnycstudios.org

Dolly Parton's America : Episodes | WNYC Studios | Podcasts

The story of a legend at the crossroads of America’s culture wars.

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Stacy Fahrenthold @sfahrenthold.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The American Historical Association hired a lobbying firm to help silence member advocacy on Palestine. In this essay, Adam Rzepka covers @historians.org's relationship w/ Thorn Run Partners, its deep ethical conflicts, & the advocacy crisis AHA has thrust upon us. www.chronicle.com/article/a-sc...

chronicle.com

Opinion | A Scholarly Association’s Secret Washington Playbook

Did the American Historical Association ask a corporate lobbying firm for advice on how to silence its members?

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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 24/08/2026

Switching from Flock to another ALPR provider or other police surveillance technology isn't a fix, EFF’s @mguariglia.bsky.social told @NPR.org. "You're just replacing one color of camera for another. Those dangers you were concerned about are still going to be there."

npr.org

As Flock battles public scrutiny, other police surveillance companies see an opening

Dozens of cities have canceled their contracts with Flock. Some are switching to other companies, but privacy experts say they're no better than Flock.

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Nick Sousanis @nsousanis.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

As folks gear up for the new semester, a reminder if anyone needs it, my Ai statement is available for people to make use of in their own materials. It’s downloadable and printable from my site here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.

https://spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-syllabi/

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Worth a read: harpers.org/archive/2026... "If your plan was to kill trust—in journalism, within organizations, and in the public consciousness—the best way to do it would not be to build some complicated bazaar of secret brokers, but to launch an anonymous public market for predictions."

harpers.org

The Chaos Machine, by Finn Brunton

Prediction markets and the triumph of crypto-anarchy

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Andrew Guthrie Ferguson @profferguson.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

If you are focused on Flock in your communities, can I interest you in real-time crime centers, video analytics, drones, sensors, or other pattern-matching and tracking technologies. A narrow focus on ALPRs obscures the other equally pervasive and panoptic policing technologies in use.

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

A bill to ban wildfire betting on prediction markets -- Wildfire Event Contract Prohibition Act -- has been introduced in Congress by Michael Baumgartner (R-WA). Last active wildfire markets I am aware of were from Jan 2025, but better late than never... www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

congress.gov

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Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

More than 150 wallets on Polymarket International may have traded on inside U.S. military information, attracting copycat bets and raising concerns that the market could broadcast signals exploitable by foreign adversaries. www.reuters.com/business/fin...

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Kalshi is offering a new Heatwaves category in disaster betting, & Polymarket has just added Drought. Does anyone look at this and seriously think "hedging function" and "price discovery mechanism"? Or is it more "yeah let's pass the time and maybe make a few bucks while the planet burns amirite"?

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Went down a GitHub rabbit hole to explore the wonderland of prediction-market agents, aggregators, alerts, arbitrage tools, etc. Found a couple of apps for producing fake Polymarket screenshots "for marketing, entertainment, and educational purposes." What could possibly go wrong, I wonder...? 😱😱😱

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

So it turns out that releasing fake polls can throw off the truth machine okay got it "...it calls into question how information of varying quality might move the needle in betting markets like Kalshi and Polymarket."

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Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Stunning reporting from @ericklinenberg.bsky.social on how climate change driven extreme heat in Europe is reshaping the continent. Must read.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Did not realize that Polymarket is basically just doing Trump messaging now.

polymarket
1d
+
BREAKING: DOJ to send roughly 1,000 monitors to polling sites across the U.S. during the November midterm elections to watch for fraud. 1/2
=

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vanoreo @vanoreo.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

@edzitron.com had it on the money here

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

This is the best of the recent articles on the January 2025 wildfire markets -- it gets the chronology right (these markets are *not* currently active) while still highlighting the dangerous material and moral implications of "arson markets."

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

ding ding ding I also think it’s relevant that this is in particular a coding tool, and there was likely an effort to give it a masculine name as a result🫠

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

404media.co

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

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Kathryn Tewson @kathryntewson.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

A King County Superior Court judge in Washington state has found that Kalshi’s trick of calling itself a “prediction market” doesn’t make it not gambling under the Washington Gambling Act, and has therefore ordered Kalshi to stop almost all activity within the state. Read more here:

atg.wa.gov

Judge orders Kalshi cease numerous Washington operations | Washington State

A King County Superior Court judge issued a final order requiring KalshiEX (Kalshi) to cease many of its Washington operations after finding that Kalshi likely violated the Washington Gambling Act and...

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Noah Rosenblum @narosenblum.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Who could possibly have foreseen this?

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Bob Henson @bhensonweather.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The photo (taken by climate scientist @rahmstorf.bsky.social) itself speaks volumes.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Over the 6 semesters that I taught my writing course "To What Problem is ChatGPT the Solution?" (about AI, not using it to write), I saw a clear evolution from openness to AI as a "tool" to serious concerns about cognitive offloading, privacy, and deskilling/1 www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

And these students are not outliers. Young people are very concerned about generative AI degrading their cognitive and social capacities. A recent survey of young Americans under 30 found that 61 percent worry that the use of AI will make people worse at thinking creatively, and 58 percent worry that it will impair the ability to form meaningful relationships with others. Another survey shows that 31 percent of Gen Z respondents reported “anger” about AI, a very large increase from 22 percent the previous year.

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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 06/08/2026

"THOSE AT HIGH RISK INCLUDE OUTDOOR WORKERS, THE DISABLED, PREGNANT PEOPLE, OLD PEOPLE, YOUNG PEOPLE, ANYONE WITH CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONS, ANYONE ON MEDICATION, ANYONE IN DENSE URBAN AREAS, ANYONE WHO IS POOR, PETS…… BASICALLY EVERYONE BUT MARK ZUCKERBERG."

mcsweeneys.net

Heat Advisory

“THOSE AT HIGH RISK INCLUDE OUTDOOR WORKERS, THE DISABLED, PREGNANT PEOPLE, OLD PEOPLE, YOUNG PEOPLE, ANYONE WITH CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONS, ANYONE ON MEDICA...

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Jamie Pietruska @jpietruska.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Good piece in @theguardian.com about the US Senators' letter to the CFTC expressing concern about the Polymarket wildfire markets (which, as I say in the article, is only a year and a half late...) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com

US senators urge crackdown on wildfire betting amid warnings of arson risk

Experts say growing trend on sites such as Polymarket and Kalshi could motivate people to start fires to win money

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Molly White @molly.wiki · 05/08/2026

It's a year and a half after i highlighted the issue, but nice to see: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

arstechnica.com

Senators demand crackdown on wildfire "prediction market" bets

Fire experts warn such markets could incentivize arson.

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Dr. Jeff Masters @drjeffmasters.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Six of the top-10 costliest wildfire disasters in world history have occurred since 2017.

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 03/08/2026

George Santos has been fined $35,000 for attempting to place bets on his own attendance at the State of the Union in February. He’s also been banned from the prediction-market platform Kalshi for 3 years.

motherjones.com

George Santos got busted for manipulating political betting markets—and seems to have little remorse

"Touché bitches lets see who wins!"

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Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan on X) @markanthonyneal.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

"All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact...It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)

A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.

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