iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 22/11/2025

as Phillips O'Brien also points out, this plan has been in negotiation for a long time, probably since Trump took office. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

open.substack.com

The Long Con Comes To An End

The Trump Administration Takes Off The Mask (Again)

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kaaspe.bsky.social @kaaspe.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion - The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

nytimes.com

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion

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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

The conditions that have led to what’s happening in the US today exist in democracies around the world. They are an inevitable outcome of our collective failure to adapt to fundamental changes in the information ecosystem on which our democracies were originally built.

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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 30/05/2025

We wrote about the US ruling class taking the reins to manage its own decline. What do the Trumpist factions of capital want? Can that be squared with the interests of the MAGA base? Capable state managers could potentially thread the needle, but that's all gone. With @cedricdurand.bsky.social.

phenomenalworld.org

America’s Braudelian Autumn | Benjamin Braun & Cédric Durand

Factions of capital in the second Trump administration

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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

"Encouraging technology dependence and building a global panopticon fits with the goals and authoritarian dreams of billionaire technocrats who are abandoning democracy while funding their dystopic visions with tax dollars."

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Eric Goldman @ericgoldman.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Angry judge roasts Biglaw lawyers for their "collective debacle" filing a brief where "~9 of the 27 legal citations in the 10-page brief were incorrect in some way" due to Generative AI digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcont... Lawyers will pay $31k for their sloppiness 🤖😵

digitalcommons.law.scu.edu

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

If you want to see how upset the “New Right” is about the term “Woke Right,” see this lengthy post by the founder of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes NatCon. It’s wild. These screenshots are just the first part of the post. The post is looooong. 2/ x.com/yhazony/stat...

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Andrew Otis Weiss @thatweissguy.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

“Historical inevitability” in the techbro sense:

A cartoon panel of Big Telecom in the form of big anthropomorphic telephone threatening a consumer because they aren’t adopting the videophone technology they blew a pile of cash less-than-perfecting, from The Big Book of Losers.

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Philippe J. Fournier @338canada.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

The attacks on 338 continue today, this time in Eastern Canada :-( Use the French version of the site, which is up and running: qc125.com/canada/distr...

qc125.com

Qc125 Canada | Les 343 circonscriptions

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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Gore: Adorno was right

The torso of a man wearing a gray t-shirt. The shirt says, "adorno was right" in white letters

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

2/4. The entire practice of the Holocaust of the Jews involved zones of statelessness. It is easier to move people away from law than it is to remove law from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

I wrote a piece for the Guardian's "big ideas" series on how techbros' failure to understand sci-fi novels is causing immense harm. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

theguardian.com

The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?

Skewed interpretations of classic works are feeding the dark visions of tech moguls, from Musk to Thiel

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

1517 co-founder Michael Gibson is a former Thiel Foundation VP & Thiel Capital principal who now advises Pronomos Capital (backed by Thiel & Marc Andreessen). During Thiel’s October “Hereticon” event, Gibson co-led a talk titled “Manifest Destiny:Greenland, Cuba, & the New American Colony.” 1/

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

A fascinating issue around Yarvin and Musk is how figures feted as visionaries by the techbro Right don't seem to have considered the possibility that gunmen and covert ops types needed to enforce their vision might turn around and seize power from intellectuals and oligarchs like Yarvin and Musk

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kaaspe.bsky.social @kaaspe.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

"The U.S. government is asking Canadian grant recipients questions that threaten their academic independence... including whether their work is connected to DEI, is an “environmental justice” project or whether it protects women from “gender ideology.” Globe and Mail March 20, 2025

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

1/ Peter Thiel-who backs the "network state" movement & the construction of charter cities—wrote a preface for "The Sovereign Individual," a book that states in part as follows:

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

So much of Musk's persona comes down to his fundamentally Fascist misunderstanding of Asimov's New Deal progressive vision of the future

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Prof Julia Steinberger 🌹🌱🌍 #ClimateAction #Fightfascism @jksteinberger.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

NO CHATGPT Or other artificial stupidity: motivation
First, clarity on distinguishing AIs:
Non-generative: grammar aid, translation, dictionary, text-to-audio (e.g. Natural Reader): no problem
As long as you use the appropriate tools (least intensive in data and server energy use).
Why? Because you provide the content. Your brain is doing the most important work
Generative: ChatGPT & Co.
You only supply the prompt, the AI supplies the content.
Why is this delegation of work problematic?
3 domains: ethical, environmental, intellectual engagement.

(Caveat: generative is probably ok for computer programming, where it can be useful and save time. Not relevant to this class.)

1) AI and ethics
Mass theft of all and everything
«learning» on books, articles, blogs, social media, images, music, cultural production, without permission of authors/creators, and leading to their mass joblessness. Profits are not reditributed to originators.
Permanent destruction of the mental health of underpaid precarious tech workers in the Global South (Kenya, Philippines …):
«correction» to avoid production of violent and pedophile contents etc, tech workers are obliged to watch and correct super violent contents for days on end, leading to extreme psychological suffering and trauma, from which recovery is doubtful. No or little compensation (certainly not at the level of the suffering inflicted).
In short, an industry built on theft of real human creation and sacrifice of real human health, profiting a few megafortunes.

2) AI and (un)sustainability

Massive consumption of electricity, water, server capacity for generative AI.
Outcome: keep fossil fuel companies in business, using up new renewable capacity, without any satisfaction of basic human needs.
Massive misappropriation of the finance necessary for climate and ecological action (renewable generation, efficiency and retrofit for buildings, public transit, infrastructures for cycling etc) towards AI industry.
Overall: undermine climate action, reinforce fossil industry, waste resources necessary for human development.

3) AI and intellectual engagement

First, what learning is (or should be) about:
The goal should not (only) be the reproduction of «correct» knowledge,
But mainly personal engagement and experience of thinking about topics of interest. Personal engagement = using one’s own brain.
The most important activity for learning and intellectual engagement is the experience of making one’s own mistakes, by trial and error, corrections based on new ideas, starting over again. Learning to recognise nuances, knowledge gaps, better explanations
This kind of learning is possible only through using your own brain, not AI.
Also, Ais are not «intelligent». At all.
They simply reproduce pre-existing patterns. They «bullshit», invent false references, false facts, false data, simply because those sound plausible. VERY DANGEROUS.
If you learn how to NOT use AI, and how to research facts and data on your own, this will serve you and your communities for the rest of your life.

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kaaspe.bsky.social @kaaspe.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Faustian bargain "Aerosol offset of GHG warming is a Faustian bargain ... providing present benefit without regard to future consequences. ... with the change of ship regulations, our first Faustian payment came due. Hansen et al 2025 doi.org/10.1080/0013... Fg2: Faustus contemplates bargain...

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kaaspe.bsky.social @kaaspe.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

"What’s happening now is unethical, illegal, and unconstitutional. But the path forward is clear. Share what you know to be true. Support those documenting reality. Demand transparency. Call out lies."

notesfromthecircus.com

Flood the Zone With Truth

How Truth, Technology, and Democracy Can Survive the Age of Chaos

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kaaspe.bsky.social @kaaspe.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

"...most terrifying... Trump, the supposed strongman ... is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand ... that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy." M. Brock

notesfromthecircus.com

The Plot Against America

How a Dangerous Ideology Born From the Libertarian Movement Stands Ready to Seize America

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Mike Brock 🇺🇸 @brockm.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

This has been my most ambitious piece of writing so far. It's long. And I will be working on a much shorter version for a wider audience. But I also don't want to lose sight of the deep truths lurking around us. So, here is The Plot Against America. www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-a...

open.substack.com

The Plot Against America

How a Dangerous Ideology Born From the Libertarian Movement Stands Ready to Seize America

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