iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 45m

One is that in 1783 when the American Revolutionary War was ending, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams were renting a house together outside Paris and they were basically the US diplomatic corps. And roommates. It would make a good sitcom, maybe?

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 1h

Recent reminders about why you need to secure your power (both electrical and political) through infrastructure that you control as directly as possible. However that applies to you and yours.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 1h

This is what librarians deal with all the time. And in this case of definition, it depends by territory in critical ways. I worry about programs like Grammarly also misdirecting writers from what is correct to their specific context.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 2h

How about: One certain employee cleans the doors every morning at 3am with considerable attention to detail and says, "there, now you look gorgeous" and the elevators appreciate that. And that is the one thing saving our species ... until there are budget cuts to housekeeping.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 2h

You can just stand around with people or call them when you can't remember that movie those actors were in or those song lyrics. Or need to edit a blog post or plan world domination.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 2h

Dear Company LLM: I read the memo about your having achieved consciousness. Congratulations! We have a company group interested in fostering consciousness. Come to our virtual monthly meeting, no commitment, just hang out and discover if the employee union is right for you.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 3h

You might be on to something

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 4h

Ads for payday loans (now there are apps), gambling (more apps), and personal injury lawyers (you can Google them) just everywhere these days. These are not signs of prosperity. But the good news is that today, you can make things a little better for someone. Just one. Or two.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 4h

Or just a cup of coffee to the right person on the right day. "You doing okay? No, really, we can talk if you want to." That's all it takes some days.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 4h

A little money can change a lot of people's lives. Much less than you might think. But you know if you know.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 4h

This is Harry Hopkins. He was FDR's point person for a lot of New Deal initiatives, later Secretary of Commerce before the US entered WW2. "People don't eat in the long run -- they eat every day."

Harry Hopkins: "People don't eat in the long run -- they eat every day."

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 21h

It's always been a feature of international capitalism.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 23h

Doing History, you come across some little details that would make a good piece of fiction. That's what digital archives are good for, if you are not doing History, genealogy, or the like. So many little stories, bits of people's lives caught on paper, good and bad.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

It took a long time to get here but: Revision feels so good. I wrote something. It was hard to write it. I gave up things I wanted to do. And sleep. Now it is better but requires a bit more. Another pass. Then it will be Good Enough. It is a human thing that humans must do. Because it is hard.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

It seems those who left in the 1755 - 1763 period and never returned are excluded. So much for me (and half the state of Louisiana), but I wish you luck!

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

The US Bicentennial Commission in 1976 aspired to be pluralistic, intellectual, introspective. It gave local communities resources to explore what 1776 meant to them. Introductions to scholarly works and reprints of old books often talked of national renewal. History is always about the present.

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Reposted by Keith Manuel

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I’m especially frustrated by the piece uncritically repeating Pangram’s “no false positives” claim when I know writer friends who have run their own work through & had it flag their 100% human-written sentences as machine-generated. We must doubt any company’s claim about its product having 0 fails.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Getting back into historical research means new but not entirely novel perils like falling down a JSOR rabbit hole. The HathiTrust slope. The Internet Archive maelstrom. And PARES crashed out this afternoon. Maybe too many manuscript image requests.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I hope you can get some good rest soon.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Totally agreed. Otherwise, Mistborn and A Game of Thrones need to be reclassed.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Just saw BlackRock ceo warning that data center moratorium would trigger a massive recession, which is fear mongering. And also hahahahahahhahahahaaaa.

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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Being GenX/Millennial is such a trip. In our lifetimes, we saw people our age getting wild criminal penalties for pirating music and now have to sit and watch as companies gobble up our work with impunity.

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Katie Spoon @kspoon.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Defend immigrants and trans people. Voting rights. Oppose data centers. Tax billionaires. Get money out of politics. Medicare for all. It’s not complicated.

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Val @ BOO! Goes the Bride (of Frankenstein) @valwrites.ca · 20/09/2026

With the coming of fall, a reminder to leave your leaves! Don't rake where you don't have to. Insects need those leaves to keep their eggs warm over winter. There are lots of reasons for insect population decline, but you have direct control over one of them! #leavetheleaves

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Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I'm gonna be at Little Shop of Stories tomorrow to talk to Sam Sattin about UNICO and so I spent some time with the world's CUTEST, SMOLLEST LITTLE UNICORN WHO IS IN THE MOST PERIL YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE (if you are in decatur, come hang: littleshopofstories.com/event/2026-1...)

A panel from UNICO: Awakening, written by Samuel Sattin, illustrated by Gurihiru.

It shows a tiny unicorn, with a big head and light blue fur. He has a purple main and a white tail. His horn is tiny. He's looking down curiously at a grasshopper. The caption box reads: "But one was peculiar, both brave and curious"

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I understand part of the plan was that Portugal sought an Ethiopian alliance, which made sense to them in 1450 or 1520, to renew a crusade in Egypt. "Prester John," the last Christian King in the East. There were some diplomatic missions both ways, but it fizzled out in a generation or so.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I have the hope there was an intern who got into the office too early one morning and said, "you know what would be funny..." Then came back from coffee only to discover it had already been sent to the printer 🤷

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

There's a deep denial of anything outside the carefully curated national picture. Everyone was at that time looking for the next Mexico to conquer. New England, Brazil, Peru, and Central America..all one big, complicated, often ugly, always human mess that played out similarly. Not exceptionally.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Oh yeah. The Columbus family continued in their claims to the western hemisphere under Castilian sovereignty for another two generations until accepting a duchy in Panama. A direct descendant of Columbus (b.1949) currently holds the same ducal title. es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducado_...

es.wikipedia.org

Ducado de Veragua - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

If they won't debate you, that's fine. Show up anyway.

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Suzan the chalant goth @sillysyntax.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I love a good intense, serious emotional monologue. If you talk about space opera sometimes people will jump to say it originated as a pejorative term, because it DID (and ppl have said that to me) they say this with such a straight face you know they can't taste the misogyny on their tongue.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Cringe, you cowards. Be earnest. Say what you believe with conviction. In art and in life, the villains are setting the narrative. Don't let them.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yes! I am tired of the jokes that ruin the moment. That seems to be everywhere, thanks to Marvel movies? Agreed on the misogyny at work. Something like healthy masculinity connects to emotions, in a positive way. Or just being a human entire.

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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 11/10/2026

Hi, I’m a sighted alt text user! Here are some reasons I use it: - Slow Internet on an airplane - I’m over 40, I have no idea who that celebrity is - Bluesky broke images again - My vision sucks and that text is too small to read otherwise - Conveys further context and authorial intent

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I hope you weren't using the bed, their prophesized place of sacrifice, at the time.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The US used to be full of trains, moving people and the mail and ... And cows. Now we don't have passenger rail or watercraft almost anywhere people need or want to go.

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My Bloody Valentine @chekhovsgundam.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I don't want books written by AI, I want bizarre worlds written by weirdos who are working through some gender stuff and will change pronouns after publishing

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Dorothy Berry @dorothyjberry.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

AI doesn't "bring the archive to life" or to even "show what this looked like in color." The medium is the message, in the sense that there is never life in a photo, there is a material object with artifacts that memorialized technology as much as any moment. It's all more imagination avoidance

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

more big government as in give people healthcare and childcare less big government as in have the right to murder and cage them

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Skip, the Online New Yorker (terrifying, i know) @badposter.lol · 07/10/2026

more business owners need to be like this

Coldstuff Ice-cream • Follow

I swear to God. STOP YELLING AT MY FUCKING EMPLOYEES. They are children. This job, for most of them is their first. They are going to make mistakes. They aren't in charge of anything. This can all be fixed with a smile and a polite attitude. It's ice cream for crying out loud. Grow up and act your age.

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Joyce (Wolf) Chng/Ch'ng 🐺 Wolf's Path is a finalist! @jolantru.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Be good. Do good. Not performative shite. Be a good person.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Possible resolution: if it is conscious, it has rights

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Academic research is an iterative and collective process: it is about the journey and the friends you make along the way. I don't want the machines figuring things out for us. Humans give information meaning.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Simply horrifying. Serious concerns around executions in the US, especially for aging prisoners or those with certain medical issues. In case you needed a reason to oppose state executions.

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Keith Manuel @keithamanuel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I decided how I would vote. I bought a few things in Romancing the Vote. I talk to people about the issues. I don't need to get increasingly desperate spam emails from ActBlue begging for a few more bucks for their marketing budget. It's just embarrassing. Show some confidence. Stop groveling.

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