iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

gwen howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social · 19m

really don't love that nobody considers "tranny" a slur anymore

Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 2h

There's a whole genre of X posts which is like "I tried using (bsky/Threads/occasionally Mastodon) and people there are just too cringe, so I'd rather hang out in this nazi bar."

Screenshot of a tweet where the poster (redacted) said "i genuinely tried using bluesky but it just felt like this over there" with a video clip of the band Superorganism, stuffed behind the NPR Tiny Desk, playing a kinda goofy song where some of the musicians use improvised instruments like a bucket of water. The tweet has been retweeted 4.6K times and viewed 8.7 million times.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i hope that men notice how whenever a rape story gets widespread coverage, women use it as an opportunity to vent about how fucking disgusting we think many of you are and how many have made our lives measurably worse, and take a few moments to deeply process that.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

KXAN News @kxan.com · 29/09/2026

An Austin woman says she was removed from Saturday's Austin FC match over an 'Abolish ICE' shirt. www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/aust…

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In two weeks, Russell Brand goes on trial in the UK on rape and sexual assault charges in cases involving six women. Tomorrow in DC, he's appearing at a MAHA gathering to 'moderate' a discussion with Dr Oz about medicare and medicaid. What the hell?

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

jon christian @jonchristian.net · 28/09/2026

NEW: After we published an investigation into Brown Brothers Media, a company that buys struggling news sites and turns them into AI-powered content mills, we got a tip that completely gobsmacked me: one of the brothers has extensive connections to Ghislaine Maxwell futurism.com/artificial-i...

futurism.com

You Know Those Three Brothers Who Buy Struggling News Sites and Turn Them Into AI-Powered Content Farms? It Turns Out One of Them Has Extensive Connections to Ghislaine Maxwell

Ideapod, a cornerstone brand of Brown Brothers Media's AI empire, has deep ties to convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

jon christian @jonchristian.net · 28/09/2026

Somehow "the guy who buys struggling publications and fills them with fake journalists that publish thousands of articles of AI slop to overwhelm google? turns out he goes way back with Ghislaine Maxwell, the collaborator of Jeffrey Epstein" feels like the ultimate and most exhausting 2026 sentence

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So yeah, if you suppress all knowledge of queerness, then on some level, you do end up with fewer openly queer people. You get to have more miserable, self-hating stunted people instead. YAY YOU WIN. If you just want us gone, then yeah, that's a victory condition.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The "social contagion" thing drives me screaming angry. When I was young I had no clue trans ppl existed. I'd never met anyone trans. I saw cruel caricatures in pop culture occasionally. When I realized trans was a thing someone could be, it hit like a lightning bolt. My life felt newly possible.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Andrew Schreck @andrewschreck.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i don't think cis guys realize how much power they can shift in a conversation just by casually telling their friends
"that's fucked up, man" when someone says something

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

the horrific cornell gang rape case has me thinking about emma sulkowicz who alleged she was raped as a student at columbia in 2014 and never got any justice. it has me thinking about the physical and mental weight young women are forced to carry while their safety is subsumed by male potential.

Emma Sulkowicz carrying around a mattress on the Columbia campus in 2014 to raise awareness of her alleged rape and the university's inaction.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Arizona Right Watch @azrww.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Follow LOOKOUT who is doing work that literally no other outlet in AZ will touch. It’s amazing that good journalism is just meeting the goddamn moment so of course it’s the outlet here centering LGBTQ+ voices and writers in a state that has tried for decades to silence these experiences.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 28/09/2026

It really gives the game away when the anti trans orgs are calling the election of the neo nazi party in Germany a "glimmer of hope."

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 28/09/2026

For my newsletter this morning, I found a small glimmer of political hope for trans people in the US and wrote about it: www.burnsnotice.com/we-may-have-...

burnsnotice.com

We May Have Just Seen the Tides Turn on Trans Rights

Some conservative PACs have backed off from running anti-trans ads. Is this a sign of what's to come for trans people?

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Nor’Easter is heading towards the east coast so reminder that if you have any other option DO NOT put your body in flood water. It has raw sewage, gasoline, chemicals, medical waste, radiological waste and more — anything the water touches. People die from infections after contact with it.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Beastie enby @alterkocker.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

the Globe article was perfect for the fascists because it got a lot of people agreeing with their premise that the fascism is a necessary and proportionate response to the "excesses" of the left. Those "excesses" amounting to a few Instagram comments on a small bar's instagram page was irrelevant.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

DJ Plague Mouse 💎🐁 @rhinestonemice.wtf · 23/09/2026

The Last Ditch lesbian bar mask requirement story was the topic of Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog's terf ass podcast on September 17th last week. Seems likely this is where the Globe is getting the content for the "viral story". Nice work everyone, great media literacy skills.

Screenshot of a podcast episode from the show Blocked and Reported on substack, a platform for Nazis:

Premium: Last Ditch Bar And The Never-Ending Accountability Session
Plus, mouthy women get kicked out of an “inclusive” sports bar
Sept 17

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 26/09/2026

Oh yeah, Singal and Herzog were most definitely whining about this in the media transphobe group chat

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 26/09/2026

As someone who still wears a mask in a lot of situations (incl. Medical offices, shopping, and shared transit of all kinds), seeing us be the butt of jokes over and over this week has been a lot. That Boston Globe piece really turned a lot of marginalized groups into, um, clowns.

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 25/09/2026

It was relatively quick and easy but I still hated having to tell a random pharmacy tech why I'm sick enough to deserve a covid shot. Fuck you RFK Jr.

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 25/09/2026

Wearing more makeup for my Covid booster than I wore to my date this morning. Not sure what that says about me.

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 25/09/2026

I watched Lesbian Space Princess last night, and I know there was Discourse (tm) about it recently but I thought it was funny in a deliberately cringey way. The animation style was nice though noticeably low budget in a few places. It was good. Willow, nonbinary baddie, deserves better though!

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Celeste Headlee @celesteheadlee.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So, Banksy bought a used yacht, repaired it and retrofitted it to serve as a rescue boat to save migrants in the central Mediterranean. The whole project cost the artist $860,000. Since 2020, the boat has saved more than 3,800 people. londondaily.com/banksy-funds...

londondaily.com

Banksy funds refugee rescue boat operating in Mediterranean - London Daily

Exclusive: UK artist finances bright pink motor yacht that set sail in secrecy to avoid being intercepted by authorities

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Jake Tapper (moderating the 2028 Dem primary debate): Final question. Do you renounce the Western Massachusetts lesbian bar? Pete Buttigieg: I renounce it. Kamala: I renounce it. AOC: I renounce it. Gavin Newsom: I will be deploying the National Guard to Greenfield on day one of my administration.

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 22/09/2026

My latest @thebarbedwire.com: Ever taken an HIV test at a nightclub or event? 13 AIDS-related nonprofits in Texas (and more nationwide) are losing millions in HIV outreach funding, thanks to the latest DOGE-like cuts at the CDC. Six nonprofits in Houston will collectively lose ~$2M in vital funds.

thebarbedwire.com

Thanks To CDC Cutbacks, 13 Texas Nonprofits Lose Millions In HIV Outreach Funding

Gulf Coast is hardest hit: The CEO of a Houston-area nonprofit estimated that six organizations in the area are losing a total of about $2 million in funds.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

pausa de hateration @thatguywasfly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I hope everyone who jumped on this story today is proud to take their cues as to what's newsworthy and worth condemnation as The Problem With The Left from Jesse fucking Singal.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 22/09/2026

Moral panics are manufactured concerns created to push an agenda, don't hold up under scrutiny, and the fallout always harms more people than will ever be helped. Stand up for trans people.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hey so uhhhhh that Boston Globe story about the lesbian bar relaxing its covid rules is an *absolute fucking hit piece* targeting the disabled, chronically ill, and covid-conscious and it would be great if folks sharing and joking about it could recognize that framing.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

ICE must be destroyed 🏳️‍⚧️🏴 @miawong.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's so fucking bleak that there's so many more posts here about scene drama at a lesbian bar than there is the US government's border Gestapo shooting a guy in the back, kidnapping him, throwing him in a camp, denying him proper medical care, and then torturing him Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

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Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 23/09/2026

Open enrollment for the HealthCare Marketplace is coming in November and I'm interested in talking to LGBTQ+ folks (in Texas and elsewhere!) for a story. Are you buying for the first time? Struggling to afford it? Do you get help from paying for it? Let's chat about your healthcare access.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Austin American-Statesman @statesman.com · 23/09/2026

Austin-area students walked out of class on Tuesday to protest the shooting of Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez by federal immigration officers. www.statesman.com/news/educati...

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Joel Pinckney @jpinckney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I wrote this to try and bear witness; I hope you'll read it. If you do, I hope you'll later find some quiet to think about this man, pray for him if you'd like, and then find out what you can do to help those impacted by this violence and terror in your community.

welcometohellworld.com

His car is still sitting there

An ICE kidnapping in Austin

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Mike Rothschild @rothschildmd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Anyway, the "lesbian bar masking" story isn't about lesbians or masking. It's about selfish assholes who want to destroy anything they can't keep for themselves, and the urgent need to kick those people out of your lives.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Kath Barbadoro @kathbarbadoro.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

SORRY to comment bc this story just designed to stereotype disabled people (most of whom do not act like the ppl in the story!!) but it was funny to me when the person who said they hoped their business gets firebombed said "sorry disabled people don't make your business enough money or whatever"

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽) @kitoconnell.com · 22/09/2026

“These workers were able to speak the same language and walk the same walk as the individuals they’re reaching out to for tests and PrEP, and be an example of what safe and happy sexual health looks like.”

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

The Barbed Wire @thebarbedwire.com · 22/09/2026

New from @kitoconnell.com: These HIV prevention organizations have spent years building inroads to their local communities, but now the CDC is taking away millions in funding they use for targeted outreach and testing, even as HIV cases are on the rise.

thebarbedwire.com

Thanks To CDC Cutbacks, 13 Texas Nonprofits Lose Millions In HIV Outreach Funding

Gulf Coast is hardest hit: The CEO of a Houston-area nonprofit estimated that six organizations in the area are losing a total of about $2 million in funds.

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Reposted by Kit O'Connell (🏳️‍🌈Big & Bright Queerdo👽)

Chuck Tingle @chucktingle.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL BI VISIBILITY DAY

cover of NOT POUNDED BY BI ERASURE BECAUSE MY CURRENT HETERO-PRESENTING RELATIONSHIP DOES NOT INVALIDATE MY QUEERNESS featuring a ladybuck in a red suit lookin over at a VERY ANGRY sentient eraser they are on a long street with lush green plants on either side

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