iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 4h

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart." Every October 2 I read A. Bartlett Giamatti's classic essay. Today we did a community read in the University Amphitheater. It never ceases to move me to tears. youtu.be/uH2_dUboyBA?...

youtu.be

The Green Fields of the Mind

YouTube video by Joe Bongiorno

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I really wish these pieces about administrative bloat in #highered would distinguish between workers and management. This piece looks at numbers of non-faculty university employees, but not salaries. Some of their "bloat" actually supports teaching. 1/_ www.chronicle.com/article/has-...

chronicle.com

Has Administrative Bloat Reached a Breaking Point?

Gift baskets, pizza handlers, $942-million software: Barry Lam on why bureaucracies never get smaller.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good morning again! In 2025 #cornell reached an agreement with the Trump Admin that, among other things, threw transgender people under the bus in service of the admin's libel that trans women somehow threaten other women. Meanwhile, actual threats to women were. .. . not so important.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good morning! Please remember that #cornell knows how to discipline students when it wants to. Cornell suspended pro-Palestine protesters for alleged disruptions. Apparently to the university, rape is less disruptive than organizing.

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😈Miss Hell Batkeeper😈 @mishellbaker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Conservative person: You fragile snowflakes could not exist outside your bubbles Also Ccnservative person: Please delete all mentions of the world's other religions, cultures, lifestyles, and opinions from any libraries my family might visit

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slate @pleasebegneiss.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

no you’re right, email i unsubscribed to, i did want to keep receiving your emails. this non consensual persistence will surely make me a loyal customer

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Ted Leo 🍉 @tedleo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

11,000

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Raskin made a holy shit observation on MS Now this afternoon: Since taking office, Trump has made a million dollars per hour for himself. Every hour, he has made more than twice the president’s annual salary.

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Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 24/09/2026

Imagine the reaction if it turned out ISIS recruiters had counselled a disturbed youth to go on a senseless killing spree like ChatGPT did here

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TonyHQ @tonyhq1985.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sen Van Hollen shuts down Netanyahu’s vicious lies about Mayor Mamdani

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Netanyahu did a promo reel saying he’d reveal “the truth” about Mamdani and then his actual speech was a standard NY Post editorial.

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

My dog and two cats love to throw up on the floor and they represent 60% of the household. As a leader I can't just ignore public opinion so I also throw up on the floor sometimes to stay popular

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Outside the obvious timebomb of selling out trans kids to appeal to ~16 bigots in deep Ohio, an underplayed part of the whole "trans kids in youth sports" stuff is making the most psycho Little League parents the most important political demo in America. They're joy vampires for the kids themselves!

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damniel spookradski @self.agency · 23/09/2026

what the jewish right and its wealthiest benefactors are doing right now is tying the overwhelmingly liberal and progressive jewish people to an explicitly conservative political project without our consent and asserting that our commitment to genuine liberalism is in fact opposition to it

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Barry Deutsch @barrydeutsch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The Art of Persuasion Read more cartoons! —> #Policartoon Support the cartoons! —>patreon.com/barry

TRANSCRIPT
Panel 1:
A woman and a man sit on a low stone wall in a park. The woman is upset; the man listens.

WOMAN: And now the Democrat in the race is backing some anti-trans laws! I’m not sure I can vote for that.

MAN (thinking): Uh-oh. Democrats need every vote. How can I convince her to vote for the Democrat anyway?

Panel 2:
The woman and man walk through the park, the woman ahead of him.

WOMAN: Of course, the Republican is even worse. But if Democrats turn against trans people… I’m so frightened.

MAN (thinking): I’ve got to be empathetic and persuasive.

Panel 3:
Close-up of the man, looking thoughtful with his hand on his chin.

WOMAN (off-panel): Look at what happened to the UK — they’ve now got two anti-trans parties. If we let that happen here, trans rights are dead.

MAN (thinking): Okay, I think I know how to reassure her and get her vote.

Panel 4:
The man is suddenly furious, leaning toward the startled woman and pointing at her.

MAN: You’re a Trump supporting moron and you deserve to die!

CHICKEN FAT WATCH
PANEL 1:
A good dog with a halo peers out a window. A hand sticks out of a hole in a tree holding a sign that says SEND CANDY.

PANEL 2:
Groucho peeks from behind some bushes. A poster nailed to a tree reads "Background gag to come and it'll be so funny!" A bad rabbit (we know it's bad because it's smoking) sits beside a bad worm (also smoking). A bottle lying in the grass is labeled "BARRY BEER" and has a disturbed-looking drawing of Barry. A mouse holds a knife to a cat; the cat raises its front paws in surrender.

PANEL 4:
A giant mouse (?) in a shirt and tie sits on the wall reading a newspaper, called "Daily Blah Blah," whose headline says "Literate Rodent Escapes Lab."

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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A certain kind of Democrat: "I can't believe it but I'm actually nostalgic for George W. Bush" George W. Bush: "I like to raise money for fascists"

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is peak New York Times. Happy for this young person that his mother could help him buy housing, but this framing is bananas. Mother helps a guy buy a co-op. Times highlights his "financial literacy."

How a Risk Associate Lives on $110,000 in Lenox Hill

While his mother helped him buy a co-op in Manhattan, Sean de Ganon, 26, has also benefitted from learning financial literacy at a young age.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Imagine if people cared as much about their trans neighbors as they do about the Kennedy Center.

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Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

It’s very simple and it’s been said over and over but I guess it needs saying continuously: if you deem one group too small to have equal rights you are enabling fascism, not fighting it. The people saying Dems are GREAT on trans rights are not paying attention and/or saying stuff like this.

Nichole Hiltz
The Democrats defend the Kennedy Center but not trans people.
A building.

@treewarrior.bsky....
maybe because defending everything about a super small minority of the population is not worth losing to fascists

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Imagine if anyone said this about a Kosher label.

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don't think people really understand the psychic impact of knowing that multiple times a day every day your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and everyone who could ever have any power over you is being flooded with agitprop designed to make them hate you

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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

What’s missing: 1/ Any framing about what higher is or has been that misses the big public investment post-WW2 and then massive disinvestment starting in the 1980s which spirals into rising costs and student debt is disingenuous at best. 5/

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victoria scott @victoriascott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

As I was standing by this gas pump filling up my truck with six dollar gas I couldn’t help but think that this was a small price to pay so that every child wanting to play sports in elementary school has to submit to mandatory genital inspections

My jeep with a gas pump in her fuel filler

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Together, we created an enormous surveillance state, invaded an uninvolved country, made Islamophobia a national civic religion, and laid the groundwork for the demise of the liberal order. It was beautiful, I tell ya.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Good morning! Yes, unity feels better than constant division, but it can turn out badly, actually.

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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

sorry, but torturing the omelas kid is just a smart move, polling-wise. i personally wish there wasn't a kid in the omelas hole--of course i do!--but let's not get distracted by purity tests, here.

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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Dem: We need to vote to protect our children from fascism! Trans: I will vote to protect trans children from fascism! Dem: Not them. Other children! Vote to protect the other children! Trans: I will vote for anyone who'll protect trans children from fascism. Dem: Wny do you love fascism????

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Sometimes my students ask me if it's still worth becoming a lawyer. My answer: hell yeah.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Next time a reactionary centrist tells you that it's important to remedy higher education's non-GOP tilt, please show them this.

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Sorry but if antivaxxers were truly looking for people to just treat them kinder they wouldn’t have aligned themselves with every single hate movement that exists, and it’s intolerant to everybody else to act as if that’s not exactly who they are

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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Really looking forward to the reactionary centrists and legacy media denouncing this and demanding that every GOP elected they interview reacts to it for the next several months. JKLOL. That obviously won't happen.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I'm old enough to remember the conservative moral panic about young people being too sensitive to experience uncomforable ideas.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

There are a lot more important things going on right now. A small, not that important bad thing, though - the non-stop deluge of texts that sound like angry ex boyfriends.

Screenshot of a text message:

You STILL haven't signed in to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump?!
What are you waiting for???

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Today, in intellectual diversity.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I don't know how wise it is to work through things online but this has been eating at me for a while. I just don't think a Porsche with no brakes is more unstoppable than, e.g., any other brakeless vehicle. A heavier car would be more unstoppable. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

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Wagatwe Wanjuki @wagatwe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

whenever I see someone complain about "the excesses of woke," I want to ask them what it means—did some people want ~too much~ equality?

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Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I would object to LLMs even if they weren't planet destroying plagiarism-based bullshit engines because students need to learn core skills and how to do the work themselves. Also, they are planet destroying plagiarism-based bullshit engines that give answer-shaped nonsense.

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cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

preemptively defending a theoretical democrat president, who does not exist yet, from hypothetical accusations of not doing anything is really fucking funny

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Good afternoon! I look forward to the day when people can't make big money writing shitty op-ed pieces smearing Muslim politicians with bogus claims of antisemitism. Apparently, today is not that day.

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Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley @pressley.house.gov · 26/08/2026

Sama deserves to be back home, not detained in inhumane conditions with her health deteriorating. I recently spoke with her parents who fear their daughter will never be the same. As a U.S. citizen, Secretary Rubio has a responsibility to secure her release—no excuses.

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Today, in intellectual diversity. "“We find it very improbable that Nathan Cofnas was the best out of 14 candidates … We observe only very limited expertise regarding the subjects that are central to the project" www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

theguardian.com

Ghent professors challenged expertise of Jason Arday’s plagiarism accuser

Allegations Nathan Cofnas was unqualified for Ghent role and would cause ‘negative impact’ made to senior leaders months ago

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Ed @notdred.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I guess we have the answer to the “who could possibly say anything bad about Dolly” question and it’s exactly who you’d think

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Daniel Radosh @radosh.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Republicans have spent the last year trying to defund Dolly Parton

article about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Indiana

article about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Kentucky

article about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Missouri

iarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Washington

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Lara Schwartz @laraschwartz.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Today, in intellectual diversity.

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damniel spookradski @self.agency · 24/08/2026

i looked at the blogs and social media posts of 200 signatories and a mere three spoke out against threats to left-wing speech on campus, but one of those three also supported the crackdowns on pro-palestinian protesters and another cowrote the trump admin's policy attacking transgender equality

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damniel spookradski @self.agency · 25/08/2026

this is the point i want to scream in the faces of everyone who is snottily being like "YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND ACADEMIC FREEDOM, IT MEANS STANDING UP EVEN FOR THINGS WE ABHOR" and like, great, but where the fuck are you when it's the things you purportedly do not abhor

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