iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Honestly a bit miffed I didn’t get to be on the list😤

Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

One of the most embarrassing things about having grown up Mormon was people always mistook us for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but while JWs had Prince, all we had was Donnie Osmond.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I guess I’m definitely younger than Nolen. Got some deep cuts here. Analogue and Resonance are maybe a bit obscure, but they were definitely formative.

List of “My 9 Games that shaped who I am.” In order from the top, they are: Benoit Sokal’s Siberia, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Wadjeteye’s Resonance, Warcraft II, Dungeon Siege, Fable, Analogue: A Hate Story, and Super Smash Bros. Melee

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I swear I’m not angry, just animated. Got some good feedback on my ongoing research on how sex workers in Hong Kong use CCTV systems to screen clients at Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The American government has indicated they have no interest in being world leaders when it comes to environmental responsibility. Meanwhile, we experience massive typhoons, rising tides and floods in this part of the world. What should the CPC do re: AI’s environmental toll? rdcu.be/Vdew1rmxBJfa

rdcu.be

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

With Trump’s renaming Lake Ontario, children can memorize the names of the Great Lakes as Superior, Huron, America, Michigan and Erie, or SHAME, which is fitting, all things considered.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Hot take: the homophobic language of “struggling with same-sex attraction” is actually ripe for critical reflection. 1. The language itself implies that attraction fits in this complicated space between what we fully choose and what we have no control over. 1/10

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

So here’s an interesting experience I had about the male gaze. I’m currently doing a research project on sex work and cctv in Hong Kong. I went to meet a staff member of a local NGO that works with sex workers for an interview. My research assistant met me on the street in front of the building. 1/4

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I, for one, am glad we were able to get an emo Spider-Man for this generation. #Spider-ManBrandNewDay

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

It’s actually amazing how many Chinese name places are just directions. Beijing? Northern capital. Nanjing? Southern capital. Guangong? Wide east. Guangxi? Wide west. Hebei? North of the river Henan? South of the river Shanghai? On the ocean Shandong? Eastern mountain Shanxi? Western mountain

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

One of my favorite things about going on leave is inevitably various offices at my university will email me about things that are due EoD which I had thought were handled before I left, only to find out they weren’t because whoever in that office handled them was on leave before.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Academic publishing can be *really* slow. Case in point: I was asked about editing this book 3 1/2 years ago! After about 2 full years for recruiting contributors, setting deadlines and editing, it took another full year for the publisher to finalize it! Read it! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

link.springer.com

What Went Wrong with the West: Carl Mitcham’s Critique of Western Philosophy of Technology

This volume represents critical development in philosophy of technology as Chinese scholars articulate a constructive Chinese philosophy of technology.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I’ve been reading the translation of Günther Anders’s “The Obsolescence of Man” off and on recently. As a philosopher, I was struck by how often he ascribes these mental states to others without engaging in their arguments (I.e., straw men). However, I’m starting to think he hit the nail on the head

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

At the #AustralianMuseum, you can make your own dinosaur. This one somehow looks uncannily like another famous predator.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Hong Kong academia believes in adherence to metrics with a dogmatism that would make hour Catholic Nona blush. Statistically, no more than 30% of students should be A range. What does that mean? In any given class, we shouldn’t give more than 30% As. That isn’t how averages work 1/9

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Welp. First black rainstorm of the year😳 今年嘅第一次黑雨

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

If you ask me, one of the most interesting things about #MagnificaHumanitas is you get to see how Catholic teaching changes, at least if you’re paying attention. Let me explain. 1st, Catholic teaching can obviously change with new things added to it. 1/11

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I’ve been working with the Holy See for the past 6 years on issues related to AI, so I’m very excited to see #MagnificaHumanitas come to light. No, I didn’t have any hand in writing it. But I can see traces of conversations I’ve been party to playing out in the text.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Not a surprise for those who know me. Probably not a surprise for my students even.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I started my first academic job 12 years ago. I worked at that school for 7 years. The first 3, I hoped they’d transition me to tenure track. The last 4, I ended up being a union organizer and liaison, the only way I saw a COLA during my time. #AcademicSky

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Yes, it’s true that AI steals your data, uses your water, worsens your climate, destabilizes your systems of trust, replaces your job, tells you lies, reinforces biases against at you, and raises your taxes, but it makes AI companies and their partners money, so it can’t be that bad!

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

So Google has announced both that they’re replacing search with AI, and are re-trying their famously hated glasses. These announcements come within a week of Larry Page getting seriously booed at the U of Arizona graduation for his speech praising AI. This doesn’t feel like a very wise move.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

My small tip for people writing papers—do not start your paper being submitted to a journal on philosophy of technology with any variation of the following: “Artificial Intelligence is the most important/an inescapable/the defining technology/transforming everything/technology of the future…”

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Name your top 15 tv shows ever. Gut instincts only Maniac Eureka Community The Boys Wilfred Living with Myself Todd Margaret Arrested Development Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency American Gods Umbrella Academy Sliders Lovecraft Country Watchmen Twin Peaks

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

New article in the current issue of Techné on Critical Theory of Technology and why a Lacanian reading of Herbert Marcuse helps us recognize that there is no true liberation (but we should still try). doi.org/10.5840/tech...

doi.org

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

The DNC right now only has to *not* fuck up monumentally, but as history has proven, that’s sometimes too big of an ask of them

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

I keep seeing people on social media loudly proclaim they’re Catholic and they don’t stand with the Pope. This strikes me as a rather Evangelical attitude, as if you can just shop for a different Pope if the current one doesn’t cater to your sensibilities.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

One supposes Vance prayerfully dissents from the CDF’s Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/...

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

The impression I get of this is (excuse my language), Barron saw Trump’s crash out and had his own like: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Trump said WHAT? How the fuck am I supposed to defend that?! I don’t want to be another fucking STRICKLAND!

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

It’s really funny that “Conclave”’s vision of a progressive pope was that he’d be intersex, but in real life the American Pope pisses off all sorts of conservatives for just saying the most normal Catholic things.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

While it’s good to point out when Westerners get nonsensical tattoos in another language like Chinese or Arabic, what I’ve learned in Asia is the reverse phenomenon is absolutely true, though with t-shirts. Nothing like seeing a “Boston, Massachubatts” or “To live is a fuck” in public.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Happy Good Friday! Did you know Blackie Lawless, the lead singer of WASP who wrote songs like “Fuck Like a Beast” and “Harder, Faster” became a Christian late in his career and wrote one of the most powerful crucifixion ballads I’ve heard? youtu.be/lq5UQ8gWU-A?...

youtu.be

W.A.S.P. - Golgotha (Official Lyric Video) | Napalm Records

YouTube video by Napalm Records

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Sex work is legal in Hong Kong. Within limits. One of the most common charges against sex workers then, is “working without a visa.” But it’s *mostly* trafficked people who are arrested on that charge in stings like this. I wish ImmD would focus on real crime www.thestandard.com.hk/news/article...

thestandard.com.hk

Police, ImmD raid Tsim Sha Tsui building, arrest 128 in vice operation

Police and Immigration Department officers arrested 128 people, including a 15-year-old and transgender individuals, in a raid on a building in Tsim Sha Tsui on Thursday, dismantling over 100 suspecte...

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Reposted by Levi Checketts

Ann Gillian Chu 朱安之 @gillianchuphd.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Free registration! ICAEW and Hong Kong Baptist University Ethics Series Webinars: cae.hkbu.edu.hk/academic-act... 23 April 2026: @lchecketts.bsky.social 14 May 2026: @bwwong.bsky.social 3 June 2026: @drybis.bsky.social 30 July 2026: @gillianchuphd.bsky.social 20 August 2026: Dr Rachel Robertson

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

One of my biggest flaws is I tend to talk about faith when I’m drunk, but skirt around it when I’m sober. On the whole, the paranoiac, “Deus Vult” masochistic Christians of brittle but loud faith embarrass me. But in my deepest heart, I love my Jesus who stoops down to heal the broken sinner.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Kind of weird to see your face on a big banner

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Going to give a bunch of lectures in Seoul next week on AI and climate change, and Critical Theory of Technology and Liberation Theology.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

As a Utahn, I’m regularly embarrassed by the state and have no intentions in my life to permanently resettle because of the absolutely regressive politics running the show. To think, another world was once possible… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christi...

en.wikipedia.org

Christian socialism in Utah - Wikipedia

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

This essay is, imo, a good peel back of the cultural and academic tensions at play at Notre Dame. The two events in question happened during my undergrad years, but Smith’s delayed outrage seems misbegotten given how they were resolved in their time www.commonwealmagazine.org/kaveny-young...

commonwealmagazine.org

A Shrine and a School

Christian Smith wants Notre Dame to be pure. But shrines are never pure—and Notre Dame is an American Catholic shrine.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

In HK, many grocery stores and convenience stores sell condoms right at the register. My 8-year-old asks me what they are, and I don’t really answer to avoid a conversation in the checkout I don’t want. Eventually she ask, “Is it for false mating?”

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

When you understand this, you see there are two types of AI ethics discussions: 1. Purely fantastical thought experiments about machine gods and moral machines. 2. Practical discussion about real harms caused by these technologies to specific people. 1 is navel gazing. 2 is real-world engagement.

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

As a parent, I think the thing about Weapons that seems most realistic is that 3rd grade is absolutely the age when kids would be peak feral horror

media.tenor.com

a dark kitchen with a lamp on the ceiling

ALT: a dark kitchen with a lamp on the ceiling

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

If you want to understand why John Woo is one of the all time bests, all you need to know is in this scene. youtu.be/3Sqfj5_hnHY?...

youtu.be

Action Sequence: Once a Thief/Uma vez Ladrão 1991 #3 Chase

YouTube video by CostasNarrativeXP

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate! 新年快樂！ 새해복많이바드세요!

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

4 most recent HK Bishops’ coats of arms: Stephen Chow (current bishop), Michael Yeung, John Tong, and Joseph Zen. I love that almost all of them have the HK skyline, but I’m bewildered at ++Chow’s giraffe and Golden Gate Bridge? Maybe it’s a bridge between HK and Chinese Mainland, but a giraffe?

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Recent government documents prove that there *is* a minority population in the US who are far more likely to commit serious crimes and whom you should seriously distrust simply for their belonging to this group. Unfortunately, billionaires control politics and the economy, so don’t expect justice

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Levi Checketts @lchecketts.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Having lived in Hong Kong for now 4 years, I decided to go back to Sleeping Dogs to see how it compares. First impression is the city in the game is nothing like HK. Obviously vg maps are never as big the place they represent, but even the geography, is messed up. Here are real and in-game districts

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