iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

And Susan Collins will be "concerned" about it as she always is. What a hero! 🙄

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 14/10/2026

I worked with—and deeply admired—Helen for almost 30 years. She was hands down *the best source* about emerging infectious diseases that I've ever known. My first warning of COVID was when on Dec 28, 2019 she reposted a ProMED mail report of an atypical pneumonia cluster: "This doesn't look good."

statnews.com

Helen Branswell, whose reporting on infectious diseases and public health drew acclaim, dies at 69

Helen Branswell, STAT's infectious disease reporter who earned the respect of experts and public health officials with her accessible, prescient dispatches, has died at age 69.

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pnwpolicyangel aka Angelita 👼 @pnwpolicyangel.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Remember when Tiffany was the lead fundraiser during the last election and didn’t even get an interview? I do. She made it anyway and I’m excited to serve a 4 year term with her 🩷💙

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Natee (they/them) @himmapaan.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Your periodic reminder, should you need it: Birds Are Dinosaurs.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

offices even asking these questions anymore if the goal isn't to protect other patients (and healthcare workers) from symptomatic people?? Do other offices actually take concrete action when there's a symptomatic person?

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

waiting room with someone with a fever and symptoms of illness at a practice where many patients are immunocompromised (like me!). They didn't move him immediately to an exam room or make sure he was wearing the mask properly (or at all). My doctor was shocked when I told her. Why are medical

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

At my rheumatologist's office today, I finally learned what happens when they ask if you have any COVID symptoms and someone says "yes." Nothing. The relative of the patient asked for a mask, which he wore under his nose and pulled away from his face every time he talked. I had to sit in the

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 01/10/2026

Angry crowds hounding his every waking movement, especially to his presumed-idyllic Maine retreat, is the energy i want surrounding John Roberts from now to the end of time, or until he sincerely repents of the harm he's done & pledges whatever's left of his life to undoing it. Whichever comes first

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

🤯 Surely, surely they could have found someone better to quote!!!

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm so focused on the cognitive losses associated with using any technology (including stuff like GPS) and I won't cede any more ground than I've already lost, especially when the gains are just in work productivity or extending my abilities a bit. We have to think more long-term/big pic about it.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes, it feels like it's often people arguing that the losses don't matter because of the productivity gains or that they are somehow gaining totally new skills as a result of using it that make up for those losses. Maybe it's because my health condition causes really significant brain fog, but

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Anne Helen Petersen @annehelen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"As things stand, students who commit infractions like plagiarism — which typically has no real victims — are often punished more harshly than the male students directly responsible for making the campus dangerous for female ones."

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Anne Helen Petersen @annehelen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is *the* piece. Kate Manne, professor of philosophy at Cornell, speaks truth to the totality of failures at the university — and why students protesting the war in Gaza have faced far harsher consequences than any of the Cornell 7: www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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UC Berkeley Labor Center @ucblaborcenter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Webinar: "Understanding How AI Impacts Worker Health and Safety," on Wed, October 7, 2026, 12-1 PT. A discussion of AI in the workplace looking at recent laws, worker experiences and a conceptual framework for safety professionals. By UC Berkeley LOHP and COEH. www.coeh.berkeley.edu/26WEB1007

Headshots of webinar speakers Mishal Khan, Terrysa Guerra, John Sadowski, PhD, and Yasin Khan.

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nick @unionnick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

On the *same day* the Cornell Seven drugged and raped Jane Doe, Cornell banned four students (including the President of Cornell JVP) from campus for three years for nonviolent, pro-Palestine protests. The same Cornell officials let the rapists off with apology essays.

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Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...

fnl.mit.edu

How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yesssssssssss. Nigella just seemed so authentic and has such a lusty love for food which is a welcome change from Paul's constipated joylessness.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I noticed that too! I loved how she took these enormous, hearty bites and also how she admitted that a contestant actually improved upon her walnut coffee cake. And her descriptions of things are really intriguing. Calling a cake's flavor "savage?" I'm looking forward to watching more.

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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Reason # a million I'm glad I opted to just build my own outlet years ago, where I can say whatever the fuck I want. And will ;) Meanwhile, receipts are in the book and keep an eye out for a new & improved @drilledmedia.bsky.social soon! geni.us/broughttoyouby

geni.us

Amy Westervelt, investigative reporter and host of Drilled, shows how the tentacles of corporate propaganda infiltrated our media ecosystem, undermined democracy, and now threaten the very nature of t...

Order now:

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Here's a neat thing! My mom retired after 25+ as a children's librarian at public libraries yesterday. (It was very cool! Hundreds of former Story Hour kids arrived, some as adults!) I let Ed Markey's office know in case they wanted to send a nice email back and they sent this! He's still got it!

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

How did Derry Girls not end up on the NYT list of the 100 best TV shows of the century? I expected stuff like the Expanse and Dr. Who to get ignored, but Derry Girls?!?

static.klipy.com

Clare Devlin in Derry Girls: 'This is Torture'

Alt: Clare Devlin in Derry Girls kneeling at a pew in church, looking anguished, and saying 'This is Torture'

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Just found this while trying to figure out why the fuck I was seeing all this AskAI shit in our EBSCO instance (we librarians are all 9 month faculty, so just got back and noticed this). That is absolutely infuriating!

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

As someone who had profound dry mouth with my connective tissue disease for years before it got diagnosed and treated, I would have struggled to be able to talk without something to drink (though for me it was always water). Don't be ableist; it's not hard, people.

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 24/09/2026

Just when I think I can’t hate OpenAI and Sam Altman any more, new details come out about how ChatGPT helped a shooter plan one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history in Tumbler Ridge, BC. OpenAI made an explicit decision not to report the user to authorities.

motherjones.com

ChatGPT helped the Tumbler Ridge school shooter focus on guns, tactics, and terror, our investigation reveals

OpenAI’s chatbot fed the shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre.

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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.

And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.

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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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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I called the municipal court to ask about my jury summons. They said that being on immunosuppressants is a valid reason for being excused from jury duty. I'm so torn. I really want to serve, but I also don't want to get sick.

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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I know you’re now rolling your eyes and going “ughhh Bluesky scolllld” and I’m going to tell you right this very second you have absolutely no idea, not one fucking clue, the trauma there is from the social isolation that immunocompromised people have faced since Covid started.

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...

thedartmouth.com

Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram

Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yeah, I'm hoping they'll let me reschedule. I've done that with the county court in the past, but this is our local city court (which I honestly didn't know existed, I thought everything was handled through the county) and the form seems weirdly half-assed and also weirdly specific about DUI 🤷‍♀️.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

So, just two times per year, I get the chance to meet with the faculty in my liaison subject areas and market library services services tp them. I just got summoned for jury duty for the date in the Fall (which is the most important date). What are the odds they'd excuse me for it?

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Anyway, panic is a psy-op. Stay furious. Stay serious. Organize.

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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026

Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!

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Portland Jobs with Justice @jwjpdx.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"Monsters" "cowardly." Any objective observation of the bureau's 6000 uses of force in 2020 might have anyone with a conscience saying the same. #WeAreAllMitch

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aj-boston.neocities.org @aj-boston.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Photo dump from date night with an epidemiology paper-turned-AI agent that I successfully wooed into being my girlfriend.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Of course! I'm such a fan of L.M. Sacasas. His thinking on technologies is spot-on.

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Mattilda B Sycamore @mbsycamore.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yes, please 💥

Bright green flyer stapled to utility pole on sunny day with blue sky, street intersection, and trees in background

HATE TRUMP QUIT GPT

ChatGPT is currently the most popular Al chatbot, but many users don't realize that the app:

FUNDS MAGA

OpenAl's president Greg Brockman was the largest donoe to Trump's Super PAC, MAGA Inc, according to the ter

SUPPORTS MILITARY SURVEILLANCE

Trump's Department of War signed a $200 millon act that could lead to Al for mass surveillance and

RECRUITS FOR ICE

ICE screens recruits for Trump's deportation program on OpenAl's GPT-4

ACCELERATES ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION

A single Al data center uses the same amount of energy 100.000 and consumes up to 5 million gallons of water on dirty energy like diesel generators that out our contribute to climate change.

Learn more & join the boycott:

QuitGPT.org

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Of all the many many many many mistakes Stearns made, not signing Pete was the biggest.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Sorry for the rant. I appreciate you and your thoughtful defense of those foundational pieces I have always felt like were among the most important parts of the research process. Also, if you haven't read this piece, I think you'll love it: theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/your-ai-is...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

Your AI Is Not a Tool

The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 5

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don't want to teach students how to use AI or what to use AI for and not for or how to determine whether to trust this or that AI output. The only thing I want to teach students about AI is how to decide for themselves whether or not to use it AT ALL and what they stand to lose by using it.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I went to a talk last week where someone talked about having students use AI to find sources on their topic, BUT they then had to find them through the library, read them, and describe why they were a good fit for their topic. I couldn't figure out why AI was used at other than to be "relevant."🙄

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Thank you for this thread. I'd really love to know the answers to both of those last questions as well. I get the sense that some people really believe that there's pedagogical value to using AI for different aspects of the research process and I feel like I'm truly missing something. For example,

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

For me, at least, I'd much rather be an agent of the radical AI resistance than an AI ethics cop in the classroom.

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Meredith Farkas @librarianmer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

An excellent thread about the value of the aspects of inquiry that many librarians and other instructors are telling students it's ok to outsource to AI. I couldn't agree more that the early "brainstorming" work often seems the most important and relevant to info-seeking in their everyday lives.

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