iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Little (extremely well) known fact: If you just keep adding olive oil, everything is delicious.

Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Not me bouncing in my chair that (a) this cat exists, and (b) the scientists who described it for the first time in scientific literature kept its local name.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don’t ever want to stop hurting. But I also don’t know how to function with this level of grief.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Everyone I have ever recommend 10 Cloverfield Lane to has had this reaction. It’s a real shame that it was marketed as part of the Cloverfield franchise, because it deserves to be recognized on the caliber of Psycho Or Rosemarys Baby.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

7 of the top 10 colleges ranked for ROI are CUNYs. Queens is ranked 4. And yet we can’t afford a chief librarian. All the adjuncts who were filling in for retired full time faculty have been let go. We all deserve better. Fund CUNY.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Remember in like 2007, when we were all like, "Why is the GC a cancer cluster?" And somehow didn't ask, how many of those people were here in 2001?

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Renee @reneemc.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Everyone of us here knew. We all knew. And they lied, and they will keep lying. None of us will ever understand the impact of this day on our lives because we will never know the truth. nymag.com/intelligence...

nymag.com

The Other Victims of 9/11

Twenty-five years after the attack, tens of thousands of people have gotten sick. I am one of them.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

"Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored."

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Can someone please tell my institution that we need to hire instructors, not another f-ing provost?

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The Almighty Tallest @spooknine.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Cat hostage negotiator needs to be a thing

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Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

"It smells like burning cedar." oh my god....

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 02/09/2026

There are endless studies showing this and also the financial and societal benefits of universal basic income and or housing-first policies but the U.S. never goes for any of it because it would require allowing the poor to receive benefits that the rich consider “undeserved”

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Amy Herzog @amyherzog.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Manifesting a 9-25 National Dolly Day.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

New profile description just dropped.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Back in May, I made the questionable decision to begin drafting my uncle's eulogy in my research notebook. Now, as I'm finalizing the project I was researching then, I can actually, literally see how close to the surface my grief was as I was writing.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

When my sister's partner came out as nonbinary, my 98-year-old grandma said, "I don't understand, but I don't have to." This is the correct answer! You don't have to understand, you don't have to feel comfortable, to treat people with basic respect. Grandma gets it.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

For some reason I always assumed that a lobster roll was like some kind of Northeast sushi. I am disappointed in all of you.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Oh my god I just heard Le Tigre on a Starbucks commercial. HAVE THEY NO SHAME.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

When my godsister was maybe 6, she had a dream about Dolly Parton, and when she told us about it at breakfast, she had to pull her shirt over her face because she was so upset that Dolly wasn’t with her anymore. 💔💔 We all know how she feels.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Why have two, when you could have three or four?

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

When I was door knocking for Mamdani, the first person who answered was a girl in a Dark Crystal tee who was already voting for him, but the second was a woman who hadn’t heard of him and said, with a sigh, “You know what I want? A decent person.” And that’s what Mamdani plugs into every day.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

(What she said in her letter was that she was “tousy-mousy for women.” Because I can quote Shelley in my sleep.)

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I stayed home sick today and dreamed that someone was telling me about a play they saw about Mary Shelley and I was like, well this is what she said in her letter to Trelawny. (Send help.)

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Johnny Normality @probgobl.in · 14/08/2026

EVERY STORY ABOUT BEAVERS FOR THE LAST DECADE READS LIKE: WE RELEASED A DOZEN PADDLE TAILED LITTLE FREAKS AND THEY IMMEDIATELY BEGAN A TERRAFORMING PROJECT THAT REVERSED A CENTURY OF ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE IN THREE WEEKS.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Does anyone have a good, accessible, well-researched article documenting how the NYTimes contributed to anti-trans backlash? I'm teaching a credit-bearing info lit class this fall, and since the standard syllabus includes reading the Times, I'd like something that pushes back.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 13/08/2026

Mary Shelley’s #Gothic Dundee 26 Aug, online SWI members free; non-members £6.13 “My habitual residence was on the blank & dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee…” @profdanielcook.bsky.social on how Dundee shaped Mary Shelley’s imagination #romanticism www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/swi-expert...

eventbrite.co.uk

SWI Expert Talk: Mary Shelley's Gothic Dundee

Discover how Dundee shaped Mary Shelley's imagination in this online talk with Professor Daniel Cook from the University of Dundee.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I love when a book is so absorbing that it just sweeps me away, and I’m reminded why I became an academic. I get to *read books* and *share them* and that’s my *job*! How awesome is that?!

The cover of the Broadview edition of Mary Shelley’s Lodore, edited by Lisa Vargo.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Does anyone have a way to make the internet stop moving? Videos, gifs, ads, anything that plays. It's seriously making me motion sick. How do I just make everything hold still?

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PSC-CUNY @psc-cuny.org · 07/08/2026

Deliver the petition to Save Jobs at Queens College Tuesday, August 11 at 10AM

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

"The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced in response to prompting; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings and complex ideas"

insidehighered.com

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)

We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Has anyone else noticed that the "search inside" function no longer works in Google Books? Does anyone have a work-around?

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I wonder if I get crazy eyes when I hit that moment in writing a paper when everything needs an extra footnote or seven, and the stack of books has claimed the bed. It really feels like I get crazy eyes.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

What do you think he’s dreaming about?

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

What about the rest of you? What academic work do you come back to again and again, and always find something new? (I guess this is the academic equivalent of "Name five movies you know you've seen more than five times." Let's see what the academic equivalent of The Princess Bride is!)

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

One of my favorite things to do as an academic is revisit scholarship I read ten or so years ago, that transformed my thinking at the time, and realize how much richer it is when I have ten more years of knowledge to appreciate it. Today it's Dahlia Porter's "Specimen Poetics."

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I was really tempted to back out of this project because writing has felt like such a chore lately (and god forbid I do any chores), but I'm so glad I didn't. It's been a long time since writing made me feel like *myself* the way that this paper does. I mean, for now at least. Anyway, here's a cat.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Don’t let my research get in the way of your sleep, Chester.

A large white cat with one black ear spills over the edges of a desk. He is surrounded by books, articles, and a water bottle. An open laptop is balanced precariously on my lap. Chester looks down at it, offended that I removed his warm bed from his desk.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Smoking cigarettes was an excellent excuse to stand up, walk around, and give myself time to collect my thoughts while writing. I rarely think about or miss smoking anymore, but today I could really use a cigarette break.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/08/2026

Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/

A sepia-toned 1950s era boardroom in which men in suits sit around a circular table. The chair of the meeting has been replaced with a man in a straitjacket, making a funny face. The heads of the remaining board-members have been replaced with robots from 1930s pulp magazines. The image has been hand-tinted.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

For the first time ever, I initiated a family group text. For the love of god. My 98-year-old grandma is in Spokane. And I am freaking the fuck out.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

It's *wild* as a person who used LLMs for academic reasons like 15 years ago, seeing how copyright workarounds for Hathitrust led to large-scale use of copyrighted work to train corporate AIs, and how topic modeling turned into demographic modeling. Capitalism ruins everything.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This does not bode well for my upcoming week of research leave.

An attempt to access qc.cuny.edu/library -- the Queens College Library website -- returns the error: "Access Denied
You have been locked out due to too many attempts to access a file that doesn't exist.
If you are a site admin, click on the Unlock Me button below to unlock yourself."

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Can you BELIEVE this magnificent creature’s human had the AUDACITY to take the print-out he was using as a BED RIGHT OUT FROM UNDER HIM. The absolute nerve.

An ample white cat with black markings sprawls across HIS writing desk and HIS laptop, next to HIS toy pen and HIS stack of pillow books, letting everyone know with HIS extreme ear-back exactly what he thinks of HIS stupid human’s stupid research.

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Leila Walker @lwalker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

New study from the scientists who first exposed Theranos's lack of scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals.

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