iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Bodie A. Ashton

Mohamad Bazzi @mbazzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“Show This to Anyone Denying Genocide” — front page of @scotnational.bsky.social

“Show This to Anyone Denying Genocide” — front page headline of The National, Scotland

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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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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The two most frustrating things to be asked as a historian are “what’s going to happen?” and “what would have happened if X were different?” Neither offers any sort of concrete answer.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

First proofs of the forthcoming book have arrived in my email inbox from Bloomsbury. In classic fashion: in the middle of frantic marking and at the start of the school holidays. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I stand by the opinion that “A Day in the Life” is the most perfect song ever recorded.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It’s wild being in a connected world of idiocy, when someone on Bluesky uses a racist term and then claims that it’s okay because Australians use the term in a different, albeit still racist context.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Facebook nostalgia AI slop groups are always like “look at this amazing animation of this long-lost thing!” and a good four times out of five it’s a copy of an existing static photo except people are rotating slightly.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Help I’ve so fallen in love with how beautiful Lucerne is that I’m in serious danger of saying “Grüezi” and calling chocolate “Schoggi.” Swiss German is really charming.

A view of the covered Kapellbrücke over the Reuss, which is perfectly turquoise. The bridge is covered in pink flowers. A mountain looms behind it.

Another angle of the bridge, also with a church in the background.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The rat, of course, is buying something from the one-of-a-kind, don’t-get-it-anywhere-else corner shop.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’m giving a talk today in Lucerne (!!) on trans possibilities in the West German 1970s and it’s a really conflicting feeling. I’m thrilled to be here and it’s BEAUTIFUL (I’ll put up a picture or two later) but I’m struggling badly with the fact that I’m here without employer support.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When you’re subbing for a trans girl who doesn’t know it yet.

A street sign that says “Unter der Egg.”

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I *really* need to remember that I don't eat nearly as much as I used to when I go order food.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I feel a lot of this deep in my bones.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Deutsche Bahn gonna Deutsche Bahn. I have to travel tomorrow (a long way!) and I’ve booked a seat in carriage 14. The Bahn app is telling me that the train is made up of carriages 21-29, but it also confirms that I have a valid seat reservation in a carriage that, according to it, does not exist.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Man, I'm tired of death whittling away all the people in the core memories of my childhood.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I might’ve been in this country for a decade now but German ads still often mystify me. Just saw a tram go past announcing: BEES WOULD PLAY LOTTO.

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Alan Allport @alanallport.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Although what we really need is the Donald J Trump National Flak Tower

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Saw an ad for a beer, which featured a close-up of the bottle and a notification that it was made with AI. Thank god we’re destroying careers and lives with this thing, otherwise how could we possibly have pictures of beer bottles — something previously impossible for mere humans.

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daryl "crimetime after primetime" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

just need one guy, somewhere it matters, to be like

kirk asking the entity claiming to be god why he needs a starship in the shatner directed star trek v

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Anna Neumaier @annaneumaier.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Alter. 21627 Einreichungen auf ein Fellowship-Programm. Wer soll das alles begutachten? 😶‍🌫️ Wer jetzt nicht für mehr Grundförderung und weniger Drittmittel argumentiert, der ist doch nicht gescheit.

Text, dass bei einem Fellowship-Call 21627 Bewerbungen eingegangen sind, von der Webseite der Funding Agency.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A lot of the US Democrats’ election strategy seems to be those old so-called “thought experiments” centrists would run on Twitter: “there’s a machine that will kill a thousand babies every day but it won’t if you say a slur.” Except the killings might still happen if they think it’ll poll well.

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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1

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Dr Hannah Murray @hlmurray.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Tapping the ‘if you don’t want to do your job, just leave!’ sign once again

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A history account over on Facebook that uses a load of AI slop posted this monstrosity about US-Indonesian relations in the 1970s and the longer I look at the picture the less it makes sense.

An AI-generated image of two men talking. One of them is supposed to be Gerald Ford. The other is supposedly Suharto. There are many details in this picture that will be looked at in more depth in the following posts. The caption reads “On December 7, 1974 President Ford told dictator Suharto the US would understand an invasion of East Timor.”

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So this is pretty damning but this pull-quote is going to stick with me for a bit.

White text on black background:

"The classic is, it will get the side of the body incorrect and say right when you've said left...so you need to check things pretty closely, especially things like drug doses," he said.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

While writing an article last week I came across a note about evidence taken from an illegal brothel in 1964, including “what can best be described as a novelty male sheath contraceptive.” I question if it actually was the best way to describe it because I still don’t know what it was.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Literacy crisis: everyone is mad at Ed Sheeran, but if you actually read his statement he specifically said he’s not complicit

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Suddenly realised at close to 21.00 that I was sitting in the pitch darkness and hadn't eaten anything because I was focused on finishing up an article, and I don't actually remember the last time I was that on task for *anything.* Felt good.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Frankly extraordinary number of supposed allies insisting that trans people cheerily vote for their own destruction.

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Jesse Hawken @jessehawken.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"One more thing Miss Barlow... you were about 14 in 2001, and you grew up in the UK, so why did they dismiss your school at noon on 9/11, when the attacks would have happened around 2 pm your time? I just don't understand how the school knew the attacks would be happening later"

Columbo (Peter Falk) asking one more question

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I’m finishing an article about a case from the 1960s where cops raided a brothel, discovered the madam was a trans woman, and did a big dance about whether she was a man or a woman because that decision would have implications as to what she and her co-arrestees could be charged with.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Goodbye to my favourite newscaster in the world, SBS’s Anton Enus, and I hope he enjoys his well-deserves retirement. youtu.be/AXJOgv5q_6w?...

youtu.be

Anton Enus signs off after 27 years at SBS

YouTube video by SBS On Demand

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Also fuck it I'm getting my cats tattooed on me next week.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

My god I will never not absolutely love Depeche Mode and have deeply inappropriate feelings because of Dave Gahan's voice.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

@adriandaub.bsky.social it's giving Benn and Schillings but cutting out the middle man (and also Börries von Münchhausen, who at least might've livened it up).

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Hooray another rejection. Apparently seventeen years of active and innovative research design does not qualify me for a position in research design.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’ve been able to get through about a year without knowing what “We Are Charlie Kirk” sounds like, and I’ve also been able to get through a whole lifetime without knowing what Charlie Kirk himself sounded like, and none of these is a regret.

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Julia Serano @juliaserano.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I hate that I have to re-up this today. as I detail in this piece, abandoning trans rights is not only immoral, but it's also BAD POLITICS for Dems, as it will turn away their own pro-LGBTQ base without winning over a single new voter: www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

bostonreview.net

Trans rights aren’t tanking the Democrats.

Julia Serano responds in a forum on “How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism.”

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Just saw a post declaring a certain point in history as “when the train ran off the rails and we’ve been riding a runaway train ever since” and whatever their point was, I humbly suggest they have an extremely shaky grasp on the concept of trains.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Me: okay time to shake the depression and do the work. Also me: oh hey Bluesky so this is why Nazis are still around and why journalists should stop being surprised [1/34,976]

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

While I don’t want to take too much away from Behr’s point, he puts waaaay too much faith in Vergangenheitsbewältigung and not just the ability but the willingness of Germany as a polity to both confront and learn from its past. 1/

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Okay I've had my 24 hours of hopeless depression. Time to pull it together again. There's work to do.

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Dr Dion Georgiou 🇨🇾❤️🇬🇾 @drdiongeorgiou.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I wonder how much the Miliband family's connection with the anti-Apartheid movement have fed into Ed's approach on this issue. Ruth First, the Jewish South African anti-Apartheid activist assassinated by the SA Police in 1982, was a friend of his parents. Ralph M wrote this obituary of her.

marxists.org

Ralph Miliband: Ruth First (1982)

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Pet Shop Boys lyrics bot @psblyric.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I'm building a wall a fine wall not so much to keep you out more to keep me in

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

For any pals, nice vibes would be appreciated on a day I should’ve known better than to get my hopes up for.

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Bodie A. Ashton @manwithoutatan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

So I guess maybe it’s time to be realistic about the disconnect between all of the really lovely and heartening and kind words I get from colleagues and friends and students about my work, and the fact that any job I apply for goes by without an interview and the grants don’t happen.

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