iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Michael Paarlberg @mpaarlberg.bsky.social · 19h

In Brazil, there is evidence that Meta suppressed pro-Lula accounts in favor of Flavio Bolsonaro ahead of next week's election (Brazil is the world's top user of Whatsapp). Underscoring why regulating social media over electoral interference is in the mutual interest of the US and other countries.

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 17/10/2026

an expert here: designing chatbots to be anthropomorphic, sycophantic yes-men is a choice ai developers make

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Dr Keith 🎃 Wilson @keithwilson.eu · 14/10/2026

Over 36,000 strong and growing, there has never been a better time to move your #Bluesky account to #Eurosky! Developed and hosted within the EU, rather than the US, Eurosky is subject to EU data protection and privacy laws. Plus a eurosky.social, mu.social or custom handle… What’s not to like?

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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Hopefully people are waking up to the fact that the Maga-aligned AI industry is invested in hijacking, censoring, & manipulating information about the world as they suck up data and privatize it, gaining power over entire populations.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 16/10/2026

Thanks for posting about this @markrubin.bsky.social — see full proposal here: Hutmacher, F., Guest, O., Rubin, M., & Wendt, A. N. (2026). Special issue proposal: A (critical) metascience perspective on psychological theories and theorizing. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

This is still very early days! We have not yet secured agreement with a journal for this proposed special issue. But you might be interested in some of the questions we hope to address:

Discovering and Developing Theories
· What is a psychological theory and what are there different types of theories?
· How do theories come about, and how should they come about?
· What is the relationship between theory, data, and phenomena?
· What are psychological theories for, – and when are they successful?
· What makes a good psychological theory, and how can we evaluate theoretical progress?

Specifying Theories: Formalization and Beyond
· (When) does formalization offer a path forward, – and what does formalizing a theory entail?
· What is the value of informal theories?
· (How) can the process of theorizing be formalized and standardized?
· (When) iIs there a risk that standardization introduces new forms of “checklist science”?
· (When) do formalization and standardization conflict with independent thinking and theorizing?

Evaluating and Debating Theories
· How can consensus building among experts be fostered?
· What degree of agreement regarding theories and concepts can be expected?
· What theoretical virtues should we value in psychological science and why?
· (How) should the positionality of researchers be considered in theory discussion?

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Violet @geeklint.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

I am reminded of this, rapidly becoming classic: bsky.app/profile/slac...

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Katie Spoon @kspoon.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Aaron Swartz, coding prodigy and hacktivist who helped develop RSS and was a co-founder of Reddit, died by suicide after facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison for felony charges, just for downloading pdfs of research papers with the intention of making them accessible to the public.

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Morgan Johnson @poormojo.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Reading this made me tear up, and that's really special because we Germans only get to tear up twice a year. Professor Peter Fonagy, Chair of the Independent Review into Mental Health Conditions, ADHD and Autism (2026), with his letter to a young person.

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Marek @marekmcg.eurosky.social · 14/10/2026

This looks like nothing so much as the mafia setting up for a protection racket. Recent "hacking" incidents were criminal negligence of incompetent security engineers, but may increasingly seem like organised crime ruffians picking targets to make examples of.

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Karlin Lillington @klillington.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Because what would the actual people most impacted by AI have to add to this cozy discussion by govts and companies? This AI 'summit' is an absolute disgrace and I hope the opposition and civil society groups torpedo the govt for this

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The O’Brien Press @theobrienpress.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

After the wonderful ‘Run Home, Little Fox,’ Tom McCaughren and @erikamcgann.bsky.social can’t wait to show what little Ollie has in store! Illustrated by @shannonbergin.bsky.social, ‘Swim, Little Otter’ will be out on 19th October.

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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 13/10/2026

@tressiemcphd.bsky.social has also done a great job making this point. "When people try to sell you on the idea that the future is already settled, it’s because it is deeply unsettled."

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Liana Brooks @lianabrooks.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It's almost as if running a home takes effort. Oddly enough, it also sounds like maintaining friendships, society, and social networks also takes effort and thought. Raise your hand if you're shocked. I'll hand you a broom.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"Whatever we call it, Bashford says, the eugenicists of a century ago “would undoubtedly be delighted at contemporary possibilities for reproductive selections.”" Good to see @danfalk.bsky.social digging into the ugly return of eugenic thinking. nautil.us/the-return-o...

nautil.us

The Return of a Discredited Pseudoscience

The Return of a Discredited Pseudoscience: Eugenics is rearing its ugly head again in today’s crucible of politics and culture

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Rob Cruickshank @robcruickshank.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Turns out these guys are real

A fish like a child would draw, no fins, just a tail an eye and a little smile

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charlotte @le-rose.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

this one is a top contender for me

an image shows a “verify you are human” challenge with a warning sign for a stoplight. google’s ai incorrectly asks “select all squares with traffic lights”.
original poster: “the machine refused to recognize my humanity until i professed to believe that a sign painted to look like a traffic light is indeed a traffic light.”
quote reply: “eat shit, René Magritte”

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Gavan Reilly @gavreilly.com · 09/10/2026

You know the xkcd strip about how all modern internet architecture is eventually built on something a hobbyist maintains for free? Someone went out and found them all. sheets.works/data-viz/hol...

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

"There’s a widespread misunderstanding by which people think that their problems can be solved with bigger samples" Preach!

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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 08/10/2026

Freire in Education for Critical Consciousness (2002/1973): > If [people] are unable to perceive critically the themes of their time, and thus to intervene actively in reality, they are carried along in the wake of change. They see that the times are changing, but they are submerged in that change

If men are unable to perceive critically the themes of their time, and thus to intervene actively in reality, they are carried along in the wake of change. They see that the times are changing, but they are submerged in that change and so cannot discern its dramatic significance. And a society beginning to move from one epoch to another requires the development of an especially flexible, critical spirit.

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Pete Fraser @petefrasermusic.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is incredibly important. I feel deeply that curbing sexual violence will come from raising social expectations of men, not from ‘educating’ them. I fear this is an unpopular view, because people are afraid to face up to the scale of the issue.

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Aoife Martin @lockdownbookclub.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

@cethanleahy.com you are now an artifact in the Museum of Twitter.

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 06/10/2026

I'm a scientist concerned about trainees using Chat, Claude etc recklessly Imagine if that internal employee ID number was protected human subjects information, like the email address of a participant, or a confidential diagnosis or worse

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Nick Sousanis @nsousanis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

holy crap, this letter... "At his elementary school, when another child gets hurt, students are expected to find an adult. Someone is hurt. You get help. That’s essentially the whole semester." "I don’t merely want my son to learn how not to rape someone. I was hoping we could aim a little higher."

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026

This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 16/12/2025

I wrote this brief talk on why “augmenting diversity” with LLMs is empirically unsubstantiable, conceptually flawed, and epistemically harmful and a nice surprise to see the organisers have made it public synthetic-data-workshop.github.io/papers/13.pdf

title: Cheap science, real harm: the cost of replacing human
participation with synthetic data

author: Abeba Birhane

abstract: Driven by the goals of augmenting diversity, increasing speed, reducing cost, the
use of synthetic data as a replacement for human participants is gaining traction
in AI research and product development. This talk critically examines the claim
that synthetic data can “augment diversity,” arguing that this notion is empirically
unsubstantiated, conceptually flawed, and epistemically harmful. While speed and
cost-efficiency may be achievable, they often come at the expense of rigour, insight,
and robust science. Drawing on research from dataset audits, model evaluations,
Black feminist scholarship, and complexity science, I argue that replacing human
participants with synthetic data risks producing both real-world and epistemic
harms at worst and superficial knowledge and cheap science at best

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Simon McGarr @tupped.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

An interesting exchange on how to react to Slop-as-evidence at the Oireachtas. Oireachtas committees hear from people with all sorts of views, and by definition, many of them diverge from each other. But they are actually their views. The people who come in expressed them.

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Tony Chemero @tonychemero.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thanks to Scott Aikin for this fun interview. Viewing is recommended especially you want to watch me make a bunch of strange hand gestures. m.youtube.com/watch?v=k76P...

m.youtube.com

Vanderbilt Philosophy Interviews - Anthony Chemero

YouTube video by Scott Aikin

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Brandon Sheffield @brandon.insertcredit.com · 01/10/2026

Several weeks ago, Phil Tippett's legendary animation studio in Berkeley, CA closed. An anonymous hero noticed a folder of CDs. This turned out to be hundreds of unseen hi-res images and videos from Star Wars, Robocop, Jurassic Park, etc. ~90 isos for you to browse: archive.org/details/tipp...

A casual Star Wars alien fella at the cantina, in a sun faded, reddish photo. Someone will be mad at me for not knowing who this is.

Phil, a balding Caucasian man, poses a model of the garthok, an antagonist from the Coneheads movie.

Phil, a balding caucasian man, points at some CG on a CRT computer monitor, as a younger man looks on. The screen shows a model of a dinosaur attacking a jeep, while there's an actual physical model of that event in the foreground for reference.

an isolated shot of a star wars vehicle. Sorry, I don't know star wars lol

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Ryan CrawCour @ryan.crawcour.social · 01/10/2026

BREAKING NEWS: Tensions between Thor and the Care Bears have escalated rapidly overnight.

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A revised version of this preprint is now posted on arXiv. The theory section is rewritten, improving model exposition based on feedback we received, we fixed some confusion and errors, contextualized the models more carefully so the interpretation becomes clearer, and improved the overall writing.

arxiv.org

The Difference Between "Replicable" and "Not Replicable" Is Not Itself Scientifically Replicable

Replication studies estimate the replicability rate of scientific results by aggregating binary verdicts of experiments as ``replicated'' and ``not replicated''. These estimates assume rarely attainab...

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Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman) @drspacejunk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Imagine what space would look like if we had different eyes, and could see above and below the visible light range.

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Marek @marekmcg.eurosky.social · 01/10/2026

Puts me in mind of this Battlestar Galactica scene with Dean Stockwell revelling in the same anguish. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8uL...

youtube.com

Battlestar Galactica “I’m A Machine” - Cavil / John - Dean Stockwell (BSG S04E15 - with subtitles)

YouTube video by myutopia123

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evy kwong @evystadium.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"Men shouldn’t require a daughter, wife, girlfriend or sister before sexual violence against women becomes important to them. Women are enough. And condemning sexual assault shouldn’t qualify anyone for a medal. The bar is on the floor. Step over it."

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 30/09/2026

GOAT OR BIRD????

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Sam Weller @samwellerauthor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is the most remarkable story Ray Bradbury ever shared with me. He told it to me late one night, sitting in his den of antiquities and mementos. Take five minutes to read this. It’s pure magic. #Writing #Living #Creativity #RayBradbury #BookSky

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Time for this classic again.

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dear @erc.europa.eu , we DO already have common standards & frameworks. 'AI' likes to pose itself as 'special' but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. We already have established codes of conduct for research integrity. We just need to apply them. See below + more resources in thread🧵

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic
the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth
— the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding “informa-
tion”. At best, such output is accidentally true, but generally citationless, divorced from
human reasoning and the web of scholarship that it steals from. At worst, it is confidently
wrong. Both outcomes are dangerous to the ecosystem.
Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij, Marcela Suarez, et al. (2025, n.p.)
Knowledge production is supposed to be safeguarded by (inter)national codes of conduct for research
integrity (ALLEA 2023; KNAW et al. 2018). Such codes forbid, for instance, fabrication of data,
falsification of results, plagiarism, and, generally, distortion of the scientific record. Many argue that
new rules are required to regulate academic AI use, but pre-existing guidelines fit the bill (cf. Tafani

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward

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Marek @marekmcg.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

This is brilliant! Speaks to how well you've reached them, and that they understand some of the importance and it matters to them. Bravo!

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Dr Keith 🎃 Wilson @keithwilson.eu · 29/09/2026

I made a video to promote the Philosophy of Mind & Embodied Cognition MA programme at UCD, of which I’m the Director. (Also, apparently this is what I look like now! 😳) www.youtube.com/watch?v=wudT... #PhilMind #EmbodiedCognition

youtube.com

MA in Philosophy of Mind & Embodied Cognition- UCD School of Philosophy

YouTube video by UCD College of Social Sciences & Law

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 29/09/2026

unsolicited brag: dug into the data -> ai -> surveillance pipeline in class this morning and received a standing ovation at the end of class. genuinely did not expect it. now i’m in tears. first time for everything

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