iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Latinx A Forbidden Alchemy Petra has a glamorous life in the imperial city with her ambassador mother & the heart of the emperor's son. But when her homeland rebels & her mother is arrested she must choose between her roots & family, or a future with the prince she’s fallen for. #DVPit #A #F

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Hello I’m pitching & hanging out in DVPit today as a writer, not a pub person. If I comment it’s as a fellow writer hyping you up! 😎

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Born at the furthest reaches of the empire Petra has clawed her way to the top of imperial society & into the arms of the emperor’s son. But when her homeland rebels & her mother is jailed for treason she must stop a war between a motherland she scarcely knows & the city she calls home #dvpit #a #f

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Melissa Caruso @melissacaruso.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Discoverability for new SFF books seems way down these days, especially outside of bestsellers and certain subgenres. I'm noticing this as both a reader and a writer. Great stuff is in danger of sinking without a trace. Please post about new/recent books you love or are excited for!!! I'll start:

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SACosby @blacktopkid.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Got into it with a tech bro "You're gonna get left behind if you don't embrace AI, ppl aren't always gonna read your books" Me: maybe not but it will always be me writing them" 😎

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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The literacy crisis is not just referring to people's ability to literally read and write. It's also people's inability to read for context. I've been a public educator for over 20 years and I have never, ever seen it this bad.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Right, okay everybody, I’ve had a lot of meetings and talks this week and I have to share some top line thoughts. Things are quite a bit worse than i am usually willing to share with people because panic does no good. It’s kinda bad. The baddies have the wind at their back. No denying that.

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Ryan North @ryannorth.ca · 23/09/2026

Pompeii is a UNESCO world heritage site not because it was remarkable in its prime, but because it survived to our era untouched: one moment, preserved for all time. But future generations won't know what OUR world was like unless we do the same. This is why we MUST bury Toronto with a volcano

Picture of the streets of Pompeii, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompei_-_panoramio_(26).jpg. Taken by Tanya Dedyukhina, used under CC

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Hello! I’m participating in PreDV today as a writer, not a publishing professional. If I comment/like, it’s as a fellow writer 😁

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Latinx A Forbidden Alchemy Petra has a glamorous life in the imperial city with her ambassador mother & the affection of the emperor's son. But when her homeland rebels & her mother is arrested, she must choose between family & homeland, or the prince & the city she calls home #predv #F #A

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This post is making the rounds again for some reason and therefore I feel I must inform you that they’ve hired another one so there are now TWO forensic pathologists working in Iceland.

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Cass Morris @cassmorriswrites.com · 09/09/2026

oh holy sweet Juno, this entire thing makes me so happy Yes, codes of conduct should absolutely consider the use and promotion of genAI in the same vein as other hateful behaviors. Can I have this in every creative community, please?

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

This thread is about using AI to code but is 100% applicable to using it to write

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Dorian Dawes @doriandawes.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"Why wasn't this piece of art more explicit with its messaging" cause it would have sucked ass Bob. Telling people the truth isn't as effective as making them experience it. That's why it's art and not an essay.

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molly tanzer (I guess!!) @mollytanzer.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

RT if you've never had a tab of ChatGPT open, period.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Just went to buy @gilduran.com's "The Nerd Reich" on Google Books, and discovered that the enshittification is so thorough that it's not safe to do so - I was very close to buying one that's actually AI slop with an identical title and author name. This is utterly insane.

A screenshot of deceptively marketed books on Google books.

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KJ Charles @kjcharleswriter.com · 03/09/2026

"I have an idea for a novel, so I want an author to write it for me! / I need an AI to write it for me!"--bitch, ideas are ten a penny, yours is almost certainly derivative, it's all in the treatment anyway, you won't get rich, and there is no global novel shortage that makes yours important. ~fin~

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Mark Sarvas @marksarvas.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Holy smokes. Could be the best description I have ever heard: "She once, brilliantly, described novel-writing as 'trying very hard to remember something which has not yet taken place'." www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...

theguardian.com

Anita Brookner by Hermione Lee review – an enigmatic literary great given her due

This exhaustive biography of the Booker winner brings her properly out of the shadows for the first time

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VeGOREpunk AuHORROR @vegapunk-aurora.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

*Mr Beast voice* I HELPED THIS WOMAN TURN A ROOM FULL OF STRAW INTO GOLD USING ONLY A SPINNING WHEEL! IF SHE CAN'T GUESS MY NAME IN THREE DAYS, I'M TAKING HER BABY!

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

FFS. Should I be just getting proton mail now? Any other alternatives people like?

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Hamlet of Melnibone @hamlet10.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The good news is that almost everything is better than it was 40 years ago. The bad news is that almost everything is worse than it was 10 years ago.

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

“Making sure our books are discoverable by chat bots” is a grim sentence indeed.

Text from the article : And where once search engine optimisation (SEO) was the big thing, now it's GEO - generative engine optimisation, or "making sure our books are discoverable by chat bots", Dibble says. So how do you court ChatGPT or Claude? It's an evolving science, she says, but "you can format your content in particular ways that bots like, such as author Q&As or listicles".

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

you would be genuinely shocked how so many people (unfortunately, especially younger generations) seem to think portrayal is condoning behavior

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Janine Gibson @janinegibson.ft.com · 27/08/2026

ON the radio Alexandra Pringle, apparently the former editor in chief of Bloomsbury is asserting that of course memoirs aren't true stories and no publishers are not responsible for checking books. This well spoken lady is achieving tech bro level of don't be so naive it's not MY business

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

“Going to the word ATM” and then “giving someone the receipt” might be my fav description of using LLMs yet

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Die Booth @diebooth.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

New devastating insult just dropped lol

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

One thing I’ve learned by reading so much slop against my will: AI can’t be funny. At all. It can do passing approximations of the typical tones you see in literary fiction, thrillers, horror, & a few others, but funny? Never, not at all.

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Stephen King @stephenking.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

JANSPLAINING is an interesting book blog. This lady takes no shit, which is sort of exhilarating. She takes on the ever-popular blurb-o-mat, pointing out such words as "propulsive," "epic," (which means long), and my favorite "luminous"--which means not much really happens in this book.

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Grae Hall @graehall.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

remember, plagiarism is unforgiveable if you're a Black university professor, but it's a revolutionary business model on which the entire world's economy must now rest if you're a white billionaire techbro

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 10/08/2026

I will never let semi-literate, poorly-read ding-dongs dictate how I write.

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Brandi Buchman @brandibuchman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Library funding is tied to usage.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 09/08/2026

if they're drinking nounwine it's fantasy. if they're snorting a verb it's sci fi

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Alan Baxter @alanbaxter.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

If gen-ai slop really could do all the things they claim they wouldn't let you use it. They'd sell you the product. But it produces shite, so they're desperate to sell you the shite machine.

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Jared Pechaček @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

new issue of Vizier Monthly is out

a fake magazine cover with a cruelly smiling old woman in red vaguely Renaissance garb, leaning on a staff with a serpent twined around it. Headlines around her:
So He Saw The Strings: What To Do When Your Lord Thinks He's a Real Boy
Chalices, Knives, Nooses: How's a Girl to Choose?
Why Satraps Rebel: 10 Cautionary Tales
12 Moves For The Ambitious Concubine (and a 13th for the New Favorite!)
"I'm Just Getting Better With Age": Catching Up with Brynza, the King's Eye

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Angela Liu @angelaliu.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Everyone’s talking about AI, but this is the one that really hit home for me on so many points. Extremely moving and relevant essay.

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Speaking from experience, as the slush pile fills with AI slop, nothing stands out more than the work of a real writer with real skills. Maybe now more than ever.

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C. Robert Cargill @crobertcargill.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Don't let the Ai discourse discourage you aspiring writers out there. Art is valued by its rarity, and the rarest thing in the world is the talent of a single individual. What can be mass produced for cheap has little value. You are an original. A one of a kind. A bespoke wonder. Never forget that.

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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.

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Dr. Vaughn Joy @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

What blows my mind with AI is the people who are like "how could you possibly function without it?" To which I say, "you, YOU literally did until what like 3 years ago? Did it degrade your brain that fast that you can't figure out how to do the thing you trained for years and earned a PhD to do?"

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⛧ Mother Suspiria ⛧ (Stina Marie) @stinasdemons.com · 28/07/2026

Pure pointed eloquence As only a human could write it

Things You Can Make ChatGPT Write for You

- Hayley DeRoche

Your last words
But before them
What to murmur to a lover in bed
What to say in the group chat when someone's Sister mother brother is dead and
The apology you could never quite get right for a friend
And hell why not make the robot compose your proposal
Your wedding toast, too
Your best friend's birthday roast
You could ask it to write a custom lullaby
For the baby snuffling at your breast.
You can cradle to grave away
Every warm human word
You could ever have said
And when they chisel your gravestone
For your final rest
We can ask ChatGPT
Because it knew you best

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Maria Heater @mariadonna.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Perfect description of every LLM user flooding query boxes and short story markets with their garbage.

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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

There is a lot to say about the Nolan Odyssey movie. But one point that I think has not been emphasized enough is: this is a film about living in LA, as Nolan, my erstwhile British compatriot and age mate, has done for years. I gather it’s a strange place.

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Remember, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally audiobooks.

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