iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 3h

Some good news for a change: Overcoming a massive and aggressive tech lobby and a squeamish, Silicon Valley-friendly governor, the labor movement has managed to pass a raft of first-of-their-kind AI laws aimed at protecting workers in California.

bloodinthemachine.com

California just passed the strongest AI labor laws in the US

Finally, some good news

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 9h

Posting a little early because I know I'll forget - trying to take the sting off being a Salem resident during Halloween season with a sale on the most supernatural-based books in my backlist this month, so Doc Silence: the Cost of Magic will be 99 cents this weekend.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 12h

So apparently if your gut response to needing eye muscle surgery is "what if I don't and just stay like this?" because the idea of it makes you nauseous, people do not find it funny and start bullying you into taking care of yourself. This cancels my plan for going full Nick Fury, in any event.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We know this DOE bullshit is about oppression of thought and keeping people poor, but to be honest, the most money I ever made with my English degree were gigs making sure dudes with MBAs didn't sound like they had two muffins in their skull where their brain hemispheres should be. It's lucrative.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Canceling because of safety concerns" is just AI company speak for "canceling because we haven't monetized this correctly." These dudes do not give a single solitary damn if someone gets hurt with by their project or we'd have less kids getting self-help self-harm tips from it.

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natemare before christmas @natescape.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Do you know how much has to have gone wrong for me to not like the internet

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joe @shariauncle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

increasingly feels like my Perfectly Fine liberal arts education was an artifact grabbed fleeing a burning temple

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Barry Lyga @barrylyga.com · 29/09/2026

🚨 ONE DAY ONLY! 🚨 Hey, y'all! For TODAY ONLY, Every Hunter is Hunted is a #Kindle Daily Deal! You can snap it up for a mere $1.99! Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity! It's gone by day's end! www.amazon.com/Every-Hunter... @crookedlanebooks.bsky.social

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If I hear one more person say "Claude is the least evil" one when they're the motherfuckers who had to pay damned near every author on Earth for STEALING THEIR LIFES WORK I am going to give myself some kind of myocardial infarction.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Had to make an appointment with a specialist this morning and the woman I spoke with to set it up had a Kerry accent (I spent a LOT of time there a while back) and I think I would find my entire medical journey easier if I got all news, good or bad, in a Kerry accent.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I play maybe one video game every three years so I'm a terrible judge of game play, but story-wise, I've liked Insomniac's portrayal of Wolverine better than any media interpretation of Logan outside of comics, ESPECIALLY his nuanced relationship with Jean. Liam McIntyre's performance is perfect.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Did not realize how much I relied on our dog's multiple meandering walks every day to get my head screwed back on straight until he had a brief back injury that meant no long walks for two weeks followed by a nor-easter (he's afraid of the rain). I need to take MYSELF for a walk today.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I worked at a Little Caesars as a teenager and watched my manager kick the bumper off the car of a dude who threatened him. This post checks out. Everyone I worked with was one bad day away from a brawl in the lobby.

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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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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”

APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Consumers: "how do I turn off all of your AI functions please" AP: "AI cannot feel anything, please stop humanizing AI in your headlines" Meta: "What if we made it a cute little guy like Tamagotchi?" I swear there hasn't been a person in leadership in tech who understands humans in ten years.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

For someone who wrote about healthcare issues for like, a third of my life, I am finding that I am REMARKABLY squeamish when talking about my own health. (Just chatted with a very nice neurologist and I am now CLIMBING OUT OF MY SKIN.)

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The Authors Guild @authorsguild.org · 22/09/2026

“Newly unsealed comments made in briefs filed by the tech giants reveal that executives knew they were illegally training their products on copyrighted books and that AI generated books would likely displace human-authored books in the market.“

publishersweekly.com

Unsealed Files Show Open AI/Microsoft Knew Copying Was Illegal and Could Hurt Authors

Newly unsealed comments made in briefs filed by Open AI and Microsoft reveal that executives knew they were illegally training their products on copyrighted books and that AI generated books would lik...

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The first time someone emailed my author page to complain about Hachette's "indestructible" books for little kids not being indestructible it was funny. It's happened often enough I find myself having unkind thought about adults not looking at the publisher's name on your book before hitting send.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

S: What do you call toe beans on something like a lion or a tiger? They're too big to be beans. Me: TOE-TATOES

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I play maybe one game every three years, but I've always wanted to play a modern Wolverine video game so picked the new one up. I'm impatient, visually impaired, and bad at games, but it includes a difficulty setting that is basically "are you here for a good time, not a long time?" & it's perfect.

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 18/09/2026

honestly some of the most apocalyptic impacts of "AI" will be shit like this, and most of the doomsday dipshits predicting SkyNet can't be bothered to notice or care

arstechnica.com

UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges

For the largest health insurer in the US, AI's error rate is like a feature, not a bug.

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 18/09/2026

This is why I hate "just a tool" so so so much. You can make a calculator without access to every calculation. You can make photoshop without access to all photos. Someone show me a genai tool that didn't require all of our labour in its production. It's plagiarism software.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

2 a.m. sleepless thoughts as I scroll: Galway Shawl is one of those songs I will always stop and listen to no matter who's singing it because I lived in Oranmore for a brief quiet stretch and because life is what it is, I know I may never get back there.

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God @thegodshow.com · 18/09/2026

AI billionaires CANNOT BE TRUSTED to regulate themselves!!!!!!

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Eric Ravenscraft @lordravenscraft.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

holy shit, this is the whole ballgame in a single paragraph gAI systems require mass theft of copyrighted works, for the explicit purpose of replacing the market for the people they stole from, and the people in charge knew what they were doing ahead of time, and did it anyway

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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 17/09/2026

“A senior executive at Microsoft said A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’ and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”

orlandosentinel.com

Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’

The admission appeared in a newly unredacted filing in the landmark copyright infringement legal battle playing out between newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI...

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

@kithwith.bsky.social is the very best. I also really appreciate that he highlights two of the chapters I am most proud of in my entire writing career. (Been starting to get ambitions of a book 6 lately if I'm being honest even though each book is written with an ending in mind>)

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 17/09/2026

it's actually insane how terrible AI executives like Alex Karp here are marketing their products. he sounds like a complete lunatic on CNBC right now.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Just saw a government-connected directory of authors in Massachusetts disqualifies self-published and small press authors from applying when fully 80% of the successful working authors I know are self-published. So fuck them. That's some 1990s level snobbery right there. Mass should know better.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I thought media literacy was dead, but I just saw someone with a mediocre but valid opinion accuse someone of an equally valid but mediocre opinion of being media illiterate and it felt like someone dug up the corpse of media literacy to desecrate it all over again.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If a generative AI CEO is telling you something, take it with a grain of salt the size of an iceberg. So if they want regulation now, it is more likely something to do with finances than an immediate existential threat. These dipshits do not care about existential threats other than going bankrupt.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

So what are we thinking, 18-24 months before the Federal government bails out the AI companies instead of using tax money to help all the people these AI companies put out of work?

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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 13/09/2026

An AI flyer is a brown M&M test. If your event or business is cutting corners by using an AI flyer, where else are you cutting corners? What else are you cheating out on? Why should I be bothered to go somewhere you couldn't be bothered to promote with a little of your own personality?

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Congress is going to decide AI is "too big to fail" before they do anything to regulate its implementation, aren't they.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I've been joking for a year or two everything I've learned about AI has been against my will, but literally nothing any of these CEOs are saying is surprising. It's all a shell game and it is WILD to have the privilege of having seen how the sausage is made and watch people devour tubes of offal.

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Katie Hinde @mammalssuck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"The whole “Oh no, our models went rogue” thing … When a bridge collapses, you don’t analyze whether the bridge was ethical or sentient or why it decided to collapse. You ask, who is the person who built this bridge to be so flimsy?" www.wired.com/story/one-of...

wired.com

One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

About to surrender an inch of ground on the vision front and figure out how to review edits to the latest manuscript using read-aloud software (while avoiding any AI read aloud tools, of course). Don't mind me, just crumbling to dust.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I usually just get angry on this date because of how much worse we've become in the interim. I don't get sad. I was a reporter for a local paper and my job that day was tracking the casualty count and fielding calls about locals who might have been in the city at the time. But /1

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Having the AI marketing... ghoul that referenced my dead cat in a pitch to market my books email a second time to ask if I had "reservations" about it's approach is wild. Were it a person, I might respond to suggest it perhaps not lead with someone's beloved deceased pet in the sales pitch.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Caused a bit of a brouhaha giving driving advice for Salem tourists the other day and was reminded of the time a model friend said "I want to dress like a mourner in a Salem graveyard" one late summer day and so she did, and I photographed it.

Black and white image of a woman dressed in mourner's garb next to a low tombstone.

Woman in mourner's garb looking sadly away from the camera.

Woman in mourner's garb in black and white leaning against a grave.

Woman in mourner's garb resting on a tomb looking mournful.

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Konner Knudsen @penzerker.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Werner Herzog's scathing quote about Ai is what I needed this morning.

Werner Herzog response to a question about ai

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Dr Rehaminator's Monster Cock @drrehaminator.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

"I'm too talented to need shortcuts" goes so fucking hard.

youtube community post from Huggbees that discusses why he does not and will not ever use AI in his art

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I have friends who work in hospice who have bounced from organizations because they uncovered fraud. But they STAY in the hospice industry because people NEED that care. Bragging about shutting down hospices without a plan to help the patients left behind is just sentencing people to suffer.

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Matthew Phillion @matthewphillion.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

For a while it seemed like how people reacted to AI was telling us what side they'd fall on during Frank Herbert's Butlerian Jihad, but every new scare marketing technique has really started revealing who would believe a naked emperor was fully dressed.

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 08/09/2026

A new version of ChatGPT is about to drop. Academics like @alexhanna.bsky.social and Emily Bender have been pointing out for literal years that these scare tactics about how powerful and scary AI is actually work as marketing. At this point, being this gullible is a choice.

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