iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Along with some other stuff happening in 2026 it looks like this is the year that I get into Gordon Lightfoot. I've also discovered that he has no bad albums, even the ones Allmusic gave two stars.

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Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Wise words from *Dr* Guzzo: “We spent decades shaming women for having kids under the wrong circumstances, for not having their ducks in a row,” said Ms. Guzzo, the demographer. “Now they are holding up their end of the bargain.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/u... @karenguzzo.bsky.social #demography

nytimes.com

The Birthrate Is Plunging. Why Some Say That’s a Good Thing.

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Problem about the loneliness epidemic is, it's everywhere except in representative survey data. Let's look at where the claim comes from. 1/

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

All I'm going to remember when I look back on the 2020s is the world panicking about a technology called AI that's not even AI. Things really haven't changed that much since the 1920s.

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

From Jonathan Haidt on social media's impact on mental health: "Meta’s own research on the effects of social media reduction confirms those from academic researchers. Both sets of researchers find evidence of causation, not mere correlation" #Facebook #Instagram #Meta #SocialMedia #TikTok

afterbabel.com

Mountains of Evidence

Two new projects catalogue research on social media’s many harms to adolescents. Some of the strongest evidence comes from Meta.

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

One of the brighter points of Meta (and social media) tanking is that I've rediscovered how useful the internet is when you're intentional about it, and not logged into social sites 24/7. A big part of that has been website blocking extensions and apps to break the muscle memory. (1/2)

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

After spending an ample amount of time on both Mastodon and Bluesky I've landed on the neuroscience hashtag as one of the better ones. At least when it comes to day-to-day relevance. Sometimes you've got to tune out politics..

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

None of the history I've read has been more of a page turner than Maps of Time by David Christian. Read by a thirty year old me nearly a decade ago.

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

As an outsider who's studied Sociology one of the more interesting things about the field is everything it doesn't say about human behavior, arguably the most interesting things. Sociobiology tries to say those things but many Sociologists don't like soc/bio. And this is considered science. (1/2)

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

It's a bit of a chicken / egg problem because I don't think many people are actually looking for older content. And those who are will look for ways to find it.

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

"We have been posting about our lives for a long time. But now I notice something else, something more than a compulsion to capture and share moments. I see people turning into TV characters, their memories into episodes, themselves into entertainment. We have become the meaningless content.."

afterbabel.com

We Are The Slop

Your life is my background noise

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Brad DeLong @braddelong.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

It looks like future historians will say that in all the annals of American economic governance, the appointment of Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary—alongside the elevation of E.J. Antoni to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—was a critical sea-change away from institutional independence and... /

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 04/09/2025

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

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Flipboard Science Desk @sciencedesk.flipboard.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/08/2025

We've probably all heard the statement that your brain isn't fully formed until you're 25. However much it "feels" true — it just isn't. Neuroscientist @Garwboy writes for @BBCNews Science Focus about where it comes from, and the reality, and what the consequences would be if it was really the […]

flipboard.social

Original post on flipboard.social

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

I'm coining a new term: 'Contemporary Bias' When people see a problem as unique to their era but it's either a solution to a worse problem from a previous era, or a problem that's existed throughout our entire history but they have no historical perspective. #Sociology #Anthropology

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

This is bad. But if Trump was the best we could do at this point I don't think pollution is the root of the problem.

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

And athletes make tens of millions of dollars. This isn't sustainable.

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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

".. close to two-thirds of global financial professionals expect that the greenback will lose its leading reserve-currency status in the next five to 15 years. The global selloff of American bonds last month suggests the U.S. administration’s chaotic actions may have accelerated this timeline."

theglobeandmail.com

America is sinking, and Canada cannot go down with the ship

Donald Trump is blaming other countries for his country’s large trade deficits when the U.S. should be looking at itself

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Nick McRae @mcraenich.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

I'm curious who in the #Zen community has discovered T'ien-t'ai. It predated Zen in Chinese Buddhism and one of its seminal works was translated in 2017 by Paul Swanson (The Mo-ho chih-kuan). Swanson's title is called Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight. Well worth checking out. #Buddhism #Tientai

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Total number of children that US women aged 20-24 plan to have 2002: 2.4 children 2012: 2.3 children 2023: 1.5 children www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Chart shows declining expectations across age groups over time in the number of children than US men and women plan to have.

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Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Spoiler alert: multitasking is bad What is scrolling doing to our brain? Emma Kennedy talks to world leading cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Earl K. Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, to find out what scrolling is doing to our brains. open.spotify.com/episode/46qo...

open.spotify.com

What is scrolling doing to our brains?

Why? with Emma Kennedy · Episode

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Xavier Greenwood @xaviergreenwood.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I’ve invented a new social media trend. It’s called the leave the Sentinelese people alone challenge. My story in @observeruk.bsky.social today about the growing threats to uncontacted tribes.

observer.co.uk

Uncontacted tribes are under threat from developers, extractors… and influencers

An isolated people that Marco Polo called ‘violent and cruel’ just want to be left alone

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Seth Abrutyn @sethabrutyn.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

So, this paper is passion-project of mine, asking questions about #motivation, proactive social actors, & emotional/affective dispositions. It is a long time coming & is a key piece in the argument for an affective #sociology. Check it out, open access (thx UBC) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Alan Jagolinzer @jagolinzer.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Highly recommend Sarah Wynn-Williams’ new book Careless People, which offers her inside look at the psychological incentives to actors who have built Facebook and steered its growth. (1/5) read.macmillan.com/fib/careless...

read.macmillan.com

Careless People - Macmillan

CARELESS PEOPLE A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah-Wynn Williams Preorder your copy today ON SALE NOW Amazon Barnes & Noble BAM! Target Indigo Bookshop An explosive insider ...

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

To live to hear Jim Goldgeier say that "NATO is finished as an institution" ...

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Here’s my contribution to the issue on Wilson’s legacy: the sociobiology debate may have led the human evolutionary behavioural sciences down a path which resulted in scientific critique of bad science being dismissed as ideological “censorship”, making it harder to counter misuse of the discipline

online.ucpress.edu

The Legacy of Wilson’s Sociobiology for the Human Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Fifty Years On

When Wilson’s 1975 book Sociobiology was published it ignited a media firestorm. His bombastic style and speculations on the role of biological explanations for human behavior attracted considerable a...

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Jeremy Cliffe @jeremycliffe.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Blimey. Asked about Trump, Merz says he’s in close contact with European leaders about becoming “independent” from US (and confesses “I never thought I’d say that on TV show”). Casts doubt on value of NATO summit in June. This from a die-hard Atlanticist. Things are moving fast.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state... This is by far the best, clearest and most realistic analysis of what we're in for that I've seen.

foreignaffairs.com

The Path to American Authoritarianism

What comes after democratic breakdown.

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Vince @vincetinguely.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

“The Köln Concert was totally improvised, but not what we understand as ‘free improvisation’. It’s tonal and melodic. It has a structure, and it transcends the boundaries of music-marketing. Jarrett described his solo improvisations as ‘universal folk music’." #jazz #improvisation #film #jarrett

theguardian.com

‘The Köln Concert is the hit he wants to disown’: why Keith Jarrett shunned two new films about his unlikely masterpiece

His back hurt and his piano was substandard. But the musician’s improvised 1975 show entered jazz history. Now two films are celebrating that mesmerising night – and the sweary teen promoter who made ...

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Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Can people actually participate in democracy in a complex, media-ted world? This debate between Lippmann and Dewey is just as relevant today.

conspicuouscognition.com

The world outside and the pictures in our heads

Walter Lippmann, John Dewey, and the fundamental question of political epistemology: Can anybody understand modern society?

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

We live in the ✨ world of tomorrow ✨

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Aaron Parnas @aaronparnas.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Jeff Bezos never wanted this cartoon to become public. He killed it, and as a result, pulitzer prize editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit. Make sure everyone sees this cartoon.

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