iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 14h

No one asked the Oakland Review of Books to make a voting guide, and we made one anyway. Today we start off with the ballot propositions and the regional transit measure: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/orbs-totally...

oaklandreviewofbooks.org

ORB’s totally partisan 2026 voting guide

We made a spreadsheet and everything.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 14h

Nice to have my vibes-based take (low birthrates reflect a gap between public sphere relative equality and private sphere hierarchy) gain validation from an Actual Expert.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 22h

An update on what undergraduate men at the University of Chicago, admitted at twice the rate of women to craft a male-majority class, are doing with that numerical superiority:

blockclubchicago.org

Group Reportedly Cheered Sexual Assault At UChicago Frat House; Person Of Interest IDed: Report

An investigation is ongoing but no one was in custody as of late Tuesday, Chicago police said.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 22h

Just like "taxi service is lousy in SF" this is a prelude to "and that's why we need our own" and no, you should not be able to buy your way to the front of the line. lpeproject.org/blog/the-neo...

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

What they mean is: In the 1950s I had the unquestioned cultural and economic expectation of unpaid, full-service domestic labor, and now I don't.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

This is really something - my alma mater seems to be maintaining a male majority undergraduate class solely for the purpose of not just gender parity or representation, but supremacy.

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I'm really worried about Rep. Omar, who is a brilliant representative and a voice of real courage.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I have not been paying great attention to the battle against Hindutva in India but it does seem, from a distance, as if the struggle against Modi and Modi's repressive violence have reached an inflection point

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Listening to the first episode of Leon Nayfakh's poddoc on Only Fans and it occurs to me that OF, too, is another app enabling accommodation to feminist professional gains without actually forcing men to abandon status. Men still get hierarchical romantic relationships that do not demand they...

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Hey it's the West Bay paper covering ORB (and some other great folks)!

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Watched Newsies with my nine year old last night and she spent most of it complaining about the discrepancies between the kids' accents. Also I have questions about what exactly they won in the strike given they're still fronting newspaper costs in the last scene.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Just almost got run over by someone making a right on red without coming to a complete stop by someone driving a car with a "I brake for wildflowers" bumper sticker because Berkeley.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's more important that he's evil but Vance is also an idiot.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Yes. Women got educated and came to work as equals and AI has always been pitched (to the extent it's pitched as a consumer product at all) to men who miss secretaries or to (male) students committed to the myth of talent as distinct from actual work.

cooperativeoverlapping.substack.com

On the Gender Wages of AI

In which I suggest the appeal of LLMs has more to do with our conceptions of our own intellect and professional status than anything the technology actually does.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If this isn't the most brutal of metaphors for the status of women in US politics in 2026. She's brave for running against MAGA and brave for reporting and I am wishing Greene-Placentia all the strength and healing I can.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Just got my flu shot, gonna virtue signal about it as a reminder for the rest of y'all to do so as well.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I say this as someone who does not go out as much as I would like in part because babysitting is so expensive but the "affordability crisis" being the reaction of suddenly being asked to pay market wages for feminized labor but it's gig work and not gender equality, uh, has explanatory value.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I hate MAHA (in part) because in the Before Times I would read this and think "oh a return to bipartisan environmentalism, yes, this is good consumer protection," but now I see this headline and think "oh hell some company has been caught in the crossfire of a new attempt to pathologize trans kids"

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you vote against this measure you are an asshole and if you vote against it and it fails you will be responsible in small part for the death of my soul (and also of public transit and eventually of The Bay Area itself as a place). Yes I am posting this from a bus.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Great write-up, I'll only add that (1) the whole thing is particularly galling given the Court granted cert here prematurely to get this decision in before they allow the Trump admin to reverse the endangerment finding and the basis for Clean Air Act preemption evaporates and...

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 05/10/2026

"If nothing else can be said for the year 2026, it is at least impossible to imagine 'Detransition, Baby' being written now."

oaklandreviewofbooks.org

Orbiting space junk

Torrey Peters and the impossibility of the great trans novel.

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Micah @rincewind.run · 05/10/2026

the brazil thing is so depressing because they did the right thing, man they did what we couldn’t, they actually prosecuted their coup and threw bolsonaro’s ass in jail and generally showed the united states what a functional state looks like and now they are gonna elect his dipshit son? really?

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Returning to this thread with the latest Patreon-only ep of @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social and it hit me that there is a very obvious way to further "restorative justice" for the victim at Cornell that goes after systems and culture rather than individuals and it is banning frats on campus.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Victory in the battle against the Oakland coal terminal - Newsom signed AB 40, which will require the Bay Area Air District to conduct an environmental review that actually considers the impact of coal dust (not studied as part of the EIR completed in *2002* [not a typo]) before issuing a permit.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I cannot overstate how much the *ask* for these data centers, divorced from their actual construction or usage, has fucked ratepayers and carbon reduction efforts in the electric sector, and the fact that it may have all been a tax dodge strategy makes me want to start smashing things.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The irony of our current predicament is that the Supreme Court has revealed itself, specifically, to be comprised of six lawless hacks, because *in general* the courts have done an admirable job of not succumbing to fascism, which suggests to me the problem is one of personality and party

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I am 42 years old and today I encountered a cultural artifact that enabled me to get Simpsons jokes for the first time, which is why I believe seasons ~3-10 will be required middle school viewing for my children.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Political misogyny is the defining social movement of our time and there is no way out that does not confront it head on, though I am at a loss at how to do so and win.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A small cabal of cops who have been around since the OPD bad old days have negotiated themselves millions of dollars in bonuses at the expense of (literally) lead abatement in schools.

oaklandreviewofbooks.org

What’s with OPD's new contract?

We asked the Oakland Observer to explain what is going on.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Jettisoning a Congressional cat-and-mouse with the Roberts Court in favor of massive expansion of publicly owned and/or managed economic and social programs? Now you're playing my (and hopefully the post-2029 Democrats') tune!

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Tommy Craggs @tcraggs22.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is about how great tech critics are made and how they’re sometimes unmade, and for a few hundred words it’s also about a guy named Dick Pick.

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

WIRED @wired.com · 25/09/2026

A quarter-century ago, Borsook published a wildly prophetic, penetrating book about Silicon Valley called Cyberselfish. Then she disappeared. www.wired.com/story/paulin...

wired.com

Who Killed Paulina Borsook’s Career?

A quarter-century ago, Borsook published a wildly prophetic, penetrating book about Silicon Valley called Cyberselfish. Then she disappeared.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yes, I too defend women by taking my definition of one from a world historically prolific rapist.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I learned this from @karenhao.bsky.social 's book and it really is important: these are not people with a technological vision but ppl who stumbled on an emergent property arising from (digital, now material) resource consumption and trying to outrun the fact there's no underlying technological leap

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yep. And that is a big reason for all the apocalyptic language. www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/more-and-mor...

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's unattractive to brag but I figured out in January 2025 that the entire AI pitch was to professional status-insecure men who wanted secretaries and in a world where women had achieved educational parity and now the CEO of Nvidia says he's offloading cognitively to an LLM rather than his wife/PA.

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Reposted by Megan Wachspress

Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

For @lpeblog.bsky.social I wrote about why "bring your own power" is a false solution to the problem of datacenter energy demand and why municipalization (public ownership and control) of regional transmission organizations is necessary to protect ratepayers and accelerate decarbonization.

lpeproject.org

The Neoliberal Grid is in Crisis

To protect customers from rising electricity prices, public officials are urging data center developers to supply their own power. But this approach risks privatizing the power grid…

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

lpeproject.org

The Neoliberal Grid is in Crisis

To protect customers from rising electricity prices, public officials are urging data center developers to supply their own power. But this approach risks privatizing the power grid…

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I'm generally a half-hearted defender of tech workers *as workers* and not the demon spawn they are usually described as by the Bay Area left BUT if you WFH and vote no on this you are engaged in class war of the PMC against service workers and a bad person.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's a scandal if you're a prosecutor that has never visited a prison, and I'm sure even those visits are highly choreographed and superficial.

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Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Creeps out of Congress when they're women, too.

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