iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Speaking at #TED2026 was the thrill of a lifetime. Utterly intense experience--the Olympics of public speaking. So glad to be invited, so relieved it went well. Deep thanks for all the coaching and support. Just wow.

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Reposted by Michael Chorost

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 25/01/2026

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Fellow authors, check out Eva Langston's terrific new podcast, "The Long Road to Publishing," in which she interviews longtime novelists about their careers. I highly recommend the debut interview with the novelist Courtney Maum, and the next one with Julia Bartz: shows.acast.com/.../epis.../...

shows.acast.com

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

SecDef is NOT a position where it's okay to be learning basic security practices on the job.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Taking care of Mom has become like getting too near a black hole: the equations blow up, causality breaks down, time and space switch roles, nothing makes sense. open.substack.com/pub/michaelc...

open.substack.com

The Mystery of the Locked-in Cat

In which my mother becomes entropy's best friend.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

On Jan. 5th, 2020, Daniel Rodriguez texted his friends, "There will be blood." On Jan 6th, at the Capitol, he shocked a cop repeatedly in the neck with a stun gun. A jury found him guilty. Sentenced to 12 years. Trump just let Rodriguez go free. (Hat tip: @davidlitt)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Let's just revisit the truth of January 6th, shall we? This was not a peaceful political protest. This was a planned, coordinated, violent onslaught by Republican thugs. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified afterward, "I was slipping in people's blood." (1/3)

Capitol police officers looking through a shattered window.

Republican thugs fighting with Capitol police to breach the barriers.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

PSA for my author friends. Check out CreatedByHumans.ai, a project to get AI companies to pay authors when LLMs ingest their books as training data. They've partnered with the Authors Guild, which gives them a ton of credibility in my eyes. The AG exists to protect the rights of writers.

createdbyhumans.ai

The AI Rights licensing platform for creators - Created by Humans

Take control of your works' AI Rights and get compensated for their use by AI companies.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

In lieu of flowers, send pizzas to his funeral. #pizzagate

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

On a scale of 1 to 10, how corrupt does this sound? "Alito spoke with Trump not long before Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to delay his sentencing following his conviction in New York in a case arising from hush money payments."

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Reposted by Michael Chorost

Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 07/01/2025

🚨🚨🚨🚨HOMEWORK🚨🚨🚨🚨 I think the Jack Smith draft report is finished. Write to Merrick Garland and ask him to release the Jack Smith report. You can do it here. Select “Messages to the Attorney General” from the drop down menu www.justice.gov/doj/webform/...

justice.gov

Your message to the Department of Justice

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

I’m really looking forward to the big snowstorm in D.C. Supposed to be 6-12 inches. I love the quiet and the white, and the feeling of staying in while the world takes a pause.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Hi there RFK. I was born 5 years before the rubella vaccine in 1969. Cost: $10 per dose in 2024 dollars. Cost of 2 cochlear implants: $100,000. Plus 50 years of hearing aids + batteries, cochlear implant spare parts, and audiologist visits. Not getting a vaccine can be pretty damn expensive.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Looking to interview creative writers--poets, novelists, etc.--who use ChatGPT or other LLMs to aid their creative process. Not for text production (they're terrible at that) but for brainstorming, idea generation, and other high-level uses. Hit me up.

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

But gradually, through persistence and grit, everyone, including the aliens, learns to understand each other. It's an optimistic story of communication against all odds. Now that it’s done, I’m about to look for a fiction agent. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck! (6/end)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

The whole plot turns on misunderstandings. The team misunderstands the alien language in ways that nearly kill them. The team leader falls in love with the linguist--and they misunderstand each other too. (5/x)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

As a deaf person I'm keenly interested in communication and (just as importantly) failures of communication. Misunderstandings are a big part of the plot. I wanted to represent the protagonist's experience as a cochlear implant user realistically on the page--including his misunderstandings. (4/x)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

The worldbuilding was tough: how does an intelligent social insect colony pick up a hammer? I've been a nonfiction writer all my life, so I also had to tackle an even tougher challenge: how to build a plot and write plausible characters—including a sapient social insect colony. (3/x)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

The team consists of an entomologist, a linguist, a physicist, and a neuroscientist. Eventually the neuroscientist becomes convinced that humanity will never accept coexistence with sapient insect colonies. He begins sabotaging the team’s work. (2/x)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

At last, the finished manuscript of my novel! It’s about a deaf grad student in entomology who asks how to stop a rogue ant colony that is ravaging Earth. The answer is, “Ask it to stop.” He recruits 3 other grad students and they travel to a high-gravity planet to learn an alien language. (1/x)

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Michael Chorost @michaelchorost.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Why are all you people following me? I haven’t even posted anything yet.

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