iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 8h

Things went downhill when men started shaving their heads instead of just owning male pattern baldness

Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 10h

The starting point for any discussion of declining public trust in higher education in the US has to be that since the McCarthy Era, the center-right has systematically misled the public about the purpose and practices of higher education as well as underfunded it.

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 10h

Le Wackisme

Wired app push notification

New Frontier
3m ago
A French company claims its newest Al model, ‘Le Chonk,’ can compete with the
US and China

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 15h

White supremacist cops take a minority citizen, drive him out to the woods as a threat, and leave him there. No, it's not Mississippi in the 1930s, why do you ask?

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 13h

👇👇

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elias isquith @eliasisquith.blog · 12h

Trump: the bad guys can bomb san diego. that would be funny to me. NYT: it remains absolutely impossible to determine what the president meant by these remarks. but someone close to mamdani once said intifada, which strongly suggests mamdani shares all of arafat’s views.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Went someplace overnight for a wedding. This is what we came home to:

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 02/10/2026

much respect to the work 404 does, but plenty of real people with real problems are using AI as a force multiplier in their jobs already. like try telling boko haram members to their face that chatGPT doesn't save them hours every week planning attacks, designing IEDs, and repairing weapons

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

lowtax speedrun enjoyer @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

the entire postwar global order was built because whiteness very much does *not* mean “high trust” and “social cohesion”

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

i remember when our government wasn’t being stripped by kleptocrats. It was nice.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Agreed. The NFL—like so much of contemporary America—is a cult of masculinity that seeks out and rewards the absolute worst men.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Maybe next time don‘t beat the cowboys 35-31 in Super Bowl Whatever and make certain eight-year-olds cry

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Very good thread here. Frat rapists act like boys playing a game. Women aren’t people attending a party; they are seen as consenting to be the object of the game. And the rules of competition for males in the business class are: if you lose, tough. “She shouldn’t have played/lost/complained.”

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ps give Jon Schwarz’ and my fondest regards to Rick. 😘

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It often feels like our ruling class read too much of a certain type of SF and can’t imagine any other kind of future. “No no you fools! Life as Neo-serfs on a barren hell-planet ruled by decadent hereditary pedophiles enabled by a corrupt priestly class is what we were supposed to AVOID.”

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The sheer existence of the phrase "officials suspended the execution and had her taken to a hospital" is grotesque www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/u...

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

So, we are putting the equivalent of Flock cameras on Postal Trucks to create “valuable data”? Valuable to whom? Will it be sold?

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We are reaching the “private army” phase of tech-warlordism

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CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Good job, California. 15 states to go. No child should marry. A child who marries isn’t emancipated, her (and it’s usually a girl) new spouse becomes her guardian. If he abuses her, she cannot go to a domestic violence shelter. She cannot initiate a divorce. She can’t have her own money.

sfchronicle.com

California bans child marriage, even with parental permission

Supporters hail ban on child marriage and companion bill to address forced marriages as “most comprehensive framework” in the U.S.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Really thought-provoking and, if I might say so, makes me miss the Cold War

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/09/2026

I for one think it’s bad that the president can just say crazy stuff all day every day and 99% of it doesn’t make the news because we’ve normalized having an insane president

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

jackheathwriter 📚 @jackheathwriter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

As a non-American, frat houses always struck me as ghoulish—and the knowledge that almost all US legislators and business leaders emerged from them is *dystopian*

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

RE: Cornell, thinking of what I went through to see friends at Smith ca. 1988: At door: "Who are you here to see?" Cooling heels in common room: "I'll take you up to x floor." On x floor: Name & ID written down Friend comes to get me. This made me HAPPY, because I worried about my friends less.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

FOUR NEW SONGS from the "Songs in the Key of Life" sessions! boingboing.net/2026/09/28/s... What's "Songs in the Key of Life"? Something you should fucking MEMORIZE before listening to whatever dumbass shit the 23-year-olds who rule the internet are talking about.

boingboing.net

Stevie Wonder finally releases four unheard songs from Songs in the Key of Life

Stevie Wonder released four unheard songs from his Songs in the Key of Life sessions to mark the album's 50th

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It is extremely encouraging to know the Youngs understand Bookshop Girl is an erotic icon. Some things *are* eternal.

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hard to imagine what that would be like

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think Hurts is concussed. He’s played worse since that big hit.

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

Winter @mswinterrrr.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Who your Governor is, who holds your State legislature, city council, county level positions really do matter. They are the ones who can check the federal Government. Your local elections matter just as much as federal elections. In fact, my local Government helped me more than federal.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

...and at that point, conservatives looked at the antiwar movement, and the various liberation movements, all closely connected with students, and thought: "We need Americans to be as uneducated as possible."

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Pope reminds me of a version of Catholicism I knew growing up as a young man attending anti-war and anti-death penalty protests, where I met elderly Catholics who shared their version of faith with me. I learned that Catholicism was about love and mercy for the weak, the condemned, and the poor.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The more troubling conclusion is that toxicity is what some alums LIKE about their old frat. That's the easiest explanation for some of these organizations. In that case, you just gotta blow it up; Ivies have lawyers for a reason. A new group will emerge, but at least it won't be rich & connected.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

IMHO frats (or something like them) are probably inevitable. Changing the internal culture of the toxic ones is the only thing that really could reduce this type of horror, and the change has to come from the inside. If the frat is still rotten -- at least you will have tried.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

These scandals needn't keep happening. Getting blackout drunk and raping women is not normal behavior; frats aren't inherently factories of sexual abuse. The frat guys I knew were more malleable than most. Brett Kavanaugh would be a better person today if Yale's chapter of DKE was a better org.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

IIRC the man who created "Animal House" told me that prior to the GI Bill, American frats were not particularly hard-partying. It was the generation of ex-soldiers -- men who'd f*cked and drank their way through tons of trauma -- that made certain frats into centers of debauchery.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Then, when an external authority comes in to clean up a collegiate organization, the natural instinct is to become embattled, call in alums, close ranks, ride it out. And that behavior becomes a badge of honor. "THEY tried to shut us down, but WE..." I've seen it at DKE at Yale for decades.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"...by minors is strictly prohibited," while knowing that every weekend, 25% of the kids he's looking at will be blind drunk AND high AND having sex (maybe porn-y risky sex). Legally, Dean Friendly can't know; he needs to pretend. So everybody pretends, and most years, it's OK...ish.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Today, for the amount of money parents pay, they EXPECT the Univ to look out for their kids. The school is not some faceless authority who will kick you out if you make a dirty joke in the school paper. It is good ol' Dean Friendly, who gives you a pamphlet saying, "Consumption of alcohol..."

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

For the last 60 years, Ivies eschewed this kind of guidance, considering it old fashioned. Simultaneously, they've moved to control more and more of the student experience. Today, at a school like this, you're constantly flattered that you're an adult, but protected like you're a child. Confusing!

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I always felt the stakes were too high. You had to try. All of those young men -- not to mention their victim and Cornell -- would be thanking God right now if a hardass alumni board had prevented this horror. Before 1960, any student org at a place like Cornell had a strict code of conduct.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I believe that alums have a responsibility to monitor the culture of their beloved institutions, and "correct it" when necessary. Many of my fellow alums disagreed with me. Many felt this was overstepping, or impossible, or had a sentimental attachment to the group as "by and for students."

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I resurrected Yale's ancient college humor magazine, and was Mr. Alumnus for 35 years. What happened at Cornell was criminal activity by those young men, but it also had to rhyme with the culture of that frat. Which, to some degree, was determined over decades by alums.

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Art Of Coop @artofcoop.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

maybe I haven't heard that song because I have better taste than you do

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I wonder what it would be like if laws were actually applied to Trump? I guess we'll never know.

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Michael Gerber, bon vivant @michaelgerber.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My traumatized brain thought of this immediately: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_...

en.wikipedia.org

Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 - Wikipedia

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Reposted by Michael Gerber, bon vivant

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The New York Times has now run two prominently placed stories about Zohran Mamdani's comms department coordinating with unpaid influencers as if it is a huge scandal. Will they cover Trump using our tax dollars to buy literal campaign ads as if it is equivalent scandalous? If not why not?

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