iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Tax policy should be like “if you make enough money to lay on a fancy Getty rug for Harper’s Bazar and look this ridiculous then you owe 99%.“

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This one is fire! Come one, come all!

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We know how to deal with the idiocy of AI evangelicals because we've dealt with them all along. "Because even comprehension, the person was imitating. The comprehension that had never been made of anything but someone else's language and of words." Clarice Lispector, The Apple in the Dark, 1961

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This one is a special one. Slow, real world research is quite possibly why, at the end of the day, I'm a writer.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

As the French say, you have the right to be bored.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

When you remove all normal friction from your life, which is the biggest selling point of AI, your life and brain atrophies. Even a grocery store with the kids is a messy, friction filled joy. Not giving over an ounce of my life to a chatbot.

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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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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

It’s high time we all stop using Google Search.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The trillion dollar Mad Libs machine wants you to sacrifice your first born.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Capitalism cannot function without the theft of labor.

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Abighoul @morwen.net · 09/09/2026

also Wikipedia didn't just happen and people adapted. it was sloppy in the 2001-2002 period and then a group of editors (including people who had been there right from day one also including myself) worked out principles for making the project work with a lot of hard graft over the next few years.

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Jimmy Two Heads 💀🎃 @jimmytwohands.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I know exactly why, poindexter. It’s because it looks cool as fuck

This 11,000-Year-Old Statue from Turkey Shows a Man Riding a Leopard.
Archaeologists Aren't Sure
Why
The strange sculpture reverses a recurring Stone Age motif of humans confronting dangerous predators.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

There are many ways authoritarian governments can fall or change. I promise you, liberal centrism is not one of them.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

There is really no such thing as an AI friend or parent. These bots ”console and ruminate“ with you because they are a product designed to keep you using. A drug like any algorithm. Without thought. As a parent, I find this especially dehumanizing and anti human.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Finnish nature photographer Lassi Rautiainen followed a female grey wolf (Canis lupus) & a male brown bear (Ursos arctos) for 10 days. They played together, shared meals, napped together. Both were young adults. They appeared to be... friends? (📷: Lassi Rautiainen, www.wildfinland.org)

A brown bear and a grey wolf on a green grassy plain, both looking in the same direction, with strange wispy trees out of focus and concealed in fog in the distance. The suggestion is of a land of magic where bears and wolves are friends.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I just assumed the political and business “leaders” who emerge out of Harvard were already clones.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Yep! Capital always flows toward the fascists and capitalists.

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Mikki Kendall @karnythia.blacksky.app · 22/08/2026

I really wish we talked more about how many execs are functionally sociopaths. They know other people exist and they don't care

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

That feels like the correct way to read it. It’s extraordinary.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Google is teaching you to be illiterate and boring.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I do love NYC, but also happy to note that comments like that in Chicago will still get you laughed at. :)

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Reading AI produced text for research is a form of illiteracy. It flattens syntax, prose, research insights, the idiosyncratic nature of human voice and reasoning. You will miss out on accidental discovery in your own research. You will start mimicking its logic and language to the same effect.

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StoryStudio Chicago @storystudiochicago.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Have you ever wanted your own personal writing mentor? This program is for you! Our next Intensive Coaching Cohort begins August 20, with writer @michaelzapata.bsky.social. This is a six-month online program designed to help you kick your project into high gear. Register now: buff.ly/5jmuPOH

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I need this! Felicidades to all involved! :)

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

The Internet kind of sucks. This will be one of its junky legacies after it’s gone.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

ChatGPT is a tool specifically created to make you illiterate and illegible.

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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 18/07/2026

Happening now in Chicago: community members and activists are in the La Villita/Little Village neighborhood to demonstrate against continued ICE violence in across the country. In just the last two weeks, ICE agents have killed 2 men. A 3rd died running from agents, and a 4th died in ICE custody.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Antifascism looks like Pedro Pascal. It looks like Alex Pretti and AOC. It looks like 600 priests, imams, and rabbis in the cold streets of winter Minneapolis. Antifascism is gorgeous.

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some kind of Ys guy @meldric.cc · 17/07/2026

do not use ChatGPT as a search engine. it is not a search engine.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Its‘s actually a resume requirement to be that corrupt.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The Nazis lost. They are losers. Their ideology, though, still lives on in the minds of losers.

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StoryStudio Chicago @storystudiochicago.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Our next 6-month Intensive Coaching Cohort with @michaelzapata.bsky.social starts in August! This online program is for writers looking for a personal writing mentor and a small group of like-minded writers. More information and to join now is available here: buff.ly/sH2aE01 #writingcommunity

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

No hell too hot. www.sunjournal.com/2026/07/13/i...

The little girl was still in Bluey pajamas.

No older than 3, she was trying to smell the flowers.

At her side, a pink rolling bag.

Her father, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, had just been fatally shot and yanked from a car he’d been driving. Now, he lay handcuffed in the street, where he would remain for five hours.

“You took her dad, you took her dad!” a woman nearby yelled, according to Cecelia Humiston, 22, who witnessed the interaction in Biddeford on Monday morning.

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

At its core LLMs are a type of zombie technology. Its rampant spread is a sure sign the Internet has died.

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Vic Thorstenson @vthorstenson.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Man, nobody could build a shithouse like the WPA.

Large limestone lavatory building built by Works Progress Administration workers in 1938. Located at Minneopa State Park near Mankato, MN.

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

67% error rate

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I’ll never really understand why teens use social media, even with all the nefarious marketing and math. They see their parents and grandparents on it. It’s the epitome of not cool. What is youth without making fun of your elders?

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Read Don Quixote and Clarice Lispector. Drink a café con leche at 1AM and write a prose poem about sentient spiders, nuclear fallout. Stare at a spider. Ask it about sentience. Send an email to your favorite living writer. This is key- NEVER USE AI. You will be kings and queens of the job market.

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David Bowles @davidbowles.us · 04/07/2026

I'm working on more stories in my "Toltec Wuxia" cycle. Both Western & Eastern sword & sorcery tropes fit nicely in the chaotic period after Quetzalcoatl's incarnation was forced off the imperial throne by dark mages and went into exile. The 1st, "Whispering Shards," was in a recent anthology. 1/

flametreepublishing.com

Latin American Shared Stories - Flame Tree Publishing

This vibrant anthology presents a curated selection of speculative stories and fascinating essays highlighting the many voices, mythologies, folklore,

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Michael Zapata @michaelzapata.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

250 years and we still don’t have siestas. It’s true. We are a failed state after all.

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