iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 09/04/2026

‘It is increasingly hard to deny the reality that America, like Sparta, expects not friendship but fealty. There need be no consultation prior to military action, or even the show of it.’ Thomas Poole on alliances, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...

lrb.co.uk

Thomas Poole | In a League of Their Own

The alliance is a very old political technology. The late Bronze Age, with its dense networks of trade and cultural...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 29/03/2026

‘In overall effect, 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 is reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica. But what crime is being committed here, what battle being fought out? A more ambiguous drama is unfolding.’ Tony Wood on Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, at MoMA. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Tony Wood · At MoMA: Wifredo Lam Reconsidered

Lam referred to a ‘desire to include in my painting all the transculturation that had occurred in Cuba’ – using a...

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 10/02/2026

‘Beauvoir described Cold War America as a coercively cheerful country that refused to confront the reality of death, that expressed its horror of the body in advertisements for deodorant and laxatives.’ @adamshatz.bsky.social’s Winter Lecture, ‘Another Country’. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Adam Shatz · Another Country: Visions of America

Is America a dream or a nightmare, a democratic paradise or a bastion of white supremacy and religious intolerance? Is...

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

The kidnapping of Maduro inaugurates a highly dangerous era of U.S. empire that for perhaps the first time in an era of mass media is not pretending to be anything other than a violent, extractive enterprise of domination.

forever-wars.com

A Criminal Empire

The United States launches a conquest and occupation of Venezuela to extract its oil wealth. The neocon dream is the America First dream

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Giovanni Tiso @gtiso.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I'm pre-emptively cringing about the cowardly statement Luxon and Peters are going to release today.

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PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

What a massive disappointment, so many embellishments by Sacks, even the man who mistook his wife for a hat... 😞

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

“Ultimately, the collective strategy of AI companies threatens to deskill precisely those people who are essential for society to function(…) automation of knowledge and culture by private companies is a worrying prospect – conjuring dystopian and outright fascistic scenarios.” — @olivia.science

project-syndicate.org

AI Is Hollowing Out Higher Education

Olivia Guest & Iris van Rooij urge teachers and scholars to reject tools that commodify learning, deskill students, and promote illiteracy.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 25/08/2025

Newsletter: My 16,000 word opus - How To Argue With An AI Booster, a comprehensive guide to arguing with AI boosters, addressing both their bad faith debate style and their specific (and flimsy) arguments as to why generative AI is the future. www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...

wheresyoured.at

How To Argue With An AI Booster

Editor's Note: For those of you reading via email, I recommend opening this in a browser so you can use the Table of Contents. This is my longest newsletter - a 16,000-word-long opus - and if you like...

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Marie Phillips @mariephillips.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

The Observer takes on the collapse of Unbound - some truly shocking allegations, almost all of which I have seen compelling evidence of as a member of the Unbound author WhatsApp group and through my own experience of being published by them observer.co.uk/news/busines...

observer.co.uk

Death of a publishing dream: how the Unbound revolution b...

The literary disrupters enjoyed great success with their crowdfunding model, signing authors that other publishers overlooked. And then the money ran out…

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Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Increasingly convinced the main damage cell phones have done to creativity isn't decreased attention spans or what not but the elimination of productive boredom. Inspiration comes from the mind filling the void inside. Hard to make art when you're constantly silencing the silence with "content."

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Sarah Lazare @sarahlazare.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

During these critical moments following the US bombing of Iran, key lawmakers and pundits are circulating a lie on par with Iraq WMD falsehoods: that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. US intel consensus is they do not. Does it matter? By me and @ahjohnson.bsky.social

columnblog.com

Lawmakers and Pundits Speed Run Iraq WMDs-Level Lies About Iran

The US intelligence consensus is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Why does our media and political class keep implying—and explicitly saying—otherwise?

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

"Pictures are famous for their humanness, not for their pictureness." Kurt Vonnegut discussion of art in his 1997 novel Timequake offers one explanation why people might find AI creations unsatisfying.

I went on: "People capable of liking some paintings or prints or whatever can rarely do so without knowing something about the artist.

Again, the situation is social rather than scientific. Any work of art is half of a conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to
know who is talking at you. Does he or she have a reputation for seriousness, for religiosity, for suffering, for concupiscence, for rebellion, for sincerity, for jokes?

"There are virtually no respected paintings made by persons about whom we know zilch. We can even surmise quite a bit about the lives of whoever did the paintings in the caverns underneath Lascaux, France.

"I dare to suggest that no picture can attract serious attention without a particular sort of human being attached to it in the viewer's mind.
If you are unwilling to claim credit for your pictures, and to say why you hoped others might find them worth examining, there goes the ball game.

"Pictures are famous for their humanness, and not for their pictureness."

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Osman Faruqi @osmanfaruqi.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

21 people killed “amid gunfire”. Takes you two paragraphs before you find out who did the shooting. These outlets are making themselves a joke.

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 18/05/2025

‘Whitman’s nature notes reveal a sometimes doleful cast of mind below the delightful notations of the present: of birdsong, trees, the frolics of two kingfishers, the specifics of the evening sky.’ Maureen N. McLane on Walt Whitman: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Maureen N. McLane · Brag and Humblebrag: Walt Whitman’s Encounters

A champion self-advertiser, maven of the brag and the humblebrag, Whitman announces in the first pages of Specimen Days...

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Felipe De Brigard @felipedebrigard.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

My book “Memory and Remembering” in the Elements series from CUP is out today! PDF free to download for the next month.

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David Hood @thoughtfulnz.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

The jump in the covid reinfection rate within 30-90 of previous infection in NZ that peaked in the first week of October, is a pretty good match to the growth in the newish to NZ HK.3 variant in the same week in poops.nz The fall in the reinfection rate since then suggests HK.3 growth will slow.

Reinfection in high reporting 70+ ages within 30-90 days. Most recent peak in first week of October.

Covid variants in wastewater from poops.nz

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