iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I had the most engaging conversation with Gene Demby host of @nprcodeswitch Switch today about our kids, our hopes for their education, and the complicated landscape we are navigating right now. riverside.com/shared/snaps...

riverside.com

Riverside recording snapshot

Create your own studio-quality content.

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Marnie Kaplan @marniekaplan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yes! I understand much of the history and why things are the way they are. Small districts, no political will to consolidate. But what’s frustrating is our district could be a model of what is possible. But the implementation has been so messy, & the local politics so contentious & so…

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I think there is a generational educational access tsunami brewing re: Black and poor people that is as significant as the assaults and dismantling of Black educational access following Reconstruction and/or Brown v. Board. During the same little bit of time, the Justice Dept closed deseg cases,

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Just when I decided the whole Nor’easter thing was an overhype here in PVD, the skies have opened and the wind is gusting.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is worth the listen. It was taped before the recent article. The takeaway for me is that individual effort, no matter how sincere, well argued, furious in its assault, will rarely change the system before the system changes you and those you love. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

podcasts.apple.com

An Argument

Podcast Episode · This American Life · September 26 · 1h 2m

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Jen @cassiciacum.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

It’s terrible. It’s also not a great time for humanities PhD students. I’m really worried about ours at UT. Our entire grad school got reorged. It used to be standalone with a dean. Now it reports to a senior Vice provost, is effectively under the Provost’s authority.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

www.linkedin.com/pulse/anothe... The woman who buys human hair is not the enemy of the woman who sold it. The two are connected by an industry that needs both of them and fully protects neither. One woman's body is in the marketplace so another can move through her own world with less friction.

linkedin.com

Another Woman’s Hair

After writing about Christina Jenkins, Naomi Sims as the Black women who helped invent the modern synthetic hair market, I found myself thinking synthetic hair was never only fake hair. At its best, i...

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

How did synthetic hair become such a central part of Black beauty culture? Who built the industry? If you were to start digging into this question, you would keep returning to two names: Christina Jenkins and Naomi Sims. www.linkedin.com/pulse/black-...

linkedin.com

The Black Women Who Invented the Synthetic Hair Industry

I have been writing about Black women and beauty for 30 yearsl. Over that time I have researched beauty shops, beauty schools, hair politics, respectability, integration, entrepreneurship, and the com...

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

For generations, Black Americans have lived with the consequences of a society that treats appearance as a proxy for character. Sometimes the target was a zoot suit. Sometimes it was a hoodie. Sometimes it was dreadlocks, braids, cornrows, or natural hair. www.linkedin.com/pulse/fashio...

linkedin.com

When Fashion is the Crime

Last fall, I taught a course on the cultural history of cannabis legalization. As I researched the class, I found myself unexpectedly immersed in the history of fashion.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Before discrimination appears in policy, it appears in habits. Before inequality is enforced by institutions, it is practiced through everyday rituals that teach people what feels normal and what does not. Hair has long been one of those rituals. www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-b...

linkedin.com

What Black Hair Reveals About Politics

Years ago, I taught a course called Negro to Black: The Aesthetics of Racial Integration. The title often confused students.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

For generations, Black women have had to fight human beauty standards that treated our hair, skin, noses, lips, bodies, age, and features as problems to solve. Now those standards are being encoded into machines.. www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-a...

linkedin.com

When AI Decides What Black Beauty Is

A few years ago, National Geographic ran a piece on the science of beauty that returned to an old and unsettling claim. The beautiful face, researchers argued, is often a symmetrical face.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Every year around Juneteenth, I think about how Black communities survived in the years after emancipation. Freedom and survival are not the same thing. Emancipation ended slavery, but it did not provide safety. www.linkedin.com/pulse/beauty...

linkedin.com

Beauty, Juneteenth and the Black Women Who Built the Infrastructure of Survival

Every Juneteenth, some Americans celebrate freedom. This year, as stories about voting rights, democratic backsliding, attacks on higher education, and the erosion of civil rights protections fill the...

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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 06/06/2026

Residents of Monterey Park, California, decisively approved the nation’s first permanent ban on data centers in Tuesday’s election, with more than 86 percent of voters supporting the prohibition, according to data.

washingtonpost.com

Voters back first-in-nation permanent data center ban in city near L.A.

The ban on computer warehouses in Monterey Park won overwhelming approval as the tech industry struggles against pushback across the country.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

In 1933 Adolf Hitler shook down German industrialists for millions of Reichsmark to establish what he called the Adolf-Hitler-Spende der deutschen Wirtschaft—a slush fund he used to pay off Nazis whose violence got them into legal trouble. In 2026, Donald Trump is quietly doing the same thing.

nytimes.com

Obscure Group With Trump Ties Plans to Route Funds to His Allies for Legal Fights

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Women spend much of our lives receiving messages about aging. We are encouraged to fight it, conceal it, slow it down, and disguise its visible signs. Entire industries depend on our willingness to believe that aging is a problem requiring intervention.

linkedin.com

The Hardest Transition. Going Gray.

The hardest part of going gray was learning that other people saw me differently.That surprised me.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Black hair has always functioned as a cultural text, encoding economic aspiration and spiritual practice, generational memory and political positioning. It moves through entertainment and into the market and back into the community, carrying meaning at every stop. www.linkedin.com/pulse/hair-c...

linkedin.com

Hair is a Cultural Text: Just Ask Jay-Z

This past weekend, Jay-Z walked out onto the Belmont Plateau stage at the Roots Picnic in Philadelphia and the internet lost its mind. Not just over the freestyle he dropped or the apparent shots at D...

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Starved of cash, the U.N. has made historically large spending cuts and embarked on an efficiency drive. It has closed offices and eliminated a record 3,000 secretariat posts. It has powered down escalators and ignored loose cladding on its 75-year-old headquarters in NY. www.wsj.com/world/the-u-...

wsj.com

The U.N. Is Going Broke as the U.S. and China Withhold Billions

The Trump administration has failed to pay billions of dollars owed to the international body, while Beijing has been accused of gaming the budget.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Hurston saw adornment as artistry. Modern America often interprets the same impulse as failed discipline. That distinction matters because the policing of Black style has never been merely aesthetic. It is also about regulating who gets to occupy public space comfortably and under what conditions.

linkedin.com

Zora Neale Hurston understood something about Black style that America still struggles to accept

In her 1934 essay “The Will to Adorn,” Zora Neale Hurston argued that adornment was not superficial decoration, but a deeply human impulse toward beauty, invention, display, and self-making. She descr...

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L'Histoire de Manon @manonatelier.blacksky.app · 29/05/2026

"The photographs from Osaka's dinner offered a glimpse of belonging. What they did not offer was a ranking system. The difference matters. One creates community. The other creates a world in which people are valued according to how closely they resemble an ideal."

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Fonseca came to play against Djokovic today. Fifth set upcoming. He is 19. His legs and nerves seem to be steady!!

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Djokovic, Fonseca has turned into a great match.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Academia is organized around ways of knowing. Popular and mass culture, and shaping cultural appetites are not so much engaged except in “studies” fields. Scholars in there understand exactly why this matters in a four alarm fire, this is not a drill, speak or forever hold your peace, kind of way.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

“The National Design Studio was created by executive order in August 2025. Its job, officially, is to redesign how Americans experience their government. Its leader is Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb, which is to say he is a man who looked at the American home and saw an untapped revenue stream.”

thedreydossier.substack.com

I found a second vote.gov — and it's registered to the White House

There is a moment in every investigation where the thing you have been looking for finds you instead.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

When most people think about fascism, they think about governments, leaders, and state violence. They think about censorship and repression. Those elements matter, but they are not where authoritarian projects begin. They begin with stories about belonging.

linkedin.com

The Fashion of Fascism

At this year's French Open, Naomi Osaka's outfits have generated almost as much discussion as her tennis. Sportswriters have described them in detail.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

linkedin.com

The Fashion of Fascism

At this year's French Open, Naomi Osaka's outfits have generated almost as much discussion as her tennis. Sportswriters have described them in detail.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Dear cash-strapped universities, please see below and budget accordingly: “corporate leaders are scrambling to bring down expenses by finding ways to ration AI use in their organizations, steer workers toward cheaper, homegrown tools and help them hone their skills to improve returns. “

wsj.com

Corporate America Is Starting to Ration AI as Cost Skyrockets

Executives are scrambling to track returns on AI investments as the bill for massive computing needs comes due.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Beginning in 1958, Eunice Johnson built a traveling couture spectacle featuring Black models, audiences, and designers moving through 200 cities across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Black were worthy of glamour. www.linkedin.com/posts/noliwe...

linkedin.com

Eunice Johnson, Fashion Fair and the Fabric of Black Beauty Culture | Noliwe Rooks

Eunice Johnson Built a World So Rhianna and Beyonce Didn't Have To

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I’m honestly not sure these young people are listening to the NAACP about where they should go to school. Or is the organization more impactful for them than I understand?

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

This part of summer is so good for watching sports. Tennis and basketball are very good right now.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

My Bethune book is out in paperback. I am so very proud of it!

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

My Bethune book is out in paperback. I am so very proud of it!

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I mean the whole thing is a destructive scam that’s fun to play with and streamlines tasks. It’s hardly the holy grail!

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Talarico: I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment. And if all they have on me is lying about me being a vegan, I feel pretty good about our chances this November.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Folks steady regret it when they fail to understand what mass and popular culture tells us about politics.

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NBC News @nbcnews.com · 26/05/2026

A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge.

nbcnews.to

Fake academic journals are publishing AI-generated papers under real professors’ names

Online academic journals falsely attributed articles, likely written by AI, to several professors, who say the fiasco is a warning about the future of scientific knowledge.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Just tone deaf and why in the midst of the decline of democracy so many are still uninspired by corporate Dems.

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Well...at least I'm not important enough for scammers to do this?

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Watching the new PBS documentary W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause, I kept thinking not only about Du Bois’s politics but about Black fashion at the turn of the twentieth century. Black freedom struggles were never only legislative. They were also aesthetic. www.linkedin.com/pulse/du-boi...

linkedin.com

Du Bois, Black Fashion and Black Freedom

Watching the new PBS documentary W.E.

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Brent S. Sirota @brentsirota.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

And now they are all gone. RIP Sonny Rollins.

A Great Day in Harlem, 1958 photograph by Art Kane

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

“This era demands a new framework for Black politics—fresh strategies, tactics, leaders, and goals. We need a “Double Front” approach. And we should be clear-eyed: Even before Callais, the existing models of Black politics were growing stale. The” newrepublic.com/article/2106... via @newrepublic.com

newrepublic.com

The Voting Rights Act Is Dead. Here’s a New Model for Black Politics.

After Callais, the old civil rights politics is moot. And more recent strategies have limited reach. Here’s how we can build something more transformative.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

I honestly don’t remember a time when so many people tried to shoot at the White House in such a short period of time.

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Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 15/04/2026

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Omg! Huge shoutout to San Francisco, CA! Ocean Beach, you crushed it! 🌊

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ACLU @aclu.org · 18/02/2026

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

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Noliwe Rooks @nrooks.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Since when have they not??? Clinton and Obama were big fans. Democrats, It’s Time to Embrace School Choice www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Democrats, It’s Time to Embrace School Choice

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