iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ha ha that’s gross and should make everyone uncomfortable, anyway, Rahm presided over a Chicago police black site, lied about what it was and then I sued the Chicago police for its records that proved it:

theguardian.com

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people

Exclusive: Lawsuit exposes scale of detention at off-the-books interrogation warehouse while attorneys describe find-your-client chase ‘from a Bond movie’

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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 25/09/2026

QUESTION: What’s going on with Susan Collins and the bribery scandal? But explain it to me like I’m five. ANSWER: Here you go 👇🏽

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Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"the law has spoken on Palestine. The question is whether states will act.. the Maldives calls for concrete action. We call for a full arms embargo on Israel & a complete boycott on trade" The Maldives foreign minister at yesterdays Hague Group meeting on defending international law. Well said.

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

What is so frustrating about current media: DC media losing it over Dems & a Twitch streamer—running for no and holding no office—who has zilch name rec outside narrow online circles, while actual USG voices and senior leading Repubs—including those in office!— say the most vile racist stuff daily.

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“While the word intelligence is constantly deployed in these circles, the word stupid often seems applicable.” 👌

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

So this week we've learned: 1) The AI goons CONFESSED they were committing the biggest theft in history. 2) The data centers really are sucking up all the energy during an energy shock. 3) AI almost caused a World War.

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

if you don't think humanistic learning has value in its own right, no amount of instrumentalization is going to save it that epochal decline coincided with the hegemony of the "employable skills" pitch, including earnings data and all the trimmings, ought to have taught us that

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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Why does the BBC have as one of its lead news stories this morning another Britain-hating interview with Jim 'the UK has been colonised by immigrants' Ratcliffe? What public interest is this serving?

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Fixed that story about Sir Jim Ratcliffe on the BBC.

Picture of man smiling with tea-mug. Headline reads: "Non-Billionaire who actually lives in the UK and pays its taxes says he has lost confidence in the super-rich", with sub-header: 'One of Britain's taxpayers says he has lost confidence in billionaires, describing them as "on the take"".

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+972 Magazine @972mag.com · 18/09/2026

+972 condemns escalating threats against ‘NAZA’ directors A campaign of incitement by government ministers and far-right activists only proves how much Israel fears the truth — whoever is speaking it. www.972mag.com/naza-yuval-a...

972mag.com

+972 condemns escalating threats against ‘NAZA’ directors

A campaign of incitement by government ministers and far-right activists only proves how much Israel fears the truth — whoever is speaking it.

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

@jonathanfreedland.bsky.social is a decent man. But read his last 3 paras - “but/Macklemore,” “but/sanctions,” “but/no easy solutions” - to see the moral bankruptcy of trying to defend an imaginary, democratic Israel in the face of the criminal reality. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

This Israeli election could be the country’s last – this week I saw that for myself | Jonathan Freedland

Spend time on the ground and you see how high the stakes are for next month’s contest – for Israelis and Palestinians alike, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'd vote for the future where there's the option of a box that pops up when lazy nonsense appears and says "this looks like AI slop. Would you like me to find a piece written by a thoughtful human on this topic - something that's valued by other humans and is actually worth reading?"

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

However predictable such slanders are, they must never go unchallenged. The genocidal Israeli state is neither a synecdoche for nor coterminous with “the Jewish people.” I am proudly Jewish, I despise antisemitism, and I reject bloodstained Israeli apartheid. No contradiction.

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Very worth reading, even if he does quote William F Buckley.

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Alona Ferber @aloner.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The response in Israel to Naza is beyond unhinged. Mobs have shown up at the house of co-director Rachel Szor's family. All over social media the directors are being branded traitors and "not Jews". There is a frenzy of incitement to violence against them online www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

theguardian.com

Netanyahu seeks to strip citizenship from Israelis as threats to NAZA film directors intensify

Israeli prime minister to pursue new laws as directors of Guardian-produced film face threats from far-right officials and activists

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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 17/09/2026

i feel like a message that is missing in the midterms is that….republicans control everything? it feels like a basic thing we should really be saying over and over. this is all their choice. unhappy? look who is in the drivers seat.

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Lisa Guerrero @lisaguerrero.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Not only did I meet Robert Kraft, I worked for him. His kid Jonathan asked me to “remove the black music” from my gameday playlist in ‘94 & I refused so they fired me. I was the cheerleader director at the time. I sued them for wrongful termination and won. So yes, I know that motherfucker.

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The spiralling panic & anger around AI is moving extraordinarily fast. Just a week ago, the HuggingFace incident was being widely but for the most part not yet hysterically discussed. Coxon-Hubinger-Amodei have turbo-charged the issue to the point that it’s now nearly all-consuming. 1/x

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yeah, this wasn’t predictable at all

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Jim Swift @jimswift.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Impeach Them. All of Them. www.thebulwark.com/p/impeach-th...

thebulwark.com

Impeach Them. All of Them.

Hegseth is only the beginning.

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Trevor Austin @trevoraustin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

There’s a lot of truth to that, but you can substitute AI for “computer programs that write other programs” and kill us all for “kill a lot of people,” and wind up in the same place about the need for regulation.

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

UK politics seems incapable of responding to serious policy problems with anything except "look at me sticking it to the elite" gestures. And yes, I'm playing their game by posting on it.But the issue is a whole way of thinking about politics that solves none of our problems but fuels the far right

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Perhaps the UK government should take Piddington at its word. It could set up border posts around the village & arrest any residents who try to cross as illegal immigrants. There would be tariffs on goods, of course, and no access to the NHS or UK schools, police, fire, pensions or utilities.

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Sexy Plato's Cave @andrewblair.co.uk · 16/09/2026

The arts industry in the UK: we contribute so much money to the economy but we are dying, please help Lisa Nandy: Village Parish Council: we held a pretend referendum Lisa Nandy: I'm listening

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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Fair play to the wife of a Caribbean man and mother of mixed race children being informed by the BBC reporter that she’s in the minority in her community regarding immigration and responding with, “Yes, I’m surrounded by bigots.”

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I’d say these boneheaded (and utterly gratuitous) comments were beyond belief, but she’s long since shredded whatever meagre intellectual or political credibility she once claimed.

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Una Mullally @unamullally.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Irish musician Aaron Rowe has said he is withdrawing as a support act on Ed Sheeran’s tour.

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Tell us all about it Ed. Profile in courage.

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.

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Daniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:

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Jason Karsh @jkarsh.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

One of the things about Trump is that he never misses an unprompted opportunity to remind the world how stupid he is. Just the worst of America, swaddled in a mediocre intellect, swimming in his own pool of racism and corruption. And he may well kill us all.

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The UnPopulist @theunpopulist.net · 14/09/2026

A pardon does not have to be the last word on accountability. David French makes the case for impeachment and disqualification at LibCon2026. #LibCon2026

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BungalowBill @opinionsarelike.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Actually, not very hard to argue at all. (What knowledge?) The Economist has really guzzled the AI Kool-Aid recently.

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