iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 9h

This 33-year-old nurse told the FBI she knew she was “going to set him free” after border patrol agents brought in a man whose face was bloodied and seriously injured. She treated him and helped him escape, and she faces charges now. He got away, and they never relocated him.

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VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 3h

When undergraduates in Italy received either causal-reasoning training, ChatGPT, both, or neither, students with ChatGPT access scored better on the assignment but only those who received causal-reasoning training produced unique ideas. Chiara Fumagalli, Alfonso Gambardella cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Whether teaching a cognitive skill remains valuable in this era of AI is a crucial question in education and for firms. This column reports on an experiment in which around 1,000 undergraduates in Italy received either (1) causal-reasoning training, (2) access to ChatGPT, (3) both, or (4) neither. While students with ChatGPT scored better in an assignment to write a 180-word recommendation on a real-world problem, only those who had received causal-reasoning training produced unique ideas. The findings highlight the benefits of combining training in first-principles thinking with large language models.

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 11h

"Scholars of colour described overpreparing for presentations, ruthlessly analysing their own results before exposing them to scrutiny, softening their conclusions or avoiding research on race altogether." The level of checks I go through often astounds some colleagues

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

New from me: I unpack what happened at the Jack Smith hearing, and offer a theory of what the hell Senator Eric Schmitt thought he was doing. And yes, an inability to tell the difference between the Hawks and Hawkeyes really did seem to be a big part of it. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-happe...

donmoynihan.substack.com

What happened at the Jack Smith hearing?

A guide for the perplexed. And yes, it does say something about the state of the Republican Party

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 19h

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 17h

Administrative Burdens are political tools--and those in power, and those who already have enormous resources--control how they're deployed--or not!

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Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 22h

It’s, um…interesting that the documentation req’d by disadvantaged folks to access social safety net programs - in the interest of “accountability” to ensure no improper use - is not req’d by the very politicians who rail about the need to be responsible with taxpayer dollars.

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Breaking News: Just received a journal review where I was informed that I didn't have a grasp on the administrative burden literature.

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costrike @costrike.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Is this the before pic?

A kid jumping off a short cliff over a rough patch of dirt, with a pond seemingly out of reach in the background

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Kate Manne @katemanne.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I wrote for @thecut.com about the Cornell case and what it says that, at my institution and many others like it, protesters are often punished more harshly than sexual assailants www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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Josh Fruhlinger @jfruh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

they DIDN'T REFUND her fucking TUITION?????

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I spoke to @usatoday.com about data on sexual violence at Cornell. Victimization rates are increasing and reporting rates are falling. “Together… those two trendlines tell me that all students, including victims and perpetrators, believe that there is impunity for sexual assault at Cornell.”

usatoday.com

Cornell rarely expels students in sex assault cases | Exclusive

A third of undergraduate women say they've been sexually assaulted. But on average, Cornell reported expelling just one attacker per year.

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David @dburnette.com · 29/09/2026

Bring back 18F and the original USDS!

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

America.gov launched today--a DOGE initiative to use AI to deliver public services. Child lying facedown on a frozen lake as the image accompanying the question: "How can I invest in my child's future" is just incredible. Way to go AI

Image of a child lying facedown on a froze lake. above is the portal where you ask AI questions about government services. the question matching this image is: "How can I invest in my child's future?"

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Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

1. SCOOP Attorneys for JMSN, the singer whose song “Love Me” was featured without authorization in a taxpayer-funded ad that looked and sounded like a political campaign spot, have sent a cease-and-desist letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. My Story: bit.ly/4hRmFwu

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Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I was also pretty stunned by the wording of this NBER abstract 🫠. As @rcobooth.bsky.social lays out very nicely, there are many important questions to be explored here, but language, especially around reproductive choices, matters. substack.com/home/post/p-... #econsky #demography

substack.com

On prospective grandparents

(a tiresome thing from the internet this weekend, and some new stories)

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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Lotta talk right now about the President using public money to push political propaganda. It didn't start with these TV ads. Let me remind you of the political nonsense he forced the Census Bureau to publish: newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/how-to-fak...

newsletter.platypuseconomics.com

Who Put the Census Bureau in the Propaganda Business?

A once-trusted agency has dressed up partisan election claims as official statistics—and hidden the evidence needed to test them.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I'll save you the click-through: A lab at University of Copenhagen had been feeding draft manuscripts & data into "Claude Science" & then Anthropic announces a discovery that this lab made a year ago but hasn't published yet. It's plausible that Claude found the same signatures independently...

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Vought is breaking the law but he is not “going rogue.” At his confirmation hearings, Vought told Republicans he would do this and they voted for him anyway. If they want to stop him, they still can via impeachment. They won’t.

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Hope Harvey @hopeharvey.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Reminder that the Martin School is seeking applicants for an Assistant or Associate Professor position in Public and Nonprofit Management (broadly defined). Please consider applying or reach out if you'd like to hear more!

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The Economist @economist.com · 26/09/2026

Reliably Republican counties skew older, but they have significantly higher death rates even after adjusting for age, as our charts show

bit.ly

In MAGA-land people are dying faster than they are being born

Our analysis suggests Trump country is only growing because of migration

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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"In an aging, white Pennsylvania farmhouse at the end of a long gravel driveway, the Amish couple brought their 18-year-old daughter home to die. She had just been released from the intensive care unit...her brain swelling from the measles infection that had ravaged her body for weeks."

post-gazette.com

The tragic death of a Pennsylvania Amish woman stricken by measles

LEWISTOWN, Pa. — In an aging, white Pennsylvania farmhouse at the end of a long gravel driveway, the Amish couple brought their 18-year-old daughter...

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Send this to every university President in the country.

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Lex Roman @lexroman.com · 25/09/2026

Watch what you post because Threads just might pretend you're the guy who masturbated on the plane. What just happened to Peter Shankman is a warning for all of us using Meta products.

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Russ Vought just sent a rescissions request to Congress, signaling he intends to illegally impound funds. The $810 million highlighted in this “request” (but this is a pretext to just illegally impound the funds) is not the exhaustive list of many billions of dollars he’s impounding this year.

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Michan Connor @michanconnor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It would be nice if we could be confident they’d face more consequences than a student who protested the bombing of children in Gaza

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Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

In case you don't get it, today's Supreme Court ruling allowing states to use flawed SAVE data is infected by these fraud claims. Non-citizen voting (and registration) is exceedingly rare. However, the *perception* is that huge amounts must exist requiring extraordinary measures to combat it

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Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

UNC Sociology is hiring an OPEN-RANK position for a Population Health and Aging scholar! We are especially interested in more advanced and senior scholars. Full position details, qualifications, and application instructions are available at: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/325...

Position Summary: The Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites applications for an open rank (tenure-track) faculty position to begin July 1, 2027. We are seeking candidates with research and teaching interests in population health and aging. This is the first of an anticipated five related searches over the next four years in a new UNC-Chapel Hill initiative on biosocial health and aging. We seek applications from scholars who exhibit a record of strong and innovative research and excellence in teaching. Candidates are expected to hold a Ph.D. in Sociology or a related field by July 1, 2027.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Once again, the Supreme Court prioritizes imaginary harms done to Trump by not allowing him to indulge in his conspiracy theories, as opposed to the very real harm done to citizens who may lose the ability to vote in this case.

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Ari Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This means eligible voters will be wrongly labeled non-citizens due to faulty and unreliable data and be purged from the rolls

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I learn so much every time Jen talks about vouchers

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

the playdate ended because it was time for his nap

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yet another example of how AI can be useful *once you already have deep knowledge and experience in a field* whereas using it as a student actively prevents the acquisition of that knowledge. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | A.I. Has Made Me a Better Doctor. It’s Made Med Students Worse. (Gift Article)

I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — and less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts.

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Andromeda Yelton @thatandromeda.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Look I’m a faculty brat so I know public universities‘ relationship with the government can get fraught but even so this is REAL weird

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Most people have no idea how much international students are the lifeblood of higher education. But they’re about to learn. Sigh.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 24/09/2026

MURRAY: The Trump admin falsely labeled birth control as abortion. Do you agree that an IUD is an abortifacient? OVERTON: If confirmed, I'll be fully briefed M: That's not an answer. The prospect of an FDA commissioner who doesn't know that birth control isn't an abortion is deeply alarming O: 😊

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There are folks already worried about how existing tech--not needing to remember phone numbers, directions, spatial map layouts--may increase risk for faster cognitive decline as we age.

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Soraya Nadia McDonald @soraya.press · 24/09/2026

Ken Griffin: gives enough money to put his name on a Lincoln Center building as a flex, but throws a shitfit about paying a pied-a-tierre tax on his penthouse which is a *second home* The mayor:

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Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

1/ New in @pnasnexus.org: Demography strikes again! The mortality penalty associated w/ smoking has seemingly grown over time. Speculation centered on biological reasons, like more intensive smoking, or more negative selection of smokers on other characteristics. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

academic.oup.com

Why the mortality penalty of smoking is rising over time

Abstract. The adverse association between smoking and mortality is well known, yet estimated risks for smokers have risen markedly in recent decades. Expla

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NPR @npr.org · 24/09/2026

Education staff are being scattered across several other federal agencies. Despite the Trump administration's claims, employees say it's adding bureaucracy and making it harder to serve students. n.pr/3TS9SAR

n.pr

The Education Dept. hasn't been dismantled. It's become more inefficient, staff say

Education staff are being scattered across several other federal agencies. Despite the Trump administration's claims, employees say it's adding bureaucracy and making it harder to serve students.

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Tim O’Brien @timobrien.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A federal judge said that Trump’s order barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House was likely unconstitutional and ordered the administration to restore access to the three news outlets. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/b...

nytimes.com

Court Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico

Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately restore the press credentials for the employees of the three news outlets.

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Was on a meeting today with someone closely tracking states’ implementation of Medicaid work requirements and I don’t think people realize what is about to hit us. It will make the SNAP chaos look like almost nothing in comparison.

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