iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Her tragedy, like that of so many others, is captured by this aphorism in Bertolt Brecht's 𝘔𝘦-𝘵𝘪:

Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Maricarmen, the 87-year-old who was violently evicted from her apartment so that it could be converted into a more profitable investment property, and whose plight sparked massive housing protests in Spain, died yesterday. Not in the place she called home for 71 years, but homeless, in a hospital.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Academic freedom in the U.S. has arguably reached a new nadir—maybe worse than the 50s. This is not only due to the scale and range of the assault on higher ed, which is targeting everything (individuals' views on Gaza, DEI initiatives, the curriculum, collaborative research with other countries)...

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Spain twitter game at a whole other level.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Which is why you get absurd proposals (like my own), where you're trying to pitch a bunch of unnecessary/unrealistic deliverables for a year-long fellowship offering 40k. I'd be thrilled if I just got half of that for a course buyout and some money to spend a couple of months in the archives.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

As universities become obsolete institutions by embracing their transformation into meaningless credential factories disguised (at best) as utilitarian jobs training, it is worth rescuing an observation made by the supreme utilitarian, John Stuart Mill (who also happened to be rector of St Andrews):

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Teaching MBA students sure produces some weird ass artifacts

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Kind of hilarious that as Americans face an epidemic of uncontrollable explosive shits due to the Trump administration slashing health standards, that same administration still manages to surge the price of toilet paper.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

First reaction upon seeing this UChicago guy who has written 200 papers so far in 2026: "I bet he's at Booth."* *(Of course he's at Booth).

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This assumes that between now and 2035 the economy would grow at a rate of about 8% per annum, which is, to put it mildly, batshit insane. No one should be listening to anything regarding the economic transformation coming from the mouths of the cultists working in AI labs.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Might the end of Yglesias et. al style punditry be the one good thing to come from LLMs and the ensuing enshittified interwebz?

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It's the year of our lord 2026 and somehow some economists are still speaking in these terms. Dude is trying to sell his AI "peer review" (sic) tool, which makes it all the more embarrassing...

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The whole TAH kerfuffle is exhausting. He's right about some stuff, but writing as if it were 2018. He's also keen on disingenuous explanations for his modus operandi. An occasional aside about higher ed's neoliberal political economy is not the same as endless articles about DEI's failures.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Updated syllabus of Modern Cities and Capitalism completed! As part of my moves to foster a "luddite classroom," I'm requiring students to purchase a very cheap physical course reader, which also includes curated reading questions to help them make sense of the material. Below, the general gist:

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I figured some folks might be interested in seeing this, as Europe deals with record-breaking heats year after year. In 1873, Camille Flammarion published an atmospheric science book geared toward a general audience. In it, he included a table indicating average temperatures in Paris since 1800.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

According to Gallup 37% of Americans are creationist purists who believe God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years, so I guess we need to start making some changes to the composition of biology departments!

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Whenever I'm feeling down I open up have a folder on my computer that has absurd screenshots that make me LOL. Consistently, the ones that make me laugh the most are screenshots of inanities uttered at Davos by dunces and rogues who are taken as oracles. Truly amazing stuff.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The only ethical kind of engagement with this kind of content.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

LinkedIn is truly a hellscape

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

The losers behind this should first partake in "Basic Comma Use Appreciation Day".

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Hooliganism hasn't been an issue in World Cups since 1998... (In other words, can't wait for this WC to finish so that all the new U.S. soccer geniuses can focus on RBI or whatever).

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

So how do "green" institutions square this circle?

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Um. Wut? (Asking as someone who fundamentally doesn't think there is such a thing as "objectivity" but who also doesn't think we can engage in rational dialogue without evidence to back out claims).

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

These two headlines are umbilically connected to the administration's drive to break something and then make it worse through the fix.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

That's ok, though. It's not like the Americans Society of Civil Engineers gave transit a grade of D in its 2025 infrastructure report card. infrastructurereportcard.org

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Oh, and there was one final negative response, which I didn't include under the ones above because, um, it's this:

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Once in a blue moon, I think my silliness ends up being pretty clever.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Throwing grenades in the corporate social media because what else is one supposed to do?

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Important questions! And, like the BBC, I'm sure this guy has the answer! www.linkedin.com/in/shane-wat...

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

"Historian" www.linkedin.com/in/shane-wat...

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Dear lord, some of these business school folks have truly lost their minds.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

This final quote reveals just how unserious this particular person in this particular context is... "Me murdering that guy does not, in fact, diminish the larger questions about violence, accountability and guns and their impact on society, democracy and safety," he added.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

This final quote reveals just how unserious this particular person in this particular context is...

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

This answer is also so deranged. WTF is she going about her weird Mars RPG commumity?

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I know that one of the defining features of fascist rhetoric is that it rejects reason and refuses the rules of logic. That being said, it really annoys the shit out of me how points 7 and 8 in the Palantir "manifesto" are inherently contradictory.

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Quote post with something good that lasted longer than the Confederacy (1861-1865) My undergraduate years as a Jayhawk at the @universityofkansas.bsky.social (2005-2010).

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Patrick De Oliveira @plso.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Taught a session to c-suite types in an executive leadership and foresight boot camp, and I couldn't miss the opportunity to present them with my favorite slide.

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