iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

The false equivalence in a Washington Post piece today about the hassles faced by people attending the "Freedom 250" July 4th celebration in the nation's capitol is 😳. People protesting turning what should be an event of national unity into a Trump rally are just as bad as fascists, clearly!

Pictured is an excerpt from a July 5th Washington Post article, reading "Steel fences and closed roads made photos of iconic monuments hard to capture. Both white supremacists and liberal activists marched through the city, each demanding their country back." That second sentence is highlighted.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Feeling tired of the accelerating rightward slide of American mainstream media, how about you? MAGA-supporting billionaires buying up news sources left and right, and shifting their editorial policies to roll that "centrist" Overton window redwards. . . Please remember to read critically!

"Another day, another NY Times opinion piece saying that if the Democrats ever want to win another election, they need to be voting for laws requiring me as a trans man to use women's restrooms."

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Passports do not need gender markers. They've not been there since time immemorial--they weren't around when I was a kid. And they've always been about gender policing. Just remove them, the way we removed race markers!

Text reads: Did you know that US passports did not include a gender marker until 1976? Then, under President Gerald Ford, conservative panic over “unisex” hairstyles and jeans led the State Department to add a gender marker to reinforce gender binarism. The M/F markers have always been about enforcing a conservative vision of gender against social change, and never about some actual security need.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

In the spirit of Halloween season, here's something truly spooky! Have a post talking about eros and thanatos in consumer capitalism and politics! asociologicaleye.blogspot.com/2025/10/eros...

A bookplate shows Thanatos as a skeleton in a long black robe holding a scythe, and Eros as a nubile young bride. Thanatos and Eros embrace and kiss, as Thantos slides his skeletal hand up Eros thigh, lifting her long white gown and exposing her flesh. This image is used to illustrate a post about how a century ago, when consumer capitalism burst onto the scene, it employed Eros to sell products. That is, it presented consumer goods as objects of desire, or as items that could make the buyer desired. Now, a century later, consumer capitalism has been joined by another force: the attention economy, in which entities and influencers compete for our clicks and views. And in the attention economy, it is thanatos rather than eros that is employed. That is, negative emotions of fear and hate are mobilized, as we are shown stories that generate outrage in our hearts, and glue our eyes to our screens to observe perceived threats. The post discusses how we are better able to deal with being manipulated by the erotic call of advertisements, after a century of facing this tactic, but much less well-equipped to deal with the more novel manipulations of the thanatotic call to anxiety and disgust deployed on social media to rivet our attentions.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Lots of people are posting about the presidential announcement claiming that Tylenol causes autism. Many argue how damaging it is for conspiracy theories to become federal policies. True! But something much bigger is going on, which I discuss here: asociologicaleye.blogspot.com/2025/09/auti...

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com

Autism, Tylenol, Conspiracy Theories, and Culture Wars: The Battles over Neurodiversity

We really need to talk about the concept of neurodiversity. Current events make that very clear. As you are likely aware, if you were ...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

I’ve seen a bunch of commentary on the Green Dildo Coin campaign of throwing sex toys at WNBA players, mostly seeking to let you know that this is sexual harassment, but you probably knew that. In this post I focus instead on how misogyny is being monetized today.

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com

Misogyny Memecoins

This is where we are in the saga of American history: over the past week or so, a bunch of phallic sex toys have been thrown onto the cou...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

The murder rate in the US today is down about half from its peak in 1993. But most Americans today--especially Republicans--think the rate has gone *up*, and that cities are more dangerous than they have ever been.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

This week, in compliance with a Trump executive order, the US Olympic Committee banned transfeminine people from becoming members of the US Olympic teams. This was pure hate-theater, as there has never been a trans woman on a US Olympic team, due to overwhelming discrimination.

trans-fusion.blogspot.com

Olympic Discrimination on the Part of the US

There have been 13,215 Olympic medals awarded to women. Not a single one was won by a trans woman. That did not stop the US Olympic and ...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

The Trump administration has been trashing democracy. Congress rolled over and did nothing. Courts had stepped into the breach, but the royalist enablers in the SCOTUS supermajority kneecapped them this week. No one else is coming to save us. So we the people have to stand up and save ourselves!

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com

The last institutional barrier is falling. It’s up to us to stand.

The last institutional barrier between us and the presidential narcissist who would be emperor is falling. It’s going to be up to us to st...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I know we all struggle now with outrage. Algorithms push it to keep us glued to our scrolls, and it divides us and makes people despondent. But the Skrmetti SCOTUS decision being paired on the same day with cancelling national suicide hotline support for trans youth should outrage us.

trans-fusion.blogspot.com

Sometimes Outrage is Called For

Look, I avoid outrage-posting, because we live at a time in which outrage has been turned into a terrible currency, generated to glue us...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

The SCOTUS decision upholding state bans on gender-affirming care for minors is a terrible one. The impacts it will have are very negative. But don't give up hope! Trans people cannot be erased.

trans-fusion.blogspot.com

Don't Give Up Hope!

Just waving my little trans flag. Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 margin that states have the right to ban puberty blockers a...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

I have a really fun post for you! It's got wacky Victorian folklore, the neo-Druid King Arthur Uther Pendragon, Ancient Aliens: The Game, and strange AI imagery. I think you'll like it! Even if yes, it's also all about racism then and now. Enjoy: asociologicaleye.blogspot.com/2025/05/ston...

This image is titled "Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Beliefs about Race." It depicts the relative sizes of the Great Pyramid at Giza and Stonehenge. The linked post discusses how racism has shaped our understandings of ancient monuments, and how current scientific discoveries about ancient DNA and skin color have triggered another chapter in the ongoing historical battle about who built these monuments and why.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Today, attempts to manipulate the output of AI chatbots can produce hilariously bad results, like Grok calling into question the existence of actor Timothée Chalamet because it was instructed not to trust mainstream sources. Too bad it won't last. . .

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com

The Grok AI's Sudden Decline

Let's see where we went in the space of a week! Last Sunday, Elon Musk fumed on X about his xAI chatbot, Grok, treating the BBC and The Atl...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

"[H]e’s an American conservative and he’s from the Heartland and he’s a Republican primary voter and he’s likable and he’s got a storybook biography. None of it was enough. It has to be exhausting to be so intentionally hateful and perpetually enraged like this."

charlotteclymer.substack.com

These People Are Never Happy

And I don't think they ever will be.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

LGBTQ+ related research accounted for under 1% of total NIH grants funding. But it accounts for about half of all of the grants that have been canceled by the Trump NIH over the past few months. (The rest largely related to research focused on the health of other minority populations.) #LGBTQ #trans

trans-fusion.blogspot.com

Half of All NIH Grant Cuts have been to LGBTQ+ Research

Research looking at LGBTQ+ health has collapsed in just a few months, as the NIH has canceled grant funding. Some of those studies actuall...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

It turns out that those claims about "cancel culture" were, like so many MAGA claims, pure projection of what they wanted to do.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

No grants were cancelled, no lists of terms sent out to be purged from university websites, no books removed from libraries, no datasets erased, because they conflicted with progressive values. Only the current administration has done that.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Administrative representatives are still whining about "cancel culture" at universities, supposedly wielded by progressives to oppress conservatives. It's so ludicrous.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Like so many research projects, this one was canceled by the current administration, which believes it has defined sex variance away by executive order, and that the idea that intersex people exist is somehow "gender ideology."

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Whelp. The date has now passed when the NIH working group I was a part of was supposed to hold its final conference. The working group was looking at intersex health across the lifecourse, and what research initiatives were most needed to promote that health, to guide future funding.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 16/04/2025

1. The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a national "snitch form" to report gender affirming care providers. The last few times state Republicans did this, they were overloaded with memes and Bee Movie scripts. The latest from S. Baum. Subscribe to support our journalism.

erininthemorning.com

HHS Launches Snitch Form to Report Gender Affirming Care Providers

The new HHS guidance encourages people to snitch on trans-affirming health care providers—including in instances that do not violate the law.

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Reposted by Cary Costello

Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

It's genuinely hard to express to sort of normal not politically plugged in non-lawyers *how* lawless the Trump administration is, and I think that's some part of the problem. You sound like you're hyperventilating, but it's just a flat description of what is going on.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

What could be more ludicrous than banning books on the actual biological reality of intersex statuses as "violating biological reality?" Well, that is what the Trump administration is doing--inverting empirical fact and myth, and removing books from libraries, as I explain here.

intersexroadshow.blogspot.com

Banning Biological Reality is Ridiculous!

What could be more ludicrous than declaring biology to be against the law? Over the past few months, since Trump was inaugurated again, inf...

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

The entire permanent staff of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice was laid off. This division addresses issues such as asthma and air pollution, climate change and health, childhood lead poisoning, and cancer clusters.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Good riddance to a vile peddler of transphobia whom the NYT legitimated with their platform to do so much damage as a reactionary wolf in “reasonable sane centrist” sheep’s clothing.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

On the Trans Day of Visibility, here is my paean to balding! Elon Musk and Donald Trump felt the need for gender-affirming surgeries to "correct" it, but unlike certain men with fragile masculinity issues, I embrace this testosterone effect. Happy TDoV! #TransDayOfVisibility #transgender

trans-fusion.blogspot.com

Celebrating Going Bald on the Trans Day of Visibility

Here’s my announcement for the Trans Day of Visibility: I’m balding. And I love it! Times right now for trans folks in the U.S. are not ...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

That one-third of Americans support "taking control" of Greenland is super creepy. "We need colonies!" say the inheritors of a war against colonial control.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Don’t overlook the power of being annoying! In situations in which they are big and you are small, it can be a superpower. Don’t cooperate with evil. Misunderstand it. Repeatedly. “Helpfully” over-comply. Ask for clarification, and then for clarification of the clarification. Become the mosquito.

An image of a mosquito rising from a lake. Text at the top reads, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.”

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Random TERFs are now sending my wife messages on Bandcamp where she sells her music, showing that they have our actual address and claiming they are going to SWAT her for being an openly trans woman musician. O tempora, o mores.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Thanks, Daniel! I have just had it up to my eyeballs with being told folks like me and my wife are "unnatural." If I were able to actually violate the laws of nature, I'd fly around on dragonfly wings sprinkling these people with magic dust that causes them to experience empathy.

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Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

What this administration is teaching Universities is that even if you comply - punish students for protests, ban masks, remove DEI from websites and classes - they will still defund you and try to break you apart. Basically, there is no point in complying.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Everyone loves nature! Both the left and the right make claims about the need to defend it. The left decries climate change. The MAGA right cries that the woke left is violating the laws of nature with its sex ideologies. These are very different types of claims, which this post explains!

asociologicaleye.blogspot.com

On Claims of Defending Nature

Ah, nature. Everyone loves it! Here on the left, we want to protect nature from human-caused climate change and pollution. The right cou...

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

"Engineer's Disease": when someone in the "hard" sciences thinks they are the smartest because their discipline is "hardest." The other sciences are easier, the social sciences barely count, and the humanities are despised as opinion and babble. Musk is the avatar of Engineer's Disease.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

"Will there be a recession?" So many of us in the public sector and academia now don't know if we'll have a job in a few months, or have already lost our jobs. Our projects and research are being defunded. We're spending as little as possible. It's already a recession for us and it will spread.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

The politics of fragile masculinity are terribly destructive. They're also so cringey that they put your cheek muscles at risk of a sprain. Ow!

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Children must not make animal noises at schools!! “The cow goes mooo” is just grooming them to be furries, y’know.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 13/03/2025

1. Major court ruling! The 11th Circuit Court has ruled that there is no constitutional parental right to out trans students at a Florida school in a major ruling against January Littlejohn, who was referenced at Trump's address. The latest from S. Baum. Subscribe to support our journalism.

erininthemorning.com

11th Circuit Court Finds Florida School Was Not Obligated to Forcibly Out Trans Students

“Children do not give up their constitutional rights by enrolling in public school.”

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

I know so much is going on, and a depleted media faces intentional barriers to news-gathering. But like the many stories that report on broad transphobic federal initiatives but only mention bans on trans women athletes, so much that is important is going unreported. People need to be informed!

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Either way, the questions I have highlighted, about "DEI" (which this administration defines as anything acknowledging disadvantages faced by women or people of color), climate/environment, and mandated transphobia, are not getting media attention. For example, www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/h...

nytimes.com

Trump Administration Sends Politically Charged Survey to Researchers

Scientists on overseas projects must say whether they work with communist governments and help combat “Christian persecution.”

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

But the survey is being received by other groups, such as recipients of CDC monies for US projects. Some think this is just due to Trump administrative incompetence--but others believe the surveys are intended for widespread use, and are just starting to be deployed.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

This has gotten little media attention. The reports that do exist focus on overseas aid projects being asked to attest that they do not have ties to “entities associated with communist, socialist or totalitarian parties." Aid projects helping people in communist and socialist nations are alarmed.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

These are questions from a survey sent to teams who have federal grants or projects, giving them 24 or 48 hours to respond. They must attest that their projects do not contain "DEI elements," climate or environmental justice elements, or recognize the existence of trans people. 🧵

Survey received by recipients of federal grants and contracts, including attestations that there are "no DEI elements" in the project, no environmental justice or climate elements, and that the project "protects women and children" by refusing to recognize trans people in their lived genders or acknowledge that gender identity exists.

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Cary Costello @profc.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Another day, another set of American quiet heroes fired by loudmouth cartoon villains.

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Not being sarcastic or glib, but what is the point of destruction like this? What does Musk gain from doing this? Is it really as shallow an explanation as “I want to just destroy everything.” But … for what? I get the attack on USAID, or the FAA, or DOJ. But what does this … do?

Deleting massive amounts of VA survey data.

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