iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 9h

Anthropic is out with new nonsense about Claude (or the collection of models called Claude) deserving moral consideration and/or be able to feel distress, so my inbox is filling up with journos asking me to comment. I've also got a day job, so here is a brief set of public comments on this: >>

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/10/2026

a livestreamed execution is just a lynching

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 08/10/2026

It's telling that men would rather try to invent tech to replace humans' role in caregiving than step up as equal partners in parenting. Telling, that is, in that it shows how financial capitalism and patriarchy work together to dissuade men from doing "unprofitable" labor, like the work of care.

X post from AI industry insider Alvin Sng :

My wife: Can you read our baby a book?
Me: I can just play an audiobook from my phone.
My wife: But then it won't be in your voice.
Me: I can train a voice model.
Parenting hits different when you work in Al.

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 07/10/2026

you don’t hold "AI" accountable; you hold AI developers, vendors, and corporations that profit off it accountable holding "AI accountable" is like holding a toaster accountable. it's an inanimate object. it doesn't have wishes, feelings, or desires

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 05/10/2026

NEW: Fresh off of announcing her intent to resign as the Episcopal Bishop Washington (a process that will take ~2 years), Bishop Mariann Budde is featured in a new election ad that references her Trump sermon as she urges people to vote and "choose love, not ICE." religionnews.com/2026/10/05/b...

religionnews.com

Bishop Mariann Budde, in new election ad, urges people to vote

(RNS) — 'I am asking for your courage to love your neighbor, to respect the dignity of every human being, and now, to vote,' Budde says in the new ad, which references her headline-grabbing sermon to ...

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026

This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

OH MY GOD CLERGY PLEASE STOP WITH THE AI SLOP IT IS SUCH AN UGLY LOOK

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ElizabethwithaZ @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"If you set up a machine such that any question you put in will lead to an answer coming back out…you are setting up a view of the world and of knowledge that says, 'All questions have a discrete, knowable, objective answer,' and that's just not true and has no place in education." ❤️😍💯

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Wrote a thing Monday. Got held back and is a weekend read at the Guardian today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

While the criminal justice system should address reports of rape, we know that rates of conviction are appallingly low for a number of reasons. Although, thanks to feminist interventions, the legal system is better equipped to understand this crime and less prejudiced against victims, we will not change the world through that means.

After rape allegations at Cornell University, why are women again being urged to talk to their sons? Why not men?
Gaby Hinsliff
Gaby Hinsliff
Read more
Sexual assault arises in part through both the entitlement and the desire to abuse and dehumanize women, which is in part about definitions of both masculinity and femininity: masculinity in that domination, violation and degradation are seen as status-enhancing, femininity in the perception that women’s bodies are for men to use, women’s voices and rights to be ignored.

The most compelling thing I’ve read in response to the Cornell case is in an essay by feminist writer Soraya Chemaly. She cites anthropologist Peggy Sanday, who told her that there are “rape-prone” and “rape-free” societies: “She found that in rape-free cultures, women have far more authority, status, safety and freedom.”

They’re societies in which women’s rights to bodily and social self-determination are respected, and a man who violates those rights would face severe consequences. “Rape-prone cultures, on the other hand, treat rape as an entitlement in a system that revolves around masculine contests and hierarchies.”

rest at link

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Yeah, I’m with the OP — the point is that LLMs aren’t actually useful for anything other than inducing psychosis via automated sycophancy.

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward

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Bruno Dies @brunodias.dev · 28/09/2026

It really doesn't make sense to attribute those job losses to AI-the-technology, because if that were the case we'd be observing AI outputs displacing conventional entertainment products, and they're clearly not. Rather, the impact of AI is that AI-the-business is crowding out other investment.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Reminder that in Canada upon becoming an engineer you get an iron ring made of a collapsed bridge, purposely designed to be uncomfortable, to remind you that your ethics demand you give a fuck even about the boring grudgework of such as double-checking your math. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

en.wikipedia.org

Iron Ring - Wikipedia

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sounds to me like you’re describing unfettered (unregulated) capitalism generally. Or is there something more specific you’re thinking about re: Silicon Valley?

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Seriously, read the alt-text on this one. Maybe things are okay, but maybe we’re heading into another omicron winter. Have you gotten your Covid shot this fall yet?

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Clearly you need to make a new task list — Task 1: organize my task lists. (Task 2: throw all productivity technology into the sun)

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

PMC COVlD Update, Sep 21, 2026 (US) 🔥13th COVlD wave 🔥40 states/territories with outbreaks (see Alt text) 🔥3.8 million estimated weekly infections 🔥Outbreaks in NYC 🔥Extremely high levels on the Big Island of HI Mask up and get boosted. 🧵THREAD (1/4)

The US has at least 34 states and territories with COVlD outbreaks. These include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawai'i, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. Levels on the Big Island of Hawai’i are particularly high. Note also, the NYC area is seeing outbreaks.

There are likely outbreaks in additional states. The summary statistic of 40 only includes counties with observed data, rather than estimated data. For example, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, and Tennessee likely have outbreaks, but monitoring is poor.

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

What if somehow your particular baby has the smelliest poops in the history of defecation?

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joao @joao.omg.lol · 20/09/2026

Why is it being for educational purposes imply that it's ok for it to be wrong? Should we stop buying Wiley textbooks because they don't guarantee the quality of their educational resources?

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If I’m being honest it was Jazz Jackrabbit 2.

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Mask up in #NYC, and cancel what you're doing to get your booster today. Kings County is raging with COVlD, per today's CDC update. PMC estimates 1 in 20 residents actively infectious, as of the most recent data on Sep 12. pmc19.com/map We have warned of this for weeks.

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"No one is going to vote for a Democrat because they came out for a trans sports ban. No one is on the fence being like, "If they just came out for a trans sports ban, then I would vote for them. I don't think that person exists," says @evanurquhart.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2154... .

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I somehow only just today learned that the Mountain Goats sound more like TMBG or Ben Folds 5 than like, Bison or Mumford and Sons or something more banjo-y, which was for some reason my assumption.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Unlike Macklemore, these support acts don’t have big followings and they are giving up their chance to perform to stadiums to push back against censorship, not of themselves but of a fellow artist. Respect.

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

PMC COVlD Update Sept 14, 2026 The US has at least 34 states/territories with COVlD outbreaks (see Alt text for details). Find all charts and graphs: pmc19.com Get county-level estimates: pmc19.com/map

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Matthew Johnson @mjohnsonuu.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If the real divide is Team Fight vs Team Fold, and both Dems and independents desperately want Team Fight, then why would you fold?? Throwing trans people under this doesn’t signal moderation. It signals cowardice.

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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

New: Macklemore says Robert Kraft — who owns Gillette Stadium, where Macklemore & Ed Sheeran were to perform later this month — called Sheeran. Kraft rallied other owners together behind an ultimatum for Sheeran: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you won't be allowed in our venues.

I'm not sure how to start this. So I'm going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour.
But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don't lose sight of that.

Ed is my friend. I've known him for 13 years. We've shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I've grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we've had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I'm writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can't change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.

Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other
stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

Ed was in …

What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I'm sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, "Free Palestine" becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that's why this time it became so important to silence me.

And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying "Free Palestine" gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn't protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

I hope this isn't the end of my relationship with Ed.
Thirteen years of friendship doesn't disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation.

When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there's a phrase in Arabic:
لا شكر على واجب
"La shukra ala wajeb." There is no thanks for a duty.
That stayed with me. Because that's what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.

Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn't, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people be…

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Dr. SkySkull @drskyskull.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is just a spectacular unintentional self-own

Dude on Threads: If you hate on ai, you better be pretty damn good at whatever you're doing

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

What’s next, a simslike Diablo game?

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 12/09/2026

The Labour Party did this. That's why trans people are pushing back on Dems capitulating on trans issues. We have seen what happens when the liberal party abandons trans people after saying you must vote for them or it without be worse under a conservative government.

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Toby Buckle @polphilpod.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

so the exact scenario all of us opposing this have warned about for the last 2 years

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 11/09/2026

I learned a lot from this conversation. Perry is doing some of the best expert interviews in media right now

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I can only assume the OP is referring to bonobos. I’m fine with using anthropomorphic language about bonobos (within reason).

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 10/09/2026

Sure looks like Apple went through a lot of trouble to design a pretty impressively secure system with a lot of technical fail safes that I’m also definitely never going to use because lol my dude it’s on all the time and logs what we say!

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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

this is worth repeating again and again.

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I did the same a few years ago, and am now doing so with Kasabian — like how did I not get into this band at the time? I liked the songs on the radio. Ah well, when the student is ready the post-grunge rock* will appear, I guess. (*i have no idea what I’m talking about)

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

PMC COVlD Update, Week of Sep 7, 2026 ◾️33 states/territories with outbreaks (see Alt) ◾️Highest levels nationally since March 5th ◾️1 in 86 Americans estimated actively infectious ◾️Peak expected soon, but some caveats THREAD (1/5) 🧵 pmc19.com

The US has at least 33 states/territories with COVlD outbreaks. These include Alaska, Hawai’i, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

There are likely outbreaks in additional states. The summary statistic of 33 only includes counties with observed data, rather than estimated data. For example, South Carolina and Oklahoma likely have outbreaks, but monitoring is poor.

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Haven’t read it yet but I do follow Emily Bender on here, and she does a great job re-framing the tech and what it actually does (“synergtic tezt extruding machine”) in contrast to the advertising hype (“artificially intelligent agent”) the companies use. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

bookshop.org

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI...

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Doesn’t go far enough for me, but this is a great start!

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The CDC recently downshifted current and historical COVlD levels into lower categories. For example, 6 of the 8 states normally classified as High or Very High have been downshifted to "Moderate." This is Part 2 in our series on the CDC "Bluewashing" ethics crisis.

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colin feral @sal.gay · 29/08/2026

Shout out to the nyt for enthusiastically laundering and mainstreaming anti trans extremism these last several years

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

But Baby does not want soothe. Baby wants to sleep on mom (or not sleep, or something else diametrically opposed to mom’s agenda for the evening).

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Rev. AJ van Tine @revajvt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Idk about no-cry but sleep training but in our experience was an hour of crying followed by 45 min of crying follows by 30 min of crying followed by 15 and then 10 and then 5 and finally zero. And this week at 31 months it’s back to crying/fussing when put to bed 5-10 min but then she conks out.

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

PMC COVlD Update, Week of Aug 29, 2026 ▪️Outbreaks in 29 states/territories (see Alt) ▪️A projected 13th wave is under way ▪️1 in 95 Americans estimated actively infectious ▪️Peak anticipated around Labor Day THREAD 🧵(1/4)

The US has at least 29 states/territories with COVlD outbreaks. These include much of Hawai’i, Alaska, Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine.
There are likely outbreaks in additional states. The summary statistic of 29 only includes counties with observed data, rather than estimated data. All of the data in Oregon are at least a week old, and while we do not count the state among the 29, we estimate there are likely outbreaks there as well, given proximity to WA, CA, and NV. Levels in some Texas counties are so high – on par with the national peak of BA.1 Omicron – that it drives up estimates for counties in neighboring states that lack CDC wastewater monitoring systems. Looking closely at the map, notice other instances of Very High counties in one state driving up estimates of an adjacent county in a neighboring state that lacks data. This shows a clear value of the county-level map over the CDC state map. The CDC applies the median level to the entire state. The PMC map recognizes that state boundaries are somewhat artificial with regard to the spread of infectious disease and instead offers localized estimates for counties that lack data based on what is happening in their region.

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 24/08/2026

Underappreciated: US farmland *already substantially produces energy, not food*, and does so very inefficiently. Corn ethanol (~40% of all US corn) requires about 100 times more land per vehicle-mile driven than solar photovoltaics -> electric vehicles. Shifting corn to solar *would free up land*.

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