iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Cori Catchthorne @coricatchthorne.bsky.social · 6h

Gorgeous post full of excellent advice, including lots of questions—not just big, open ones but small, specific ones, along with ways of exploring and testing the waters. And as Finn noted, this is a GREAT resource for writers too. (No surprise, as Johannes writes incredible erotica too.)

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Morgan Johnson @poormojo.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

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Fin 🧿 @finbeard.com · 14/10/2026

🧿

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Catherynne M. Valente @catvalente.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Fucking “mindfully” GTFOH it’s burning the planet & the human soul. And “follow evolving best practice recommendations” FROM WHO? Oh, that just means “do what we’re told like good little puppies and maybe we’ll get a treat.” Writers live & die on BOOKS & CONTRACTS. We don’t sign sloppy shit.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Don't be fooled! This is NOT a venomous snake. It just looks like one. You're looking at a Giant Dead Leaf Mantis (Deroplatys desiccata), native to Malaysia, Philippines & Borneo. These little guys are masters of disguise. This is their "scary sharp-toothed predator" trick, but they have MORE!

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

She has discovered a devastating memetic weapon against me, and it is saying ‘white people phrases’ slightly wrong confidently. ‘Nothing to chalk home about’, ‘let’s blow this cheese stand’, ‘let’s rock and drums’. This is breaking me. She’s become too powerful.

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Enerjax✦ 🔜 Design Festa, Frosty Faustings @enerjax.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Dame de la Vengeance🗡️🩸 So happy to complete this illustration! I’ll be bringing her to Design Festa next month 🛡️

The seedy, tyrannical villains of the land need to go. Ultimately, deciding this over a final glass of wine she sheds her finery, renouncing this delicately embroidered lifestyle, because she has had enough of tyrants and will now take matters into her own hands. Swords blazing.

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Aud Connelly 😎 @audconnelly.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

This is technically a simile because it uses the word "like", but it goes on and on like a metaphor🤣 #lithodgepodge #Dogwood1

She had never seen someone so afraid. Living with their parents, Nessie used to get upset and cry, but that was not the same thing. Owen’s terror filled up the room, like a wild animal loose in the house: even as it hid in the corner, panting and staring, you felt surrounded by it. Its very presence spread over the floor, crawled up the walls, and made the furniture unsafe. It infected her, made her heart race, scattered her thoughts and sent goosebumps down her arms and legs so her hair stood on end.

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💋 𝕡𝕒𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕜𝕒 • ♱ @ladypaprika.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Oh wow, Astha really needs to share her hair care routine 😳

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Fine. I’ll update with a word count when I start writing again. @legalminimum.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

This is the most appropriate rejoinder to all the @tkingfisher.com hate. I know the General Counsel of Wizards of the Coast. Zero chance his contract didn’t contain robust approval rights and rights to force a rewrite if they weren’t happy. The people who own the character liked this book.

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The Witch's Bakery - Sunny Lab @sunnylabgames.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The Witch's Bakery is OUT NOW! With inspiration from Kiki's Delivery Service and Persona 5, we tell the story of a witch-baker who can heal people's emotions with croissants🥐and baguettes 🥖

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The Portal Bookshop @portalbookshop.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Hey Bluesky, I don't have enough polyamorous books in. Particularly looking for things with an established polycule (plot being adding someone new is fine, plot not being related to their relationships is also fine) Suggestions? #RecQuest

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Scarlet Mitchell is a 👻g..g..ghost!👻 @scarletvmitchell.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Alt: painting of a pale horse with shining eyes under the water of a murky pond. Deeper under the water, more shining eyes and pale horse faces can be seen.

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Acid Rain @bearysweet.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Aah, Chopin, the age-old lullaby for cultured felines. 😸💤 #cat #chopin #piano #concerto

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 14/10/2026

Simba Kundizeza's statement on his Caine Prize-winning story "The Blue Fighter" is also worth reading—keep in mind, the evidence-free article slandering him was published in The Atlantic to a mass readership and his defense is a tweet to his eight hundred followers

Simba Kundizeza
@S_S_Kundizeza
Statement on The Atlantic article concerning “The Blue Fighter”

I would like to say at the outset that this statement is not in any way a proffer of an explanation or a defense against the allegations levelled against me in the article published by The Atlantic, because I don’t believe the article warrants either. I am however writing because of the level of public interest generated in its aftermath, and out of respect for the people who have supported and championed my writing, as well as my fellow shortlisted writers for the Caine Prize. I want to set the record straight.

For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote "The Blue Fighter." I did not use generative AI to write it. It is entirely my own work.

This story did not appear out of nowhere; it has a concrete, documented history. Its genesis was during my LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency in Ghana. While there‚ I read a poem by vangile gantsho titled “my father's hands․” I was inspired by this poem to write a story about my family's experiences in Zimbabwe‚ including my father leaving his accounting profession and the hardships my family faced as a result․ Other aspects of the story‚ including characters and the setting‚ are drawn from events in my own life․

There is also a clear chronology to the story's development. I sent the completed first draft of the story to vangile for feedback on May 15‚ 2025․ I then submitted the story to The Shallow Tales Review on May 27‚ 2025․ Fiction editor Nzube Nlebedim accepted the story on June 10‚ 2025‚ and it went through the standard editorial process. vangile then provided her feedback to me on June 25‚ 2025․ On the same day Nzube also provided editorial feedback to me․ In an email dated June 27‚ 2025‚ I sent the final draft and requested that the editor preserve the formatting of an epigraph in the story as originally submitted by vangile as a courtesy to her․ The story was published on June 30‚ 2025․

The Atlantic article seems to question the story's authorship by comparing its style to my other writing. As writers we develop recurring interests, but we don’t produce work from a single fixed template. My debut novel, “Freelance”, and the story titled "The Whistleblower" published in Transition Magazine in 2021 which is referenced by Ms. Vara, are thrillers dealing with political intrigue. "The Blue Fighter," however, is a deeply personal story about economic collapse and familial relationships. The voice shifts because the subject matter demands it. To suggest that a writer cannot write in different styles or genres, or improve his writing substantially after five or more years fundamentally misunderstands the craft of writing.

The motive for my supposedly using AI to generate the story is equally difficult to understand. I was under no obligation to write “The Blue Fighter”. I was not commissioned to produce it, nor was I paid a fee for its publication. The decision to submit the piece for consideration for the Caine Prize was made by the editor of The Shallow Tales Review months after its publication. I therefore didn’t write the story with any guarantee that it would be submitted, let alone win anything. The idea that I would have somehow written the story with the express intention of entering and winning the Caine Prize, despite the inherently competitive and uncertain nature of the prize, conjures up a motive that simply did not exist.

"The Blue Fighter" is my work, and I stand by it completely. I'm grateful to vangile for her inspiration, to The Shallow Tales Review for giving the story a home, and to the Caine Prize judges for recognizing the work on its merits. I’m also heartened by the numerous messages of solidarity from fellow writers and readers, and to Adrienne Ingrum and Regina Brooks at Serendipity Literary Agency for their support throughout.
I look forward to continuing to work with the Caine Prize team, and to celebrating this recognition with the people who helped bring this story into the world.

Most importantly, I will continue to write.

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Oleander Craw @oleandercraw.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

If you're looking for a fun fantasy serial you should definitely check this out!!

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spicyraeman @spicyraeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

darktide zealot oc, yall like buff women right?

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Drew Shields (commissions open) @gnarlyghost.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Hey #PortfolioDay I’m Drew! Genrefic illustrator working in the TTRPG space, check out my page!

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🔞🏳️‍🌈 Domi, Best Boy & OnlyWans’ Prince @ comms open in pinned! 💜⛓️😈 @domiwoof.xxx · 14/10/2026

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOLY SHIT THIS COULD NOT GET BETTER

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dumbcat @dumbcat.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

win by doing nothing

meditating monk: i will not play ai video game
reply: and it will cost the dev $1000/day to run empty servers
surprised monk: per day?!

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 12/10/2026

Yeah. And if you don't care what Pangram says—it's just another AI company, and I don't care how good they are at hyping themselves—I also don't see what's so "AI" about this story at all. I don't think "trust me, it's bad" is meaningful (and that is quite literally what the article says.)

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rocketdancing @rocketdancing.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

This is true even outside of art. A good way of determining whether a project is too large is to ask “What is it specifically that I need to learn to be able to finish this?” If the answer is that you don’t know what you don’t know, the problem is probably too large.

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James Felton @jimmfelton.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Man in a gilet stood on platform 12 gives up on reading the display and asks ChatGPT out loud if he is on the right platform for his train. I don’t want to be dramatic about it but Eratosthenes figured out the circumference of the Earth using a stick and knowledge of a distant well.

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Skree Ghoulsen 🎃🦇🌿 @breebird33.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Girlies didn't wear "panties" or "smalls" during most western history. They were free ballin' under that shift and all those petticoats until split crotch drawers were introduced in the 19th century but even then, they weren't something everyone wore THAT'S WHY THIS PAINTING WAS SO SCANDALOUS

crop of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing with girlie kicking off her shoe as one of the two men depicted gets a peek under her skirts

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Aud Connelly 😎 @audconnelly.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

See this and other dates end in disaster in #Dogwood1 😅 #WIPSnips

“Hey.”
Wesley looked sharp, as though surprised Owen was still there. Grime coated Wesley’s skin, except for where he’d scrubbed around his eyes. His once-blue coveralls were a solid, filthy brown. He knelt on the cottage’s front porch, in the middle of laying out tools to be cleaned and dried.
“What do you want?”
“Can I take you somewhere?”

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Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

girls only want one thing and it is a single aspect of human life that has not been intentionally made worse in the interest of chasing limitless profit

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Aud Connelly 😎 @audconnelly.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

HOUND FATALE comes out next month!! So I'm going to do a character profile every week leading up to the release (Nov 17, jot it down!✍️) The author's chew toy, I mean Owen, is first! preorder: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLBF4CP1 Get a glimpse of him in the prologue: www.audconnelly.com/the-dogwood-...

Owen:
Chubby-faced guy with a sun-tanned complexion, shoulder-length brown hair and thick-framed glasses. He looks anxious and annoyed.

Character facts:
like if one of those squeezy stress balls was mad all the time.
short.
feral child literally raised by wolves, but she did her best okay!!!
will not rest till those Donovans are dead.
likes when people are mean to him (unless they’re a Donovan, all of whom he’s sworn to kill).

First line in Hound Fatale: There go the groceries.

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Was watching Buffy’s Anya backstory episode. Friend asked why I sighed. “She’s not of a sufficiently high social class to have domesticated rabbits that far north in Europe in that century, but the writers couldn’t know, the paper was only presented at a conference yesterday.” Accuracy is fleeting.

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Kara BOOOOOchanan 🏳️‍⚧️🎃 @magicariot.com · 06/10/2026

"It has no place in my world" goes hard, gonna need to file that into my personal usage

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Aida @aidap.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Bluesky's Head of Trust and Safety handed his block list to a bot. 1,271 people blocked in eleven days. He says it never looks at who you are. Blocks are public, so I checked. Trans people were blocked at 2.5× the odds of everyone else, for posts of the same harshness. 🧵

Title card reading "Who the autoblocker blocked". Three figures: 1,271 accounts blocked in eleven days, against twelve in the two years before. 46% of the readable bulk-loaded accounts had never replied to, quoted or mentioned him this year. 2.5× the odds of being blocked for a trans-identified account, against others who wrote equally harsh posts. Below, a quote from Aaron Rodericks, 1 Oct 2026: "These do not factor in your bio or your identity. I have zero clue who you are."

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I will point out, however, that serious scientists are cautious with their claims. Furthermore, as we wrote in 2021 (in "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?🦜"), p.616: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... >>

Screencap from linked article, highlighted portion:

This can seem counter-intuitive given the
increasingly fluent qualities of automatically generated text, but we
have to account for the fact that our perception of natural language
text, regardless of how it was generated, is mediated by our own
linguistic competence and our predisposition to interpret communicative acts as conveying coherent meaning and intent, whether
or not they do [89, 140].

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

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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Djinn & Tonic @djinnandtonic.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

What some refer to the "terminal lol" actually serves a very important grammatical function, a sort of copula, akin to the Japanese "desu" lol

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John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

In light of some magazines pulling scummy things on creators lately, I’m doing a little thread on short story rights. I don't want anybody getting taken advantage of. Also, if you're new, this stuff can be confusing!

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Also Lucy Lawless is directing it so YES THAT ROSTER WAS BUILT IN FREE AGENCY WITH A PLAN

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

discovered this show called Blue Murder Motel and it has so much that I value in a procedural- a hotel, NZ, super implausible plots, detectives who investigate with full public cooperation with zero jurisdiction and the deepest REMEMBER THAT GUY FROM WHEN HE WAS IN XENA roster I've ever seen

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