iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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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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John Schwartz @jswatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

“The honest truth is that — regardless of what this court does — Missouri will not be able to run an orderly 2026 general election,” she said, adding that “no option is ideal.” In other words, “I already set fire to the house,”the arsonist said; “You should let me loot it.”

nytimes.com

Supreme Court Once Again Blocks Republican-Backed Voting Map in Missouri (Gift Article)

A federal appeals court had sided with Republicans seeking to use redrawn congressional district boundaries to give their party an advantage in the midterms elections.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It really is hard to convey how the world of, say, Davos & TED Talks & the Long Now Foundation completely failed to anticipate the rise of a far-right mirror-image of themselves seizing the agenda and actually putting the world onto a *more* short-termist, extractive, rapacious, and venal path. 🗺️

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Imagine if other countries, or the European Union, tried to cut separate deals and negotiate directly with individual US states… 🗺️

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Important on the change in tactics post-Minneapolis

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Once again, they don’t follow laws or court orders, so the solution cannot be more laws or court orders, & we need to stop kidding ourselves about that, especially if we’re United States Senators. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

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Jared Wesley @jaredwesley.ca · 24/09/2026

You'll never hear me say that all proponents of direct democracy are fascists. But I have yet to meet a fascist who didn't love direct democracy. Ask Carl Schmitt.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Republicans after Reagan: The Party of Administrative Burden.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Headline in 2015 about a foreign country: "Regime allies attempting to further consolidate media control"

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The executive branch is trashing the constitution (just in the past day, a brazen attempt to defy the plain terms of laws re: health insurance access, for example), but, sure, run with this… 🗺️

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Who else will they disappear next?

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Scott L Greer @scottlgreer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Secret police disappearing people

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It looks like one of those brass rubbing things you do in churches when you're a kid, except the sculptor left the relief in the furnace too long and it melted.

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Ann M. Lipton @annmlipton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

2 and 4 make me want to find an isolated cabin in the woods to live out my days

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John Springford @johnspringford.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Definitely not extremists

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Makes me think of Stanislav Petrov, one of the greatest heroes in history. We're going to need to build systems that don't rely on people like him to stop a rush to judgment.

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Simon Lester @simonlester.com · 18/09/2026

But what if the thing driving up gas prices is also undermining national security?

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Simon Lester @simonlester.com · 17/09/2026

Let's all commit to voting for smarter people.

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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This reminds me of a story from 2020 of a couple guys from Eastern Europe who had identical sites, one ragebait for leftists, the other ragebait for MAGA, and they too had traffic that dwarfed major outlets. But they were employing staff writers to do the inventing and plagiarizing, iirc.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

But do we know the name of the horse that the mad emperor will put in the Senate next?

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Beware the Praetorian LLM?

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“… In June, the World Bank overhauled a key part of its Climate Action Plan and scrapped its commitment to direct 45 percent of its spending to projects with climate benefits. …” 🌱 🗺️

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’m very aware of context gaps in the discourse today, so I’m using this cheerful little piece 👇 as an excuse to remind folks that Carney was Governor of the Bank of England between 2013 & 2020 (yes, during the Eurozone crisis), and is not a naïf about how Europe works (or doesn’t work). 🗺️

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Vikram Bath @vikrambath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is certainly a sentence a person could write (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/o...

What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. In recent years, California has proudly defied a national trend:
On average, about 40 percent of its students are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. More than half qualify for free tuition. The percentages of underrepresented students have crept up, through a variety of initiatives. The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition.
Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’m old enough to remember how worried people were about China’s holdings of US Treasuries, as a matter of bipartisan, serious-people consensus. I guess many people still are. Anyway, something to note as the “But China!” scare moves on to AI, and whatever comes after that. 🗺️

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I hadn’t thought about this before, but how often have we seen this essential context be provided in recent news coverage? I can’t recall *any* articles doing so, in the whole period since the coup in Venezuela.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Sadly, this kind of geopolitical denial appears to be widespread — among Democrats, etc., too. 🗺️

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Simon Lester @simonlester.com · 17/09/2026

"Pillage and plunder" as the basis for foreign policy.

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Simon Lester @simonlester.com · 17/09/2026

I have a theory that they want to find a way out of the trade war with Canada because it is hurting them in certain swing states, and threatening Europe here rather than Canada maybe supports that. But as with everything, who knows!

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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Ambrose Bierce: an alliance is "a union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third".

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yes, what an odd turn of phrase that has become widely adopted in foreign policy discussions. Sticking shivs into each other *is* a kind of “transaction,” I suppose — as much so as withdrawing cash from an ATM. 🗺️

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"judges have ruled that the Trump administration has deported more than 170 people in in violation of court orders, in defiance of legally mandated due process protections, or to countries from which they had sought or received protection from torture & persecution" www.politico.com/news/2026/09...

politico.com

Illegal deportations spike under Trump's ICE push

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The counterfactual is not a world in which coal become magically economically-competitive. It’s a world in which rational policies price-in the harm from keeping coal on life support. In other words, a world which looks more like 🇬🇧 or 🇳🇴 than the 🇺🇸. (See my book: link.springer.com/9783032245755)

link.springer.com

Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?

This book analyzes climate and energy policy across major fossil-fuel producers, revealing how institutions shape reform and counter vested interests.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3430):

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Pontius Pilate: The crucifixion of your lord and savior not caused by any decisions or policies on my part.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yes, another word salad. But …

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

“… Every single tactic used against Brazil, Canada, or Denmark has also been deployed elsewhere—not to support democracy, not to build American prosperity, but to spread the illiberal revolution and make money for the predators who support it. …” 🗺️

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John Schwartz @jswatz.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The corruption is off the charts. “Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family.” www.propublica.org/article/dona...

propublica.org

Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding Bankrolled by Putin-Linked Russian Oligarch

The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large...

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

“This is exacerbating the already bad affordable-housing shortage in this country…”

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is the bill where 30+ Democratic Senators voted that tariffs were a Presidential foreign policy tool a few months after 24 Democratic Attorneys General won a case in the Supreme Court arguing that tariffs were absolutely not a Presidential foreign policy tool.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

‘…The war on terror propelled the 🇺🇸 to collect & combine information, including on its own citizens; classify individuals it considered dangerous; [deploy military units for population control; & use coercive] emergency authorities. It also reinforced an “us against them” conception of public life…’

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

We should punish the illegal & arbitrary exercise of executive power that violates domestic law & all of our international treaty commitments & turns us into a personalist authoritarian regime

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Scott L Greer @scottlgreer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The attack on the Washington Post by Bezos gets a lot of attention but the destruction of the LA Times by its owner has been even sadder and more dramatic

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Yes, this is ridiculous. But ask: What enables it? Why didn’t most world leaders condemn the attack on Iran, and call for it to stop?? There are consequences to living in a world which has lost moral clarity, where appeasement has been normalized. 🗺️

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