iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Matthew Prorok @mattprorok.bsky.social · 18h

If that's your concern, I have great news! There's no evidence that trans people have any kind of physical advantage in athletics, and some evidence that they may be at a disadvantage.

sf.gov

Trans Women in Sports: Facts Over Fear | SF.gov

Resources to combat misinformation around trans women's participation in sports.

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Matt McMuscles @mattmcmuscles.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We actually don't hate this administration enough

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This is true. In 2016, I got into an argument with a gay man on a menswear forum. I've since made it my mission to make every man dress gay, thereby destroying his ability to tell who is actually gay and, ultimately, his chances of finding love. I built my social media following to achieve that goal

Someone on Twitter writes to me: "People should follow your advise if they want to look gay."

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Aaron Huertas @aaronhuertas.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The psychology of doomerism is that the Doomer is the smartest boy in class because he can see the Real Problem, which obviously negates the primacy of Other Problems. For totally mysterious reasons, the Real Problem is never poverty or discrimination.

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Sam 🏳️‍⚧️ @samgauss.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Extremely glad I no longer hear that stupid “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” quote anymore, it always struck me as somehow both cynical AND naïve

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 23/09/2026

Political winds do not only flow from voters to politicians, they go in reverse as well. Democrats running ads like these signal to the general public and their voter base that this issue now has support by both parties, and that hating trans people is publicly acceptable. They do harm to us.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I could talk about this scene for an hour. The entire film I’m subconsciously braced for the fat jokes. The ugly jokes. And I don’t even realize I’m braced until i have a good exhale when this entire exchange manages to unfold without once mocking the cashier.

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wariotifo @wariotifo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

as far as I can tell the harry potter series is a couple of chapters viciously skewering a snobby middle class couple and then seven books outlining why snobby middle class closed-mindedness and bigotry is great it's just that those two people were fat

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Dr. Stephanie @punkrockscience.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The fact that every major news outlet includes vocal tics and hesitations when it’s a woman saying “like” and not when it’s a man saying “um” is itself wicked telling.

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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 22/09/2026

I think you had to be very online at a time when most people weren't to know that the bush administration was comically evil to the extent that it was, but for those of you who weren't: trust us! these were stupid evil people, not so different from the current ones!

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SazCaz @sazcaz.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Choosing to reference a method of inflicting trauma on a community when you lose an argument on the internet and look bad is absolute dogshit behaviour, whether the person is on my side or not and we should call it out

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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Case in point: I get accused of taking testosterone and mocked for being muscular, and that my “all consuming rage” at being fired for criticizing Charlie Kirk is supposedly from roids. And the right-wing idiots said I embody a “primitive form of manhood”. freebeacon.com/men-of-the-y...

freebeacon.com

2025 Man of the Year: Karen Attiah

Great Men never go down without a Fight. The beefier the Man, the fiercer the Fight. Karen Attiah practically dared the Washington Post to fire her beefy ass in 2025, and that's exactly what happened....

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Colin Spacetwinks @spacetwinks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

flinching on trans rights does not help dems win nor does it help with the other 'more important' issues. you ever think about those weirdass voters who like AOC *and* trump? what they hate is a fucking flincher. they hate a wimp. even if they don't support trans rights, they hate flinchers more.

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Colin Spacetwinks @spacetwinks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

not for nothing, the thing that kills dems image isn't 'oh they support trans people' it's 'people, including many dem voters, think dems are spineless, cowardly, wimpy, and don't actually stand for anything' standing for trans rights corrects that. beshear won in *kentucky* without flinching.

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siobhan mcdonough @siobhan-m.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

for those who aren’t familiar—the NAACP’s solidarity with trans people and willingness to recognize “similarities between exclusions of transgender kids and racial segregation” is something i find genuinely moving

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Stella Sacco @antlervel.vet · 20/09/2026

I would also like for my siblings that live differently, more loudly, more radically than I do to have the same freedoms and rights as I should have. I am not an exception or a model tranny for cohering in the ways I do. There is and should be no “correct” way to “deserve” rights as a trans person

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Return of the Cmonmacques @cmonmaque.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is a very good point and the thing to understand is that’s not what’s happening on either side. The republicans are identifying all the people they want to target for degradation and a repeal of their civil rights. The democrats are giving a list of who they’re okay to do that to.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

a lot of people act like there's a trade being offered where we give up trans athletes in sports and in exchange fascism is defeated forever

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Can't say it enuff: Every leftist politician should Xerox Mayor Mamdani's direct-to-the-people model, speak DIRECTLY to the constituency about the good they're doing, ignore the billionaire-captured filter of legacy media, & reduce those people to impotent hecklers forever reacting never directing.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 16/09/2026

Arienne Childrey, an Ohio LGBTQ+ rights leader and trans candidate, speaks out about being stonewalled by the Ohio Democratic Party for confronting Dem. Governor Candidate Amy Acton's anti-trans comments. People tell us to "just speak with the candidates." This shows why that doesn't always work.

ari4ohio.substack.com

Ally is a Verb

The True Story of the Ohio Democratic Establishment’s Demand for Silence, the Fight to Be Heard, and Why True Solidarity Cannot Coexist with Political Triangulation.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 16/09/2026

All it took was one person to confront Rob Sand at his town hall for his anti-trans statements. There are 26 Democrats that have taken bad votes or made bad statements towards transgender people. Those who disagreed with my article said to talk to the dems instead. So, we are. Go do it!

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Tamoor Hussain @tamoorh.com · 14/09/2026

btw Kanye did a song Heil Hitler and no one stepped in to oppose his tour(s), which is ongoing. In fact, Kanye is scheduled to perform at one of the stadiums Macklemore has been stopped from being at.

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

(Realizing it would sound petty if I just said I don't like your post) Your post jeopardizes an important election

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Leonard Pierce @leonardpierce.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"Let's all unite to win this unjust, immoral imperialist war that everybody hates" is not a new position for the Democrats, alas

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

an admittedly tertiary but still annoying side detail of the "trans kids in sports" debate is that these were already the worst kind of sports parents and now they think they're The Face of a Movement

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gwen howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

two years ago, i was allowed to use the women's room at the airport no problem. now, the texas state government can fine the airport thousands of dollars if i use the women's bathroom.

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Gwen Snyder is uncivil @gwensnyder.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"I work in tech! AI will replace us all!" No, AI will replace you and generate slop that you *think* replaces the output of people in the social sciences and humanities because you do not have the ability to discern quality work in those fields

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Relegated Things @relegatedthings.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The ACC moved the basketball tournament away from NC and that popular governor is on a glide path to winning a Senate seat there. Do people understand how crazy it is nobody is talking about the race in NC because the DEM seems like a lock? Trans rights being a losing issue for Dems is delusional.

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Relegated Things @relegatedthings.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Roy Cooper didn’t equivocate. We should be yelling at Talarico for listening to that idiot Cornyn staffer he hired that’s somehow convinced him this will save him more votes than he’ll lose. Republicans need to get used to being told no on some issues. And squiffy Dems should suck it up too.

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Relegated Things @relegatedthings.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Ten years ago the ACC told the state with the most rabid college basketball fan base (North Carolina, no arguments against that accepted here) that they couldn’t have their tournament if they banned transgender people from bathrooms. And one of the most popular Dem governors won off it.

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 14/09/2026

I've found that this attitude goes hand in hand with a failure to realize that every single issue that is now labelled "radical trans activism" was a compromise trans people won with those in power that power is now reneging on.

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 14/09/2026

One of the more insidious phrasings I've seen with the Dems/trans rights discourse lately is the idea that trans people are being greedy and demanding a "maximalist" approach to trans rights. No, you cannot call the state of rights American trans people had as recently as 2023 "maximalist," sorry.

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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The Democrats who are responding to anti-trans Republican attacks by kowtowing are signalling that they're not ready to meet this emergency. If elected, they're showing won't have the spine needed to reverse the Trumpist tide - unless we make them more afraid of their base than the other party.

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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

What's so toxic about the debate right now is that ordinary Democrats are just desperate for a win. They're scared of Trumpism and just want to believe their candidates are good, and for everyone to be in agreement that they're good.

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Adrienne @adrienneleigh.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A WHOLE LOT of trans people are citing to the last decade of UK politics as a reason they think anti-trans Dems winning is worse FOR THEM than anti-trans Repubs. And a whole lot of US liberals aren't engaging with that example at all while pontificating about why trans people are wrong and stupid.

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Corinne Green @ket.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

can those of you mad because you think trans whining on microblogs will depress support for dem politicians please imagine for one second how dem politicians spouting transphobia on enormous mainstream platforms depresses support for trans people

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Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

If you cannot be trusted to stand up for transgender Americans when they’re facing what some experts call a genocide, I don’t trust you to stand up for anything.

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Sam 🏳️‍⚧️ @samgauss.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Very petty and pedantic but I want to remind people chastising trans people for “doing nothing” if they’re considering not voting for an anti-trans candidate, that you can actually influence your community and local politics even when it’s not an election day. You can do it so many other days too!

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

When Democrats attempt to triangulate on trans rights, it's my sense that many liberals and people in politics don't understand why many trans people are so upset. I wrote about the differences between then and now, what trans people have lost, and what we still stand to lose

autonomy.substack.com

This Is Not A Love Song

Explaining the “maximalism” of trans rights

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Cheryl Lynn Eaton @cheryllynneaton.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

People are on here talking wild reckless to trans people. And it is very annoying because trans people have done everything they needed to do. They educated the public about candidates who were against civil rights. They pointed people towards viable alternatives. They came through in primaries.

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John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Notice the concern of parents who feel their trans children are being victimized never get listened to. It's only bigots. "Respect the parents" is a shell game.

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Scoiattolo @scarnecchia.net · 12/09/2026

I really wish people would make the connection between this sort of thing and men like Larry Nassar. Society just seems to want to make girl’s sports a site of mass sexual abuse because they’re afraid of a handful of trans women. It’s horrific.

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 12/09/2026

I stand by my post here. I’ve watched us go from one or two local dems to 26 national and statewide dems embracing anti-trans views, with some embracing REALLY bad ones. And I’ve watched what happens when you don’t cut that cancer out. One thing though: do present my side fairly please. 1/2

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Lexi Koren @lexikoren.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

One thing I like to remind TERFs is that trans women vote for the bodily autonomy of cis women at a much higher rate than cis women do.

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 12/09/2026

I would have gone out and found like an 8th generation Texan family who had an adult trans kid who fled Texas and cut an ad with them going "i voted the way i did to keep this texas family together, but Ken Paxton drove them apart. When the government reaches into the home, I begin to question it."

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

it's two things, to me: 1) trans rights matter because trans people matter and deserve rights, not just because failing to stand for trans rights is a bellwether for inauthentic progressivism more broadly 2) if you can't be trusted on trans rights you can't be trusted on anything

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daryl "crimetime after primetime" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…

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Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

I'm so sick of discourse from supposed allies about where trans people went wrong. Where we "went wrong" is that billionaires spent unimaginably large sums to attack us repeatedly and major media outlets have spent a decade piling on.

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Sorry but if antivaxxers were truly looking for people to just treat them kinder they wouldn’t have aligned themselves with every single hate movement that exists, and it’s intolerant to everybody else to act as if that’s not exactly who they are

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