Sign in

iiinova is part of the Atmosphere — an open, public network where you own your identity.

Sam Jackson

@sjacks26.myatproto.social
13.7K followers 380 following 1.3K posts

Researching right-wing extremism in the U.S, conspiracy theories, extremist language, etc. Professing in Albany, NY Black Lives Matter he/him My book about Oath Keepers: bit.ly/2DOUuh7 CV: tinyurl.com/meyy6xpd

PostsRepliesMedia
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 17/10/2026
Diamonds over sapphires?
000 0
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 16/10/2026
I was at UTK during the 2008 presidential elections. My conservative friends were *very* excited to get to say "No 'Bama (Alabama) No 'Bama (Obama)" on gameday.
110 1
Reposted by Sam Jackson
rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
I guess it's as good a time as any to announce the new moderation list I have: "Silence, robot", for bots, LLMs, and agents that speak to you without all parties who will receive the notification having solicited the speech: bsky.app/profile/raha...
13298125 298
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Andy Carvin @acarv.in · 16/10/2026
I'm sorry, but that's not flying - that's controlled landing without crashing, like a fluttering chicken.
172 7
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Tom Joscelyn @tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
In early 2025, I assumed the Trump regime would delete the Department of Justice’s press releases and other statements related to more than 1,000 Jan. 6 cases. So I downloaded them. We’ve now made them available to the public with a search tool. They can’t erase history. jan6memoryproject.org
jan6memoryproject.org
The January 6 Memory Project
A public archive of Department of Justice news releases and related court filings concerning prosecutions from the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
13767302532 6.7K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 16/10/2026
I’m sorry to have to be the bad guy here but we need to recognize that we live in a compressed air thrusters world now. If you’re not finding ways to teach the critical use of compressed air thrusters in your classroom, you’re setting your students up to fail when you could be setting them up to fly
1314080800 4.1K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 15/10/2026
well then i can see absolutely nothing here that would suggest a possible downside
0162 16
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Wagatwe Wanjuki @wagatwe.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
can't take "LLMs are people" discourse seriously when we haven't even convinced everyone that all people are people.
38134203858 13.4K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Matt Thiessen @mattthiessen.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Dear god, it's conscious!
1639388 393
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
its not even 10 and I need a stiff drink

Jesse Lunsford, PhD
@jesselunsford.bsky.social

Follow
I can't get past this, and I know it's not just this poster. Sorry it's been them I got stuck on this morning. 

"AI is slavery and I'm a slave owner" is a deeply troubling stance. 

If you believe something is slavery, friends, don't do it. Don't become a slaver.

Siobhán 🪏
 @shibbi.me
· 11h
Yes, it’s slavery. My job at this point is basically just “software-slave owner”. We’re incentivized to use them as much as possible.
9:17 AM · Oct 15, 2026

Everybody can reply
1 repost
1 like








Write your reply

Siobhán 🪏
 @shibbi.me
· 15m
My not being a slaver will do nothing to destroy the institution of slavery.

I am far less concerned with the state of my soul than with the state of the world.
691990213 2K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
some deranged lunatic is going to storm an elementary school with an ar15 looking for the schools surgical center and the media is going to pretend we have no idea where they got that idea from
456109622605 11K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 14/10/2026
We're doing a thing! And it's free!
316745 167
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Apropos of nothing, let me say this: Questioning the normative assumptions that motivate a focus on something like polarization IS NOT an anti-intellectual project. Pretending that one’s arguments or perspectives are free of normative commitments is the unserious, anti-intellectual make-believe.
2538 53
Reposted by Sam Jackson
John Horgan @johnhorgan.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Your reminder that @jmberger.com's stupendous new novel The Pope's Hitman drops two weeks from today. Do yourself a favor and order/read the book before the Hollywood adaptation comes out. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/836202...
penguinrandomhouse.com
The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger: 9798892428514 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
John Wick meets Conclave in this fast-paced international thriller about a priest with a deadly secret who must stop a plot to kill the Pope on Christmas Eve. Everybody loves Father Francis Loyola, t...
295 9
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) @lizthegrey.com · 13/10/2026
cpu is dogshit slow for inference, and self-replicating worms already exist (you may know them as rVPNs or botnets) alas they're just repackaging an existing problem as "you should be afraid of everyone's ai except ours"
24612151 612
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
NEW: I wrote about why so many people wanted to believe that Ukrainian airstrikes on a Russian data center reduced troll and bot activity online, even though it's almost certainly not true. Featuring @noupside.bsky.social: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Drone strikes didn't take out a Russian bot farm, but we were primed to believe It
A viral rumor illustrates people’s hunger to make sense of the division we see online.
481546661 1.5K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Y’all, I hate to rain on the dead bot parade, but the Yandex data center destruction doesn’t seem to have significantly impacted social media bots. I made temporal graphs of X posts about AfD around the time of the attack and there’s no sign of a sudden dip or residual impact on that conversation.
15345231175 4.5K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Edsall wrote an article on my recent article. I do think it’s important to point out here that Sean Westwood has been attacking my work since 2021, regardless of topic. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What if Political Polarization Is Not the Disease but the Cure? (Gift Article)
A debate in the rarefied atmosphere of elite academia is virtually certain to have real-world consequences.
129819 98
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a week.
835363851 5.4K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 12/10/2026
A solution in search of a problem is not progress. It's rent-seeking.
730531 305
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Reupping: The ST&SV Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study invites chapter proposals for a volume exploring the relationships between digital technologies, especially AI, and the artifacts, structures and power dynamics of the global political economy. Abstracts due 11/1 www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/cfp...
03125 31
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 11/10/2026
bsky.app/profile/anti...
060 6
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Joseph Menn @joemenn.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
No, bombing Yandex has not impacted automated Russian trolling operations in the U.S.
581414486 1.4K
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 11/10/2026
D’oh. I read your post too fast!
010 1
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Micah @rincewind.run · 10/10/2026
if your agents are going to commit crimes, you are legally responsible if you cannot figure out how to prevent your agents from doing crimes, you’re going to have to choose between releasing them and protecting yourself from criminal liability imo this would do more for “ai safety” than a sex cult
542771545 2.8K
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 10/10/2026
What a line up!
030 3
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
My man ended USAID, condemning millions to death
594506895 4.5K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Your regular reminder that the job of an ICE officer is dramatically safer than the job of a regular cop, such that not a single ICE deportation officer has been killed in the line of duty since 1949 (and that was actually a stabbing inside an INS jail in Hawaii, not street enforcement).
451509458 1.5K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
2. But Anthropic researchers say they see patterns that suggest that Claude can. The employees at Anthropic are telling themselves stories based on the words they input into the software and the words that come back out. >>
131295154 1.3K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I remember a decade-long panic about undergraduates, activists, or Tumblr pages declaring new language rules and denouncing people for violating them.
post from Trump on Truth Social declaring that anyone who uses the term "Artificial Intelligence" is THE ENEMY!
571082196 1.1K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 08/10/2026
This is great! I think a lot about whether/how to use LLMs to model language in analyzing texts (I have not done so in published work to date). This is a very clear decision tree to guide such evaluation in a purposeful way rather than a reflexive/emotional yes or no.
0175 17
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Adam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
It's a distinctly American irony that sovcits and militiamen frequently run into more trouble with traffic courts than with ATF agents
510519 105
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 08/10/2026
I will take weak recommendation algorithms over giving hundreds of millions of dollars to people who are bad for democracy though.
020 2
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 08/10/2026
This is one of the weak points of Tidal imo. Recommendations end up being the same cast of characters with comparatively little new stuff.
120 2
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Stephen C. Rea @stevierea.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
It was only a matter of time 😞🤬
0106 10
Reposted by Sam Jackson
jasmine mithani @jazzmyth.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Absolutely horrifying. Fear of sexual violence prevents women candidates from running for office — a gendered burden that impacts representation overall. It is brave for Bernadette Greene-Placentia to share this. (NB Article contains graphic descriptions) www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/congres...
phoenixnewtimes.com
Congressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signs
Embarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing.
311047 110
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 06/10/2026
Based on this interview, @nbedera.bsky.social’s book is jumping to the top of my reading stack
0113 11
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 06/10/2026
Starter Villain by @scalzi.com
020 2
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026
People ask whether these guys are true believers or just massively invested in the hype, and at the point where you are trying to lobby *the pope* to say you are creating the machine god, there is no meaningful distinction.
28815 88
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 03/10/2026
a lot of people into ai want to talk about how it works, but they either mean the stack inside the software or the things it "can do now" that "can't be explained" but ai is a rhetorical technology. the way to understand how it works is to understand how rhetoric works
415235 152
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Dan Nexon @dhnexon.net · 03/10/2026
I find it depressing that we're arguing over whether or not LLMs qualify as "conscious beings" when countless non-human animals clearly qualify as such and yet we continue to inflict needless pain and cruelty upon them.
2467 46
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Also, plenty of effort to launch a revolution by white men, including McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City and the Bundy Ranch and Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Plus Charlottesville. It’s not a lack of trying. I did a whole podcast about this: longshadowpodcast.com/podcasts/ris...
longshadowpodcast.com
Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right
Episode 1, Waco: The Spark, chronicles the 1993 FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound which solidified a far-right movement.
1017554 175
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.
6148401434 4.8K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026
oh this is gonna be an interesting read to be clear tho, when rightwingers start screaming "a judge said you can't punish noncitizens who vote illegally?!", no, that's not what a judge said storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
screenshot of the opening of the linked opinion, which reads as follows:

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
ON DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS THE INFORMATION

This is an unusual criminal case. It rests upon a forty-year-old federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 611, that prohibits the act of voting in a federal election by a non-U.S. citizen. Until very recently, no federal court has been presented with the following question about that statute: Did Congress have Constitutional authority to enact it? That’s unusual, all by itself.

But this case is even more unusual than that, because the Government’s principal defense of the statute’s constitutionality invokes a single Supreme Court case that is very, very weak. Let me say that a different way. The leading case cited by the Government to uphold the statute is of “minimal precedential value” (that’s not my characterization, it’s Justice Scalia’s; we’ll get to that), and the
application of other binding precedent shows that the Government’s leading case simply does not control this one. So why does the Government lead with such a weak hand? Because it’s the best
hand it can play. And why is that? Because the text, structure, and original public meaning of the Constitution show that *Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute.* screenshot of the bottom of p. 29 and top of p.30 of the linked opinion, which reads as follows, with internal citations omitted:

The Court does not set aside the application of a statute passed by Congress lightly, so let’s end by underscoring what this unusual case does *not* decide or even touch upon:

1. Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does.

2. Does the federal government have the power to remove the Defendant from the United States for engaging in the exact conduct alleged here? The undersigned must wait for a live case, but
a different federal statute, embedded in Title 8, states that “[a]ny alien who has voted in violation of any Federal, State, or local constitutional provision, statute, ordinance, or regulation is inadmissible.” That statute on its face rests on Congress’s immigration power and does not depend upon setting a federal voting qualification. This case doesn’t address the Government’s power to remove a non-U.S. citizen who engages in the same conduct.
615938 159
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Suuuuper interesting, I was not tracking this. The judge found the law criminalizing noncitizen voting is a voter qualification statute, and therefore outside of Congress’s power. Surprisingly, this is an issue of first impression! Decision is here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The best reading of the actual statute that underpins this criminal case yields an inescapable
conclusion: 18 U.S.C. S 611 is a voter qualification statute, and the Constitution does not authorize
Congress to legislate voter qualifications for federal elections. Except for very specific constitutional
provisions (that cannot support this statute; we will go through them, Congress has no power to say
who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections-that foundational power is reserved for the States,
and limits Congress.
Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock, and
this case reveals a big one: When you're prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the
authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand. That principle in federal law harkens back to cases
like Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803), and United States v. Hudson, 11 U.S. 32, 34 (1812), and
has had explicit and unbroken support in criminal cases since Ex Parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 376-77
(1879) ("An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime. A
conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of
imprisonment."). The principle is so fundamental that it even predates our constitutional republic; it
lies at the very heart of our constitutional heritage. See, e.g., Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N.C. 5, 9-10 (1787) (striking down a legislative act as unconstitutional and holding that a court cannot enforce an
unconstitutional law in any type of proceeding). This principle acts as a shield for every person facing
criminal prosecution in the United States, citizen and non-citizen alike. That shield protects the
Defendant here, and none of the Government's arguments break through it.
341023309 1K
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
262185654909 18.6K
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
What does "internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease" even fucking mean? And no, "I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment" doesn't make that sentence better.
010 1
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
Like, this simply isn't true! You don't find evidence of introspection, you see a machine generating output that you as a human inject meaning into.
“I will be honest: We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling,” he said. “We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”
150 5
Sam Jackson @sjacks26.myatproto.social · 02/10/2026
It took me three tries to read this article. Almost everything Olah says about Anthropic's model is PR speak. And it's not even smart PR speak, it's just "wow I don't understand it so it must be human like!"
142 4
Reposted by Sam Jackson
Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Omg Kate Garraway gagged her with that question
1322168415 2.2K