iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I missed this Pew study in August, but was just pondering what this number is up to. This is what an extinction event for the information ecosystem looks like. www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...

Timeline chart since 2023, showing new pages climbing to 35% and all pages climbing to 9.6%.

Paragraph reads: In the July 2026 snapshot, signs of AI authorship can be found in over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released. This is in line with other studies that have shown that large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 02/10/2026

It's not a Gish Gallop, that implies an inappropriate level of control. A Gush Wallop? A Flush Flollop?

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 30/09/2026

where do I type in my bank account number

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 29/09/2026

It's not every day you get a reenactment of the *entire* Pepe Silvia scene.

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Paul Voosen @voosen.me · 28/09/2026

New Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:

science.org

NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding

Decision risks “incalculable loss” of data from the edge of the Sun’s influence, scientists say

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/09/2026

I like the simple "something big that it is still bigger than" approach, like human energy use. Or something physically related like the scale of temperature increase if that energy were added to the atmosphere rather than the ocean. (Another way of getting at 90% going in the ocean, but still.)

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 25/09/2026

The Jira feature request for disabling AI has turned into a help forum where users teach each other how to hide the UI elements with uBlock. jira.atlassian.com/browse/AI-930

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 24/09/2026

On the one hand, there is absolutely no reason to do this. But on the other hand, there's also no reason to do this.

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Glen Peters @glenpeters.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The world has a stubborn tendency to rebound... Yes, there are mechanisms for a structural change post-Hormuz, but we said that after the Global Financial Crisis and after COVID. And yet, we still have record emissions of coal, oil, and gas!

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 22/09/2026

When you install the hot new Build-A-Vulnerability Workshop.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 20/09/2026

You might think that this sounds like one of the dumbest things you've ever heard, but remember that the architect was a 3rd grader doodling during class.

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Bloomberg Law @bloomberglaw.com · 17/09/2026

OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft Corp. executives admitted that their AI tools were substitutes for articles published by the New York Times and other outlets and acknowledged the threat their technology posed for the news industry, according to a newly unsealed court document.

bit.ly

OpenAI, Microsoft Leaders Admitted AI Is Threat to News Industry

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 11/09/2026

Why are they selling a disposable mop fluid refill as if it were a beverage?

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Alexandra Witze @alexwitze.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The National Science Foundation has not had a director since April 2025, but is undertaking very significant structural changes in how it funds US science. No permanent leadership appears anywhere in sight.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 09/09/2026

Interesting: Massachusetts has ordered all new data centers above 25MW to procure clean power.

mass.gov

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Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 04/09/2026

On The Climate Brink, I post my comment about the USGCRP's proposed amendment to eliminate RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 from the National Climate Assessment. www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-worst-...

theclimatebrink.com

The Worst Case Is Still on the Table

Why removing RCP8.5 from the National Climate Assessment would be a serious mistake

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 04/09/2026

The clearest lesson of COVID was that no one around you is capable of giving a shit.

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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

NSF slights the social sciences and STEM education in new solicitation for graduate research fellowships www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

NSF shrinks support for social sciences in prestigious graduate fellowship program

New solicitation excludes students in seven fields and science education

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molly taft @mollytaft.com · 25/08/2026

NEW: gas power in development in the US explicitly for data centers have nearly doubled in less than a year, soaring from 97GW at the end of 2025 to more than 189GW mid-2026, according to shocking new figures from @globalenergymon.bsky.social that's up from just 4 GW in 2024:

wired.com

Data Centers Are Driving an Alarming Gas Power Expansion in the US

There’s no clearer sign of the data center boom than rampant gas projects that have been proposed or that are already under construction.

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EarthScope Consortium @earthscope.org · 20/08/2026

Detecting flash floods while they’re still trickles is essential for early warning of the growing threat. A new study uses NSF NGF instruments and facilities to demonstrate how Distributed Acoustic Sensing can pick up signals from these initial flows. Read it here: doi.org/10.1785/0220260087

A five-panel comic explaining the importance of understanding when overland flow starts and how DAS can be used to detect this transition. The comic features a conversation between an anthropomorphized DAS instrument, cloud, and raindrops.

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404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026

EXCLUSIVE: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Investigation by @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social here: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 16/08/2026

Not enough people talk about how Word's grammar checker has become hilariously, unusably bad since they AI-ified it. www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 13/08/2026

We like to play around with the ol' Up Goer Five in science communication training sessions, and this year our kick-ass interns decided to turn some entries into video. www.youtube.com/shorts/nsuaF...

youtube.com

How do we explain complex science? #shorts #geology #scicomm

YouTube video by EarthScope Consortium Science

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 12/08/2026

If you also experience curiosity...

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/08/2026

Why this comparison? It's interesting to think about the lifecycle analysis of exporting materials to space or importing materials from space. Also, I figured the Venn diagram of AI megaconstellation bros and asteroid mining bros was an ellipse with an eccentricity of zero.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/08/2026

Even with an *extremely* conservative estimate, I was pretty surprised by how big some of the numbers get. This is all *per year* by the way, because we're talking about 200,000 satellites dying annually.

Bar chart for each element, and for both chondrites and iron-rich asteroids, titled "Diameter of asteroid (in meters) required to match the amount of each element lost.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/08/2026

I was curious, so I ran some numbers on the metals we'd lose by launching a giant AI data center constellation into space where they can't be recycled. I was still curious, so I figured out how big of an asteroid you'd have to mine for an equivalent amount. www.sjon.earth/launching-or...

sjon.earth

Launching orbital data centers is like asteroid mining in reverse

How much e-waste material would be lost by putting AI data center servers in space, instead of a building where they can easily be collected and recycled?

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

The Australian Antarctic Division and the Australian aviation company Skytraders just conducted a spectacular medevac of an American from the US National Science Foundation's McMurdo Station in -43°C, something that's never been done in July.

nytimes.com

Inside the Mission to Carry Out a Midwinter Medevac in Antarctica (Gift Article)

An Australian flight crew faced subfreezing temperatures, changing weather conditions and almost constant darkness as they worked to rescue a U.S. national.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1

workspace where you can tell Claude what you are writing about. Screenshot shows that user is writng a paper about "AI and Education"

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 04/08/2026

Absolutely no shot this guy knows about lindens.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 04/08/2026

Their trees are all gross.

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 30/07/2026

ICYMI I wrote about what we can and can't say about one possible environmental consequence of the orbital AI data center megaconstellation concept—ozone depletion. www.sjon.earth/elon-musks-o...

sjon.earth

Elon Musk’s orbital data centers could be an environmental catastrophe

Tens of thousands of satellites burning up on reentry might not be the best thing for the ozone layer.

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EarthScope Consortium @earthscope.org · 29/07/2026

How are ocean waves and earthquakes linked? A new study combines buoy wave height measurements with NSF NGF seismic data to examine how winter ocean swells impact seismicity at California’s offshore Mendocino Triple Junction. Read it here: doi.org/10.1785/0220250447

A comic illustrating how wave height measurements and fifteen years of seismic observations draw a connection between seismicity and ocean-waves. The comic features anthropomorphized borehole seismometers and a wave rider instrument collaborating to study the seasonal changes in seismicity.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/07/2026

[undignified pleading follows] A thousand thanks for your help if you share my work at any point! I'll also have a free monthly email you can sign up for! I'll be cool about it! And to whoever is my first paid subscriber, I have Chicago roots and so does the Pope. Sainthood isn't off the table.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/07/2026

Ozone depletion has started to get some research attention in the context of Starlink, OneWeb, etc. The data center constellation would be much, much bigger. Makes ya think!

$Screenshot from the article: A 2024 paper can help us relate this back to the AI data center satellites. That team modeled the process of a Starlink-sized satellite burning up on reentry. They estimated that a 250 kg satellite would release about 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles ready to deplete ozone. Given that, they estimate that satellites would have released about 2 metric tons of aluminum oxide in 2016, increasing to almost 17 tons in 2022. When megaconstellations like Starlink reach steady-state operation in the future, that number could be around 360 tons. For comparison, the total amount of aluminum in small meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere each year is about 140 tons—the amount oxidized into similar nanoparticles would be some fraction of that. If we use these numbers as a rough estimate—30 kg of aluminum oxide particles from a 250 kg satellite—we can scale it up to the proposed AI data center satellites. Each of SpaceX’s “AI1” satellites are expected to come in around 6 tons. (See Eric Berger at Ars Technica for the working on that. Although Elon Musk also helpfully noted that they are “very, very tiny compared to Earth.”) That would mean 720 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles released per satellite. With 40,000 to 200,000 of these satellites reentering Earth’s atmosphere each year, we’re talking 29,000 to 144,000 tons per year.$

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/07/2026

For my first story (no paywall), I dug into whether there might possibly, maybe, on the off chance, be some environmental hazard associated with Elon Musk's proposed orbital AI data center satellites constantly burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

sjon.earth

Elon Musk’s orbital data centers could be an environmental catastrophe

Tens of thousands of satellites burning up on reentry might not be the best thing for the ozone layer.

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