iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Hong Kong Free Press HKFP @hongkongfp.com · 01/10/2026

Hong Kong police arrested two people on Wednesday for allegedly acting "with seditious intent", authorities said, with local media identifying the pair as an independent journalist and an activist. In full: hongkongfp.com/2026/10/01/h... Photo: Tang Ho-wing/YouTube & Kyle Lam/HKFP.

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H Mac @hmac.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The quote that went around when Wendell Berry died, "the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines" comes to mind *often* these days. Trying to live as a creature is becoming my north star.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Technology enthusiasts severely overestimate the average person’s desire or willingness or capacity to build and use AI agents. I understand some work roles that could mandate or encourage it but that is no way a tech revolution. Agents are best for structured, clearly delineated tasks.

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YTSL @ytsl.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Mid-Autumn Festival was just a few days ago... 🙄

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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is such a sorry & infuriating tale. Via @davidpetts1.bsky.social from another place. www.sarsen.org/2026/09/hist...

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The French Republican Calendar @sansculottid.es · 27/09/2026

Today is Septidi the 7th of Vendémiaire in the year 235. Vendémiaire is the month of vintage. Today we celebrate carrots. #JacobinDay See today's page

An old time-y illustration of a Carrots.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Aaron Busch @tripperhead.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Peggy Wong has resigned from her duties as a Tai Po District Councillor, citing health reasons, the government said on Saturday. Wong also resigned from her duties as member of the Tai Po South Area Committee and captain of the Tai Po Kwong Fuk and Plover Cove sub-district Care Team.

news.rthk.hk

Peggy Wong resigns as Tai Po District Councillor - RTHK

Peggy Wong has resigned from her duties as a Tai Po District Councillor, citing health reasons, the government said on S...

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BCP Minus Context @bcpminuscontext.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of life

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Catherine Frieman @cjfrieman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Assume this means the old rules restricting the hoi polloi from the bod have gone out the windows and anyone can get a reader card now... no?

bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Apply for a Bodleian Reader card

Applying for a Bodleian Libraries Reader Card if you are not a member of the University of Oxford.

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Immigration and Ethnic History Society @iehs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

***Upcoming: "Asian Exclusion and the Battle for Birthright Citizenship"*** This conference contextualizes efforts to restrict and strip birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants ineligible to naturalize within the context of Asian American history. www.huntington.org/event/asian-...

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

A.I. and corporate lingo are dragging language ynto drugged realmes of vague, airy, plastic nothingnesse: glitz and hyperbole wythout meaning. Language must have fur and clawes, make the floorboardes creake and leave wet dirtye footprintes. Wordes are rayne and fyre and stone. Wielde them. Save us.

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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

fwiw I've been digging my site out of mothballs because everyone really does need their own domain that's not controlled by somebody else, and I've had this one running for 30 years, off and on. www.thismodernworld.com Mostly posting cartoons, but plan to get back to photoblogging as well.

thismodernworld.com

THIS MODERN WORLD – BY TOM TOMORROW

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

There's plenty of corruption, crimes against humanity, and downright evil shit to focus on, but every so often it strikes me how thoroughly we USians have been exposed and disgraced on the world stage. A country who can elect such a man—twice!—is not a worthy country. We need radical reformation.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Our super talented friend and collaborator @noahjodice.bsky.social has another installment for @interruptcrim.bsky.social's "Imagining Overground Railroads" series. I shared this one with folks this weekend: the theme is "Learning Together." millionexperiments.com/zines/overgr...

millionexperiments.com

Overground Railroads

Do you see any “overground railroads” where you are? What systems, networks, and relationships come together around you to bring people closer to liberation? The different pieces of your railroad may...

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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

new toon: large language muddle www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

dailykos.com

Large language muddle

A cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.

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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Happy weekend! 🦛 ❤️ Two ancient Egyptian blue faience hippos made by artisans some 3,800 years ago! Neues Museum, Berlin 📷 by me #Archaeology

My photo shows two blue-green Egyptian faience hippopotamus figurines displayed on a white museum surface at the Neues Museum in Berlin. The larger hippo on the right sits upright on its haunches with short front legs planted forward, head turned to the left with mouth open, as if smiling. It is 9 cm in length. The smaller hippo on the left lies in a reclining or resting pose, with body close to the ground. It measures 4.8cm in length. Both are decorated with black lotus flower and aquatic river plant motifs. The museum display makes them appear like a mother and her baby hippo! 🥰

Egyptian blue faience is a ceramic material made of ground quartz. The decoration depicts Nile river plants such as water weed and lotus flowers found in their marsh habitat. In ancient Egypt lotus flowers were associated with regeneration as they open in the morning and close at night, symbolising rebirth. Whilst ancient Egyptians were well aware of the danger and destructive power of hippos, they were also seen as an animal with revitalizing power. An animal from the fertile mud of the Nile, fiercely protective of their young, hippos embodied divine powers guaranteeing rebirth. Blue faience hippos have been found in Middle Kingdom tombs of high ranking officials. It's thought they were placed in the tombs to aid the rebirth of the deceased.

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Euan Healey @euanhealey.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Edinburgh University created the first ever Chair in Celtic in Scotland in 1882 (Donald Mackinnon of Colonsay). This is a cultural retreat happening before our eyes where there was once leadership.

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Touhin Panda🤍 @touhin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

9.17.26 Moo Deng (Khao Kheow Open Zoo) update - followed mama Jonah, was full and digesting, was moisturized, not bouncy, and unbothered💜

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Professor Nutella @jpnudell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A few thoughts on why chasing "what students want" is both necessary and out of sync with giving them the best education possible. joshuapnudell.com/2026/09/17/t...

joshuapnudell.com

Teaching Thursday: What Students Want

A few thoughts on why chasing “what students want” is both necessary and out of sync with giving them the best education.

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Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The price of a gallon of diesel in Des Moines is nearly the same as the hourly minimum wage in Iowa…

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Adia Benton @ethnography911.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

THE uni of Edinburgh?!? Yikes

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

ICE routinely moves detainees multiple times to distant locations, "creating vast distances between them, their loved ones and the lawyers fighting for their freedom.... A Banner analysis of ICE records found that a person first detained in Maryland is typically transferred more than 1,200 miles."

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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Ed Yong is offline @edyong209.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Briefly popping my head back in to unveil the cover of my upcoming book, LIFE BEYOND MEASURE: Nature's Hidden Wonders at Every Scale. It’ll be out on April 6 in the U.S. and April 29 in the U.K. and you can pre-order it right now! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/757705... 1/

A book cover featuring a beautiful closely cropped portrait of an Anna's hummingbird. The cover says LIFE BEYOND MEASURE: Nature's Hidden Wonders at Every Scale, by Ed Yong. The image also says US: 4/06/27 and UK: 4/29/27

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Yen-han Chen 陳彥翰 🇹🇼🇺🇸🇺🇦 @chen-yenhan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Found this account that posts webcam footage from around Taiwan. This is the first light over Taiwan on the day it has been a democracy longer than a dictatorship.

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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

NEW: Once exceptionally rare, illegal deportations — in defiance of court orders or due to ICE screw-ups — are now a routine part of President Trump's mass deportation push. It happened 3 times this past week and more at least 30 times in recent months. www.politico.com/news/2026/09...

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I have a cousin who was constantly putting me on game with ways that I could get out of my J-O-B and not do all that “smart shit cuz.” I finally explained to them that I LIKE all the smart shit, did in fact choose to do it for a living, and I am very good at it. They never really believed me.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The fuck it could. If a law is designed to murder humanity, humanity can and should kill that law.

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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.

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Carley Carden @carleycarden.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Imagine running for a public office in Kansas and NOT invoking the greatest movie ever made, which also happens to be a bildungsroman ab becoming a person of moral, psychological, mental, and social integrity—w explicitly political notes!—set in Kansas. Couldn’t be Dem Senate nominee Adam Hamilton.

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HK Hemlock @hkbiglychee.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Small towns in the hills around Sapporo give me an odd sense of deja vu. Took a while before it clicked: West Virginia. With a dash of Scandinavian warmth-retaining house design. And fewer trailers and overweight people…

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HK Hemlock @hkbiglychee.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Asahikawa. Best boring town in Hokkaido? Morning: shrine with barely a half dozen visitors all year; bad sculpture; deserted streets; cheap onions. Mostly a sense of emptiness and having seen better days (as a lumber hub). Where are the people?

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HK Hemlock @hkbiglychee.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Sweet Lady Jane Cafe, Sapporo. Highly wrought cakes (coconut, pineapple, almond pictured). But most of all - ACME brand cutlery!

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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The unfettered pleasures of Pieter Bruegel's marvelous Children's Games of 1560: an entire town taken over by children at play. Today is Bruegel's day.

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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Happy 72nd Birthday to Ruby Bridges, who at the age of 6 desegregated the New Orleans public schools. She’s younger than 30 senators and our last two presidents—and only 7 years older than Barack Obama. The past isn’t past.

Ruby Bridges flanked by three U.S. Marshals on the steps of her school

Norman Rockwell’s painting depicting the event, “The Problem We All Live With,” originally published as a centerfold in the January 14, 1964 issue of Look magazine.

Ruby Bridges talking with President Obama as they look at Rockwell’s painting while it was temporarily displayed at the White House in 2011.

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

This is seismic news for fisheries scientists. Northern cod is *the* iconic symbol of total fisheries collapse due to overfishing (and other factors) *and* the iconic symbol of a complete failure to recover for decades afterwards. This is like announcing the complete recovery of bison on land.

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 07/09/2026

"If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, 'What would I do if I were a horse?'" -Ely Devons

A fake Harvard Business Review cover, dated September-October 2026. It features a large Roach Motel under the headline 'THE NEW CUSTOMER RETENTION' with the subhead 'Why acquire customers when you can take hostages?'A fake Harvard Business Review cover, dated September-October 2026. It features a large Roach Motel under the headline 'THE NEW CUSTOMER RETENTION' with the subhead 'Why acquire customers when you can take hostages?'

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Anthony of the Badlands @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Who aced structural geology and wants to show how messed up this fault is?

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Project Gutenberg @gutenberg.org · 06/09/2026

A new datasets portal for bulk downloads of all 23+ million pages in the collection. It also provides direct access to over 425,000 pages of newly upgraded OCR text. www.loc.gov/collections/... More information: blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/20... #books #publicdomain

Screenshot showing a June 1, 1903 article from the Washington Times newspaper in Chronicling America before and after OCR reprocessing.

Graphic comparing OCR quality before/after reprocessing on a scanned 1900s newspaper clipping about the Library of Congress collecting old newspapers. "Before" text is garbled and repetitive; "after" is clean and accurate—demonstrating improved OCR/digitization results.

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Cirenzi @cirellan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

2026 absolutely does not need “Anak Krakatau has entered the chat.” 😬

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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I am having a particularly frustrating week, so here’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The eruption of Sarychev Peak in the Aleutian Islands, seen by the crew of the space station. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

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