iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 22h

The authors of this book identify 3 converging strains of fascism: religious extremists convinced we’re in the end times; tech oligarchs scorching the earth in pursuit of AGI; and white nationalist politicians scapegoating immigrants to win votes. Yet there’s hope. A must-read book! #BookSky 📚 💙

End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein andAstra Taylor

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I read Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation (translated by Susan Bernofsky). It traces the life of a house built by a lake in the Brandenburg hills east of Berlin. The characters (some nameless) come and go across time. The gardener is a constant presence. A beautifully executed inventive novel. #BookSky 📚

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

billmckibben.com/books/here-c... Here Comes the Sun! Bill McKibben gives us good reasons for Hope, not that we can prevent climate change (too late for that!), but that we can mitigate the crisis and create a future civilization that harnesses its energy from the sun and the wind. ☀️🌬️ #BookSky 📚

billmckibben.com

Here Comes the Sun

From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness the power of the sun and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future. Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

psychopete1.substack.com/p/the-infini... Some useful advice to De-Google your life. I’ve started taking a few baby steps. We’ll see how it DuckDuckGoes…

psychopete1.substack.com

De-Google Your Life

And starve the machine while you're at it.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

youtu.be/Lwz1XwHwWhY?... Jesse Welles rocks The Nerd Reich Great song for the times

youtu.be

The Nerd Reich

YouTube video by Jesse Welles

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Finished listening to The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by journalist Gil Duran on libro.fm. A clear-eyed deep dive into the twisted worldview of the Tech oligarchs who are dismantling democracy and destroying the planet. 🌎 A must-read. 📕 #USDemocracy 💙 #BookSky 📚

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Reposted by Stephen L Cooley

Monica @softtail65.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

This information is good to know if you're registering to vote this year or working on getting others registered to vote! 🗳

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Reposted by Stephen L Cooley

Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @nothoodlum.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Oops. 🥴 www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

imaginationlibrary.com Wasn’t Dolly Parton amazing? She understood what it meant to live in poverty, and she used her talent and fame to make the world a better place for so many. RIP Dolly. You will be missed.

imaginationlibrary.com

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Emily St John Mandel is a great writer. Just finished reading Station Eleven, a pandemic-apocalypse novel featuring a traveling Symphony and Shakespeare troupe. The narrative deftly weaves between those moments and years leading up to and following the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... Dis.qua.li.fied. Jeffries cannot be Speaker of the House if Democrats win big in November. That cannot happen. What a disappointment he is.

theguardian.com

Democrats incredulous over Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner meeting

Critics include Senator Chris van Hollen, ex-aide to Obama Tommy Vietor and ex-Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

substack.com/@charlesmblo... Charles M. Blow, one of my favorite former NYTimes Op Ed columnists, is now a contributing writer for the Guardian. An excellent match. Congratulations to both! 📰

substack.com

Charles M. Blow (@charlesmblow)

BIG NEWS: I’ve signed on to be a contributing writer for #TheGuardian.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

podcasts.apple.com/hk/podcast/t... Gil Durán and The Nerd Reich. He’s on fire in this episode, which may be the last one on YouTube. 🔥 Have a listen. If you like what you hear, purchase the book and support his work. Tech CEOs be damned. #BookSky 📚 #USDemocracy 💙🗽

podcasts.apple.com

The Nerd Reich

Politics Podcast · Updated twice weekly · The Nerd Reich with Gil Duran a podcast about Silicon Valley politics and power—who holds it, how they use it, and how the unchecked influence of tech billion...

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Damn, what a timely gut-punch of a novel. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout. “Every day brought something new. On and on it went. Artie watched these things, and he slowly understood that what he felt the day of the election was true: His country was committing suicide.” #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202... Fascinating article on the future of reading. Are we on the cusp of a postliterate world? #reading 📖

theatlantic.com

Is the Age of Reading Over?

Rose Horowitch on her cover story and what happens when a society becomes “postliterate”

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Confession: Finished the final chapters and the epilogue today (and glad I did). SWW deserves credit for publishing her story, as much as she sensationalizes it and embellishes the small details. I believe her in the main. Will be interesting to see what she does next in the area of AI policy. 🤔

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

What a disappointment this book was. My BS detector was on high alert and I found it difficult to get to the end. Ok, SWW establishes that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are greedy and awful, and that FB is a horrible social media platform. Q: What took her so long to leave? 🧐 #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The lengths to which sociologist Brooke Harrington goes to expose the secretive system of offshore finance are impressive. Using an ethnographic approach, she observes and interviews the wealth managers who protect the fortunes of the global ultra-rich. We should all be outraged. 🤬 #BookSky 📚

Offshore: Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism by Brooke Harrington

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI is another insightful book by Cory Doctorow. It cuts through all the hype surrounding AI and helps us understand the technology “not just for what it does, but for who it does it to and who it does it for.” As the bubble grows, be prepared! #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Loved this book. It’s a serious 3-phase framework that explains how big tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook (Meta), Google (Alphabet), Amazon :( and Twitter (X) have all turned to 💩 I’m now listening to his latest book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI on Libro.fm #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Back on BlueSky. Thank you support@bsky.app

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Apologies to all who have received DMs from my account with invitations to receive a community badge. It’s a phishing scam. Don’t click the link! I’m deactivating my account for a while to see if that helps. Will check in again sometime next week. 💙💙💙

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Yes, I’ve reported it to bsky. Sorry 😕

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Sorry for the trouble. Received this response from BlueSky.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Thanks for letting me know. I’ve reported it and BlueSky support tells me it’s a phishing attempt

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Bluesky Safety @safety.bsky.app · 28/03/2025

1/6 We're seeing an uptick in scams pretending to be Bluesky or @aaron.bsky.team. These scammers are targeting artists via DMs, trying to take you off-app. Our moderation team is reviewing reports of these scammers and will take down their accounts. Here are some important reminders:

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I received this from BlueSky support. It looks like a phishing attempt.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

If you receive an invitation to receive a community badge from my account, I believe it’s a phishing scam. Please delete it. It seems my account has been hacked. I have reached out to support@bsky.app to seek support.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Thank you Joel. Will look into it. 🙏🏼

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I listened to this audiobook on libro.fm Former US federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann argues for a new law to hold political liars to account when their lies undermine the institutions of democracy. Fascinating! I’m filled with hope. Brazil did it. Why can’t we? #BookSky 📚

Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America by Andrew Weissmann

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar features four voices from one family forced to flee Iran and seek asylum in Germany. Spanning four decades, from the 1979 Iranian revolution to the 2009 Green Movement protests, it’s a powerful account of oppression, resistance and hope. #BookSky 📚

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar and translated by Ruth Martin.

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Barbara Rybolt 🐸 @barbararybolt.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

#ProudBlue #Resist I pinned this on BS when I joined in 2024, then last week I managed to unpin it. Just found it again & will continue to post it. I hope people who check out my profile will repost it also. It’s why I am here. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears when I saw it live. Never forget!

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Sounds like it. Will add it to my reading list! 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Another Ishiguro novel to take my mind off current events. This one, a near-future dystopian novel told from the PoV of Klara, an Artificial Friend. “Klara and the Sun” explores loneliness and obsolescence. It is an investigation of the human heart, of that which makes us human. #BookSky

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Revisited “When We Were Orphans” by Kazuo Ishiguro after over 20 years. Christopher Banks, a self-absorbed and unreliable narrator, returns to Shanghai in the 1930s to confront his past and investigate how he lost his parents. Such a rich and multi-layered novel. #BookSky 📚

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Finished reading Karen Hao’s “Empire of AI”. She tracks the development of Open AI and ChatGPT from an insider’s perspective and reveals some alarming details. We’re in another age of empire and it’s unfolding in real time. Makes me never want to use AI again. #BookSky

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

podcasts.apple.com/hk/podcast/t... Fascinating discussion. David Remnick of the New Yorker interviews Omer Bartov, an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. What a contrast to Jake Tapper’s cringe interview of Elise Stefanik on CNN’s SOTU! 😬 Alternate universes

podcasts.apple.com

A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel

Podcast Episode · The Political Scene | The New Yorker · 20 April · 40min

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... Good news for liberalism and the rules-based international order. Thank you, Hungary.

theatlantic.com

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable

If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

podcasts.apple.com/hk/podcast/t... This is a great episode. I stopped listening to Ezra because of his annoying tendency to perseverate over what’s wrong with Democrats, Liberals and/or liberalism in general. In this interview with Fareed about Trump’s war in Iran, he’s back on track.

podcasts.apple.com

The Ezra Klein Show

Society & Culture Podcast · Updated weekly · Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic ...

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Stephen L Cooley @slcool.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Americans overwhelmingly oppose the U.S. entering into war with Iran. The U.S. government should work to deescalate the crisis, prevent a full blown war, and not escalate tensions that put our national security at risk. sign.moveon.org/petitions/no...

sign.moveon.org

Keep the U.S. out of forever wars!

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