iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Meanwhile, in Cambridge. Mood: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_O...

Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

New banger by D.Cohn "How this building came to be offers plenty of insights into how the sausage is made at IU...how decisions about the campus are made and its treatment of graduate students through the lens of the housing that it does or does not make available to them" medium.com/@dncohn/on-g...

medium.com

On graduate housing (or not) at Indiana U Bloomington

Last Friday, IUB held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Beverly, a new apartment complex on the site of the former Poplars Building that is…

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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A good read from @zey.bsky.social. Related to @arxiv.bsky.social 's oral exams: i) chalk talks are going to be really interesting during interviews. ii) Peer reviewing, I've also noticed folks winding up further out over their skis with stats.

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The rise of metascience embodies and builds on this result-centric focus that has come to define the scientific endeavor over the past few decades. Maybe the backlash against AI will help us finally push back against this trend and bring the focus back to the context, process, assumptions & models.

psycnet.apa.org

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Alex Kale @kalealex.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What AI scales about science are the parts that are most broken and gameable. With the exception of combinatorial problems like protein folding, we need more thinking and less rote computation.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"Writing centers should be championed, not dissolved... Colleges are racing to outspend each other with new AI-focused programming. But individualized, human support for student learning should not be sacrificed on the altar of these ambitions." (by Lizzie Hutton, Miami U Ohio's WC director)

cincinnati.com

AI makes college writing centers more important, not less | Opinion

Opinion: AI can generate words. College students still need to learn how to write.

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John Timmer @jtimmer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

So, I turned my chaotic little developmental biology rant into an actual article that is hopefully somewhat less chaotic and a bit more approachable.

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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"Archaeologists discovered 3,400yr-old fragment of world's oldest known peace treaty...signed c.1269 BCE by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II & Hittite king Hattusili III...the fragment contains text...related to treatment of refugees...It reminds us of our responsibility to protect human life & dignity"

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Admirable Women @admirablewomen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Great post entitled "Three Women, One Breakthrough" from AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists). First sentence: What do you think was the first profound, wide-reaching, economically effectual technological breakthrough in petroleum geology? Hint: 3 women are behind it 👇 #WomenInSTEM

aapg.org

Three Women, One Breakthrough

The first major technical breakthrough in petroleum geology was foraminiferal micropaleontology – made by three young “girls” in 1921, which, within three years, created oil industry jobs for 300 micr...

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Paul Watzlawick's work, research in addition to his popular writing, is highly recommended.

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Radio Free America @radiofreeflorida.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.” ~ Langston Hughes #RadioFreeAmerica #politics

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Adolfo Neto @adolfoneto.elixiremfoco.com · 21/09/2026

N. Katherine Hayles says LLMs are hideously innefficent. www.instagram.com/reels/Ddeogb...

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Admirable Women @admirablewomen.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Physicist Dr. Ursula Franklin helped invent archaeometry--the application of materials science to analyze archaeological artifacts. She used modern physics tools to date/determine the compositions of ancient metals & ceramics to uncover how ancient peoples lived/worked. Born #OTD 1921. #WomenInSTEM

A charming photograph of Dr. Ursula Franklin (1921–2016), the pioneering Canadian experimental physicist, metallurgist, and humanitarian activist. She is positioned slightly off-center against a minimalist, solid slate-blue backdrop. Captured from the chest up, she looks off-camera to the right with a bright, genuine smile that showcases her warmth and sharp intellect. Her short, styled silver-grey hair frames her face, and she wears thin-framed, amber-toned glasses. She is dressed in a crisp, purple-and-white vertically striped button-down shirt. Around her neck hangs a delicate silver chain supporting a striking teardrop-shaped pendant featuring a vibrant orange-red stone or amber setting. The lighting is soft and even, accentuating the fine lines of a long, accomplished life. The clean, professional composition evokes a mood of joyful wisdom, deep dignity, and enduring historical significance, celebrating a legendary woman in STEM.

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Dr. SkySkull @drskyskull.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is just a spectacular unintentional self-own

Dude on Threads: If you hate on ai, you better be pretty damn good at whatever you're doing

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 14/09/2026

The government’s university funding policy is forcing women out of the academy. The example below is a pattern. This is one of the many ways the whole mess is unjust.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is very good on the psychological damage caused by universities ripping themselves apart, but it presumes that leaders want to repair that damage. My experience is that they deny its existence or simply do not care.

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Admirable Women @admirablewomen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Biochemist Dr. Ida Stephens Owens mapped how human genes control drug metabolism. The first Black woman to earn a PhD from Duke (1967), she spent ~50 years at NIH. She identified the UGT1A gene complex, decoding how enzymes detoxify drugs & harmful toxins. She was born #OTD in 1939.🧵 #WomenInSTEM

A charming photograph of American biochemist Dr. Ida Stephens Owens (1939–2020), renowned for her groundbreaking research on drug-detoxifying enzymes and human genetics, posing in a laboratory setting. Standing from the waist up, she is turned slightly to the right, looking forward with a warm, confident smile that lights up her face. She has short, curly black hair and wears a delicate gold chain necklace with a small round pendant, and a ring on her finger. She is dressed in a casual, short-sleeved beige knit top. Her forearms rest on a surface in the foreground, with one hand loosely holding a pink folder or pamphlet. Behind her, a brightly illuminated laboratory reveals her research environment, featuring a tall shelf tightly packed with colorful textbooks, alongside structured racks holding assorted glass beakers and scientific equipment. The overall composition balances her approachable, dignified expression with the busy backdrop of her historic, decades-long career at the National Institutes of Health.

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Having sat on a committee as a student representative about twenty years ago: Not a joke (ve duh nod duh tshoks).

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David Hunter @dhunterto.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

AI doesn’t kill anybody, people kill people using AI. Like when Elon Musk’s DOGE boyz used AI to shut down USAID.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 11/09/2026

25 years ago, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people, including 2,753 New Yorkers. As we remember that terrible day, let us also remember the first responders, office workers and strangers who ran toward danger to help each other.

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Dear university, increase my salary to a level that will allow me to retire at the same age my senior colleagues are currently retiring, as you add more tasks to my job, making it impossible to meet even its basic requirements, while the academic infrastructure has been systematically hollowed out.

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

meanwhile, the humanities takes people who have creativity and inner lives and makes them utterly miserable and insufferable

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Annual reviews at university science depts assess "merit" heavily based on these grants. Early/mid-career scholars (eps. those who don't sell their soul to 'the current thing') are beaten by aggressive restructuring of academic infrastructure, as executive power rests with those often unaffected.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Every half-ass plan for our extinction that they provide just turns me on. No internet, you say? No online banking?? No 2FA to use the bathroom at my job??? Baby I was a latchkey kid in the 1980s. You’re describing my platonic ideal. Extinct me.

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

“And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.” Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

You imagine a world truly fictional compared to ours: a world built on morals instead of market value.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I feel so confident saying the native intelligence of this generation is not the problem. The looting & wholesale sabotage of their educational infrastructure is.

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The way AI is going to “kill everyone” is just by manufacturing consent for ever worse outcomes & conditions, like many governments do. It is a governing technology after all. And like bureaucracy it launders responsibility so the people & institutions who deploy it aren’t accountable for the harms

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This idea becomes clear once built into models of vision et al. Yet it is not. A philosopher once came after me for noting that olfaction is a simultaneous, integrated measure of external/environmental signals and internal processing tailored to the perceiver (metabolism, hormonal status, etc.).

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Daniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It does not seem right that when Anthropic execs tweet about their research having a 10% chance of killing all humans they get a bumper IPO payout, but when I do the same thing I get a referral to the IRB for "additional training"

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Riccardo Fusaroli @fusaroli.eurosky.social · 10/09/2026

How does the architecture of a city shape the way we think, talk, and draw space? And how do spatial conventions travel across cultural generations? New paper in Open Mind, spearheaded by Z Alinam (w J Nölle, C Vesper, K Tylén & me): doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/

doi.org

When the City Speaks: How Urban Form Shapes the Cultural Transmission of Spatial Conceptualization

Abstract. How do urban environments shape the way people conceptualize and communicate space? Using a cultural transmission experiment in virtual reality, we asked participants to navigate one of two ...

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

*Becoming* middle-aged, aka adopting the salient advice from @berondam.bsky.social (who said it much more elegantly, but hey, it's been a long day): Stop bending yourself into a self-denying shape in the hope of getting paid in praise by people you don't really like (and who give a toss about you)

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

And here I was hoping that I no longer needed to worry about not being able to afford retirement.

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Pedro Hollanda @phollanda.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The G in G-Spot stands for Ernst Gräfenberg. Fallopian comes from Gabriele Fallopio. Reproductive imperialism, as comedian Matthew Broussard once joked, has been a thing for centuries.

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 09/09/2026

Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).

A crescent Moon seen during the day, arcing from upper left to lower right of the frame. At lower centre is the full disk of Jupiter; the small dots to its upper left and lower right and Io and Ganymede, respectively.

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

So, in case you have ever wondered why Doug Hofstadter has never joined the "moar AI" craze, this is what he voiced as his concern and reason a couple of years ago. And in case he needs an introduction: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas...

en.wikipedia.org

Douglas Hofstadter - Wikipedia

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Depends on your departmental and institutional affiliation.

Doctor Who Meme ("Depends on the Context"): Top left: "Is it acceptable to have 'legitimate concerns' about AI?" | Top right: "Depends on your academic affiliation." | Bottom left: "In a History Department, yes." | Bottom right: "At a place that equates merit with bringing in external money, any means justifying the ends, no."

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Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Don't get me started on the "AI and education" research grants distributed like it was Oprah's birthday. Including the mockery and, frankly, unfounded 'intellectual' confidence some science peers brought in response to any criticism that had the slightest whiff of humanities thinking.

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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“Mathematics only makes sense as a gift economy. It has no trade secrets. Substituting a monetizable ersatz culture for the one evolved through historical experience is a particularly insidious form of knowledge collapse.” Mathematician Michael Harris on the AI companies coming for math:

bostonreview.net

Knowledge Collapse

AI companies are racing to mechanize mathematics. Where does that leave human understanding?

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Jill Walker Rettberg @jilltxt.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The video of Marwa Abdulhai and Isadora White's talk about this paper is now online here - they present a pretty complex computer science paper so clearly, I highly recommend watching it if you're interested in using LLMs to edit or draft writing might do: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDQ...

youtube.com

How LLMs Distort Our Written Language #AIStories

YouTube video by Center for Digital Narrative, UiB

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Loukas Christodoulou @loukas.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The danger of AI governance? It's the same old problem of the abdication of governance to the market, just automated and congealed through concentration of capital.

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