iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Nick (derogatory) 🎃 @slothropsmap.bsky.social · 17h

In my mind the defining feature of Trump II is that is ✨actually✨ a kakistocracy. RFK Jr and Russ Vought have very little in common politically, but they do share one essential quality: they are absolutely the worst person alive for the jobs they have.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This is a ‘good strategy’ in game theory terms if you assume Trump will punish you for not rolling over and showing deference and democrats won’t. Democrats should think about altering those incentives.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Agreed although her before and after is so shocking to me because of how much worse she got. For instance, I would say her before nose was more conventionally desirable? It’s truly bizarre.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 08/10/2026

like, this isn’t even an “AI could create that much value” versus “no it can’t” argument - let’s grant the premise, let’s say it does in that world, with these people in charge, unemployment and poverty explode and no safety net is built to handle it

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/10/2026

the funny thing about this of course is that "athenian democracy" was a cautionary tale to the framers, who saw it as unstable and prone to demagogues and tyrants like the one rubio works for

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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Seems like if you're going to make a national story out of Hasan Piker, who campaigned a few times with the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, saying Israel causes antisemitism, you should also make a national story out of the favorite intellectual of the US Vice President supporting Hitler.

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American Library Association @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Let books be. Today kicks off #BannedBooksWeek, an annual observation started more than 40 years ago in response to a sudden surge in attempts to censor or remove books in libraries, schools, and bookstores. Sound familiar? Find ways to get involved and spread the word: bit.ly/4yvixbB.

LET BOOKS BE. Various line drawings related to libraries and books, including a hand holding a sign made of an open book that reads "Freed for ALL to Read," a tote bag that reads "Totes Resist" carrying a book, a full book cart with the head and tale of a horse with text that reads "A Wild Ride," and a closeup of two feet standing on a stack of books that say "A Soap Box" on their spines. Text at bottom reads "Protect the freedom to read. Banned Books Week, October 4-10, 2026." American Library Association. ala.org/bbooks

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 04/10/2026

Remarkable: an industry that is dying because it can't compete in the market writes a Republican president, asking him to keep the industry alive by brute force, and he says, ok. What would it take for the GOP to lose its reputation as the "free market" party? Seriously, what would it take?

nytimes.com

The Coal Industry Asked for a Rescue. Trump Obliged.

In a previously unreported letter, a top lobbyist floated the idea of using emergency powers to keep aging coal plants open.

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Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The part that struck me was their insistence that they know the kids at the UT game "aren't assimilated" because despite being at a football game and having the same shitty fashion sense and the same goofy hand gestures as white fans, they still look Indian. Gives the game away.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026

i think cox should spend less time weeping about polarization and more time working to convince his co-partisans not to abandon pluralism and liberal democracy

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I remember seeing this in high school and thinking Frost was an old reactionary crank. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it’s less an ideological indictment than a well-observed diagnosis of too many of the ideology’s faithful 😂🫠

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Had the literal same thought

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Whenever you see a pollster or consultant give a take like this, it’s always worth following the money. In this case, Emanuel has paid Anzalone’s firm nearly $300k (maybe more but that’s what I found so far). A consultant class is devouring the Dem Party www.elections.il.gov/CampaignDisc...

John Anzalone &
@JohnAnzo
X.com
Underestimate @RahmEmanuel at your own risk.
He knows how to win. He knows how to fight.
And he knows how to message.
And no one will out work him. Regardless of whether he wins the Democratic nomination in 2028 he will make an impact on the race. You can be sure of that. Don't take your eyes off of him. At the minimum, learn from him.
Rahm Emanuel Makes His 2026 Play
Rahm Emanuel Makes His 2026 Play
From nytimes.com
6:47 AM • 9/26/26 • 274K Views

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Vituperative Erb @vituperativeerb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Among other things abstaining *makes a national GAC ban much more likely* and Dems losing to frothing bigots is going to pressure candidates to move right, not left Worse now, worse next time

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This one doesn’t qwhite work in this particular context …

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 19/09/2026

This miracle is the fruit of generations of enormous and bipartisan investments of public research support for our universities. Future versions of this miracle are what we are currently losing, due to the US Administration’s decision to shatter the public’s partnership with our universities.

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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

New: Macklemore will donate entire $1M of his earnings from Ed Sheeran's tour to six orgs helping Palestinians — and invites Robert Kraft to match him. Says he wants to center Palestinians being killed + journalists & aid workers who keep going. "Their risk is of a far different order than mine."

With everything that has happened over the last 48 hours, I want to bring the conversation back to where it belongs: to the Palestinian people who are still being killed, still living under military occupation, and still fighting for their freedom.
I will be donating the entire $1 million of my net earnings from Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour to six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people. And I invite Robert Kraft to match my donation. Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting. A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any other life on this earth.
That is what this has always been about. Not me. Not a tour. Not the headlines or the controversy. It is about Palestinians right to freedom, dignity and safety in their own homeland. I want to center the parents carrying their children into hospitals without the basic resources to treat them, and the physicians, paramedics, journalists and aid workers who keep going back in. I want to center the organizers and activists who have paid real costs for standing with Palestine. Their risk is of a far different order than mine.
Just yesterday, 15 year old Muhammad al Zinati was killed in an Israeli strike while rushing to help aid worker Sherif Lubbad, who had already been injured. He was a child. Both were murdered. Both should be alive. And the ones still under the rubble, whose names exist only in the memories of people who may not have survived to speak them. Writing a check is one of the least costly forms of solidarity available to me. I am doing it because I can, and because these organizations are doing the work while much of the world debates it.
But aid alone cannot address the conditions that make it necessary. This is a manmade injustice, and I believe it requires immediate political change. Palestinians have lived for decades without basic rights and should not have to wait another day to be free. That is where my focus will remain. I will …

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

One side of this war has an elected legislature but it doesn't really have any power compared to the supreme leader and the council of guardian jurists, and the other is Iran.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

My dad’s a professor. For decades, students have told him “My name is Nicholas, but I go by Cole” or “I use my middle name.” He makes a note and calls them what they ask. As he explains it, treating trans student’s name requests as any different or more difficult is facially absurd

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I was about 10 when this came out, and recall my cousins and uncles in my big Star Wars-loving family being outraged by Watto. The name, the accent, the underworld connections: to my Italian-American relatives, he was *obviously* an outdated anti-Italian stereotype. Make of that what you will 💀

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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Garcia: There’s a group of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors that are here in Dallas. And the survivors are saying that they are also disgusted that Todd Blanche is out there giving speeches while refusing criminal convictions, while refusing to release the rest of the files.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I’m less offended by the fact the GOP is overrun by hack trolls than by the fact that they’re so first thought and unimaginative about everything

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The neo-Nazi party made huge gains in the German elections thanks to the backing of the world‘s biggest billionaire and most prominent publicizer of white nationalist conspiracies on the planet. Good thing there’s no comparable relationship in the US for our media to explore.

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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Commented today in an interview that the operative theory of law within Trump 2.0 is “what I can get away with” which boils down to everything is permissible unless SCOTUS explicitly says “no.” Holds true for the boat strikes, the Iran War, the ballroom, destruction of USAID, etc.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Why so much to Cooper? Move $1M+ from there to a couple of reach states…

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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

just talk about musk the way republicans would if he was a democrat a bigoted antisemitic weird foreign billionaire with a weird breeding fetish and a nazi pedo chatbot is funding the republican party. if republicans don't denounce, we know they are pro-nazi pedo bot and the voters should know.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 03/09/2026

‘"The general pattern seems to be that with wealth and rising power, you become less engaged with the needs of others and less burdened by the needs of social relationships," Piff [the study author] said.’

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Which companies do we think will go along with Trump renaming Wednesday to something like “Mary Anne Day”?

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Seems notable that the court’s longtime illiberal authoritarian streak has a couple of recent rulings that directly impact Clyburn (gerrymandering in Callais) and the party (campaign finance in NRSC v. FEC) which might *finally* mean party elites see rebalancing as necessary for self preservation!

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T. Greg Doucette @gregdoucette.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Yep, this is empirically true. Sentence length is largely no impact; certainty of punishment is high impact, as is short time between crime and punishment The US system* gets it exactly backwards, with draconian sentences sometimes levied a long time later (*probation violations excluded)

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

If this was about electoral advantage — the thing reactionary centrists claim as their expertise — they would be writing about how this entire issue is a distraction. If you are concerned about the influence of fringe radicals over policymaking, Republicans are the bigger threat. Of course they are.

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

This only "becomes a political and moral crisis" if reactionary centrists relentlessly frame it as one. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Abdul El-Sayed’s Hasan Piker Problem
In Michigan, the Democratic Senate candidate’s alliance with a hard-left streamer has become a political and moral crisis.

By Jonathan Chait

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The situation in Haiti is terrifying. On Sunday, 150 gunmen swept down on a town to kill, rape, loot, and burn. 22 people were executed in a churchyard. 52 were taken hostage. Stephen Miller mockingly says Haiti is safe and ICE just sent its second deportation flight this month; with kids on board.

They arrived in silence, under cover of darkness, heavily armed as they surrounded the town and moved through Kenscoff’s rugged terrain and towering forests in the mountains above the Haitian capital. Numbering around 150, the gunmen swept through several locations as they made their way toward the center of the town, opening fire on resident who tried to flee. At least 13 people were shot and killed as the gunmen ran through downtown, according to an account by the United Nations human rights office. As more than 50 others sought refuge in L’Arche de la Nouvelle Alliance, a Protestant church that had been sheltering people already displaced by the violence, the gunmen pursued them. When they arrive, they forced residents from the church and executed 22 of them in its courtyard. A dozen others were killed behind the sanctuary. The attackers didn’t just stop there. Before withdrawing from downtown, an area encompassing City Hall and a Haiti National Police substation, they abducted at least 52 people, including a mother and her five children, as well as another mother and her infant. Children and elderly who could not run were killed inside their homes. Others were burned alive after gunmen set at least a dozen houses on fire, witnesses told the National Human Rights Defense Network. The attackers also shot horses and other livestock inside the rural enclave.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

no one out there believes in "vote blue no matter who" less than the centrist shitheads like Gottheimer

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The Intellectualist @theintellectualist.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Corporate Convictions Have Plunged Under Trump. So Where Are the Prosecutions of Executives? Under the Trump Justice Department, fewer corporations are being convicted of wrongdoing, while prosecutions of their executives are falling too. theintellectualistofficial.substack.com/p/under-trum...

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Well the media has much more important things to cover like the half decade old trolling from a twitch streamer! 🙃🙃

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Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I can entertain the argument that reacting to this stuff with alarm isn’t obligatory, may even be counterproductive. But it HAS to go hand in hand with the promise of GRINDING accountability that makes everyone complicit atone. Otherwise it’s just a unilaterally imposed degradation of standards.

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

GROUNDWORK: “.. After adjusting for inflation, corporate profits have grown 52% since 2019. Wages have grown just 12%.” @groundwork.bsky.social

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

a fun and telling thing to track will be whether twitch streamer hasan piker or sitting united states congressman max miller receives more mainstream news media coverage between now and the election www.the-downballot.com/p/morning-di...

the-downballot.com

Morning Digest: Thought Max Miller would become a GOP pariah? Nope.

Republicans in competitive races are still backing the congressman—and keeping his contributions

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🎃Darin S Pumpkins🎃 @darinself.com · 26/08/2026

Some people with power haven't learned anything from the past six years. When someone attacks your electoral system, being passive just invites more attacks.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I actually find it disturbing in an almost existential way. The need to change people’s incentive structures is so painfully obvious and yet center/left elites just refuse to believe that in these critical political and legal contexts (but you bet your ass they get it re e.g. street crime)

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Louis Peitzman @louispeitzman.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Hasan Piker is simply not famous enough to normies to warrant this level of attention! He does not demand these endless statements! Nick Fuentes dined with the president and Republicans just played the “I don’t know her” game. No reason to play into this bad-faith shit.

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Nico B. @sneakynics.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It’s also the exact same people in the party ostensibly fixated on being anti-cancel culture and atoning for “woke 1 overreach” that are monomaniacally obsessed with — gasp — cancelling a fucking streamer and stoking guilt by association campaigns against anyone he endorsed …

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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

ICE has fallen out of the headlines but July marked the largest number of migrant detentions ever on record. Five migrants have died in ICE custody in the last two months. It's also currently impossible to legally migrate to this country, as 100% of visa applications have been paused.

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ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

When Amadeus first transferred from London to Broadway in 1980 the Broadway production starred Tim Curry as Mozart and Ian McKellen as Salieri and I would like to go back in time and watch that.

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I appreciate that Dolly Parton refused to participate in "dress respectability" and, by her own account, modeled her aesthetic after a town "tramp," who she thought was beautiful. She separated aesthetics from character and understood "classiness" to be about how you treat people, not how you dress.

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