iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's an alignment problem. Always has been.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

a classy thread on cultural capital

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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

people who I am 99% sure voted for trump at least twice between 16/20/24 are now openly making 'no beardos' jokes at pete's expense in DoD offices that are full of people who voted for trump "Pete is a joke" is percolating far and wide across the force, it's not a GOFO/deep state/w/e thing

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Theodore Grunewald @tedgrunewald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

JCO for the win.

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Dave @dmalinowski.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The world may be on fire, but at least we’re entering spooky leaf season 🦇🍁

A low-to-the-ground photo of a brown curled dry leaf on the asphalt, with light from behind casting a long shadow. The leaf vaguely resembles a bat

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Mara Wilson @marawilson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I’ve seen people define antisemitism as “anybody who believes in what’s going on in the Middle East is wrong” Another reason why I’m going to hate Netanyahu for as long as I live. The genocidal maniac killed thousands of innocent people, and completely fucked over his own people in the process.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Gender-neutralize a band name: WHole

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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One of the fun parts of parenting is you can tell your kids about something all you want but once they learn it somewhere else it’s, “Mom, sit down you will not believe this,” and you just smile and nod.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If there is only way of looking at it, it ain't really respecting fully

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is all, to say the least, viscerally disgusting

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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 23/09/2026

everything you depend on in modern civilization is run by furries and that is an actual fact

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

happy first (full) day of fall, bluesky

ina garten in a witch hat saying “If you can't summon the flames directly from hell, store-bought is fine.”

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Anti-Heroin Chic @antiheroinchic.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Friends, our submission inbox is completely empty. If you'd be so kind as to help us spread the word among your communities it would be so greatly appreciated. heroinchic.weebly.com

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Jacob Wren @jacobwren.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"Jean Cocteau said he preferred cats to dogs because no one has ever seen a police cat." – Michel Tournier

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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

look, if you can't explain it in a tweet to a hostile audience who has never once exhibited a charitable understanding of someone who disagrees with him, then it doesn't exist. simple as

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 18/09/2026

Dear Silicon Valley cultists: no, I’m not getting paid by a shadowy they/them cabal to be mean to you. I’m being mean to you because your sicko culture has helped destroy mainstream international aid funding (which is killing people), usher in Trump 2.0, and pervert technology and innovation.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Re Houthis gaining the coast in Yemen, my understanding is it's generally not good for imperial powers when they and their allies can no longer project sufficient force to control key trade routes. Can historians confirm? Cos if so I worry that perhaps the Iran war may have been a mistake for the US

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

people on the internet can really be something else

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm a humanist and deeply value the skills it involves and teaches and truly I get the impulse to try to wade through complex social issues armed only with the tools developed there but you just are not going to social critique your way into understanding how the atmosphere works be fucking for real

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Zoe Drayson @zoedrayson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

THIS 👇👇👇

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The revolution will not be televised. It's more like a performative simulacrum.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is just what happens when people live in denial about the Chinese rooms they work for

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Memento (artemis) Morty 🌙 @mementomorty.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

i grabbed beers with some mutuals tonight 10/10 would recommend

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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Baltimore/DC people: it is almost time to adopt these kittens!

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Increasingly convinced this is the most important post

Twitter post from January 24, 2019, from @Merman_Melville reading

"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day."

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SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Nice to have a citation for the stuff we all sort of assume to be true but question if it's just our own biases making it look that way

Screenshot from the article in the quoted post, saying "Piff and his colleagues found that upper-class drivers were more likely to cut other cars off at junctions and ignore pedestrians at crossings. Wealthier people also appeared more willing to lie at work. In one experiment, volunteers were left alone with a jar of sweets ostensibly meant for children. When the researchers returned, upper-class people had snaffled nearly twice as many candies as lower-class people.

“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 said. “Taking candy from children might be the least of our worries but it’s emblematic of the tendency to prioritise one’s own needs over those of others.”

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Christina Wolbrecht @cwolbrecht.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The truth will set you free But first it will piss you off. Gloria Steinem rest in power and thank you

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Seth Rudy @sethrudy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Me: to study the humanities is to cultivate a fuller understanding of the mind as we seek to find meaning in the past, present, and future of our individual and collective existence Them: are you happy Me: god no

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Robin G Nelson @robingnelson.blacksky.app · 30/08/2026

I miss NSF SBE. I miss science funding in the US. I miss literacy. I miss intellectualism. I miss when people cared about others' well-being. I miss funding for scientific discovery. I miss dreaming about the future.

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

sounds like affirmative action for MAGA basically

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Tell the truth, but tell it catawampusly

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Joshua Raclaw @joshuaraclaw.com · 22/08/2026

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Linguist: What even is a cup, exactly

image from labov's 1973ish study of cups and bowls and semantic boundaries, a bunch of weird cuppy thing are illustrated including a mug with a loooong fluted stem and a triangle mug

neat bar graph of cuppiness and bowliness

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 21/08/2026

every single person pushing this angle is intellectually bankrupt. The data centers being built today are for NOTHING other than AI compute, and are much, much larger and more destructive. If none of them got built, services like online banking, social media and streaming would continue to function.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 19/08/2026

the fact that there's a 🫑 emoji and an 🧅 emoji but no celery emoji shows as a society we still have a long way to go until cajun cooking is normalized in this country

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Preparing for a workshop on teaching critical thinking in STEM in light of current, let's say pressures, and decided I should start my talk with a slides that lays out the values that form my premises:

Slide header: Premises/values: Cards on the table

Bullet points:
* I care more about students’ learning than about the “accuracy” of grades or the prestige associated with a specific degree
* I want to work collaboratively with my students, rather than policing them
* I don’t want to spend any time reading, much less providing feedback on, something nobody wrote
* Science is a human, communal process; there is no knowing without knowers; and our work cannot be autocompleted
* Deep thinking and human connection are always more important than polish, speed, or “productivity”
* Research agendas should not be set by & for industry

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 15/08/2026

Will the NYT commit to hounding multiple members of the Trump admin into ending their own lives? They are *actually* unqualified, all plagiarists, and were solely hired on the basis of race? If they’re committed to “both sides”, why isn’t there a body count in this White House based on NYT coverage?

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Janet D. Stemwedel @docfreeride.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Stop sacrificing your human agency to narratives of inevitability.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Whatever happened to credit where credit is due?

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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

fun fact: DC has a street named Capitalsaurus Court after elementary school kids got council to name it that because of dinosaur bones discovered there during sewer construction in the 1890s that belong to a species thought to be unique to DC

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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 08/08/2026

I blame the culture. Lack of respect for authority, pants too pulled up, getting hyped up on all that country music.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Yes, this! And let's put the literal "liberal" back in our learning by reminding people that the Liberal Arts are the ones that give free people the power to participate as citizens in society and government. Anyway, great thread—read it all.

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