iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

it's warbler migration time in South Florida: Black-and-White Warbler just now, first of the season for our backyard

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What would be a contemporary equivalent? A 2026 novel, set between 1970 and 1990, where the residents of a small town ultimately accept a good-hearted immigrant who brings new small-scale technologies to the heartland and whose kids will be locals—while readers know the Internet and AI are coming?

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The residents of Raveloe do incorporate Silas and his machine, with difficulty but in the end wholeheartedly— because of Eppie—but an unimaginable future is looming. Unimaginable to the villagers, but not to Eliot's readers, who live in a world of railroads, factories, and steam-powered machines.

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Eliot dramatizes huge social transformation, but in an earlier moment and the "wrong" way round: Silas brings his machine from the town to the country. His arrival in the village is a challenge to the old ways; his loom has a "questionable sound" compared to the traditional sounds of farming.

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Eliot is writing in 1860, after steam-powered looms have begun to displace handloom weavers like Silas. She sets the novel decades earlier (as she often does): Silas arrives in Raveloe in the "early years" of C19; the novel ends perhaps c. 1830?

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I must have read Silas Marner before, but it was long ago, and reading it now, in the midst of the AI Revolution, the chapter at the end where Silas and Eppie go to find his old home Lantern Yard and it's just ... not there, bricked over by a factory, nobody remembers it at all ... whoa.

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Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)

all those times we said, I'm sure my phone is listening to me, I just saw an ad based on a phone conversation I had with a friend, and they said, absolutely not, no audio is captured, and it turns out, yes, in fact they were sending that info to data brokers—so this is that, only worse, right?

nytimes.com

An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.

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They worry that doctors—"high-expertise decision-makers, such as expert physicians"—are especially subject to what they call "algorithm aversion"—i.e., being skeptical of AI. They do not worry that expert physicians—and other people in the loop in medicine—may judge medical care in a broader way.

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They assume that "autonomous AI" does not involve the humans who engineered, trained, and financed it. They assume that "better" = quantifiable. They further assume that AI can perform "cognitive" medical work.

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John MacNeill Miller @snarlsdickens.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Emanuel et al. argue: "In cognitive medical functions, AI-alone medical care is likely to be better than physician-only or physician-AI hybrid care." (One of Emanuel's coauthors is CEO of a medical AI company; another is the billionaire investor father of the CEO).

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Reposted by Tim Watson

Increasingly I think of the disruptions of our current AI moment, at least in education, as in some ways analogous to the disruptions of the peak of the pandemic—that time when the situation was clearly pervasive, persistent and dire, before any vaccine was available to partially counteract it.

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While Rahm makes his play, while polling at ::checks notes:: zero per cent in the 2028 presidential primary, I'm more worried about his brother Ezekiel, lead author on a current JAMA article arguing that AI is better at medicine than doctors and that "autonomous AI" is the future of medical care.

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Yellow-Throated Warbler this morning (with blurry phone camera documentation)

a blurry photo taken on a phone camera of a Yellow-Throated Warbler perched in the foliage of a firebush tree

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I'm worried this is actually going to be a plus for Salazar. www.msn.com/en-us/news/o...

Screenshot of the top of a Politico piece with the headline "Trump turns on Salazar"

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first Ruby-Throated Hummingbird of the season in our backyard (6 days earlier than last year) plus the first Gray-Blue Gnatcatcher (I'm reasonably confident) in the same tree

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This is really useful, thanks for writing this! I will be sharing with undergrads here who are interested in grad school in English.

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I read your posts sitting under a live oak tree on a campus of Miami Dade College. Enrollment of this one college: 100,000 students. The way we let the Ivy League end of higher ed stand in for the whole of higher ed is absurd and maddening, as you say.

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Just drove past the Miami branch of Alpha School (in a former church building on Miller across from Tropical Park). Had not realized they were here in Miami too. Dystopia on my doorstep.

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Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Good to see. They show up far too often when I switch on the Coral City Camera feed as background at work. It's the opposite of calming to see them there, although they're certainly striking-looking creatures.

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Reposted by Tim Watson

Notice all the black writers being accused of using AI in their works. Notice.

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Tim Watson @timwatson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Sometimes the split screen is just too much between the sensible little guardrails in place to protect the democratic system (congresspeople can't send out constituent newsletters 90 days prior to an election) and the extremity of the Trump administration's corruption and propaganda.

cbsnews.com

New Trump-focused "Love Me" ad campaign paid for by taxpayers hits airwaves

Ads promoting President Trump and paid for by American taxpayers are now airing on network and national cable.

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a light-hearted response to this revolting poster: doesn't Piker look like a young Gerry Adams (only hotter)?

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Thank you, I did wonder if it was a legal thing. Makes sense.

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Fellow voters of FL-27: if you're on Salazar's newsletter email list, have you received one since early August? Did she just stop sending out news of all her bipartisan accomplishments? I used to get them almost every week.

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This is an astonishing piece of writing.

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a little bluesky advice: nuke the Discover feed and pin For You, Quiet Posters, and Mutuals.

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National Dems enter House race for Oklahoma's 5th District | Exclusive

I know nothing about Oklahoma's 5th congressional district except that Trump's margin there in 2024 was 18 points. No wonder my FL-27 congressperson, Maria Salazar (Trump +14 district) is freaking out.

oklahoman.com

National Democrats plan to make a late push in Oklahoma’s 5th District, providing funding and field staff to back Jena Nelson’s congressional campaign.

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