iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

TIL that Bob Seger's saxophone player was named "Alto Reed"

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I'd argue that using AI to identify AI in texts causes your reading muscles to atrophy just like using AI to write does

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Saka and Kettle's terms feel almost as long as Fetterman's

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

This is thrilling, but I'm guessing it means Lena Dunham is not working on my dream project: a Gus Van Sant-style shot-for-shot remake of THE BIG CHILL starring the GIRLS cast. For the record, here's the casting: LENA DUNHAM / MARY KAY PLACE 1/x

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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Just remembered the Christopher Columbus bit from the Curtis Sliwa-Adam Friedland podcast, the #1 clip of all time for Not Having Any Idea What Words Are Coming Next

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

And another British Columbian, Charlotte Gill's Eating Dirt

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I was going to name Thick Skin! Superb, and not that easy to get in the States (but we have lots at our shop :))

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I have eated grilled cheese sandwiches, read Salammbo, and listened to Steely Dan many times each, all with great pleasure. But together!???! May need to travel to Anchorage just for this.

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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Nearing the 33rd anniversary of staying in a Best Western in Anchorage, Alaska, eating grilled cheese sandwiches & reading Salammbô while listening to Steely Dan on the radio. At 3am in the airport bookstore I was helping to open I placed a copy of Fear & Trembling on the shelf. It sold immediately.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Kyle Schwarber, theater guy _and_ transit guy? ❤️

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Meant to mention New Directions in my first post! But especially gratifying to see this profile of our heroes and friends there on the same day as the Wired piece about Big 5 pubs pushing AI on their employees. Can't imagine Barbara Epler opening ChatGPT to email Anne Carson.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Look closely! An eagle-eyed customer spotted The Phinney by Post Book crammed into a chaotic stack in their offices alongside once-and-future Nobelists. Heady company! www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/b...

A photo of wonderfully chaotic book stacks, including volumes by Tawada, Krasznohorkai, Hawkes, Wright, and Nissley, as well as hand-sanitizer dispensers, all atop gray filing cabinets, with the top drawer labeled "Duncan(Opening)-Ferlinghetti(General)". NYT photo by Vincent Alban

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

They’re live-streaming the execution of the person they think they can get away with doing that to first. It’s a test. If they can do that, they’ll expand the margins of permission.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…

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🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 09/10/2026

"What are we, a bunch of BROWN people?" This is white people doing white people shit. Y'all had picnics under our hanging bodies but sure ok. It's like the Taliban.

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Jonathan Melville @jonmelville.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Found this 1979 Rockford Files ad and now I need a poster version.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I've been immersed in research on Reconstruction in Lousiana and it's a very difficult truth to absorb that the white terrorist movement in the South was among the most successful terrorist movements in global history. Took 10 years but it won a total & complete victory through murder and atrocity.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

White supremacy is, above all, an ideology of stolen valor bsky.app/profile/seth...

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Crow's Nest Comics @crowsnest.quest · 05/10/2026

We've been working with Books to Prisoners Seattle to help get graphic novels into prisons for years and a generous donor has committed to matching all book donations this week in honor of banned book week!!! Go to shop.crowsnest.quest/a/listify/re... to get them some comics and double your impact.

red background, white text "books to prisoners donation match", angry black crow flying over the text as if descending to attack

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

As someone who has been lucky enough to make a living _without_ scaling up, this hits home

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Brenny @pissedoffinnh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

What do i love this so much??

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The Capybaron, Seasonally Spooky @thecapybaron.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Again, much of Pete Hegseth’s deal is the only skill his job demanded for a long time was keeping a trim figure to be conventionally pretty for stay-at-home moms watching daytime tv. His job was “be pretty,” but he knows that’s a girl job, so he’s deeply insecure and is trying to make it a boy job.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"You're right, and I'm sorry. That never should have happened" will be the refrain of our next decade

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27/09/2026

Google Gemini says that @jevinwest.bsky.social and I aren't to be trusted because in our first lecture, we had a playful example where Jevin presented data the same way that Tim Cook did, and I called bullshit on it. It hallucinates criticism and the only citations are to the lecture itself.

1. The "Explosive Growth" Slide ControversyIronically, the most direct and explicit example of this occurred during their very first "Calling Bullshit" lecture at the University of Washington.The Setup: Jevin West presented a slide to the class showing a graph that purported to show the "explosive, hockey-stick growth" of web traffic to their new Calling Bullshit website. The graph utilized standard marketing axes and compressed timeframes to make the project look like an unmitigated, runaway viral sensation.The "Bullshit": Carl Bergstrom actually had to step in and call "bullshit" on his own co-instructor's slide. When the data was displayed honestly without selective axis truncation or creative smoothing, it showed that while traffic was high initially, it heavily ebbed, flowed, and plateaued over time.The Criticism: While some praised this as a playful, planned pedagogical moment to show that "anyone can fall prey to bad data framing," critics viewed it as a perfect illustration of the double standard: when it serves a personal or professional promotional narrative (like proving your own course is a massive success), the temptation to use flawed, hype-driven metrics is incredibly high.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

That sentence could have gone so many directions in its last word, but it ended up with the best possible ending

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HistoryLink.org @historylink.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

#OnThisDay in 1968, Richard M. Nixon campaigned for the presidency in Seattle. historylink.org/File/3666

Richard M. Nixon at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, 1968

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Zach Everson @zacheverson.com · 24/09/2026

Don Jr.-backed drone-parts manufacturer congratulates Eric Trump-backed drone manufacturer on winning a DoD contract.

Unusual Machines
@UnusualMachines
18h
More momentum for XTEND. 🚀

Congrats to the team on another important U.S. defense milestone. Proud to be an investor and supplier. 🦅

$UMAC $XTND #Drones #DefenseTech
Unusual Machines Inc
UMAC
$23.24
+2.42%
@XTEND_XR
XTEND
@XTEND_XR
Sep 23
XTEND has been awarded Phase III of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Modular Kinetic Lethal Drone (MKLD) program.

The award follows XTEND’s recent Gauntlet II top-performer selection under the Drone Dominance Program.

Read more: xtend.me/xtend-secures-…

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The predictive truth of this photograph endures forever

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

100%. It's taken me decades to flush the toxin of the Hello video from my system, but c'mon: Sail On _and_ Brick House?!?

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

These centers are the guy who thinks hot young women aren’t showing up to the bar he stocked with weird dude things because pink-haired woke commie broads won’t let them.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Followed by the vast expanse of years once you are older than Norman Fell

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Robin Gibb is so far beyond, say, Phil Collins in the "This Person Was a Giant Rock Star?!?" Invitational that he laps him twice

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16/09/2026

Short thread: 18 months ago, as part of their assault on higher ed, Trump/DOGE/Vought terminated my friend Kelton Minor's NIH Director's award that would have allowed him to take a faculty position there. Without the funds, Columbia ultimately rescinded the position. Kelton moved to Denmark.

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Josh Zingher @zingherpolisci.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Really hard to overstate just how central AI video slop is to the broader authoritarian project. It allows people to visualize fantasies without having to pay the social costs of such actions, while desensitizing people about the act itself. It's 4chan on steroids w a veneer of respectability.

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The Fake History Hunter @fakehistoryhunter.net · 08/09/2025

Hugh Mangum, an photographer, travelled all across the US from the 1890s till his death in 1922s. Possibly ignoring segregation laws in some places he welcomed everybody in front of his camera. The results are fantastic. If only these photos could talk. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Ma...

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The Loar Axe @theloaraxe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Homoeroticism, ill-advised adventure with the boys, charismatic leader, hard lessons about messing with wild animals... hi, I'm Herman Melville, welcome to Jackass.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

With my semi-dormant AmLit PhD, I did come across her a number of times, although at this point all I could do is associate her with the 30s Left

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Hub City Press @hubcitypress.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Announcing Hub City Shorts, our new series that goes state by state, pairing archival materials from writers whose work defined the state's literary legacy with new stories from the writers defining it now. SC & MS out May 2027!

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The Needling @theneedling.com · 09/09/2026

Google Maps Shrugs, Renames Lake Union to Lake Confederacy: tinyurl.com/54sx3nm

Google Map of Seattle showing Lake Union renamed to Lake Confederacy

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I was talking last week with a colleague from Hungary involved in academic restoration. He said he was exhausted and overwhelmed by all the choices they had to make, trade offs and interests to weigh, ambiguity about who decided. Authoritarian compliance is easier that the hard work of democracy.

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Tom Nissley @tomnissley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What’s an example of perfect casting?

Angela Lansbury as Eleanor Shaw Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

“Look at them now,” an old man beside me kept saying. “Just look at them now.” —Philip Hamburger, reporting from the execution of Mussolini and his lieutenants, New Yorker, May 19, 1945

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sina @rejectionking.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

someday, not today but someday, a student will shout “get his ass” during the discussion of grant and ackerman vs the first klan

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Frighty MacDonald @comixace.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Why was Dolly able to do all these things? Because BMI (and ASCAP) protect songwriter’s rights and songwriters are paid royalties for everything. Dolly never sold her immense catalog of songs and it made her a 9-figure fortune.

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100 years ago news @100yearsagonews.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Summer 1926: A Finnish immigrant stowaway at Ellis Islsnd, photographed by Lewis Hine. “The desire to come to America must have been very strong for this young man to face all sorts of uncertainties,” the photojournalist writes.

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 22/08/2026

Oh my gosh today is George Herriman's birthday!

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