iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Phil Rocco @philiprocco.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Whatever can be said about the limits of self-reported well-being as an indicator of American life, the generational divide in its trendlines astounds. For all adults under 65, self-reported “thriving” never rebounded to pre-pandemic baseline. For those age 65+, post pandemic represents a peak.

Graphic showing The percentage of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 who evaluate their lives well enough to be considered “thriving” in Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index is 44% thus far in 2026, which is on pace through the first three quarters of the year to be 20 percentage points lower than the high of 64% measured in 2010. Most of the erosion has occurred since 2019. Following a modest decline over the course of the 2010s to 57% in 2019, a major drop to 39% occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. After hitting that low point, the thriving rate for this group partially rebounded to 51% in 2023 before falling again.

Adults aged 30 to 44 show a similar decline. The percentage who are thriving among this group is 45% through the first three quarters of 2026, compared with a high of 62% in 2016 and 2017. Those aged 45 to 64 have not dropped as much as younger groups, but their 46% thriving rate to date in 2026 matches their low from 2008.

In contrast, Americans aged 65 and older show higher life evaluations than in the past, climbing fairly steadily from 38% in 2008 to 53% thus far in 2026, matching their record high from 2021.

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You know when public attention can reverse a prosecutorial decision like this you almost get the sense that the decision to shrug it off in the first place was not based on an assessment of the quality of the evidence so much as an assessment of the seriousness of the crime.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

i really can’t bring myself to care about AI anthropomorphism debates. “is AI thinking?” i don’t know. is a calculator calculating? questions for the philosophers. what’s important is that we put sam altman in prison.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

in high school my English teacher would put an inspirational quote on the board every day and once she wrote “‘every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.’ - unknown”

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Andrew Couts @couts.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Absolutely horrific: Thanks to a false intelligence "generated with the help of artificial intelligence," the US military nearly carried out an operation aboard a Chinese ship because the incorrect intelligence said it was carrying nukes, according to @cnn.com. edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...

edition.cnn.com

Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics

The episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Same people who seem to think it’s bad for China to beat us at AI are perfectly fine with China beating us at high speed rail, solar energy, wind energy, shall we go on

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

this isn’t a matter of bleeding heart morality vs. cold but effective politics. the political case for moving away from trans rights is, on its own terms, extremely weak.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

underrated part of El-Sayed’s messaging strategy seems to be shaming journalists who ask dumb questions that play into right-wing frames. you can’t answer these in a way that satisfies them, but you can make it embarrassing enough that you impose a toll on asking.

Abdul El-Sayed: "Weijia, with all due respect, this is the third time you've asked about a Twitch streamer ... their whole game is to make us fight culture wars so that we don't pay attention to the fact the president has made $2.2 billion ... "

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I think a lot of straight women, including many who identify as feminists, use lesbians as a kind of rhetorical stand-in for disgusting, failed, or disposable women. But what lesbians actually represent is the maximalist expression of women’s freedom. When they come for us, they’re coming for you.

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Edward Wong @ewong.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

NEW: Nate Hochman was fired from the DeSantis campaign in 2023 after promoting a video with the Sonnenrad, a Nazi symbol embraced by white supremacists. He now works in Rubio's State Department, as deputy director of policy planning and chief speechwriter. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/u...

nytimes.com

For Fired DeSantis Campaign Staff Member, a Second Chance at State Dept. (Gift Article)

The hiring of Nate Hochman, who lost his job amid an uproar over a video containing a Nazi symbol, underscores the administration’s willingness to overlook past transgressions.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

a lot of people want to believe that right-wing beliefs are rooted in some legitimate material grievance. that makes it easier to imagine that if we simply solved the material problem, they’d deradicalize. but they won’t, because they aren’t disillusioned, they’re just morons.

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Vaccine conspiracism is overwhelmingly clustered among the religious, white and affluent. It’s a function of conservative ideology and bad faith media. Being nicer to MAHA types will not ‘bring them into the fold,’ it will only increase their sense of entitlement.

Objective: Strengthening of antivaccination movements in recent decades has coincided with unprecedented increases in the incidence of some communicable diseases. Many intervention programs work from a deficit model of science communication, presuming that vaccination skeptics lack the ability to access or understand evidence. However, interventions focusing on evidence and the debunking of vaccine-related myths have proven to be either nonproductive or counterproductive. Working from a motivated reasoning perspective, we examine the psychological factors that might motivate people to reject scientific consensus around vaccination. To assist with international generalizability, we examine this question in 24 countries. Methods: We sampled 5,323 participants in 24 countries, and measured their antivaccination attitudes. We also measured their belief in conspiracy theories, reactance (the tendency for people to have a low tolerance for impingements on their freedoms), disgust sensitivity toward blood and needles, and individualistic/hierarchical worldviews (i.e., people's beliefs about how much control soci hould have over individuals, and whether hierarchies are desirable). Results: In
order of magnitude,
antivaccination attitudes were highest among those who (a) were high in conspir-
atorial thinking, (b) were high in reactance, (c) reported high levels of disgust toward blood and needles, and (d) had strong individualistic/hierarchical worldviews
. In contrast, demographic variables (including
education) accounted for nonsignificant or trivial lev
f variance. Conclusions: These data help
identify the "attitude roots" that may motivate and sustain vaccine skepticism. In so doing, they help shed light on why repetition of evidence can be nonproductive, and suggest communication solutions to that problem.
Keywords: vaccination, conspiracy beliefs, health communication,

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

One of my more controversial opinions is that if you’re opposed to women organizing to end the oppression that they experience because they are women, the word for your position is “antifeminism.”

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Nick Field @nickfield.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Last April, Fetterman's staffers begged him to attend a meeting with a PA State Rep. He refused for over an hour and instead met with Bruce Pearl about Israel www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

For my part, I find it comforting that these complicated, contradictory, flawed and fallible people made so much progress in the past, if for no other reason than because that’s the only kind of people we have available now.

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 01/09/2026

the Trump admin ended Haiti's TPS status in an openly racist, straightforward ethnic cleansing plan, and the Republicans on the Supreme Court said that was a-okay this death, like so many deaths, is on their hands ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/mulli...

ballsandstrikes.org

The Republican Justices Are Pretending They’ve Never Heard Donald Trump Speak

No comment about “shithole countries” is too racist for this Supreme Court to decide that it might be legally significant.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

under the definition Chait uses here, the right’s position on immigration is woke. but is that how anyone uses the term?

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

we genuinely need creative ways to punish corporations for this sort of low-stakes acquiescence

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

the moderate democratic position on Gaza is that if Israel’s opponents do not comport themselves perfectly, if they don’t dance flawlessly through the rhetorical minefields every day, then it’s dead children forever.

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

It’s never the push alert you’re hoping to get, is it?

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Alice Miranda Ollstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

"OSHA has never addressed football, has never made recommendations to make it safer, even as hundreds of former N.F.L. players — workers, with a union — have been diagnosed with C.T.E., or chronic traumatic encephalopathy." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/u...

nytimes.com

Many N.F.L. Players Get Brain Disease. Why Hasn’t OSHA Intervened?

“We never see things that are this dire,” a former chief scientist of the agency said about rates of C.T.E. in former players.

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Alice Miranda Ollstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

One day after RFK's top allies were boasting about there being zero measles deaths this year, Pennsylvania reports 2 -- the first in the state in 35 years. Both of the deceased were unvaccinated. www.pa.gov/agencies/hea...

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 24/08/2026

frustrated with myself that it took me so long to watch this. what a picture!

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

true in America, too, which is why i continue to endorse the loud embrace of cosmopolitan elitism as a counterweight.

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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It's really looking like AI-free classrooms will be for students at "elite" or "top" schools.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

“if we don’t stand up for the free speech of racists, it puts everyone’s free speech in danger.” - guy who only ever talks about free speech when it’s racism

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Gotta appreciate the sheer chutzpah of claiming that Nathan Cofnas, a man whose only intellectual project is the rehabilitation of racist pseudoscience, is a *defender* of academic standards.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

look at how seamlessly they transitioned from “we must evaluate Arday’s life and work no matter the motives of his critics” to the opposite position: defending Cofnas because of his critics’ motivations, no matter the quality of his work

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molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

michael wolff’s hard drives should be seized by a guerrilla army of journalists who will actually write the fucking stories that need to be written instead of waiting for a personally advantageous moment to trickle them out

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

American lives & institutions really are deeply shaped by identity-based prejudice and disadvantage, particularly regarding race and gender. People didn’t like to hear this; partly because some of the people saying so were self righteous and annoying, but mostly because it implicates us all morally.

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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 18/08/2026

"Patriarchy Is Largely About Male Entitlement To Freely Exploit Sexual Underclasses As Their Property" v/s "No it isn't"

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Sophia D’Aurelio Adair @vitaphonezone.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Cute and sad to me that Stu Erwin and June Collyer died a couple of months apart from each other after decades of marriage. I think this may be the best photo of the couple taken

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New York Times Opinion @nytopinion.nytimes.com · 10/08/2026

Literary judges often get called out for “their inherent biases, their inescapable blind spots and the cliquish nature of the process by which they anoint winners,” Radhika Jones writes. But awards like the Booker Prize are more crucial than ever, since “the subjectivity is the point.”

nyti.ms

Opinion | Please Judge the Books I’m Reading

Literary awards get dismissed for elitism. But more than ever, we need passionate and idiosyncratic champions for the books most worth seeking out.

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Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

404media.co

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

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Jeet Heer @jeetheer.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Learn to Ode!

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

this is mostly true of dem elites, who have internalized the idea that conservatives are more authentically American.

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Anyway the rejection of “Woke 1” is a classic Democratic move: fighting the last war, and learning the wrong lesson from it. It’s coming from the idea that cultural concerns drove the 2024 election; they didn’t, but even if they did, there’s little reason to think this is a winning message in 2026.

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

*whispers* BLM was popular

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

this is something I talked about on IBCK when we were discussing Chatterton’s latest book. these guys all frame 2020 like the mainstream left completely alienated the general public, meanwhile there was a big referendum at the end of the year and Dems cleaned up

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

She’s running lol

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

i still see reactionaries say we need a “reckoning” over woke 1 and i truly don’t know what they mean at this point. the right is firmly in power and we get 2 articles a week bemoaning the excesses of wokeness. what else are you looking for?

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Emily Hilliard @emhilly.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Disappointed to see the wholesale embrace of AI by higher-ed administrators--the very places that should be defending, fostering, and celebrating human intelligence and creativity. Highly recommend this piece if you're fighting that fight where you work and teach www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

theguardian.com

‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom

Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

also, describing a lack of legislative capacity as a point against authoritarian consolidation misses the point: the defining feature of Trump’s second term is consolidation of power in the *executive* - the lack of legislative authorization makes him more authoritarian, not less

At the moment, Trump 2.0 has no great popularity, no legislative capacity, no policy legacy that a Democratic successor can't easily roll back.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

genuinely a damning snapshot of this style of politics. ygeslias was objectively correct when he said this, but would be wrong in the span of a few months.

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Alice Miranda Ollstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

🚨 Sens. Collins and Murkowski have now both come out against confirming Todd Blanche to lead the Justice Department, and both said my reporting with @joshgerstein.bsky.social on his private promises to restrict abortion pills influenced their decision. www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

politico.com

Blanche assures anti-abortion supporters that Dobbs will be ‘permanent in every single state’

The acting attorney general made the remarks during a private call with faith leaders.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

attempts to win them over are doomed because the only thing that could actually do it would be fully appeasing them on Israel. that's not happening, and if it did it would alienate the rest of the party. it's time to think about what the party looks like without them.

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