iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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The Onion @theonion.com · 04/10/2026

Archaeologists Unearth Ancient Clay Pot Shards From Dwelling Of Earliest Known Klutz theonion.com/archaeologists-unearth…

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KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 03/10/2026

"Along the US's southeastern coast, Gullah Geechee communities preserve a distinct culture and language rooted in West Africa that is spoken nowhere else on Earth." www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

bbc.com

The American coast that refused to let African culture die

Along the US's South-eastern coast, Gullah Geechee communities preserve a distinct culture and language rooted in West Africa that is spoken nowhere else on Earth.

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Boze Herrington, Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5,000 years.

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Professor KPA 🗃️😷 @kpanyc.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

You guys know that think tanks exist to keep what they do away from public scrutiny, public standards, and peer review, right? All that money could just go into existing universities if they wanted real results.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 01/10/2026

it didn't even occur to me that the government might try to execute someone a second time if they torture the person but fail to kill them during a first botched attempt. truly grotesque and a moral stain upon all involved.

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.

A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future

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The Legacy Sites @legacysites.eji.org · 24/09/2026

The power of history is in telling the truth. Being honest about our nation’s history is the first step towards recovery and reconciliation. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, is a sacred space for all.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/09/2026

Today, in my stack of books to catalogue, I find a very battered hardcover published by a university press. It has underlining, highlighting, and flocks of post-notes perched along the head- and foreedges*, each peppered with notes. This was the author's own working copy of their book.

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 23/09/2026

Had some really incredible archival finds this week. Stuff just jumping off the page it’s so great. So much of being a historian is a slog, days like these must be celebrated.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I just lectured about the WPA this morning and it is absolutely a model we need to bring back, for this purpose and others too.

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My whole career the Humanities seem to have been curled up in a defensive crouch trying to justify our meaning/existence. At times it has even seemed a productive thought exercise, but I think generally whatever body has demanded the justification is not really open to being persuaded of anything.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I’m not sure why she’s letting them off with such a light punishment but yes

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

One thing I’m struck by is how no teacher teaching a student alone. Students operate under impressions of how to navigate all of their past classes and the other classes they’re taking at the same time as yours. It always strikes me as urgent, then, that we teach our method alongside our content.

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.” Robert Penn Warren, who died on this day in 1989

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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

After reading some of the recent pubs and discourse around US higher ed.… I should just stop right here. But here are the three major fallacies of much of what’s out there, three contexts that are missing, and the one big thing that is driving me around the bend (actually already there, but). 1/

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Today’s song is “Big Butter and Egg Man,” recorded in 1926 by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, vocals by Armstrong and May Alix. In 20s slang a “Big Butter and Egg Man” was an ingenuous man with a lotta cash. youtu.be/58xAoe29aSI?...

youtu.be

Big Butter And Egg Man (Album Version)

YouTube video by Louis Armstrong And The All-Stars - Topic

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'd vote for the future where there's the option of a box that pops up when lazy nonsense appears and says "this looks like AI slop. Would you like me to find a piece written by a thoughtful human on this topic - something that's valued by other humans and is actually worth reading?"

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Gregory A. Hargreaves 🎃 @bordergroves.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Never confuse a map for the thing mapped. Ai is, can only be, a map of things already created by people. Worse, Ai is a map to nowhere.

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 09/09/2026

Not to brag, but our product has been foldable since 1828.

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William M. Cavert @williamcavert.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

My problem here is that in history "skills" are not merely tasks to perform at work. They are intrinsic to being human, who you are in the world, how you feel about your family/home/nation, how you talk to people, where you travel on scarce vacations. It's meaningless to say that AI does these.

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Fun @funkelly.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

the good news is that, for at least the foreseeable future, these humanoid robots can be easily defeated by utilizing any number of foiling tactics demonstrated in your run-of-the-mill looney tunes cartoon.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

This is absolutely right. I worked hard to get where I am but I also got lucky when I was up for jobs or awards against a field of equally talented hard working people

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 21/08/2026

I tell people all the time that I got lucky with my career and it annoys a lot of them. "No, but you're good," they will say, and I will say, yes, I am good, and also here are all these people who write as well as I do but did not get the same break, so being good isn't the issue, being lucky is.

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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Ah yes, the four orders: Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, and Death Metal

A column capital with skulls and crossbones and flaming trumpets

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

We never write history just once. Any person or group who thinks they can get to a “best version” of history and then be done does not understand anything about history, historiography, archives, or data.

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Brendan Davey @brendandavey.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Also, not everything is archived! Like... literally almost nothing in the grand scheme of humanities written work is archived. Someone has to dig through that crap and apply context to it! It really cannot be an LLM.

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

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Megan Stevenson
@MeganTStevenson
I haven't heard people talking about this, but AI is an absolute game changer for doing historical research. History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts— a massive logistical/memory problem made so delightfully easy with agentic research. 1/
1:31 PM · Jul 29, 2026
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Megan Stevenson
@MeganTStevenson
·
Jul 29
I did an OCR conversion of all my PDFs to make text files, built a semantic search index, and can just let my agents roam free to answer questions, fact-check, dig up interesting stories, quotes, etc. It takes a lot of the hard work out, as well as a lot of the human error. 2/2

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Emily Sneff @emilysneff.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

For a historian who focuses on the Declaration of Independence, I don't talk about Thomas Jefferson a whole lot. But, when I look at the parchment (signed beginning 250 years ago today, on August 2, 1776), I think there is something about Jefferson's signature that is worth highlighting.

What can the signed parchment Declaration of Independence tell us about Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson was the first Virginian to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2

Jefferson left room above his signature for two other Virginians, George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee, to ad their names when they returned to Philadelphia weeks later

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Jonathan Earle @jonearle.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Unboxing Day! He Has The people launches August 3...

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Dr. Todd Arrington @btarrington.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Today is the 162nd anniversary of the Civil War battle of the Crater. Learn more about this fight and what it meant by checking out this great @civilwarmemory.bsky.social piece. You can trust him. He literally wrote the book on the Crater.

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Tracy Power @tracypower.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

The United States has never been a perfect nation, but one founded by and peopled by imperfect human beings. Our past must not be reduced to a set of triumphs and tragedies to create “lessons” out of a faceless History with a capital H.

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Only In Boston @onlyinbos.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The potholes are so big in Boston right now that you can see that our streets once used to be all cobblestone... 📸: @leeannskitchen

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austin @bainard.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

At least we're finally recognizing the Muppets as one of the premier American contributions to global entertainment

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Every time they make it harder for foreign students to study here, they're just jacking up the tuition costs for American students and robbing America of incredible new talent too.

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Austin Tashis @austintashis.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Like the one I used for my doctoral dissertation! Even better than the card catalog, I had stack access. Sometimes you find books on the shelf right next to the one you looked up that either add a valuable perspective or take your research in a whole new direction.

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sjvn @sjvn.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

My first search engine.

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The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Stolen goods. My @smh @theage cartoon.

Two frames. 1. Scene at night outside a building at ground level where there’s a person visible in a room one floor up. Two black clad, hooded robbers with AI emblazoned on chest and back. Giant hole in the wall they’ve presumably made. Bricks and a tool bag to one side. One holds a large mallet standing by while another pulls a large crate marked “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY” out through the hole in the wall.
2. The robbers are sprung in torchlight standing by the crate and the hole in the wall. One has pulled back balaclava and says, “Pay for it?! But we just happened to find it here on the street.”

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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 16/07/2026

I’ve now gotten invitations to speak this year at George Washington University, Washington & Lee, Washington College, and WashU in STL. Someone please connect me to the right person at University of Washington, I want to speak for the cycle.

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

It is hard to figure out if there is an actual literal way to read this ad that is selling a paraphraser to rewrite your paper while telling you that your paper should not be "what AI churns out."

ad for Grammarly Pro that says "It's your paper. It should sound like you. Every assignment is your chance to show what you think-not what AI churns out. With Pro, you'll get unlimited access to advanced tools designed to help."

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Cohen is a Ghost @skullmandible.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

"how were people writing 10 page papers before AI???" we were smarter than you. you could've been smart, too. but you sold your brain for nothing

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Wendy Rouse @wendylrouse.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I don't think we are taking the issue of ChatGPT & GenAI in education seriously enough. The dull, monotonous responses and lack of critical thinking I am seeing is now at a whole new level (than even a year ago) as increasingly individuals choose to outsource their thinking to the machines.

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Jon of The North @krauza.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

You're going to get left behind if you don't use Al." Leave me then. Leave me with my critical thinking skills, my ability to read and write long- form, and books without needing Al summaries.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

This is what they have taken from us. Knowledge, vetted, organized by subject. Without AI or algorithm.

Pic of stacks of books at research library

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Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Hamburg massacre where 100 white supremacists killed six Black men in attempts to suppress black civil rights and discourage voting. Took place in Hamburg, SC, a town populated by a majority of black freedmen. .

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Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 08/07/2026

WAIT FOR IT WAIT. FOR. IT! 🪶 🐣

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