iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 3h

Not the least bit surprising but still extremely grim to read. time.com/article/2026...

Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him. In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.

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Sophie Fullerton @sophiefullerton.bsky.social · 3h

The sliding scale from atrocity denialism to sexual violence apologia is hardly surprising when it comes to the Western post-left. (1)

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Vituperative Erb @vituperativeerb.bsky.social · 10h

If we could figure out some quality or feature that was common to all the states where this happened or, conversely, common to all the states where this did not happen, that might help suggest a strategy to correct and/or prevent this

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onion person @junlper.beer · 5h

it’s amazing that there’s no crime anymore. if you do crime you’re actually just the victim for getting caught. the people who catch you are the criminals

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nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 10h

We sent @joshdzieza.bsky.social to Utah to figure out what's going on with Kevin O'Leary's giant data center project, which has stalled out due to furious opposition from locals. After promising to talk to us, O'Leary's company sent us legal threats instead. www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

Over the past five months, I spoke with more than two dozen local officials, residents, and others involved with the project, including the CEO and cofounder of O’Leary Digital, Paul Palandjian, who, after describing himself as “an open kimono” of transparency, responded to emailed questions and requests to speak with O’Leary with a message from a lawyer threatening legal action over any false statements. These interviews, along with thousands of pages of emails and text messages obtained through public records requests, show a project that moved with the urgency of an emergency. Everyone was racing — the developers against other speculators, O’Leary against rival projects chasing the same few tenants, Utah against other states, the United States against China — right up until they slammed into the residents of Box Elder County they had neglected to tell.

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 11h

"For America to right itself, we need changes on the scale of Reconstruction and the New Deal. And I worry that’s not going to happen if Democrats and the broader anti-Trump left are taking their cues about what’s necessary and politically possible from the Times." newrepublic.com/article/2160...

newrepublic.com

The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too

The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“Well, you see, I have to stay on the White Supremacist Child Porn Rape Victim Doxxing site because that’s where my community is”

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Anne Helen Petersen @annehelen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is *the* piece. Kate Manne, professor of philosophy at Cornell, speaks truth to the totality of failures at the university — and why students protesting the war in Gaza have faced far harsher consequences than any of the Cornell 7: www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The cleansing of the blood of the nation must continue, as it says in the constitution bsky.app/profile/stev...

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Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A phenomenal moment in the Senate. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., claims he has evidence Jack Smith went to a HAWKS game in Atlanta. Smith denies it. Schmitt declares he has busted Jack Smith for perjury. Smith, vexed, says he went to HAWKEYES game in Maryland. WATCH IN FULL, UNINTERRUPTED

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

One thing that’s interesting about this is that it shows that despite insisting the wokes overinterpet everything, conservatives are actually aware of and agree with their critics about how coded racist appeals work, they just like them bsky.app/profile/newr...

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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Trump era has really fucked everyone up in profound ways. Turns out electing the physical embodiment of the most demonic things about American society to the Presidency was a mistake

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Lindsey Boylan @lindseyboylan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This man is a monster. He seeks out women survivors because he hates them. And he hates them because he hates himself. He has harassed me and other women survivors many times over the years. It must end. He should never have a job anywhere.

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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 28/09/2026

It has been eight days since Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez was shot by ICE while making a DoorDash delivery in Austin, Texas. He is currently facing a severe medical emergency. The bullet remains lodged in his back, and he is being held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

DOORDASH IS ABANDONING ITS DRIVERS
URGENT UPDATE:
8 days after ICE shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in the back while he was making a DoorDash delivery, the bullet remains in his body. Wilber is in agonizing pain inside a TX concentration camp, and the silence from DoorDash is deafening. A photo of Wilber smiling, before ICE shot him, is shown.

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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Kash Patel should resign in disgrace. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...

Ciaran Martin, the former head of Britain’s cyberdefense agency, said the F.B.I. hack likely had “huge impact on the operational capability” of the bureau and could rank as one of the most consequential data breaches in history — graver even than the Office of Personnel Management burglary.

“Losing the data on 20 million federal employees to the Chinese was bad,” Mr. Martin said. “But you knew the Chinese weren’t going to sell or publish it.”

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Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Every French presidential poll LADY HITLER - 35% JEAN D'AUSTÉRITÉ - 18% CHUD COMMUNISTE - 17%

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

taco belle here is doing a good job of laying out the pretty obvious problems with weaving group sex parties, sometimes involving consensual non-consent, into AI industry culture:

taco belle •
@ animalologist
17h
Replying to @wenza @Aella_Girl @Actualwebutante Hey, this isn't the crux of my point at all. I'm not doing respectability politics about this (though I do think the "optics" convo is an important one, and I don't agree that espousing norms that the median person finds alien is a nothingburger; I know plenty of people who've bounced off rationalism bc of these bad vibes, and yeah that's a great filtering mechanism for finding Only true believers, but you need a fundamentally different strategy to connect with and persuade the broader public that your stance on a highly technical, insanely important issue is the Correct one. Most people are not high-decouplers!
These norms have downstream effects on who can participate in your milieu. Ones that are perhaps positive for many men, and negative for most women. Tech is still a boys' club, and women still have to contend with that - young Zoomer dudes are more openly misogynistic now than millennial men were at their age, and plenty of them call women sluts and claim girls ONLY ever get hired on the basis of their fuckability already. So a lot of young women are sensitive as fuck to that perception, and already struggle to walk the blurred lines between social & professional connections, and that was true WITHOUT an extremely pro-slut-event normalizing sexual forwardness, CNC, and the objectification of women. I HOPE there's not much overlap between those misogynistic men & attendees of this event, but there's definitely plenty of each in the same SF tech scene. Plenty of women are acquainted with both types of guy, and have to figure out how to navigate among them. It's pretty damned-if-you-do, damned if you don't. That's not an unfamiliar position to be in, and not everyone wants to resolve it by committing hella hard to the slut side!
Again, this doesn't mean the event shouldn't be allowed. The more gracefully that careful criticisms are taken into consideration, the more likely that the…

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’m sorry, what? This piece was not a joint publication/ reporting job (as some are). It was @propublica’s alone and the Times followed with a summary. This is so indicative of NYT. If they don’t ignore proper credit, they just go for stolen valor.

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility

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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’ve been reporting on the CDC for years, and have written about many of its troubles over the past year. I was still shocked by the extent of the staff losses and political interference I found when reporting this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/h...

nytimes.com

‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission (Gift Article)

The agency has lost its independence and nearly a third of its staff, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and associates have tightened control.

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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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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

lol holy shit I wouldn't talk about literally anything else if I was the guy running against him. —"What do you think about trans kids in sp-" —"Did you hear my opponent had his patient, who was 8 months pregnant, arrested in front of her son because she didn't pay a $50 medical bill?"

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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Every taxpayer, no matter your party, should be outraged by this. Your money is being used to fund campaign ads for Trump. It’s totally completely illegally. He’s stealing your money for his campaign. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/u...

nytimes.com

‘Love Me’ Ad Promotes Trump With Public Money Ahead of the Midterms

A disclaimer says the ad was paid for by the U.S. government, which could violate federal law.

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Ben Penn @benjaminpenn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

ICYMI - SDNY US atty’s office is looking to staff up with temp JAG prosecutors next month for a law enforcement surge. This suggests Trump admin may be plotting immigration crackdown in Manhattan just before the election.

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Henry @henrythedog.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I love the idea that Democrats "can't stop talking about" this book I'm only just now hearing about by this person I'd never heard of before, and I'm a political obsessive political reporter's universe of people who are fun to talk to and hang with is very different from real people in politics

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We just dropped a bombshell investigation into ChatGPT's role in the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. Incredible reporting from @markfollman.bsky.social that will have far-reaching effects...hopefully: www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0...

motherjones.com

ChatGPT helped the Tumbler Ridge school shooter focus on guns, tactics, and terror, our investigation reveals

OpenAI’s chatbot fed the shooter’s violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 24/09/2026

So this story is WAY wilder than I thought The Trump post I flagged this morning because it includes Natalie Harp is actually based on the Getty photo you can see below. But there is one key difference -- MONICA CROWLEY'S FACE HAS BEEN EDITED TO LOOK LIKE NATALIE HARP'S WTF is going on here?

Trump TS post featuring the mentioned edit of Monica Crowley's face

Trump TS post which shows Natalie's face where Monica's is on the original. very weird

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ponder @ponder.ooo · 24/09/2026

calling this "misalignment" instead of "negligence" is an accountability dodge. we already have laws about cyber crimes and there's no scale of ML model you can incorporate into your code that makes you not responsible for running it

In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company was "conducting an extensive review of misaligned model activity" during training, and notifying third parties when there was a potential impact on their systems.

"During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation," they said.

"In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

this is an instructive situation - if you hadn’t clocked taylor lorenz as a grifter and a hack long ago, you need to hone your moron radar

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

@ariberman.bsky.social and @pemalevy.bsky.social have a damning new story about how the Roberts Court is reviving Jim Crow, relying on the same legal tactics used to undermine the Reconstruction. A must read to understand the stakes of this election. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Cover of Mother Jones issue on the new Jim Crow

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

NYT has now independently corroborated all the major allegations against Susan Collins in the ProPublica report, including that investigators were prepared to move against her and then Trump intervened to shut it down. This put Trump in a position of exceptional and extortionate leverage over her.

nytimes.com

F.B.I. Shut Down Inquiry Into Top Ally of Senator Susan Collins

The inquiry was closed last year because senior bureau officials questioned the veracity of a campaign donor’s account, according to current and former officials.

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April Wolfe @aprilwolfe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Considering the age of consent is 18 in California, I am genuinely surprised the sex cult didn't put their school in, say, Nevada or Washington, where it's 16.

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Grudgie the Wail @grudgie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Let’s kick off our cheapest, best patients for fun”

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Your regular reminder that this is a public website and things that you say can and will be used against you.

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Boo!-per Lund @cooperlund.online · 22/09/2026

At least three times a day I open this app and am faced with a poll that I would have found completely unthinkable a year ago, and we still have over a month for things to get worse for a GOP who’s showing no sign of pulling out of their tailspin

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

We do not apply this reasoning - that you are responsible when your enemy in a war decides to kill civilians (which is not just some, but most of the deaths totaled here) - to any other war. People have agency and are responsible for their choices, including groups and countries other than the USA.

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Errant @errantv.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Kindly fuck off with the xenophobia, new york is for anyone who wants to make a life in NY work.

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QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

i cannot say i really understand the derisive commentary about the Kennedy center protests. much of the negative reaction is “why aren’t libs protesting ICE or detention centers?” when there’s been constant, ongoing protests from liberals on these issues in DC and elsewhere for two years

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Glonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹 @snarkranger.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is 100% pure uncut reactionary fear of the newcomer disguised in a purportedly-leftist wrapper, and we must wholly reject it out of hand. America welcomes the newcomer, no matter where they are from or where they choose to live.

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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Wow….wild to hear Taylor say she’s glad Elon took over Twitter and that it’s better than ever. I mean, the unconstrained growth of the far right on there? Musk’s thumb seemingly on the algorithm’s scale during elections? The impact on democracy?

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PhilTheBronxite @philthebronxite.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Any leftists who are still collaborating with Taylor Lorenz I’m giving them the biggest side eye.

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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

You fundamentally just cannot fight and win a war like this. There isn’t a military on earth that could effectively operate when your leadership is waffling back and forth on decisions on a daily basis for months on end. It’s not sustainable. None of this is sustainable.

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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Oh, the @nytimes.com is writing about the class ceiling! Surely they will have cited and talked to Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison who wrote about this, oh, 8 ish years ago, and not an economist who rediscovered the now obvious but published it in Journal of Econowhatever! Oh, wait.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 18/09/2026

It's so funny that Mamdani is doing *exactly* what the abundance types are calling for -- competent government in service of constituents' quality of life -- but they can't embrace him because their billionaire donors hate Muslims.

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

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sex parties, kink, polyamory, paid sex work, or literally any other form of consensual sex IMO: it becomes wrong when those things get all mixed up in coercion, big money, power, and professional advancement.

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 18/09/2026

Again, there is clear evidence a data center moratorium would peel far more votes away from the GOP than the 10-15 (not thousand, literally 10-15 total) who might switch over this same crowd’s demand to betray queer people. It’s malpractice that the party won’t ditch these professional losers.

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