iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jessica Variz

Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This poem by @kjaxon.bsky.social is pulling me apart at the seams. In the worst way. In the best way.

A prose poem titled “Make This Sound Academic” by Kim Jaxon published in the recent California English journal.

Make this sound academic, the student prompts, which is to say: remove the inkwell from my mouth. Remove my grandmother. Remove the sentence that turns back before it arrives. Remove the joke, the doubt, the rhythm I came in with. Make this acceptable to the place that has already decided what right sounds like. The machine obliges. It has been trained on our preferences, our rubrics, our longtime love of the sentence that complies. It gives back a paragraph with no fingerprints. Frictionless. Efficient. Adequately signposted. The kind of prose that can walk through an institutional hallway without setting off anyone's alarm.
We call this cheating because a machine wrote it, but perhaps the scandal is that we recognize it so easily. We have seen this paragraph before. We have praised it.
We have written "clear" in the margin. We gave it 9/10. We have asked for top sentences and transitions and an appropriate academic tone, as if tone were not a house built by someone, owned by someone, guarded by someone. The chatbot did not invent this voice. It simply learned how much we only recognized writing that behaved.

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This poem by @kjaxon.bsky.social is pulling me apart at the seams. In the worst way. In the best way.

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Meeeeeeee (sorry for taking so long)

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

If you have to do it, Facing History’s “Teaching Mockingbird” resource is the way. For me, the distaste comes less from the book itself (though the book itself has several issues!) and more from the role it often serves.

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Transactional, meditative, joyful, anxious

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

San Pedro (not in red flag zone)

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Omg I had that Bette of Roses album on REPEAT in high school. Thanks for unlocking a long forgotten memory!

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu, “Borders” by Thomas King, “Jubilee” by Kirstin Valdez Quade (her whole collection is great)

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

My students made creative responses to Lord of the Flies using a critical theory lens and this little sculpture of William Golding’s brain demon is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Woooow I really thought I had something for you 😅😅😅

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Just bought one for myself and one for a friend. Thank you for sharing!

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Jessica Variz @varizey.bsky.social · 10/11/2024

Hello! I never posted anything on the bird app but you are the reason I fell into romance reading three years ago. So glad you’re here!

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