iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Quick news rundown for things catching my eye recently: * Santorini(Greece), known for its idyllic beauty spawned from the Thera eruption circa 1600 BCE, has seen thousands of earthquakes over the past two weeks causing an evacuation of the island's residents/tourists. 🧵

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Helen Lewis was asked by Sam Harris what the effects of today's Internet are and presents a couple of interesting ideas. People aggressively self-sorting themselves based on very specific interests with outsized memetic value is something that would not have happened before this... 🧵

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Love it when I randomly discover a channel with interesting content. I'm late to the party, but here's a good one on psychopathy/sociopathy. (Institute of Human Anatomy) Interesting points posted in thread 🧵🧵: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHk7...

youtube.com

Inside the Brain of a Psychopath

YouTube video by Institute of Human Anatomy

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Possibly; another factor I believe has quieted many liberals is simply the fact that 77 million Americans voted for such an uncaring, ignorant man after everything we've learned about him. It's like arguing with a troll: How do you rationally debate someone who deliberately hates and is nihilistic?

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Give these businesses your patronage whenever you have the opportunity. Progressive ideas about equality and making the playing field fairer intersectionally are under assault, and the only way we keep tenable ideas about diversity on the table is explaining it to businesses through dollar signs.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

And by the way, do you know anyone who grimaces when saying "my heart goes out to you all"? Is that the standard expression for gratitude? This belies little ambiguity to leave white supremacists cheering, plausible deniability for the tech bros, and historians facepalming.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Good day for a peaceful transition of carbon.

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 16/01/2025

Not to be alarmist, but please be prepared for many gov services to vanish or be horribly downgraded in the months to come. While continuing to push national and local electeds to hold the line, think about non-gov groups that are supporting folks in your community and consider how to support them.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

After being called out over using professional gamers to pretend to be himself and boosting his accounts, Elon Musk has unfollowed Asmongold. What matters isn't whether he has gaming skills, but rather what a giant baby he is over something as juvenile as his gaming credentials.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Noticed this individual N447GH is most tracked on FlightRadar24. I think we can get a sense of what this boss is doing

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

Crossing this particular cave off my bucket list. Caves with 300 feet deep worth of bat guano? One has to imagine some colonial powers were eyeing Borneo jealously prior to the Haber process.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Just want to take a moment to say that Twitter is not improving in its rigorous intellectual discourse.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Straight out of a demagogue's playbook: Externalizing to outward threats to distract from internal discord. Trump supporters over time will care less about "America First" or protectionist isolationism and more about Trump himself. Worshipping people, not ideas. Cherishing reactions, not curiosity.

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psvrh.bsky.social @psvrh.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

The worst part is they're not obsessed, trans folk are just the easiest target. The powers that be on the right don't actually care about trans people, they just know they're the safest to kick. Trans people are first line in Neimoller's poem, as it were.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Repeating the same mistakes with different prosody is a recurring theme in history. To quote Christopher Clark: "...the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world."

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Amazing how when fear isn't the overriding impulse from animal life that didn't evolve side by side hominids that typically hunted them down for millions of years, cooperation, affiliation, and curiosity are what rises to the fore. I think there's a societal lesson here, too.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

There is an unfortunate part of our neurology that wants to extend narratives beyond space and time where it has permanence and can't be upended by the vicissitudes of mundane physical reality. If it can be knocked over a tree or a casual act of wanton violence, that speaks to arbitrariness.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

I wouldnt use a really bad bot-ridden racist platform as a counterexample for independent goodness. Without pushback, without challenge, without steelmanned debate and intellectual discussion, an echo chamber dooms ideas to like-minded lemmingship. @bobsacemano.bsky.social

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Just spotted a major drone swarm and they appear to be in formation

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

What a story this rock has lived through: Formed around a hydrothermal vent, survived on Mars for 4.45 billion years only to get chipped off by an impact 5-10 million years ago, flew to Earth, tiny zircon grain in the middle survived re-entry and landed in the Sahara. www.cnn.com/2024/12/10/s...

cnn.com

‘Black Beauty’ was found on Earth in 2011. Now, scientists say it has revealed a new clue to life on Mars | CNN

A mineral grain from a meteorite preserved evidence that water was present on Mars 4.45 billion years ago, and it may have created hot springs habitable for life.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Lindy Li always struck me as a reactionary opportunist that responded in two-bit phrases to any situation with ad hominem and screeching about Trump or Christofascists. Not that this was ideologically wrong, but people can bend like a twig in the wind if they don't have deep and nuanced arguments.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Worth noting that in the Year of our Science, 2024, people are still struggling hard with the definition of "murder" juxtaposed with the rules of war. I will help: " mur·der /ˈmərdər/ noun the ***unlawful*** premeditated killing of one human being by another." Highlighted for struggling neurons.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Important point people miss from the British Mandate is that while antisemitism played a part in Britain's endorsement of Zionism in Palestine, they also wanted the port at Haifa during a mad rush for oil post-WW1; a direct link to the Mediterranean from Anglo-Persian wells and Iraq. (1/2)

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Following Duverger's Law, tribalism and a sharper divide get worse over time. It doesn't seem reasonable to compare older presidencies for that reason: Trump is the worst form of the axiom "Cometh the hour, cometh the man" - as a demagogue, he represents the incarnation of anti-pluralist politics.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Dr. Kirk Honda(Psychology in Seattle) makes good points about how United Healthcare thrives as a low cost denial provider in a corporation>politician>shareholder feedback loop, and how he as a professional almost exclusively ran into massive denial problems with United: youtu.be/df6QV80dXUI

youtu.be

My Experience With UnitedHealthcare

YouTube video by Psychology In Seattle

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Words cannot describe how ridiculous this nativist post by Luigi Mangione is, as he Quote Tweets a white supremacist account that frequently conveys racist tropes.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

It sounds as if Assad was increasingly relying on conscription and that after Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah became embroiled, this increasingly came to new conscripts who were stomped by the seasoned fighters of HTS(Hayat Tahrir al-Sham). Assad is not his father, Hafez, and became complacent... (1/x)

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Good jumping off points in this presentation by Dr. Emily Bender for skepticism of Gen AI/LLMs: Hard to derive communicative intent from form. Joint attention of external world outside language is how we learn meaning. Meaning is not form. We contrive meaning from LLMs. youtu.be/qpE40jwMilU

youtu.be

ChatGP-why: When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable?

YouTube video by GRAILE AI

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Lizzietish @lizzietish81.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

According to Lynn Margulis's book Symbiotic Planet, sexual reproduction began as a result of aborted cannibalism between microbial organisms. For some reason I find this hilarious... "Oh sorry Carl, didn't realize it was you....um, want to share genetic material?"

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

100%. We need to pay special attention to defending the social sciences, with the next in line being humanities more generally and liberal arts. These subjects come under direct assault when fascistic enterprises take shape because they frequently shine light on injustice, and uphold institutions.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Frustrating but encouraging Sartrean moment. This could be your start to branching off into philosophy. 🥁

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

"Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals." - Robert Caro This was a great video that I wish all had watched prior to the election highlighting the dangers of dark triad trait individuals holding power, but there are still critical lessons to be learned from history: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ4g...

youtube.com

Why Narcissistic Leaders Always Fail (In The End)

YouTube video by Daily Stoic

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History Cafe ☕ Ottoman Heritage @ottomanhistory.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

■ The Parade of Guilds (Shopkeepers) in Istanbul, 1681 "The Stand of the Kebab Shopkeepers in the Parade Attended by All Professional Guilds (1100 Groups) in the City" #history #ottomanempire #kebab #parade #manuscript #manuscripts #17thcentury

Ottoman manuscript. The Parade of Guilds (Shops anf Shopkeepers) in Istanbul, 1681.

Ottoman manuscript. The Stand of the Kebab Shopkeepers in the Parade.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Democracy often seems to end with quiet whimpering rather than pitchforks, and often starts with pitchforks. The exhausted acquiescence from a dysfunctional status quo is met with the authoritarian who is all the more resolved in their conviction to wrest control.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

New study on coprolites suggests rise of the dinosaurs 200mya was due to three factors: Rise in volcanic activity results in more diverse plant diet, combined with older theories such as repositioning of legs + mobility and resilience to climate change. amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/11/...

amp.cnn.com

Fossilized poop reveals secrets of how dinosaurs came to dominate Earth | CNN

A study of fossilized feces and vomit attempts to piece together why dinosaurs were so evolutionarily successful.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Taking some small solace in the fact that we're not quite at this point yet: "On Saturday, Duterte said she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine house, if she herself were killed, prompting a rebuke from Marcos."

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Worth keeping a close eye on this vis a vis H5N1 and looking out for similar endemic trends. It seems we're seeing an increase in cases that are not directly connected to farms, livestock, milk byproducts, etc.

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Any thoughts on the main reasons for Russia's selling of Alaska to the US for $7.2 million in 1867? Retrospectively embarrassing, but: More capital for modernization after Crimean War, shift to steppes consolidation?, easy possible annexation from Canada, and offsetting British power to US. Others?

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VesperAegis @vesperaegis.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Just want to christen this account on Bluesky by tipping my hat to this, and adding that we can presumably use Latin prefixes on here to our heart's content without being censored by angry transphobes. Cisgender cisgender cisgender cisgender cisgender

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