iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Gail Simone @gailsimone.bsky.social · 18h

You guys want to hear a short but adorable story that happened right in front of me at the baggage claim in NYC yesterday? I wasn't part of it and there are bits I didn't catch but holy crap, I can't stop thinking about it.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 21h

another day at the gender factory, hope it won't all be just gender

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 04/10/2026

I want noon when the sun is at its zenith every day and we figure everything else out with computers or whatever. Why else do we have computers!

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

DST absolutely solves some things! it makes it so that the sun refrains from busting into your window at as obscenely too-early an hour as it otherwise would, as well as giving you luxurious long daylit evenings (which mean you don't have to turn the lights on). however, it's no good in the winter

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

me: and what would the Lady Jessica look like naked pitr de vries: [eyes rolling back in head] something like this, milord.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 03/10/2026

Before I saw a talk by Bevil Conway I figured color perception was basically comprehensible by analogy to the rest of vision. After his talk I had no idea how color was processed, what it was for, or how to think about it, and you probably could have convinced me it didn’t really exist.

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

you're speaking here of my unerring ability to present myself as a capering haystack no matter how many resources i may think i am putting into looking put-together, i know. fear not, i will never let that power go to waste!

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(it may not be clear, but these were all collected from sites I came across earlier today while Browsing the Internet About Seals)

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Real talk, seal talk "No one has ever seen a leopard seal mate in its natural environment." "Southern elephant seals often bunch together in muddy pits called wallows, using their small flippers to cover themselves with wet sand." "Weddell seals are incredibly placid sedentary animals."

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Things Said of Seals (of one kind or other): is a relatively large and abundant true seal is a modest diver display their dominance by showing their noses develop quickly on their mothers' fat-rich milk attack, kill and eat several kinds of ducks have been some of the common vagrants in South Africa

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Omigod, this is the most heartwarming story possible! Backpack (bear 89) is the son of the 2019 winner of Fat Bear Week, Holly (bear 435). In 2007, he injured his foot & a practice of riding on momma's Holly's back had a new meaning: he was mobility-restricted while it healed. So Holly moved him.

From DISCVR blog's Facebook page, a momma bear & a yearling cub on her back in the shallow water. I think the background has been swapped out, and I can't rule out some AI use there? God, Facebook has become the social media for AI slop : (

The title of the article, which I link below, is "How Bear 89 earned the name Backpack"

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 28/09/2026

I say "I miss laws" out loud pretty often, and it sounds like a bit, and I wish it was a bit.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

doleful moo of a cow @oulipien.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

high decoupling is like the cartoon where the wolf and sheep clock in, and the wolf tries to kill and eat the sheep, but when they clock out at five, if the sheep is still alive they go shoot pool together, because it's just a job. one problem is that you can't clock out of life so easily

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

While Pounties and Mounties have such similar plumage that even experts have trouble telling them apart, Counties are easily distinguished with or without their characteristic prey

An altered version of the Addams comic from the quoted post, with the role of the mountie (or pountie) and his Pan now filled by a vampire, getting his can.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Jorts (and Jean) @jortsthecat.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If you adopted a feral cat to the inside and he keeps meowing maybe he just really wants to smoke real cigarettes. You don’t know what he was up to before

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Nanoraptor @nanoraptor.danamania.com · 26/09/2026

retvrn

A picture of a piece of old torn and aged paper label, fragile and cracked with age, that states THIS BLUESKY POSTER COMPLIES WITH AUSTRALIAN STANDARD No. PM-00 FREE FROM POSTER'S MADNESS PUBLISHED BY THE STANDARDS AS.... and the remainder is torn.

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

HE: people are savaging the new Taylor Swift song ME: the one about Cleveland? HE: yes. it sounds real bad ME: yeah, that’s what songs that aren’t good do

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

lizardbreath 🦎🪦🎃 @spindlypete.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

i don't know if that character is old enough to be in the public domain yet but EMOTIONALLY he is. like snoopy. snoopy and superman belong to every american but especially the ones who happen to be three

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

lizardbreath 🦎🪦🎃 @spindlypete.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

just mainlining superman content. he especially loves the illustration of the fortress of solitude. he looks at it and goes, "that's the fortress of solitude" and i say it sure is buddy

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

i have a firmly held opinion i want to get off my chest and here it is: Lowly Worm fucks

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Frankie de la Cretaz @thefrankiedlc.news · 18/09/2026

I'm really glad that Code Switch included this part of my interview, because I think these are the points that so often get lost in the discussion of trans panic and why the WNBA might be an ideal target for those anti-trans groups to latch onto. www.npr.org/2026/09/15/n...

We're talking about actual bigotry and the belief that this group of people shouldn't have, like, the same human rights as another group. It legitimizes them. And so the WNBA is a big platform for them to be able to do that. But I think what's actually really insidious about being the target is that transphobia is rooted in white supremacist ideas of who is allowed to be a woman and what a woman should look like. Those beliefs have, you know, negatively impacted Black and brown and non-Western women throughout history.

So what you have is a league in the WNBA that is full of Black women, 7-foot-tall women, masculine women, women who don't fit kind of the traditional markers of conventional white Western ideas of womanhood. And so I don't think it's surprising that transphobic ideas around the acceptable kind of woman are coming and impacting this league.

And I think the last piece that I will say is, I think, in some ways, the lack of visibility that the league had for a lot of years really protected it. Like, it wasn't as successful as it should have been because of racism and homophobia and misogyny. And once it becomes successful, the flip side of that is it really does become a different kind of victim of those ideas. And the fact that you have a league that is all women, predominantly Black women, largely queer women who have been successful and they don't need men to do it, and their product is not necessarily for men. I think that's a threat to the status quo. And so it's not just about protecting women's sports. It's actually about dismantling them from the inside.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

PSL_4Loko @psl4loko.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The whole speech is good, but this part in particular is particularly relevant now. www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/publ...

A screenshot of a section of the linked speech by former President Harry Truman:

I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are--when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people--then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again.
We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform and abandon parts of our program. These, my friends, are Trojan horse suggestions. I have been in politics for over 30 years, and I know what I am talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program.
This is so elementary that I suspect the people handing out this advice are not really well-wishers of the Democratic Party.

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yessss! Another entry for the collection. I love these so much. (Please join me in calling them "Outerbridges".) #linguistics

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 19/09/2026

The truth was that if United Health had an AI that was accepting a shitload of claims with a 90% error rate, United Health would stop using the AI in about 0.2 seconds.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Stephanie 🍉 @ageofoddish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

mmygod

the slut gnomes of false berlin jeopardy bluesky post

today's jeopardy categories. the last 2 are "false berlin" and "bizarre little men"

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This point, from my recent interview with @perrybaconjr.bsky.social for TNR, is so crucial. Trans people are desperate for relief from the relentless Republican attacks impacting all of us. When Democrats move right, they signal relief may not be coming, and that engenders a lot of despair.

And so for Democrats to say, They have a point on some of this, it is engendering a lot of hopelessness and a lot of fear in the trans community, because we have been just trying to hold on, hoping that this time would end and we would be able to get back to where we were five years, six years ago. And what Democrats are signaling is, like, No, we’re going to keep things as they are, and maybe even make them worse.

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The real alignment problem was, quite literally, the friends they made along the way

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

it's almost as if there's some kind of problem with the alignment of their goals

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Oh my god literally THREE MINUTES after posting this, a text "Hi Vera, it’s Dr. Amy Acton. Is there 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 I can say to convince you to support my campaign with $5 before my EOQ deadline this month?" GEE, I DON'T KNOW, DR. AMY ACTON, WHY DON'T YOU SEE IF YOU CAN THINK OF ANYTHING

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

living in Ohio is just a great way to get to be so, so furious all the time

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

it's also fun how often the experience of reading an NLP paper and looking at the details of the benchmarking recapitulates the experience (bad) of reading a psych paper about how [intervention X] affects [capacity Y] and looking at the details of the measure being used as a proxy for that capacity

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don't think people really understand the psychic impact of knowing that multiple times a day every day your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and everyone who could ever have any power over you is being flooded with agitprop designed to make them hate you

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 15/09/2026

I was trying to write about this yesterday because I feel like a clear and neutral explanation for normies about why frontier labs are Like This would be really useful but I just couldn’t bring myself to explain it because it’s so fucking TIRESOME.

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 15/09/2026

This is of course not how you do either risk analysis or statistical decision-making. It's one of the reasons why the people making the frontier models are a) actually a major source of risk in themselves, and b) constantly bug fuck out of their minds, and c) in a cult (a cultural way of knowing).

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Reposted by it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 15/09/2026

One of the problems here is that making up quantifications for existential risks in order to make them sound like scientifically assessed statistical measurements is the cultural status quo of the existential risk community. Like, read anything by Toby Ord or Nick Bostrom — they do this all the time

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it's not Vera Tobin, it's some kind of Thing @vtobin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

and the inks in question came out of a Sharpie? i would love to be able to make a Sharpie act like that. just look at those lines!

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

separately i think those organizations are clearly not up to this, but one of the reasons they are not up to this is that their belief in AI alignment risks are essentially theological beliefs that are conveyed to them via strong social bonds and emotionally compelling writing

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Matt Weiner @mattweiner19.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

ok not the grimmest thing but maybe the most offensive to me personally? thiel is a devastating counterexample to "read some books" but reading some books would've been a good way for many people to avoid being enraptured by the charisma of yud's prose

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Asa @asa.engineer · 10/09/2026

we take privacy very seriously; for example, check this shit out. the users don't even know we have it lol. everyone gather round and take a look

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 11/09/2026

i think it is bad that the president is that helm of a deranged cult of personality

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