iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I’ve been doing some public writing, and I’m excited to announce I have a new piece out in the Prindle Post! In it, I talk about, Flock cameras, chatbots, feminism, and surveillance. Check it out! “Why the New Surveillance Doesn’t Feel Like Surveillance at All”

prindleinstitute.org

Why the New Surveillance Doesn’t Feel Like Surveillance at All - The Prindle Institute for Ethics

It's amazing the things we reveal when we think no one is listening.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

The underground man making lists for menofaction and menofacuteconsciousness

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Y’all are here doing the good work. This is so sick!

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Lauren Ross @laurennross.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Our LPS grads gave amazing research talks in our Summer Development Program at UCI @ucisocsci.bsky.social @ucirvine.bsky.social ⭐ Talks by (L to R) Tori Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social, Neil Crawford, Tessa Ng, Kai Huggett, Lauren Wigod, India Bhalla-Ladd & Curtis Mason! #philsci #philsky #HPS

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Several cool people doing important stuff.

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Cameron Buckner @cameronbuckner.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I.e., because LLMs are correctly described as doing one thing (imitating conversations from the training set, predicting the next word) they can't correctly be described as doing anything else (understanding). compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The Philosophy of Language Models

The success of large language models (LLMs) across many domains of AI research has generated intense debate. Some attribute their impressive performance on complex tasks to human-like linguistic and ...

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Placing strict limits on what instructors can teach, what topics students are allowed to write on, and what research is allowed, sure doesn’t sound like free speech to me, but what do I know?

texastribune.org

Texas Tech System cancels programs focused on gender, orientation

Chancellor Brandon Creighton directed provosts to phase out the programs and ordered universities to recognize only “two human sexes.”

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Much to say here, but let’s start with the fact that the jobs most impacted by AI currently are in finance, computer science, and business. This is classic divide and conquer style propaganda, and the Alex Karp’s of the world are using wedge-issue misogyny to normalize shrinking the middle class.

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Scott McGrath @smcgrath.phd · 01/04/2026

Frankenstein citations are now a structural risk. 2.6% of major CS conferences papers in 2025 were found to have at least one fake reference. Publishers are now wrestling with whether these "inexistent bolts" require a simple correction or a full retraction. #AcademicSky

nature.com

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Aspired to post more on bluesky to meet other cool academics, but slowly realizing all I do is read and bake in my spare time. Anyways, getting started on the reading for fun part of my night with some Proust.

The first part of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Guys I made another one (this time, raspberry blackberry and ginger)

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Some lighter reading for today.

The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Red States: We're going to cut all the programs that don't support our theology Blue States: We're going to cut the same programs, but because they don't support the business school

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I have a tendency to stress-bake. This week’s fixation is galettes. Particularly, creating a recipe that can use unthawed, frozen fruit. This one wasn’t pretty, *but* it tasted good, and the filling actually firmed up (it didn’t become blueberry soup!)

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

A broad question: How do you reliably “check” students work for AI generated writing if human and AI speech patterns are rapidly converging?

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Anyways, on to the next one (Swann's Way by Proust). Wish me luck because I’ve read the first two sentences several times over the years and given up. It’s the second one that always gets me (Ha ha).

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

My spring break *treat* was finishing Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground. It was utterly bleak. But also very funny. Example:

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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars? These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research. So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors. Great work everyone.

The Board of Governors decided, unilaterally, that no published textbook in the field of sociology could be used in compliance with the law for an Intro to Sociology class. None.
Victor: There's not a single existing textbook on the market that could be used that would qualify under state law?
Zachary: Correct.
Victor: I'm sorry, that's kind of funny. Like, the absurdity of not a single sociology textbook getting past the censors. I mean, it makes me kind of proud of our colleagues, but...

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Been thinking about the Wittgenstein's lectures on the foundations of mathematics recently (I’m woefully under informed). A shot in the dark, but does anyone here have special opinions on the idea of surveyability of proofs (particularly as it comes up in Hilbert, Turing, and Wittgenstein...)?

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Lauren Ross @laurennross.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Amazing talk by Sally Haslanger @shaslang.bsky.social on "Social systems & their micro, meso, & macro interactions'' @ucisocsci.bsky.social & dinner afterwards with Ari Koslow, Tori Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social, Cailin O’Connor @cailinmeister.bsky.social & Kate Ritchie @kateritch.bsky.social !!!

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

“At the forefront of AI thought thought leadership leadership,” lol.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

If we accept that certain topics can be erased entirely, it won’t stop with this one issue. it will spread to whatever happens to be unpopular next.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Universities are meant to be spaces for dialogue and exploration, where you meet and learn from people with all kinds of different ideas than you, not places where ideas are policed.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Higher education is supposed to challenge students to think critically and to grapple with ideas they might disagree with. If we start banning every topic that someone finds uncomfortable, we will be left with nothing but a hollow shell of what was once an education.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Let’s go a step further. Even if you personally disagree with gender studies, consider: even if a professor chooses to teach gender theory to adult college students, that is precisely what academic freedom is for!

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Regardless of your personal beliefs, the idea that a professor could lose their job simply for discussing a topic should be deeply concerning. When we start erasing entire subjects because they don’t fit a current political narrative, we risk losing valuable knowledge and forgetting our own history.

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

First, there are times when a teacher simply covers certain topics because they are part of the subject matter. Teaching about gender identity doesn’t necessarily mean endorsing any particular position. It’s about presenting information. You know, teaching?

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

A Texas A&M processor was fired for teaching about gender identity in the classroom. I’d like, for a moment, to talk about why this should be alarming to anyone—regardles of where you stand personally or politically. 🧵🪡

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Patrick Skinner @pmskinner.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Putting artificial intelligence on overcooked steak is our future

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Axios @axios.com · 08/04/2025

In less than one week, many Americans will no longer be able to apply for Social Security benefits over the phone, setting the stage for disruptions and upheaval. Nearly 6 million seniors live more than 46.6 miles, roundtrip, from a field office, per a new analysis. trib.al/5XSPqyL

A choropleth map of the United States showing the share of seniors who live at least 46.6 miles round-trip from the nearest Social Security Field Office. Rates are especially high in the Midwest and Great Plains states, with Montana (40%), South Dakota (45%), North Dakota (49%) and Wyoming (65%) topping the list.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton @hillaryclinton.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Are you a woman who changed your name when you got married? Congress is considering a bill that could make it much harder for you to vote. Call your rep—this is not a drill. indivisible.org/resource/cal...

Graphic: As many as 69 million American women lack access to valid birth certificates

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I feel like my relationship to bluesky is that we seem to log in, go “wow I wish everybody was on this app” and then forget to log on for a month. But we’re basically all on here? Just… logging on at different times of the month?

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Tori H. Cotton @wittgencism.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

So which part of America are we trying to 'make great' again? Say you ignore all of the public benefits of federally funded scientific R&D (because screw the common good, amirite?), can you really afford to willfully ignore the economic gain in being a global leader in research?

nature.com

Chaos erupts in US science as Trump’s team declares freeze on federal grants

The freeze’s effect on research is still unclear, but scientists fear ‘incalculable’ damage.

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