iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Getting ready for the quarter to start like I am going on a trip: Haircut ✅ Dentist appointment ✅ Medication refills ✅ Wardrobe refresh ✅ Anyone else feel like these tasks get next to impossible once you jump into teaching?

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Awful stuff. We need local journalists everywhere.

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Rebecca Buxton @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

This is a great piece. I have a draft paper (under review currently) on AI and the problem of suspicion at universities. The problem with AI is not cheating or "academic integrity", it's that we are placed in a context where we can no longer trust one another.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Reason number 19,208,138 we love librarians:

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Not the only food company doing this. A reminder that slavery remains allowed as punishment for a crime under the 13th amendment.

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Jen Mercieca @jenmercieca.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Teaching critical thinking: What evidence do you have to support your claim? How do you know that evidence is true? Have you considered the opposing evidence? How do you know that evidence is false?

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

That moment when a student in your (asynchronous online) Intro Micro class tells you... "Yeah, I started watching a crash course in economics online to study for the exam" and you think... Wait, what wasn't that what I was providing with my hours of recordings??

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Woman with a PhD here (completed at 29), all my school loans paid off, a good job, a house, and a husband of 14 years who cheered me on through it all, so I feel I can speak with complete authority when I say this is complete and utter bullshit and the problem here is definitely *not* women.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

TIL that South Africa is 1.8 times the size of Texas and more than twice the size of California. Sharing in case (due to multiple biases) you didn't know that either.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

I will ride the high of this message from a friend (a computer scientist who does some work on AI) for a while... "In the world of AI and large language models trained on text, there is absolutely no way any AI or human could have predicted these 2 sentences!!! 😂😂" Yay for being human + weird!

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Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

We (faculty at USC) took on an institutional behemoth with all the money and clout on earth, and we WON. We won our union. We're the biggest private-university faculty union in US history. Trying to make people care about this, challenge level IMPOSSIBLE

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Proposal for a new wealth index for use in economic research called the Bouncy House Index based on the number of households in the census tract that own their own bouncy house. #econsky

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I have no specific evidence to suggest this, but I am really curious about the possible role of immigration enforcement issues in connection to the cyclospora outbreak. Taylor Farms, now identified as the likely source, has been called out in the past for labor violations,...

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Michel Estefan @mestefan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I mean, like, I’m just giving you the hard data. A UC college degree is one of the best investments you can make in your life. What, you prefer to bet your professional career on corporate training? 🤔 Investing in a UC degree IS an investment in yourself and in the CA public.

universityofcalifornia.edu

People who say college isn’t worth it haven’t seen this data

A UC degree pays off with higher earnings that grow over time, and UC graduates enter the workforce with greater financial flexibility due to no or low debt.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

"We exist in a world where... any coherent pro-social moral stance is instantly compromised upon contact with this society... Eschewing AI is one thing that we can actually do to live out ethics that affirm values of human and environmental rights."

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The company also makes popular bagged salads sold at Costco.

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Upjohn Institute @upjohninstitute.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

We can’t solve the child care shortage without measuring it accurately. New research reflects how families really search for care, measuring childcare within a short drive and accounting for competition for slots. This provides a more realistic picture of local supply. bit.ly/4aV0qlD

bit.ly

To solve child care shortages, we first need to measure them

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Sending love to all our Canadian neighbors being affected by wildfires right now. Sorry the US has been a super shitty neighbor of late.

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GLIA-Leadership @glia-leadership.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Two years into Jen’s faculty career, her lab had a social implosion. The solution? Jen Googled "conflict resolution." The session on learning the leadership skills nobody taught you is live now in The Faculty Uplift: leadership.stefanierobel.com/facult…

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 15/07/2026

Big story from the new Pew data out yesterday: Non-voters lean Democratic in party ID again, by a 12-point margin. That’s up from R+4 in 2024. Huge shift. The party is approaching its lead with the group from 2020-2021. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-07-15...

gelliottmorris.com

Non-voters lean Democratic again: Pew NPORS

The group has recently been prone to turning against incumbents

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Jim Acosta @jimacosta.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Epstein survivors released this video today urging senators to block the confirmation of Todd Blanche for Attorney General. They’re trying to get to 20,000 signatures on their petition to send a message to the Senate. ujoin.co/campaigns/45...

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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 13/07/2026

Holy COW. Text analysis of comments on the OMB rule: overwhelming opposition, overwhelmingly not form letters. (But 9 in 10 comments supporting the rule ARE form responses, LOL) Whatever happens next, folks have stepped up.

Screenshot text: Between May 29 and July 9, roughly 51,000 comments were posted to regulations.gov (and over 200,000 more had been received but not yet published). The verdict on public sentiment is clear and lopsided: about 94 percent oppose the proposed rule and only 6 percent support it, with fewer than one percent marked as unclear. The opposition is overwhelmingly grassroots rather than orchestrated. Form letters make up only about 16 percent of all comments (roughly 8,400 comments across 210 distinct campaigns), and only about one in eight opposing comments came from a form-letter campaign. Support for the rule, by contrast, was almost entirely organized: nearly nine in ten supportive comments (about 2,500) came from a single form-letter campaign. Opponents mostly wrote their own comments; supporters mostly signed the same form-letter.

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LAL @lindli.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Our local newspaper, The Portland Press Herald, has lifted their paywall on coverage of the ICE shooting of a man in Biddeford, Maine this morning. They have excellent reporters and will have much more accurate information than natl news as we learn more: www.pressherald.com/2026/07/13/s...

pressherald.com

Live updates: Man killed in Biddeford ICE-involved shooting ID’ed as 26-year-old from Colombia

Witnesses described seeing one person being shot in the head.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

“Your horror has been stolen from you” is a 10/10 sentence.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

If you're an elected representative showing more concern about the death of Lindsey Graham than the deaths of people in ICE detention and the deaths of our neighbors at the hands of ICE officers, then your priorities are way off and I hope you get voted out.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 13/07/2026

We're starving children and their families, all so billionaires can save a few bucks.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

"verify your age"... I had a Wildlife Fact File subscription

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Sarah Gollust @sarahgollust.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Did you write your comment yet on the OMB rules on federally funded science yet? No? Don’t worry, you can do it this weekend. Here are some resources that can help you get started.

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Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Mmmmmmhmmmmm 👀👀👀👀 www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/o...

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Shout out to librarians. No testing centers nearby, so a librarian in a small town across the country is going to help me administer an exam for a student who will be traveling there during the exam period! Isn't it amazing + fantastic when we help each other out like this??

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Guy Grossman @guygrossman.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Please share info on the short workshop below with anyone you think might benefit. Thanks!

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International Studies Association @isanet.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

ISA members can now apply for ISA's Dissertation Completion #Fellowship, an award for #EarlyCareerScholars in the later stages of their #PhD! Watch our information session with the selection committee members to learn about submission details & how to build a competitive application: buff.ly/oUtTbo0

youtu.be

ISA's Dissertation Completion Fellowship

The ISA Dissertation Completion Fellowship is open to applicants from across the social sciences and humanities working in the broad field of…

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 08/07/2026

Lemme explain what the words BELIEVE WOMEN should mean. They don't mean you have to believe women no matter what. They do mean that you have to treat women as a source the same way you'd treat a man.

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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 07/07/2026

In response to this there's a long list of people giving good examples of very personal "just for me" software projects they've used agentic coding tools to create to help them out with various tasks and projects.

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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 07/07/2026

ICE is still kidnapping and killing people.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Time to mute Platner because these stories coming out are gross. Hope he steps aside soon + party is able to find a non creep to run instead (there are lots of great folks in Maine who are not creeps!) so that Mainers can have a chance for some better representation in the Senate

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GLIA-Leadership @glia-leadership.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

What if the next "promotion" isn't actually up? @fromphdtolife.com makes the case that job security and career security are not the same thing. Day 4 of The Faculty Uplift, free, July 16. stefanie.krtra.com/t/uz0pmEI1PnXc

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

If you are a researcher and you are not reading others' work as part of your research process, methinks you have lost the plot.

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Zoë Plakias @zoeconomy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Spoke to some family in Kentucky this morning to get their take, and they are pissed that Democratic leadership has not spoken up about this. Whatever McConnell's exact condition right now, Kentucky is only being actively represented my one senator at the moment.

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🏳️‍⚧️ ⛧ Nɯvꝡɩɛl ⛧ 🏳️‍⚧️ @nuvy-iel.northsky.social · 05/07/2026

🦇 This is how blue states and Democrats can *actually* *perform* alliance with trans people. More of this. Much much more of this please.

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