iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Belatedly weighing in on the whole "is it okay to be a Harry Potter fan in 2026?" thing, I chose violence: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/09/fand...

1999ad.blogspot.com

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Forgot to share yesterday but I wrote more about naming characters etc. in SF, thinking (shallowly) about the future of human societies/cultures, what languages your monolingual English-speaking readers will most struggle with, and so forth: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/09/name...

1999ad.blogspot.com

Names for the Future

I've written before about naming things in fiction (or worldbuilding, if you will), and I've written, albeit somewhat narrowly about a coup...

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Thinking about how to make an alien biosphere in the vein of Scavengers Reign on the fly in a game like #MothershipRPG: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/09/popu...

1999ad.blogspot.com

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I read some more books, and stand at the doorstep of my "Melissa Scott was a genius unrecognized in her own time" advocacy era: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/09/book...

1999ad.blogspot.com

Bookpost #6

I know, #5 was only like four posts ago, but it's been many months in the interim! Thankfully, my drive to read is not as repressible by b...

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I have deliberately misunderstood the 38 posters assignment and voted for people who are especially influential on MY enjoyment of this dumb app and nobody else’s. Oh, nine other people already voted for you? You’re too big for your britches. Sure, I liked your old stuff. Before you sold out!

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Ahhhhh @nerdjpg.com · 03/09/2026

If you miss the “house” thing of Harry Potter spend time figuring out what kind of communist you are instead. Simple as

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I grew up (in DC) saying "you all" and thinking of it as a two-word phrase. At 18, on moving to the Midwest for college, I had a whole bunch of Iowans and Minnesotans tell me things like, "Wow, I didn't know you Southerners (?!) actually said yawwwwwl like that." I was not saying "yawwwwwl."

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

After a six-month intermission (better late than never!), more backgrounds for a #Cairn game set somewhere and somewhen like 19th-century Eastern Europe, à la Beyond the Pale: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/08/back...

1999ad.blogspot.com

Backgrounds for Early Modern Cairn, Part 2

More backgrounds for a Cairn campaign set, like Beyond the Pale, in something very much like early modern Europe . We are now two-thirds of ...

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

"Is this the most corrupt World Cup ever?" ask a bunch of Americans who were only dimly aware that the tournament existed before 1994 and then paid no attention to it until it returned to our shores this year. Go read about 1934 and 1978!

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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I can’t explain how but I think this would fix me

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play by post @playbypost.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

What white people think of as the most common working class: White guy who is 43 with an oversized wrench in overalls saying 'git er done' What is actually more representative: Single mother WOC doing eldercare and gig work in the gaps who ironically lacks healthcare herself

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

In all the finger-pointing about Platner, it's frustrating to see "the left" take so much heat. Platner had plenty of support from leftists and progressives, but he had as much or more support from liberals and moderates: Ruben Gallego and Martin Heinrich, the Pod Save America guys…

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DFW Support Committee @dfwsupportcommitt.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

please read this statement written by Benjamin "Champagne" Song and share as far and wide as you can: prairielanddefendants.com/defendant…

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The Onion @theonion.com · 16/06/2026

Why Politicians Fail To Understand The Elaborate Mythical Realm I’ve Made Up In My Head

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

here's hoping that when President Mamdani nationalizes MLB in 2033, he appoints Michael Baumann Supreme God-Emperor of Amateur Player Acquisition

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

"If you go to the bookstore […] if you were to randomly sample some of the books being promoted, chances are most of them will suck." Incredible observation. This has never been true before at any point in human history, and can only be explained by the insidious phenomenon of Woke.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Amazing that in the national divorce the libs are getting the NFL, butter and cooking oil, being attracted to adult women, standup comedy, Bud Light, and now also Catholicism

Mike Nellis
@MikeNellis
"I'M NO LONGER CATHOLIC!" Hannity
ABANDONS HIS FAITH for Trump
NELLIS
X.com
•
+*+

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I remain stupid, truculently resistant to promoting anything or I do or even cross-posting stuff from my little blog but I'm TRYING to break the habit, I swear. Here, I wrote this! People liked it! 1999ad.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

1999ad.blogspot.com

The Importance of Being Earnest

Valeria made a great observation in her recent review of Daggerheart : TTRPGs have utterly failed to communicate how lighthearted this hobby...

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

My hot hot Oscars take is that 2025 was just not a good year for film. I missed The Secret Agent, which maybe should've won best picture, AND No Other Choice, which probably should've been nominated, so what do I know, but the stuff I did see was either mid (OBAA, Train Dreams, Sinners) or bad.

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

The two wolves inside me? Radical narco-communism and anarcho-tyranny. They are best friends.

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Assassinating heads of state and other senior officials of countries we don’t like is a very cool precedent to set and will definitely have no negative repercussions

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Grant Brisbee @grantbrisbee.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

you think you've seen the whole movie, and then the alt text reveals you haven't even finished act two

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

My review of the Mothership module Orphans cites the one @valerialoves.bsky.social wrote at least six times and comes to basically the same conclusions, but I promise it also has original observations in it. And tips! And it's very long! We love a long-ass review, right? #mothership

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Two-thirds of the way through the recent NYer article about Anthropic, it seems like Gideon Lewis-Kraus is finally going to acknowledge that LLMs do not have anything like personhood (no will, volition, personality). Skeptics note, he says, that agents lack "true agency" or "intrinsic motivation."

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Trump calling his own Supreme Court justices “lap dogs” rules. It’s not even projection at this point, he’s just scolding his disobedient creatures. I brought you into my house, and you’re peeing all over my floor? You’ve chewed up my slippers? This is unacceptable!

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

It’s February 14, which of course means that I am thinking even more than usual about the Austrian Civil War (which ended 92 years ago today-ish, with the fascists victorious) and Stephen Vincent Benet’s beautiful “Ode to the Austrian Socialists”: allpoetry.com/Ode-To-The-A... #poetry

allpoetry.com

Ode To The Austrian Socialists by Stephen Vincent Benet - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry

Comments & analysis: (February 12 – February 15, 1934) / They shot the Socialists at half-past five

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

so can man at last be compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind? or are we too busy with our phones or what

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Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez @ramirez.house.gov · 26/01/2026

The officer who shot Alex worked for DHS for 8 years. The officer who shot Renee worked for DHS for over 10 years. Both are considered “highly trained.” The problem isn’t "training." DHS was built to violate our rights and has been empowered to act with impunity. We must MELT ICE and dismantle DHS.

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key @kaptnkey.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Not many people will see this but I wanted to share this post. Shits insane how terrible the world is man.

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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Love this from Guillermo del Toro

“Be kind, be involved, believe in your art,” he said. “At a time when people tell you art is not important, that is always the prelude to fascism. When they tell you it doesn’t matter, when they tell you a fucking app can do art you say, if it’s that important, why the fuck do they want it so bad? The answer is because they think they can debase everything that makes us a little better, a little more human. And that, in my book, and in my life, includes monsters.”

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

You should be embarrassed to be a member of congress and issuing anything other than impeachment resolutions. You're in the model UN. They should give you legos and a propeller hat

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mattie lubchansky @mattielubchansky.com · 30/10/2025

am i full of regrets from wasting my one precious life (the end of which is approaching by the day, faster and faster and faster) or did i go to bed a little later than usual and it's cloudy outside. impossible to say. probably the first thing

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

“Every parade has the right to exist in New York City”

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ceej @ceej.online · 22/10/2025

nothing fundamental is going to change about the life you’ve already built for yourself unless you make it. it’s happening right now

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

It’s a shame that the worlds of high-stakes poker and literacy have so little overlap that nobody ever seems to have asked Molly Bloom whether she’s read Ulysses

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Bewildering and disheartening to see literally hundreds of people line up in Osita Nwanevu’s replies to insist that American hegemony is good, actually. Never in human history have a people so saturated in propaganda been less aware of it or more falsely sure of their sophistication and virtue.

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Yes, the “please don’t put in the newspaper that I love Henry Kissinger” bit is comedy gold, but the craziest thing about the Chotiner interview is that Sunstein freely admits to believing in nothing. What are human rights? Oh, you know, whatever you feel like. Definitely nothing universal!

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Holl🌞 @willows-song.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

This explains it better than I can

Dave Portnoy tweet saying ‘absolutely disgusting and disturbing video from Charlie Kirk shooting today. Hoping for the best for him and his family. Anybody who is happy about this is a disgusting human.’

Pop Crave Tweet: ‘Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy says he hopes a missile hits Greta Thunberg’s boat as she sails away with aid: “I hope they hit a f*cking, like, a missile on her boat. Knock that boat down. Greta or whatever her name is”

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jesse @jesseltaylor.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

society would improve immediately if we just seized the assets of every person who wrote jeffrey epstein a birthday note

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Michael @1999ad.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Wrote for the Appendix N blog bandwagon about how my brain got to be the way it is and how Ursula K. Le Guin came to be the chief architect of my mind palace: 1999ad.blogspot.com/2025/09/appe...

1999ad.blogspot.com

Appendix M for Michael

Illustration for The Tombs of Atuan by Charles Vess (from The Books of Earthsea ) All the creative works that influenced me and my own crea...

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