iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reminded of this by today's Ross Pearsall cartoon, a pairing of Etrigan with that other persistent rhymer, Underdog: braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...

braveandboldlost.blogspot.com

The Demon and Underdog

A blog presenting covers to imaginary comic books featuring the greatest team ups that never happened... but should have!

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Beria lasted as long as he did because he could stay cool under pressure. That's the opposite of Hegseth, whose whole career is just one panic attack after another.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Carson is the first Classics professor to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1902, when they gave it to Theodor Mommsen. She's been an obvious choice for decades, I was hoping she'd get it in 2002. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/b...

nytimes.com

Canadian Poet Anne Carson Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

The writer joins a list of laureates that includes Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett and Bob Dylan.

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Josh Fruhlinger @jfruh.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

threatening aura on this one imo

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"Unless the poem has been written for performance"- what the hell? If it hasn't been written for performance, it isn't a poem.

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KidzBoptotenlieder @theodramatist.com · 03/10/2026

If you take a more Aristotelian view, the soul then just is the unifying form of the living thing, which argument against ai being able to have a soul becomes circular.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Those are very different points of view! So few people actually receive royalties from anything published more than a few years ago that terms of copyright measured in decades or a century do nothing but deter legitimate use.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I can't help but like Pope Father Bob. Still, I can't imagine thinking of the pope as one of the good guys.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Also, if false accusations are less common than actual crimes that shows that a whole bunch of social institutions that we take for granted are working. It takes a lot of work to make it harder for people to get their enemies out of the way by smearing them than by physically assaulting them.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Sure, sure. And just yesterday I saw a YouTube video about something that was a huge story in my youth, the 1986 Illinois Democratic primary, which shows what can happen when politicians don't bother to advertise.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There are some polls showing Achillies within striking distance. Which is not likely, but not impossible- you can't make a move in a state as rural as Idaho without buying a lot of gasoline, and it's obvious to everyone there that US/Canadian relations are to be taken seriously.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Mr Shepard's work is very impressive, sir. And of course he was a member of your defense team in 1974. Had the case against you gone to trial, it is by no means impossible that you would have been acquitted. I suppose that would have been a highly divisive outcome.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Raymond Chandler wrote the reason why "the average detective novel" appears to be so much worse than the average novel written outside recognized genres is that you never see the average non-generic novel, while you do see the average detective novel.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Well, if they are looking for an employee who is hands-on...

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Clinton talked about appointing a cabinet that looks like America, Trump keeps appointing a cabinet that looks like the residential property business. So, a lot of gay men, a lot of women, some nonwhites, but the diversity stops before you put non-sleazy people in decision-making roles.

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Sandra Newman @sannewman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So basically tech oligarchs keep announcing they've successfully built a paperclip maximiser and demanding we devote all our money to funding it and all our energy to passing laws to stop it.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

2/2 His presentation is a little more polished now, but he's still nothing special as a writer, and his arguments are all worthless. Amazing to see him rising to such prominence.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

1/2 I used to read Taki's Magazine- I like to get all points of view, and while the site rarely presented arguments I found impressive or even tolerable, they had people on staff who could really write. Hanania, as "Richard Hoste," was the first columnist they had who seemed to be a total illiterate

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A Hammond and a Wurlitzer.

Trending topic: Stanford study finds brain is two organs.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I suppose this could be real? Republican as Idaho is, it's also a farming state where all economic activity depends on a low price for fuel, and it's on the northern border where everyone understands the importance of good relations with Canada. politicalwire.com/2026/09/18/r...

politicalwire.com

Risch Trails in Idaho Senate Race

A new Advanced Targeting Research poll in Idaho finds Todd Achilles (I) leading Jim Risch (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 50% to 39%.Idaho Senate RaceTodd Achilles (I) 50% Jim Risch (R) 39% Advanced Targ...

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Outward and visible ones!

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Well, the USSR ended when Russia got so fed up with all the secession threats from the other republics that they got the jump on them and seceded from everyone else. Nothing to stop England from doing the same...

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

In one of the old MST3Ks, they did an "Andy Rooney-off." To this day, whenever I am reminded of Andy Rooney my first thought is Michael J Nelson saying "I don't trust soup."

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Very true. Around 1998 I asked the owner of a gay bookstore in Seattle why he displayed the nambla newsletter so prominently, he said half his customers would boycott him if he didn't. But when people got their information from newspapers and TV, the editors could downplay that side of it.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If Nixon comes within ten points of Moody, half of Florida's GOP House members will suddenly remember that they never really liked Donald Trump all that much. Not likely to happen, of course...

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

So? Medians, means, and modes are all averages.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I can see why they put the Coptic Christians martyred in Libya in 2015 on such a fast track to sainthood, because their story was so much like those of the saints from the first centuries. But in general, it really is a good idea to wait for a century or two before putting someone on the calendar.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Long ago I heard that average US Senator has to put in 6 hours a day raising money, every day of every week. You spend that much time as a beggar, you have a hard time believing you have a right to be a chooser.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

If the definition of "violators" is "people who cross me," I don't really think lashing out against them can be called "holding violators accountable."

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

He doesn't want to hold anyone accountable to a system of laws. On the contrary, he wants to destroy those who tried to hold him accountable in the past and scare off anyone who might be in a position to do so in the future.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Trump would have to spend the next seven weeks campaigning door to door for Moody to get Nixon in, but it's still nice to see numbers like this once in a while.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Evidence that meditation is what Buddhism has always said it is, and not a form of therapy or a product that can be promoted by an industry: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

The Dark Side of Mindfulness

A prominent psychologist and meditation teacher set out to research the benefits of the practice. What she found alarmed her.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Indeed, that part is a total lie.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Jennings peaked in 1957, when he hosted CLUB THIRTEEN, Ottawa's answer to AMERICAN BANDSTAND.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I yield to no one in my disdain for Trump, but this is unfair to him. He owned the Empire State Building at that time, and mentioned that it was the tallest building in NYC. Which was in fact relevant- a lot of people were afraid that there would be more attacks, and that it would be a target.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Hey, some of our greatest senators have been naked guys.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Except WAGON TRAIN didn't feature General Order 24, calling on the ship to exterminate the entire population of a planet if need be. The main characters on THE LIEUTENANT might have thought that one went a little far, though they would certainly have agreed it kicked ass.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The peace and brotherhood part got to be a bigger deal when Roddenberry transitioned from TV producer to cult leader. Season 1 has a lot of continuity with his previous show, THE LIEUTENANT, which was about how great the US Marine Corps is (I love that show too, but peace and brotherhood it ain't.)

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

3/3 But no one thinks that a photocopier's ability to do the same thing proves that it is conscious, even if the document which it copies is a note reading "I am conscious."

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

2/3 We all know this assumption to be false- so, if you were to make by hand a copy of a document that was indistinguishable from the original, that would be evidence that you, as a human, were wide awake when you did it.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

1/3 It is odd so many of these criteria, including the Turing Test, rest on the assumption that because a human can perform a given task only when highly alert that a machine capable of performing that same task must also be to some degree conscious.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This qualifies as a "fun fact" granted a very specific value to the variable "fun."

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

An irony that Fetterman's health problems keep him from doing his job, when part of a Democratic Senator's job is pushing for policies that will ensure people with health problems can get time off work.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

He was a great patron of the Classics program, especially of the study of Latin poetry. If they want to honor the good he left behind, they should name something after Vergil or Ovid.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

People look at Moulton's war record and think he's the kind of leader we need. But the more they see of him, the less they want to vote for him.

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

It's strange that people think Vindman was a good candidate. There is such a thing as looks-ism. People would not want to vote for a shockingly ugly little man like him even if he ran a good campaign, had a compelling message, and were likable (none of which applies to him, let's be clear.)

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Acilius @acilius.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

No, I was there in the early 90s for an MA and they pushed "The Ohio State University" on all official communications. At the same time, a sportswriter friend of mine tried to tease me about being a grad student at "The Ohio State." So it may have been new then, 33 years ago.

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