iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Artificial sense of unity" is a...pretty wild thing to put down on paper about Jewish people? Like, unless you think other ethnic groups have no intracommunal tensions or divisions?

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Reposted by Adam Roy

Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Today, 8 years ago, my friend, Saudi Journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I will take them over the Yankees if it comes to that, though.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

You would think that a guy from Chicago would pick the White Sox, but the thing is, fuck the White Sox.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Really struggling with who to cheer for in this bracket.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I should not have to dress like a construction worker just to avoid being killed by a driver.

norman rockwell painting of man standing up at town meeting

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Cannot get over that we're now doing "what were they wearing?" with car crashes too.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Imagine spending your whole life watching movies and TV treat the disorder you live with as a cheap punchline, then finally getting an actual, honest-to-god story about what it's like living with it, only for it to devolve into a bunch of strangers fantasizing about beating you up online.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think this is probably the best of a bunch of bad options (John Davidson reportedly asked for it; were I in his position, I would too). But months later I am still heartbroken for this man, and quite honestly, for the rest of us with Tourettes, for how this set us back. www.bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.com

Tourette's campaigner John Davidson to watch Scottish Baftas via video link after row over racial slur

John Davidson, whose condition includes involuntary tics, shouted a racial slur during the Bafta Film Awards in February.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Obviously, Fox is not doing this in good faith—John Yoo's job there, as it was in the Bush administration, is to rubber-stamp torture—but I've seen plenty of mainstream outlets in the years since quote him as if he were a run-of-the-mill law professor and never mention the torture.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"Is this punishment cruel and unusual? For more on that, let's go to our legal expert, Torture Steve."

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'll yell about this for the rest of my life, but you cannot put John Yoo on your show or quote him in your article without mentioning that he wrote the Torture Memos, especially when a growing swath of the voting public was not alive when he did it.

Yoo was the author of the controversial "Torture Memos" in the war on terror. As the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, Yoo wrote the Torture Memos to determine the legal limits for the torture of detainees following the September 11 attacks. The legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the OLC were rescinded by President Barack Obama in 2009.[3][4][5] Some called for investigating and prosecuting Yoo under various anti-torture and anti-war crimes statutes.[6][7][8][9]

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

yes, it's silly to anthropomorphize animals, but consider: sometimes it's also very funny.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sexual cannibalism isn't as ubiquitous in spiders as people think, but it does happen, and males have some fascinating ways of avoiding it. Some offer her a snack to occupy her, some spring away the moment they're done, and a few go the bondage route and tie up her legs with silk.

youtube.com

Watch: Kinky Male Spiders Tie Up Females to Survive Sex | National Geographic

YouTube video by National Geographic

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not yet Arachtober stateside but let me celebrate early with this picture of two long-jawed orbweavers I saw going at it at UW Madison. You can see the male holding the female's chelicerae open with his so she doesn't eat him while they mate, a strategy particular to them and a few other families.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Got to spend a few days on the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin, and in addition to containing moths, the foliage was beautiful.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I also don't care but I have to admit that seeing an English-speaker avoid a widely-understood English-language title gives me strong "just according to keikaku" vibes.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One must imagine Glonzo happy.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I never thought of myself as a moralist, but now that I'm being subjected to a dozen gambling ads every hour I'm ready to go smash up a casino like a 1920s temperance crusader.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Got the macro lens out to take some footage of Jolene the Pet Black Widow for a video I was making. Look at this girl!

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I'm maybe not as fully anti-AI as some of my friends—for all the problems with it, I could see some use in automating the kind of data entry I'd rather not do—but I would rather die than let an LLM simulate a hike and write about it.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Have seen a couple of people share this, and I'll cosign: the BtB episodes on the Zizians absolutely delivers on the out-of-control title.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

There was a local pet store in Evanston, just north of Chicago, that would have a found tortoise every time I visited. Often shockingly big ones. I could be misremembering but I think I remember them having someone's escaped sulcata last time I was there.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Son has informed me that when he grows up, he wants to be Santa Claus and also a cop. I said that's going to be a tough combination because he's not going to be able to enter people's houses to deliver presents, and he asked why. Now trying and failing to explain what a warrant is to a 7-year-old.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Oh wow! I'm sorry to see you go, but good luck at your next adventure!

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Reposted by Adam Roy

Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

spending rosh hashanah telling people preemptively i forgive them for their transgressions against me, in a holy and wholly passive aggressive move

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

There's a future where the average journalist has a career path like the average influencer today—self-starter, won the popularity and algorithm war—and I don't want that. I think it fucking sucks!

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

If you run an indie publication, I hope you're thinking about this and dedicating part of your budget/headcount to establishing new voices. Good idea from an equity standpoint, but also the only way forward if you care about what you're building surviving past the current generation.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

For what it's worth: This is also a problem journalism is about to run into at full speed—albeit a structural issue, not one of resourcing. Independent pubs/platforms often only have a hope of succeeding if the people behind them come with a preexisting audience!

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

One of the most enduring legacies of 9/11: ICE, which was founded in the wake of the attacks and has spent much of the past 25 years doing largely what opponents to it and other expansions of U.S. state control warned it would do.

english.elpais.com

ICE, another product of the 9/11 attacks

Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and encouraged a hardening of operations against migrants to prevent new terrorist attacks

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Reposted by Adam Roy

Tricia Romano @tromano.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I write about this day and the week following in my book, The Freaks Came Out To Write. 9/11 marked a huge turning point in how major catastrophes were covered and how fast breaking news became. @anildash.com the soothsayer of the Internet tells the story:

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

it's normal to have strong feelings about sunscreen brands, right? normal behavior.

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Reposted by Adam Roy

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 09/09/2026

In just the first week after the 9/11 attacks, 645 separate acts of hate against members of South Asian communities in America were documented. This site captures those stories, from across the country: post911.org and also compiles the narratives into a groundbreaking report.

post911.org

What happened the week after 9/11?

Documenting hundreds of hate incidents against Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh Americans in the week after September 11, 2001.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Showing my black widow the music video for Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai

Black widow in bottle in front of tv playing music video for Virtual Insanity

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Teaching my black widow about the history of the labor movement

Black widow in bottle with The Hammer by Hamilton Nolan sitting in front of it

Black widow in bottle with The Hammer by Hamilton Nolan sitting in front of it and finger pointing to page

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

You were there a bit before me (in 1988, I was graduating from being a fetus). The Observer was still around when I was there, though I'm not sure I ever wrote for them. I was briefly a staff writer at their travel publication, the Tufts Traveler, and contributed here and there to a couple others.

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Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Great piece Jim. (And, maybe beside the point, but I didn't know you were a Jumbo too!)

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