iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 19h

If you’ve ever worried about how radioactive the isotope bismuth-209 might be, you really don’t have much to worry about: its half-life is 20.1 quintillion years. So cool it.

Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 20h

Looking up at a moon in the sky called the Moon

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

My grandpa used one of these. Not a job he wanted, but he and his battalion were highly effective denazifiers.

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

@stfj.net hey, the video on this page in which @verulean.bsky.social discusses Spelltower strategies is no longer available on YouTube. Could it be reposted? #puzzmo www.puzzmo.com/game/spellto...

puzzmo.com

Puzzmo — The (new) place for thoughtful puzzles.

Play the best daily puzzles on Puzzmo

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I don't miss gratuitously homophobic "conscious" rap

the stock photo is the icing on the cake

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Unlike in 2000 and 2008, when I lost fledgling careers, I am finally well-prepared for the bursting of another stock market bubble, having no career to speak of anymore

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YES thank you they used this as the commercial for a showing of “Magic” in prime time on a local TV station circa 1984 and it scared the holy hell out of me, like hiding upstairs in my room listening to the radio trying to get it out of my head

“The Joker” and “Hotel California” are both famous for being held together with nonce words

The last minute or two of “Sledgehammer” was ad libbed during recording and then became part of the “real” song

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That’s kind of funny given that it misses the other fork in the EDC road. One kind of guy winds up unable to leave the house without 52 different items including two sidearms and a tourniquet. The other kind just wants the Exact Right Knife and the Exact Right Pen.

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The texts that defined my world prior to age six were “Star Wars” and the Bible and I’m pretty sure it had to have been one of those

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Peppermint Patty. Amelia Bedelia. See a pattern? Very few are willing to acknowledge how deep the current of anti-Irish racism still runs in American culture

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I‘ve done them with graph paper and tools that allow wildcard searches. You have to be willing to back up and / or start over a lot. Full-size Rows Gardens are by far the hardest. I have no idea how Patrick Berry manages to work extra letters into his boxes puzzles.

Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The episode of “The Octonauts” where Professor Inkling, a squid, says he’s going to call his cousin for help and then his cousin shows up and the perspective dollies out, so to speak, to reveal that his cousin is a giant squid and the Octonauts are like a speck in comparison

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

we were too young to call it by its proper adult name: a Long island iced tea

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

in high school we also called the drink you make by pouring a little bit of liquor out of every bottle in your parents' liquor cabinet into one cup a "suicide" I've always imagined that the soda version was named by a kid whose older siblings exposed him to bad teen stuff

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North Carolina 1st Congressional District 2026: Latest Polls (Free Access)

Context: Don Davis is trying to hang on to a seat that the NCGOP has been trying to gerrymander out from under him for a long time. SCOTUS gave them an extra boost this cycle. He was already very conservative for a Democrat but this is a cynical act of desperation www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Track the latest polls in North Carolina 1st Congressional District between Buckhout and Davis.

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Tex-Mex / Tejano cuisine existed long before Texas became a state and I'm pretty sure that many generations of Texans have never considered it anything but American. I assume Cajuns feel the same way about Cajun food, which didn't originate in France or Canada.

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So I was thinking Sydney if the first, or Kingston if the point of the trick question was that it was somewhere relatively small, and Toronto if the second. Turns out that like the UK and US, Australia doesn't have an official language.

I wasn't clear on whether they meant the country's only official language or one of its official languages, and I was assuming the former, along with an expectation that most countries that had declared English their official language would have done so out of some sort of belligerent colonialism...

It's got its own ethical issues, but music discovery is what Spotify already does very well and has for years. You don't need to write prompts, you just look at what other albums and playlists it suggests. Hell, YouTube's algorithm is really good at suggesting music based on your taste.

Masta Ace "Sittin' on Chrome"

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Yeah I read about it right when it came out and said “nope this sounds awful” and ignored it and have never regretted it

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began saying bin Laden had to be hiding in Pakistan starting in like 2003

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I read “discourse tulpa” and thought “make up a guy”

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That would be an incredibly deep cut LIke if the riverboat turned out to be a “Fitzcarraldo” reference

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The airship is definitely the one from "The Island at the Top of the World," a Disney film I know nothing about, making me wonder if Disney properties are overrepresented, in which case the riverboat could be the one at Disneyland

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Likewise, pretty sure the riverboat, though it doesn't look exactly like a showboat, is just a reference to "Show Boat"

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scene from "Ferris Bueller" is the main reference I can find online but it looks nothing like that.

I'll check... Never seen the movie and I don't have a sense of how popular it was - the references are almost all well-known films. interesting how some people think some of the more generic elements are from totally different movies than me - I thought the diner was the diner from, well, "Diner"

Poster for the 1982(?) movie "Diner" with five guys in tuxes over a drawing of a 50s style diner

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Nice - one thing that complicates things is that the building is frequently referred to as the Power Plant, and looks like a power plant, but Roku calls it "The Factory." I really think the booth with the TV has to be a reference to something but I cannot find a relevant movie. The parking lot...

There’s also the “ET” bike but I feel like the tip-off is supposed to be the parking lot booth with the little tv in it + the factory

Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“Rotund” is a funny word because they created a word that means “round, but not exactly“ by sneaking a letter into “round” so you read it as “round“ and then you spot the hidden letter and say “oh, but not exactly”

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I know nothing about this but I dig the name

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Help me out: I can ID all the movies on the Roku screen saver except this one. What is it?

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Ricky B @ambivalentricky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Doesn’t look like film names were changed, but both “The Mighty Quinn” and “Bird on a Wire” contain those songs. Also, has anyone actually seen this movie? Sounds decent en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mig...

en.wikipedia.org

The Mighty Quinn (film) - Wikipedia