iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Uncle Owen didn't get to pop back as a Force ghost to give a word of advice to the kid he literally raised as his own son, but the kid's biological dad, an insane genocidal war criminal, did because the Universe apparently plays favorites.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Yeah, the real issue is that what is shown to us is that the boundless love of the Universe only seems to apply to the Force's specialest boys.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

One genuine question I still have is whether the American intelligentsia was willfully deceiving itself on this —they knew what the free speech brigade's ultimate goal was but played along because they secretly agreed with it— or if they were legitimately stupid enough to take them at their word.

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Reposted by Baptiste Lerak

Rev. Poppy Haze 𓅋 @poppyhaze.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

every “ancient tradition” was invented between 1848-1870 and every “modern perversion” is so ancient as to predate writing

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

We've known about pathological liars for a while, but the Trump era has allowed the rise of the pathological criminal, a new breed of miscreant that seems physiologically unable to not commit crimes.

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Reposted by Baptiste Lerak

Sydney Bauer @sydney-bauer.com · 13/10/2026

Median Republican voter

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Un sursaut démocratique ne serait pas mal venu, mais c'est loin d'être acquis.

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Reposted by Baptiste Lerak

Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Brexit has shown they cannot be trusted with nostalgia. All pictures of the past are to be replaced with hedgehogs until such time the British electorate can think of the present and future. God save the king and all hedgehogkind.

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Reposted by Baptiste Lerak

Autumnal Astrid🍂 @namitomoon.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Americans come up every day with new types of blasphemies not even the most radical Jacobin could have dreamed of.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It's not just about who they hate, though. His voters also expected to be materially rewarded for their support, but the modern GOP is simply too corrupt and evil to do implement even the most basic Peronist policies. All they know is tax cuts for the rich and telling their constituents to eat shit.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I am talking hypothetically of course, in the same way that it is sometimes commented that the Nazis had an obvious pathway to victory on the Eastern Front (not treating the populations of Eastern Europe as subhuman) which would only have required them to not be Nazis, making it impossible.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

They already consider the 13th and 19th Amendments as massive concessions on their part. Anything beyond that is being truly unreasonable.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It *was* a domestic priority, in that he thought it would be done in two weeks and then he could use that to bolster his faltering popularity, bragging about being the President that brought the Iranian regime to heel at no cost.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

They could probably have patched together something that kinda looked like the 00s status quo on social issues in America, but that would never have worked because that was never going to be enough for them. What they truly desired was nothing less than resurrecting the Gilded Age in all but name.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It remains amazing to me that they had an obvious pathway entrench a reactionary regime for a generation and they blew it out of sheer incompetence, stupidity and hubris.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

My kingdom for a left that thinks Stalin was a monster and an incompetent asshole. I'm not even asking you to reject Khrushchev or Brezhnev, just the guy who was self-evidently a world-historical monster and also terrible at his job.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

X is the Zone of Interest of social media sites. You might not be an active part of the horrors yourself, but there is an ambient moral rot that infects everything around you and which you cannot escape.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

But we are extremely lucky that they, in particular, are So Fucking Stupid. It would probably be much better for them to focus on Hinajosa by exploiting mental health-related prejudices than going all in on a fake Talarico scandal, but they cooked their brain online so they're going with the latter

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

This belongs to a certain category of opinion pieces that tell you more or less nothing about their subject but everything about what kind of person the author is.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Insurance rates are already really funny.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Too many writers use character deaths as periods when they should mostly use them as commas.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Still less bullish than Morning Consult lmao

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Every Chuck Grassley post reads like a failed incantation to awaken Flk'shjn the Great One, Arch-Unmaker, who in deep Trl'eks sleep, dreaming of you and me.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Psalm 133:1, as you occasionally like to post.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Not a red bias, no. They're just considered one of the more high-quality and reliable pollsters in the US, so their results got more weight than others'.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The main reason to believe this is that voters elected Donald Trump because they were willing to trade his stupid antics for a good economy and no wars. They feel like he betrayed them on both, and are very mad about it. The load-bearing question however is exactly *how* made they are.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I mean, I'm not exactly skeptical because it fits with my theory of the American electorate, but I will have to see some actual electoral proof to confirm that US voters are indeed *that* mad with him.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A *MINUS 38* approval poll from *Pew*?

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

At this point I have pretty much stopped following the polling. It predicts a massive blue wave, but I'm not particularly interested in that even though I'm quite confident it'll happen. The real test is 2028 and 2030, to see if the shifts are durable or if not even 4 years of Trump II are enough.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

One of the only good things about Trump is his insistence on always doubling down on his bullshit so that the people who always jump to his defense trying to explain that you're quite mistaken about what his majesty truly meant look like fucking morons.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The revolt of the punditocracy essentially comes down to them be incandescently mad at the idea that the failsons and faildaughters of their acquaintances and themselves are getting past over at prestigious colleges and cushy sinecures for the children of racial minorities.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

You know, normally there's a period where the aristocracy entrenches its legitimacy by actually giving a shit about its obligations. Those people though have decided to fast-forward to the part where the nobles grow fat and decadent, demanding all the privileges with none of the responsibilities.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The Trump White House already functions like a decadent royal court. Many American journalists seem to desire to be courtiers or royal heralds. Many American policement would likely prefer to be king's men, mainly concerned with keeping the rabble in check and collecting taxes at swordpoint.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

One of the strangest parts of American society, from what I've seen, is how many parts of it yearn for aristocracy. It mainly seems to be an elite thing and is very peculiar.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Actually taking the Sotoans seriously and treating them as the pathetic LARPers they are would have made for such a fascinating story.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"We bringing that W home, chat!" he says as D.D makes the broadcast go viral on Neutube.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Wings of Theve declared "a very naughty boy" after he sinks Megafloat, condemns millions of civilians to the icy depths. Commenting on the controversy, his only response was "Git gud, noob."

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Given that the Sotoan capital is the civilian Megafloat, it would certainly have made for an... interesting mission.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I guess it's only Lebensraum if the Belkans do it?

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Also the issue here is that even if we take them at their word, it means their goal is literally just to try to preserve the "Sotoan way of life" by way of Lebensraum.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It also got the vibes of a Gulf theocratic monarchy despite being by all accounts a Republic, but also not the Iranian kind of Republic (or at least if it is, it's never made clear).

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The Belkans were bastards but at least you could kind of understand what they were about and where they were coming from, even if you disagreed with them.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I feel the biggest problem is that they barely talk about how Sotoa is like outside of the war outside of "nomads" and "promised", and the confusing kitchen sink approach to its coding and inspirations make it doubly hard to really relate to them.

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Baptiste Lerak @baptistelerak.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Though the stories where one side is Japan or Japan-coded and the other is Not-Japan tend to have their themes treated VERY differently.

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