iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

first thing that came to mind

Tweety bird holding a gun, wearing a tank top and baggy jeans with the text "ok bitch call the cops I'll have sex with them"

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

@damonagnos.bsky.social ESPN reporting that Ronaldo has weighed in on C.S. Lewis's "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" trilemma.

Ronaldo says Jesus broke his word, apologizes to Portugal teammates

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

they're going to play a double-header after climbing El Capitan

MLB, White House discuss playing game at national park
ESPN
Sep 27, 2026, 08:04 AM ET

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

get their asses Richard

From the beginning, and throughout all the years of the Cold War, the United States led the Soviet Union in total numbers of strategic nuclear bombs and warheads. The bitter U.S. political debates of the 1970s and early 1980s about nuclear strategy, nuclear force levels, supposed Soviet first-strike capabilities, and strategic defense hinged on arguments as divorced from reality as the debates of medieval scholars about the characteristics of seraphim and cherubim. - From Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Thinking very strongly about the phrase "a sort of Soviet Texas"

The excesses of the Soviet military-industrial complex in the 1970s were as much the consequence of internal policy as they were of external threat. The complex was "something like a bull in a china shop" according to a former Soviet defense official named Vitaliy Katayev--"a sort of Soviet Texas."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Niels Bohr at an anthropology conference in 1938, after the Anschluss but before Hitler took the Sudetenland.

...we may truly say that different human cultures are complementary to each other. Indeed, each such culture represents a harmonious balance of traditional conventions by means of which latent potentialities of human life can unfold themselves in a way which reveals to us new aspects of its unlimited richness and variety..."

...It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies, to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Pretty disappointing we never got a Futurama gag based on this true story of Fermi and co. needing to get the football team to move around big blocks of uranium and graphite for them.

From Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb:
Our little group, which by that time included Bernard Feld, George Weil, and Walter Zinn, looked at the heavy task before us with little enthusiasm. It would be exhausting work." Then Pegram to the rescue in Fermi's telling: "We were reasonably strong, but I mean we were, after all, thinkers. So Dean Pegram again looked around and said that seems to be a job a little bit beyond your feeble strength, but there is a football squad at Columbia that contains a

dozen or so very husky boys who take jobs by the hour just to carry them through college. Why don't you hire them?
And it was a marvelous idea; it was really a pleasure for once to direct the work of these husky boys, canning uranium--just shoving it in--handling packs of 50 or 100 pounds with the same ease as another person would have handled three or four pounds."

"Fermi tried to do his share of the work," Anderson adds; "he donned a lab coat and pitched in to do his stint with the football men, but it was clear he was out of his class. The rest of us found a lot to keep us busy with measurements and calibrations that suddenly seemed to require exceptional care and precision."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

any two people on bluesky talking about the post office

From Jane Austen's Emma:
“The post-office is a wonderful establishment!” said she.—“The regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”

“It is certainly very well regulated.”

“So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong—and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.”

“The clerks grow expert from habit.—They must begin with some quickness of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any farther explanation,” continued he, smiling, “they are paid for it. That is the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served well.”

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

The agendas of old scientific and intellectual society meetings were all like 1. check out this cool snake 2. I discovered the nucleus

"The first item on the agenda was a Manchester fruit importer's report that he had found a rare snake in a consignment of Jamaica bananas. He exhibited the snake. Then it was Rutherford's turn. Only an abstract of the announcement survives, but Chadwick remembers how it felt to hear it: it was "a most shattering performance to us, young boys that we were...We realized this was obviously the truth, this was it."
Rutherford had found the nucleus of his atom. He did not yet have an arrangement for its electrons.

text from Richard Rhodes - The Making of the Atomic Bomb

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Being invited to remember some guys with my dad.

Text from my dad: Is Mobley for Cleveland related to cuttino Mobley of rockets.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

earlier I saw the ultimate NYT covering Trump headline: will Trump do something or just kick the can down the road? I wonder which he'll choose!

Trump Faces May 1 Deadline on How He Can Continue the War

After that date, President Trump would have three choices: seek congressional authorization, wind down operations or give himself an extension.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

young hot ecoterrorist lol

a young Titus Welliver in the X-Files--dark-haired, with thick eyebrows, bushy mustache, and dirty face, as the character in the episode has been in the woods for an extended period--leaning against the outside wall of a cabin

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

I have a job interview at UNLV coming up, which is proof that I may leave Sacramento, but I'll never escape the shadow of the Maloofs

screenshot from the alumni section of the UNLV wikipedia page:

Other notable alumni include:

Francis J. Beckwith (b. 1960), Christian philosopher[148]
Justin Favela (b. 1986), mixed-media artist
George J. Maloof, Jr. (b. 1964), president of Maloof Hotels and former owner of the Sacramento Kings[149]
Danny Tarkanian (b. 1961), attorney, businessman, perennial candidate and son of former basketball head coach Jerry Tarkanian

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

It's pretty interesting that he never talked politics in interviews or anything (to my knowledge) and only addressed them kinda obliquely in his lyrics, but like, this is definitely the guy who wrote "Ben Gurion."

two pieces by Rick Froberg from the book "Plenty for All." Both use green, black, and red on a white background. The piece on the left is mostly curved lines, the one on the right has more figures, most of which are abstract but the one in the center clearly looks like a watermelon.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

please join my campaign to make this the new national anthem

third verse of the Mountain Goats' "Color In Your Cheeks":
They came in by the dozens, walking or crawling
Some were bright-eyed, some were dead on their feet
And they came from Zimbabwe, or from Soviet Georgia
East Saint Louis, or from Paris, or they lived across the street
But they came, and when they finally made it here
It was the least that we could do to make our welcome clear

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

congrats @damonagnos.bsky.social on your new gig as an NYT Opinion headline writer

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Favorites 2025. A nice thing that happened was participating in a bunch of fun record dork communities (shoutout @see-saw.fun). Fuck Spotify and fuck ICE. Here’s to building a better world in 2026.

LPs
Kilynn Lunsford - Promiscuous Genes
Tubs - Cotton Crown
Los Pirañas - Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida
Home Front - Watch it Die
Emergency Group - Bag of Waters
Dwarfs of East Agouza - Sasquatch Landslide
King Blood - Eve I Aye Ivy
Dark Thoughts - Highway to the End
Motherfuckers JMB & Co. - Music Excitement Action Beauty
SML - How You Been
Blagojche Tomevski, Filip Bukrshliev, Dorjan Jovanovikj,
Dragan Teodosiev - Sveti Nikole Session Vol. 2
Orcutt Shelley Miller - Orcutt Shelley Miller
Makin’ Out - Living in a Glass House
Knowso - Hypnotic Smack
Cartoon - Theatre of the Absoid
Ville Lähteenmäki Trio - Second Sight
Mujeres Podridas - Sangre y Sol
France - Destino Scifosi
Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise
Melvin Gibbs - Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2

Singles/EPs
Smarthearts - Not Forgotten
Gnome - I Like It
The Number Ones - Sorry b/w Blind Spot
Useless Eaters - Ego Shell b/w Rub
Abi Ooze - Live at Lemp
Gripper - Demo 2025
No Peeling - No Peeling
Heather the Jerk - Very Motorcycle
Penza Penza - Volcano Song b/w Kaboom
TAKAAT - Is Noise, Vol. 2

Reissues/Archival
Various Artists - Digging Central Asia: Musical Archaeology
Along the Silk Road (compiled by Anvar Kalandarov)
Group Inerane - Marhajan Bianou
Grass - Grass
The Spells - The Night Has Eyes
Mohinder Kaur Bhamra - Punjabi Disco
Various Artists - Aïssaoua: Sufi Trance from Morocco
Jessica Williams - Blue Abstraction: Prepared Piano Project
1985-1987
Aksak Maboul - Before Aksak Maboul (documents and
experiments 1969-1977)
Don Cherry, Latif Khan - Music/Sangam
Atef Swaitat and Abu Ali - Palestinian Bedouin Psychedelic
Dabka Archive

Live Performances
3/24 Gray Area, SF - Michael Rother
6/26 Knockout, SF - Zorn, Brüja, Night Hammer
7/26 St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Sacramento - San
Kazakgascar, Chiradip Sarkar and Abhishek Basu
8/28 Great American Music Hall, SF - Los Gaiteros de San
Jacinto, Romperayo, El Pecado de Juana
9/6 Stork Club, Oakland - Orcutt Shelley Miller, Famous
Mammals
9/19 Ace of Spades, Sacramento - Hives, Snooper
10/11 Rickshaw, SF - Tubs, Foyer Red, Softie
11/14 Pretty Gritty, SF - Caroliner
11/20 Starlet, Sacramento - Home Front, Slugger
12/19 Teragram, LA - Osees, Brigid Dawson and the
Mothers Network, DJ Tom Scharpling, MC Dynasty Handbag

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me @whatatimepod.bsky.social

email from What a Time To Be Alive Patreon: SURPRISE Hellraiser Movie Commentary!

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Trump's talking about his own death like Clyde Bruckman in that scene where the network wouldn't let the X-Files writers use the word "maggots" www.youtube.com/watch?v=975z...

"I'm not concerned with where I am or how I got there. I'm at peace and it's then that I realize I'm dead. My body begins to turn a greenish-white with spots of purple. Next, the insects arrive. The inevitable follows, putridity and liquescence. Before I know it, I'm nothing but bones."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

@damonagnos.bsky.social really need you to see one of the greatest caption errors ever in this Dancing Queen timeout segment during the Spurs preseason game

photo of a TV--a blurry picture of a young girl with pom poms in the crowd of a basketball game. the caption reads "the time of your life. Divac girl, watch...", a transcription error of the lyrics of ABBA's "Dancing Queen"

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Watching the WNBA Finals

A California license plate that reads HOOPS. From Society (1989).

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

gobsmacked by the idea that Operation Paperclip was enabled by a guy finding a list titled HERE ARE ALL THE BEST NAZI SCIENTISTS in a toilet

screenshot from Brian Crim's book Our Germans. "...Council. During his assignment fulfilling Hitler’s June 1942 decree requiring “leading men of science” to work on military projects, Osenberg compiled a list of approximately fifteen thousand names. 106 In March 1945, a Polish lab technician discovered portions of the list in an unflushed toilet, from which it promptly found its way to the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) organized by British and American (Anglo-American for short) intelligence services. Osenberg voluntarily surrendered the complete list along with summaries of the scientists’ expertise and a trove of documents, such as research contracts and the status of “special weapons” like the V-2. 107 US Army major Robert Staver relied on the Osenberg file to create the military’s black list of targets used to direct Project Paperclip recruiting efforts for the next decade. The Osenberg list led Allied forces to von Braun’s..."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

wanted to make sure you saw the news about Cuban and Nico's new Zep tribute act

Headline cropped from RealGM: Mark Cuban Reveals Communication Breakdown with Nico Harrison

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Those horses are praying to Mecca

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

thank you for reminding me of one of the all-time tweets

Tweet from May 21, 2014 by user @hamsandcastle. The Spurs coyote mascot (with his trademark veiny green eyes) is operating a giant double-barreled t-shirt cannon. Both barrels are emitting clouds from having just fired. There's a man in a black baseball cap crouching right behind the coyote. @hamsandcastle has captioned the image "War. War Never Changes."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

read it a couple years ago so I was fuzzy on the primary details, helpful refresher from wikipedia

wikipedia screenshot: lthough winning the Democratic primary was normally considered tantamount to election in heavily Democratic Chicago, after his primary victory Washington found that his Republican opponent, former state legislator Bernard Epton (earlier considered a nominal stand-in), was supported by many high-ranking Democrats and their ward organizations, including the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party, Alderman Edward Vrdolyak.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

It's more than six words, but "Willie Cauley-Stein jersey-wearing Kings bear in the window of a downtown Sacramento pawn shop" could give Hemingway's sad story a run for its money. (sorry about the reflection, it was noon when I got off the bus coming back from the airport.)

A teddy bear in a purple Kings jersey that says SAC with the number 00 (which Willie Cauley-Stein wore for the team from '15-'19). It's still in the box, and the picture is a close up of it sitting in a pawn shop display window.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Incredible things are happening in Oak Park, Sacramento.

Sheet of paper with "YOU TOOK MY LEAF BLOWER. I WILL FIND YOU" printed on it and taped to a roadside light pole. Trees and city street in the background.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Prog is a state of mind

Jerry Lee Lewis record at the front of a record bin with a divider marked "Krautrock/Prog"

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Pulling for the Pacers because I think they have the better chance to take down the Thunder, but in case this is the last game of the Knicks' season, I choose to honor their great season with "confused AAVE Fox Mulder."

Tall, brown-haired white man (David Duchovny as Fox Mulder) in a sweaty, sleeveless gray New York Knicks T-shirt faces the camera. A red-headed woman in a black jacket (Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully) has her back to the camera. They're in a gym with a basketball backboard in the background. The caption is of Mulder saying "Hey, homegirl. Word Up."

Same characters as in the previous image, this time closer together. Caption shows Mulder saying, "No, I'm ready to J-O-B, just not on some jagoff shoeshine tip."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

perhaps the most important NBA photoshop

one very large man (Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets) posting up another very large man (Rudy Gobert of the Minnesota Timberwolves), leaning his elbow into the second man's chest as the courtside crowd watches. the two men are in their NBA jerseys but have been photoshopped to be wearing jeans instead of basketball shorts.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Feeling anxious? Lonely? Despairing at the state of the world? Consider Assembling a Microscope. You will surely not regret Assembling a Microscope.

A bunch of cardboard boxes in the corner of a room, both on the floor and stacked atop a desk. A couple boxes are open.

The contents of the boxes in the previous picture, assembled: a large, mostly beige stereomicroscope (Zeiss AxioZoom V16) with multiple cameras attached, sitting atop a desk. There's a computer monitor and keyboard next to them, and various electronic equipment for running the microscope behind it.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Reading a paper in which the protein Laminin is depicted as looking almost exactly like the Blue Öyster Cult logo

Crop of part of figure 1 in Fidler et al. 2017, "Collagen IV and basement membrane at the evolutionary dawn of metazoan tissues." The protein laminin is depicted in many colors but generally in the same shape described in the previous image.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

a million movies on the to-watch list but i'm going to the little art theater to watch suspiria again

Bugs Bunny w/ old timey gun "Lord Forgive Me But It's Time to Go Back to Tha Old Me" meme

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

science job prospects shrinking by the day...really hope I can find a job in the only other field I am qualified for, "guy who suggests obscure psychedelic rock needle drops for TV" (see below)

Screenshot from Yellowjackets, young Shauna (Sophie Nelisse) is in bed next a fire. Caption indicates "Dear One" by Pisces is playing as non-diegetic music.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Thinking about when Pop took time out of a Finals film session to recognize Eddie Mabo Day. www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...

From a 2017 Kevin Arnovitz ESPN piece:
"But rather than dive into the session with a strategic imperative, or even a parable on the virtues of resiliency, Popovich began by posing a question to the room.

"He asks, 'Does anyone know what today is?'" says Mills, an Australian of Aborigine and Torres Strait Island descent. "There are a lot of different backgrounds in the room, but for me, obviously, I knew what day it was, but I didn't say anything. I just wanted to see where he was going with this."

In Australia, June 3 is Mabo Day, a commemoration of the nation's most notable activist for indigenous rights. Mills was floored as Popovich proceeded to introduce Eddie Koiki Mabo's story to the team. A few minutes into the seminar, a picture of Mabo appeared on the video screen."

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I know I'll never be a father to modern embryology but hopefully I can be one of its uncles.

Picture of text from Lewis Wolpert's "The Triumph of the Embryo" centered on the phrase "one of the uncles of modern embryology," written in reference to August Weismann.

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Ben @beeeencox.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

heading out to watch the playoffs with @fargus.bsky.social

California vanity license plate that reads HOOPS

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