iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Home safety tip: when pulling the "straighten out the chip packet and tip the remaining crumbs into your open mouth" manoeuvre, do not 1) miscalculate badly and pour some of the crumbs into your eye; 2) make this mistake with a packet of Lime and Black Pepper flavoured chips

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The only poll that counts is election day etc, but sure look like Labour's steady-as-she-goes, win the centre, don't scare the horses (where the horses are a shaky National voter) etc approach has been very effective at ... driving a bunch of its potential voters to the party further to its left

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I mean this will never get made people, because Disney has 100% painted itself into a psychological corner, BUT if it did I guess the hope of the side would be that they *can't* just do "just the Empire basically comes back" *again* (right?!) so maybe there will be a new direction possible there.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ah, that special time of year where once again those of us for whom a sleep "schedule" is an academic concept at best are hit by the online wave of complaints that daylight savings is apparently somehow going to ruin lives for months on and get to ponder the truly alien nature of the lives of others

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Boy nothing sets you up for a positive day like opening up Bluesky and reading a well-researched and argued article you totally agree with about the dire state of the world and future that pierces the bubble of background-level denial you operate in at almost all times just in order to function

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Now seated for Coyote vs Acme, up yours extremely specifically David Zaslav

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The future alien xenoarcheologists basically have no chance of working out what the hell our deal was.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Everyone games on my timeline today up in arms about the "crunch is life" idiot and no-one talking about the fact that Minecraft appears to have some kind of bracket fungus now, smh

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Hey everyone The Otago Daily Times is maintaining its unlikely but nevertheless undisputed title as New Zealand's #1 video game publication www.odt.co.nz/life-and-sty...

odt.co.nz

Lively accompaniment

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Good read. Particularly striking part:

Extract from an essay about AI Doomerism which argues the more pressing problem is the inability to enforce the rule of law in this area. It reads:

And here I think the last forty years of nihilistic refusal to govern for the public interest takes its toll on our imagination. I had a recent conversation with an AI doomer sympathizer, and I asked him why criminal prosecutions or holding these companies liable for harms wouldn’t restructure incentives and force safer products. He agreed that it would, but argued that in his experience, there is no way to enforce the rule of law against the powerful. No jury could ever convict, and no prosecutor would dare take on OpenAI or Anthropic.

I was sort of shocked, and then I realized it was more realistic for him to imagine that bots would take over our civilization and supplant humanity than to imagine that we might apply the rule of law to Sam Altman.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Given we know Hollywood is rooting around amidst the Common Folk for new horror film IP in the wake of Backrooms, Obsession etc, I expect this sign on the front of the $2/costume shop at the Dunedin bus hub I walk past every day to get a three-picture deal any day now.

A printing service advertising image, letting you the passer-by know they will create face masks of a real person from a photo for you. Two examples are shown. The eyes are cut out as they would be in a mask, except the masks are placed on a white background, creating a child whose slitted eyes appear to be rolling back in demonic ecstasy as he visualises murdering you and a woman whose soulless blank stare is paired with a wide-mouthed toothy smile, which seems likely to continue to widen so she can better start to swallow you whole from the top of your head.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Boy, that minute or so clip of Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary sure is enough to tell me I will be unable to watch Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Goddamn, Silo really got to the good stuff this season.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Sirens are extinct Seawater's for drinkin'

A news headline "Thai town known for sex tourism beckons weary sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln"

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

What's worse, those cheap horror movies that get made the instant stuff hits public domain, or the forces of capitalism out here doing both "What if Scrooge had a point?" and "Robin Hood was really a bad guy" with big budgets in the same year? www.avclub.com/scrooge-gray...

avclub.com

Ti West's Ebenezer will ponder whether Scrooge had a point, actually

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

A good point, this...WFF payments are also presumably still going to be withdrawn for parents at the end of the year their child turns 18?

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Obviously we should re-orient our entire economy and society to the agentic future as fast as we possibly can

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Nice that people are looking to pay tribute this week I guess, but you've only got a 50% success rate here, world

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Tim Curry not only dining out on, but in fact making an entire three course meal out of, every single line he has in this is just the best. "Upstage lads, this is my ooooonly numberrr!", gold youtu.be/qRunQOIcuXQ?...

youtu.be

Professional Pirate

YouTube video by WolfGirl04

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Make a band bigger 30 Odd Metres of Grunts

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I'm sure there are some genuinely great video essays I'm missing out on as cool and interesting parts of the cultural conversation, but if I click on a YouTube link and see a run time of an hour and 13 minutes then I'm sorry but noooooooope

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Unexpectedly transcendent urban experience: internal speakers on whatever radio station we're on in this bus launch into the initial sax solo from Baker Street in perfect sync with pulling out of the bus hub

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

At this stage we have many examples of how badly the people running the tech industry have become detached from society, but I dunno that there's a single better one than: 1) "Our new product will eliminate 80% of society's jobs!" <5 minutes later> 2) "Why won't society support our new product?!"

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

After two leadership votes, there definitely seems to be a distinct air of "we sniff blood in the water" from NZ media within which any little thing Luxon says is going to get put under a microscope - and if Labour can't engineer an election victory in these circumstances then I dunno, man.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Good ideas. (See also: New Zealand)

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Humanity: Intelligence 16, Wisdom 3.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Look, I've watched plenty of comic book movies and liked them fine. I've read some comics and liked them too. But sometimes when multiple excited news headlines are like "Adam Driver is going to play a guy called Mister Sinister!" you do have a "...wait, how did we get here" moment.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

There are some Ben Allans out there that use what they think is a fake email address for online accounts that is actually mine, and boy, you shouldn't do that. Anyway Ben Allan who uses Walmart, count yourself lucky I deleted the account instead of upping your order of Red Bull by a factor of 1000.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A Bluesky experience I have every so often: Wait, didn't I already read this post? And that one was several days ago and it's above that newer one. Wait, "trending"? Oh my God THEY'VE CAVED AND RUINED THE LAST GO- oh I accidentally clicked on the Discover tab again didn't I

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

TFW you have the full support of your caucus

The Death of Julius Caesar, an 1806 painting by Vincenzo Camuccini.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I love it how War of the Worlds-granular the reporting gets whenever we do this. THE CYLINDER IS UNSCREWING

A live news headline which reads: Live: Movement outside National Party caucus room

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Do-doo-do Do-doo-do Do-doo-do Do-doo-do

A news headline: where have all the ATMs gone?

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Left today, right 10 days ago. We seem like a confused lot, really.

A NZ Herald headline which reads: Election 2026: Left-wing Opposition’s chance of forming Govt tiny as Opportunity rises in Poll of Polls

A summary of the Ipsos Issues Monitor survey in July showing respondents deemed Labour the party most capable of managing all five of the top issues, and left-wing parties overall were preferred for handling handing 18.5 issues out of the top 20.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The arts is only one example of many at the moment of course, but imagine being mentally in this sort of spot already and the parties of the government are making "we aren't doing austerity hard enough yet" noises. www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

odt.co.nz

‘We’ve got fatigue from fighting for the arts’: community reeling from recent cuts to Dunedin arts

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

To do a discourse for a sec: am wondering if the whole yoof not wanting sex scenes in movies thing has anything to do with sex/dating lives having become siloed away from the rest of people's lives in The Apps, thus making the idea of interacting with this sphere in non-private feel very exposing.

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Ben Allan @benallan.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Wait, has it sufficiently come to Aotearoa's attention that a movie appears to be coming up with Tom Hiddleston (!) seemingly set to play Sir Ed? #kikorangi

An APPLE TV preview screen for a movie called Tenzing, in which it looks like Tom Hiddleston appears to be playing Ed Hilary.

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