iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose." – George Orwell

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I grew up skipping rocks with my dad on the shores of Lake Ontario. Which is what it’s called.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Of all the flaws of the human species, the tendency to fall into a personality cult is probably the most problematic. And the most exasperating for those unaffected.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

A North American Trade War. How ridiculous.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

It would be great if no one ever used Fabuloso ever again please and thank you.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

If you think the backlash against AI is strong now, just wait until humanoids start appearing in everyday environments.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

To me, a leader who’s worth following isn’t the person who can play the game better than anyone else. It’s the person who’s playing a different game than everyone else. That’s the person I find the most inspiring.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Gerrymandering is a prime example of how the US political system is hopelessly corrupt and rigged, and in need of major reform.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

People who think an assassination is the answer are asinine, and clearly aren’t thinking very clearly.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

The U.S. does have a king: the almighty dollar.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I find the use of the word “deal” in the context of geopolitics (as in, “Iran offers U.S. a deal to reopen strait…”) to be nauseating.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

If a product increases from $100 to $600, that’s a 500% increase. If it drops from $600 to $10, that’s a 98.3% decrease. Numeracy is fun.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I’m not sure which is worse: that US leaders don’t possess basic numeracy, and routinely get percent change wrong by orders of magnitude, or that they continue insisting they’re right even when shown the math.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I’ve noticed that some people, when under pressure, tend to tell themselves a story about impending doom and inevitable failure, while others tend to fall back on a more optimistic story that things will work out for them, and they’ll find their way through the struggle. Which is your default? Why?

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

You can’t say someone is a wolf in sheep’s clothing if they behave, at every turn, like a wolf.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

The world sees the U.S. as full of wealthy, arrogant, ignorant, and reckless consumers. If they’re wrong about that, what would it take to prove it?

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I’ve been thinking about this passage from Tao Te Ching a lot. Whatever is eating at you, maybe the best path is to accept that it needs to grow so big that it crushes itself. Or maybe it needs to pick up so much speed that it runs out to steam.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

The problem with humanity is that the arrogant are more likely than the humble to seize power. Yet arrogance is a form of ignorance, and extreme ignorance combined with extreme power is a scourge upon the whole world.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

A little more context on my personal (current) stance to organized religion. Again, backdrop here is that I left a fundamentalist Christian organization a decade and a half ago after living in “the truth” (as they call it) for the first 35 years of my life. So why did I leave?

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I spent the first three and a half decades of my life as a devout Christian. Not the kind you’re thinking - I belonged to a tiny group of fundamentalists who were ardent conscientious objectors. I’m not a member of that or any other religious organization any more, but I will say this…

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I’m going to start using this platform more to share my thoughts about life and the world, etc. Why this platform? No idea - I’ll never be a card-carrying anything, politically speaking. I find politics and politicians to be revolting, generally.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I made it a point to watch all 10 movies nominated for best picture this year. Half of them included scenes I’d describe as over-the-top grotesque: heads being blown off, people being shot in the face, etc. I’m no expert film critic, but it seems to me that our culture is obsessed with violence.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

There’s a lens through which the world is deeply disturbing, one’s own culture is worrisome and odious, and one’s generation is disappointing and even insufferable. Aging gracefully is about owning this lens, and finding a way to be a happy person in spite of the many problems to be found.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I call bullshit. They’re getting exactly what they voted for.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

It would be wonderful if different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevailed right here in our own culture.

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Reposted by Ben Jones

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

🧵 I’ve talked a lot about disordered discourse, conspiracies, polarisation, denialism. But maybe the better question is: why does this keep happening? Why does our shared reality keep fracturing? What are the drivers I talk about as a dimension of disordered discourse?

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

The Trojans would've been stupid to reject the gift of the large wooden horse from Odysseus and the Greeks.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Wow… from “A Gentleman in Moscow” by @amortowles.bsky.social, written in 2016.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

A century of U.S. face palm: The Greatest Generation ↳ The Me Generation ↳ The Entitled Generation ↳ The Anxious Generarion

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Intelligence, rigor, wisdom, compassion: neglect these at your peril.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

I didn’t know April Fool’s Day was lasting the entire month this year.

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Reposted by Ben Jones

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 07/04/2025

So. I wrote a dissertation on how economic crises can lead to the breakdown of authoritarian regimes. Here are three key point to keep in mind as you watch the news this week 🧵

cambridge.org

Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes

Cambridge Core - Asian Studies - Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Never accept the following in another: the inability to admit error, or, upon admitting it, the unwillingness to make it right. If this is an apt description of a person in your orbit, run.

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Reposted by Ben Jones

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 04/04/2025

NEW 🧵 A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far: 1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively. These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

I think the word legit is overused.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Failures in AI translation: My wife Becky just used Google Translate to ask our landscaper in Spanish to dump a bucket of weeds she had pulled, and he showed up at our front door wondering why she’s texting him about marijuana. 😂😂😂

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Yes, I used the Atlantic author look-up app, too, and yes, I can see a number of my own books in LibGen. But mostly I just want to be this version of Ben Jones.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

The ripple effects of the tariffs will hit everyone, and many are already feeling it. Small businesses with a high percentage of their revenue coming from cross-border clients will be the first to fall.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

So far 2025 has been a good reminder to me how much I loathe recklessness and arrogance, two vices that seem to go hand-in-hand. I'm all for decisiveness, and some decisions can be tough. But I believe strongly in the importance of listening, weighing options, and seeking the compassionate path.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Maybe, just maybe, the past two decades of unbridled obsession with the anti-hero here in the U.S. haven’t served us very well.

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Reposted by Ben Jones

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 07/03/2025

NEW: The actions of Trump and Vance in recent weeks highlight something under-appreciated. The American right is now ideologically closer to countries like Russia, Turkey and in some senses China, than to the rest of the west (even the conservative west). My column: www.ft.com/content/3046...

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

For the record I’m against tariffs with Canada and Mexico, I’m in favor of supporting Ukraine, I’m behind federal programs to support science and foreign aid, and I’m vehemently pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian. So there ya go.

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

“You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me.” Sting, 1993

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Ben Jones @benrjones.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

This model of the development of one aspect of masculinity (“the warrior”) from boy (bottom pyramid) to man (top) is interesting in light of current events. The pinnacle represents balanced, healthy masculinity; bottom left is over-indexing in an unhealthy way / bottom right is under-indexing.

A Jungian model of development of the “Warrior” aspect of masculinity, from ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover’ by Moore & Gillette.

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