iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Wild to me that once a certain type of person has achieved a position of power and responsibility, the main thing they seem to want to do with it is make their favorite porn tropes everyone else's problem.

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Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Absolutely lost my shit at this co-op mode for Hearts of Iron, which you play as the Army, Navy, Emperor, and Government. All have their own win conditions aside the Government, which lost the game automatically in 1925. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

docs.google.com

True Imperial Japan Experience

True Imperial Japan Experience A Hearts of Iron 4 Game This is a counteroperative roleplaying game. The resolution system is a game of multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 and a number of discord chats. Requi...

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

"It may seem like having an armed man watch you put your ballot into the transparent ballot box may compromise the privacy of your vote. Rest assured, the privacy of your vote is secure because the armed man cannot read."

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Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Your infrequent reminder that the villains of Hot Fuzz are racist NIMBYs.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I will say, I find Donga really cool. It's practiced in places where people still live in mud huts. They fight naked* except for the jankiest homemade skull caps and elbow guards. They 2-hand a 6' stick and swing like they mean it. Fights are often held to celebrate weddings and harvest festivals.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Sucks to suck, etc., but also I wonder what Mohammad al-Otaibi is up to these days.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And people say AI has nothing to offer!

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A good rule of thumb is "never sell Saudi Arabia a military vehicle you aren't prepared to watch Yemeni militiamen do donuts in after the crew fled or surrendered" Canada should probably also bear this in mind tbh.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This would be a lot scarier if the Iran war was going really well

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Cops: Wow, it was a great idea to install face-eating leopards on every corner! That will scare the rabble into line. Cops, 0.7 weeks later: We have to do something about the face-eating leopards

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I'm wondering - and not for the first time - if bin Laden isn't best understood as something of a Saudi Donald Trump. Son of a real estate tycoon, never had a real job until he got caught up in a major reactionary political movement, widely seen as a genius, actually the biggest moron in any room.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Sorry, but this is spot on. The White House believes Donald Trump has a magic ring that turns his thoughts into reality. They demand public praise for things he imagines. And they need a computer program to generate fake imagery to sell it. The (accidentally) most accurate and honest they’ve been.

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Left Outside @leftoutside.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Going to Argentina is great. Imagine going to a friend's house and they have pictures all over of your wheelbarrow and they speak about how "la carretilla" is crucial to their identity and fashion and their relatives died trying to sneak into your garden to take it, but you forgot you had one.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I've probably said this before, but I don't think there's ever been as big a mismatch between how good the [thing]'s website is and how good the [thing] is as the UK Parliament.

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Nick Kodama @nickkodama.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

the discourse On Here sometimes panics about nuclear escalation but the reality is that these things aren't that useful and "where would you use them" isn't an easy question to answer. 👇

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"I see Trump's hand at work"

Lake America - smallest of the 5 great lakes

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"Man, I can't believe they refused my candidacy just because I told them my buddies took me to a strip club for my birthday in 2014! Hey, why did they refuse yours?" "Well..."

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Pseudotsuga @pseudotsuga86.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

QC's bilingualism rate is by far the highest in Canada. It's not that they "refuse to learn our language" it's that they'd rather conduct business in their own and be able to access the Canadian federal government and Canadian society the same as Anglos. Dumb culture wars aside I think this is fair

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

stories like this are a useful reminder that a) Chinese people love goofing around and b) the CCP really distrusts people goofing around.

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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

She ran a CrossFit gym, which is basically a swinger's club that produces orthopedic injuries

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I thought I heard the old man say Leavitt, Johnny, Leavitt For tomorrow you will get your pay And it's time for us to Leavitt

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Look, I was a TA and I had enough first-year sociology majors coming to me to fix their Marxist analyses of The Lion King (1994) to sympathize with Tom's desire to disenfranchise students, but ultimately rights are rights and everyone gets them.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

FWIW, I think the question of "Did Woke 1 go to far?" it depends on where you ask! On college campuses? Sometimes. In making cops responsible for bad behavior? Obviously not! In holding sex pests and criminals to account? Clearly incomplete, look at the damn White House.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

"But birb, why would ICE agents want absurdly large shoes?" To prepare for a career in politics, of course.

Picture of Marco Rubio wearing big shoes that Trump bought him

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

That awkward feeling when you're using your zap gloves to torture a guy for the crime of looking uppity while brown, and your nose starts to itch

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Today in "Iran likes to respond symmetrically"

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I appreciate that it can seem weird that the Trump administration is not acting in its own apparent interests, but it's not confusing at all to me. They simply do not understand how their jobs work at a level that would allow them to do this, and their incentives discourage them from learning.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The British media doesn't want you to know this, but you can walk with a stick if you want. They're legal everywhere and some kinds literally grow on trees.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Bon Cop Bad Cop, the 2026 TV show, is quite enjoyable but it gets thoroughly unbelievable in some of its portrayals of Canada's various ethnic divisions and regional politics. For example, the Prime Minister in the show is from New Brunswick.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I feel like it's a pretty established pattern that Iran likes to respond symmetrically whenever it can, or as close to symmetrically as possible in cases where it can't. Which has... implications.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This is partly inspired by the (excellent) @bretdevereaux.bsky.social series on pre-modern armies and part just something I've been interested in for a while. When discussing unit cohesion and morale in a military context, it's common to talk about combatants as if they have lost rational thought.

acoup.blog

Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part IVb: Cohesion

This is the second half of the fourth part (I, IIa, IIb, III, IVa) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are organized. Last we…

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I wonder if our particular collective fear of venomous animals is related to the tendency of many to overestimate the relative effectiveness of chemical weapons. Because while there are some nerve agents out there that can kill you in comically small doses, you can prevent that with a goofy suit.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

The people you meet on here, man

Conversation history ending in Dean Browning tweet

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Sort of interesting that the author ties this (ridiculous) trend back to the dynamics of dating sites. Women get more attention than men, leading to a surplus of options. To pare down the list suitors to something less overwhelming, women often filter men by fairly arbitrary traits like height.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I have one of those target dummies and you're supposed to put gravel in the base to stop it from falling over. They clearly haven't done this, and even balanced the dummy precariously on the edge of a desk. So I think the ramming drone is actually weak as fuck and won't stop anyone able-bodied.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Given how the rest of the quote sounds like she's having a stroke, I assume she meant "defund the police" but at this point, whatever.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

A bit close to the wind for a man who committed treason against the US government and appears to support the invasions of several US treaty allies, Mr. Musk.

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Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Once again, it is 1) A land of 23 million people with their own institutions, customs and culture not "5 randos" 2) It has never been part of the PRC.

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

One of my favorite types of concerts is one where they sing older working songs or sea shanties or whatever, because they'll be like "this is a song about a really special woman, anyone here love your girlfriend this much?" and it's clearly a song about a prostitute

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I've been catching up on @bretdevereaux.bsky.social 's posts about pre-modern armies and was particularly interested in this section of part IVa on leadership that specifically dealt with written treatises. acoup.blog/2026/07/18/c...

In literate societies, these apprenticeships might be supplemented with written guidebooks, military manuals of various kinds. There is an odd tendency in modern fantasy fiction to pooh-pooh this sort of thing – Game of Thrones (the show, in particular) goes out of its way a few times to cast aspersions on the usefulness of such works – but the fact that societies with literate military aristocracies produce and preserve these kinds of works with regularity suggests that the fellows who would know best – the one’s actually leading armies – found them useful.

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Military Unintelligence Expert 🇨🇦 @voltageanddoltage.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Not to say this isn't culture war nonsense but veterans have been doing the "military went soft the moment I left" thing since Babylon we just have craven outlets willing to let them write articles instead of bitching at the Legion or writing letters that get ignored.

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Sorry Buddy @3cityyimby.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Really an enormous part of the problem here is that Americans indeed stopped taking their government seriously (see also Sen Moreno's bill to sanction Canada). But the rest of the world still has to.

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Sorry Buddy @3cityyimby.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Fuck elbows up. Dump your bucket and drop the gloves

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Also, I didn't realize this until double checking some details just now, but Viktor Tsoi's surname is a corruption of the Korean "Choi" which means "high" or "tall" One of his inspirations was Vladimir Vysotsky, whose surname means the exact same thing except in Russian (and other Slavic languages)

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I'm increasingly fond of @polphilpod.bsky.social 's concept of conservativism as the belief that: A) there are natural laws outside of human control that don't and cannot be changed B) people may deviate from them at their peril C) the role of the state is to keep society in line with these laws

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Birb_at_Arms @birblib.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I wonder if the Chinese get mad at the Russians over wildfire smoke from Siberia

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