iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Sean Cairncross to Anthropic's Dario Amodei: "Will you be closing off access to Fable or not?" Amodei: I can't. Cairncross: "I have the answer I need." Scott Bessent: "That is a bad decision." By @sophiacai.bsky.social and Cheyenne Haslett www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Screenshot of tense conversation between Trump officials and the Anthropic CEO.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Which of these things is not like the others?

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

"For centuries the people had built and created, always honorably, always honestly, even for serf-owners and nobles. Yet no one, from the days of Ryurik on, had ever heard of wrecking. But now, when for the first time all the wealth had come to belong to the people, ...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: "For centuries the people had built and created, always honorably, always honestly, even for serf-owners and nobles. Yet no one, from the days of Ryurik on, had ever heard of wrecking. But now, when for the first time all the wealth had come to belong to the people, hundreds of thousands of the best sons of the people inexplicably rushed off to wreck. (Section 7 did not provide for wrecking in agriculture, but since it was impossible otherwise to explain rationally how and why the fields were choked with weeds, why harvests were falling off, why machines were breaking down, then dialectic sensitivity brought agriculture, too, under its sway.)"

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

One productive use of scarce energy, land and water resources is to Google nonsense phrases like "Pentecostal wombat" and watch its AI just make up shit as the answer.

Google's nonsense response to a nonsense question.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Six years ago, Twitter put a violence warning label on a Trump tweet in which he threatened that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Now he's using his own social media network to threaten that "a whole civilization will die tonight." And... www.politico.com/news/2020/05...

Trump warns on Truth Social that "a whole civilization will die tonight ... probably."

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Happy Pi Day, everyone! As we all celebrate our favorite irrational, transcendental pal, just remember this simple formula if you ever forget what exactly the digits are.

The simple, easy-peasy Chudnovsky algorithm for figuring out pi.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Seen near DC: When you've installed solar panels on your house but don't want your neighbors to know the electrical gear is from Tesla.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Cramer also noted Palm Beach police had urged prosecutors to charge him as a child molestor, but they decided to let him off with the much lighter charge of solicitation of prostitution.

"Prosecutors gave greater weight to the details [Alan] Dershowitz pointed out to the prosecutors in an apparent effort to assail their character," Elisa Cramer wrote in August 2006 in the Palm Beach Post.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Flock of Dimes on 11/11 at @theatlantisdc.bsky.social — my first time seeing Jenn Wasner perform since the Wye Oak show in March 2020 in Baltimore that was the last concert I attended before the Covid lockdown descended. A few things have happened since then.

Jenn Wasner's band Flock of Dimes performing at The Atlantis in DC on 11/11/2025.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Stumbled upon this classic example of newsroom morale-building while digging through some old files. (This is NOT from my current employer, to be clear. In fact, I don't think I ever worked at the newspaper that this came from.) There are at least a dozen more items on the reset of the page.

Batshit memo from managers of a newsroom that shall not be named.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Who wants to tell the New York Times that the Imperial March doesn't appear in "the movie 'Star Wars'"? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/u...

A paragraph in a New York Times story that seems unaware that the Imperial March didn't appear until the Empire Strikes Back.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Crucial point on #HurricaneErin: Do NOT just look at the cone, which tells you only where the center of the storm is likely to go. Look at the NHC's wind probably map, which shows that a significant swath of the US coast may feel tropical storm force winds: www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/grap...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Happy Pi Day to our favorite irrational, transcendental pal.

Euler's identity, an equation that manages to combine five key constants: 0, 1, pi, e and i

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Musk's "respond to this email or you're fired" demand is reminiscent of a vote-suppression technique called caging, in which groups send direct-mail pieces to voters' addresses and then claim undelivered pieces as evidence the voters don't live there. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

Screenshot of Elon Musk claiming on X that many federal employees don't exist.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Wait -- Gettr is still around? slate.com/news-and-pol...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

My colleague Charlie Mahtesian explored the history of bad blood between Trump, the Eagles and their city last week, including this memorable incident: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

This is a very odd way to say "Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles for winning the Super Bowl. Fly, Eagles, Fly!"

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

What a scene of mayhem in the streets at #Philly celebrates the #Eagles #SuperBowl win!!! It's like Lord of the Flies meets Mad Max meets ... um, people cheering and wearing green?

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

DC's Metro honors Rosa Parks today.

Poster on DC Metro train in Washington honors civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

www.cardcow.com/images/set85...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

I've now picked up/dropped off at 100 Capital Bikeshare stations, which the CaBi app says is 12.8% of the total. Approximately 680 to go?

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

The classic "cone" forecast map does NOT tell you anything about where the most dangerous winds might strike (it only forecasts the likely movements of the storm's center). But this "probabilistic" wind map does: www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphi...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

The tropics awaken: National Hurricane Center forecasts a major hurricane striking the Florida Gulf Coast on Thursday, including a non-zero chance of hurricane-force winds hitting Tampa Bay. www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/grap... www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphi...

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

Capital Bikeshare ridership is setting new records in Alexandria, VA, three years after the long-delayed expansion. 2024 is on track to be highest ever, and the 2nd consecutive year with >100K trips in the city. June, July and August each exceeded 13K trips. www.alexandriava.gov/sites/defaul...

Bar graph showing annual Capital Bikeshare ridership in Alexandria

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 06/07/2024

Beryl has already been the first Category 4 hurricane to form in the North Atlantic in June (in records dating back to 1851), and the earliest-ever Cat 5. Though now a tropical storm, it's expected to regain hurricane strength before hitting the Gulf Coast in the coming days.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 03/07/2024

This article is about the political situation in Europe, but it should be noted that in the U.S. the Democrats got this message on climate policy decades ago. Here, their message is ALL ABOUT climate action equaling jobs, new tech and lower costs for consumers.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 08/05/2024

I already see heads exploding about this poll result: Biden, whose signed a huge infrastructure law that's paying for projects right now, has only a 3-point edge over Trump on who “has done more to promote infrastructure improvements and job creation.”

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 08/05/2024

Biden signed 4 signature laws to allot the $1.1 trillion for direct government spending: ➡️2021 American Rescue Plan (aka pandemic relief) ➡️2021 infrastructure law ➡️2022 CHIPS and Science Act ➡️2022 Inflation Reduction Act We tracked how the money is, or isn't, being spent 👇

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 06/12/2023

Passenger etiquette on DC's Metro system leafs a lot to be desired.

Two heads of leafy lettuce occupy an entire row of seats on a DC Metro train.

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Bob King @bkingdc.bsky.social · 08/11/2023

The state of newspaper web design in 2023 (courtesy of the Detroit News):

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