iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I lived and breathed via music blogs for a time. Surprised myself over and over trying new things because I trusted the curation. (The polar opposite of a streaming platform following my listening patterns to spit out what I should listen to next.)

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Seems like it would be more ethical to follow the Star Wars model and require that any AI communication is processed through a vocoder so it’s transparent (and hilarious) that you’re speaking with a ‘droid’. Could be what keeps everyone from being deluded into psychosis by the ‘digital god.’

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thanks! It’s an oldie but I still like the colors.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Artist! Quote with your art with dramatic lighting!

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Congrats! Played with it this morning and got lost in it in the best possible way. Really well done!

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Sven Ahlgrimm @svenahlgrimm.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

ODDADA is finally available on iPad and iPhone! Here's our trailer and a little thread with some background. apps.apple.com/app/oddada/i...

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I love flat cartoon characters you can always expect to behave in a predictable way—and I love watching an animated series/film where a fully dimensional character goes through experiences that change them. And it all makes perfect sense to me. Don't box yourself into binary mindsets.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I will forever be drawn to dualities. I like that Lego is both a box of parts with instructions for you to meticulously assemble in one way, and a box of parts that you can do whatever you want with. I like when you can't pin down a singular rule, but I also love scientific and mathematical truths.

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Eric Pazdziora @ericpazdziora.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"Opera doesn't make money. Opera’s what you spend money *on*.” “But . . what do you get out of it?” “You get opera. You put money in, you see, and opera comes out,” said Salzella wearily. --Terry Pratchett, 'Maskerade'

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Are you taking about Delilah?

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I can see it unlocking things in my 7yo's brain. We've been doing a little LEGO stop-motion together, and he was asking all sorts of questions about 'how they did it', what the limitations and hard things to do are. And the jokes still land, of course. ha

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

an aside, chalk it up to coincidence, but I re-watched the first 3 shorts over the weekend with my son as we recently got the the Wallace & Gromit LEGO set and were putting it together. Big recommend.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

One of my all-time favorite animated characters, Gromit, born from practical and budget limitations. Because, of course. News to me! thank you for your latest article @ani-obsessive.bsky.social animationobsessive.substack.com/p/wallace-an...

Gromit turned into a dog really early on, since Park found dogs easier to model. And the character's dialogue was cut due to animation difficulties in the first week of the shoot. "That's when I realized I could do everything with the eyes. Gromit was suddenly born. He didn't need a mouth. He became a very introvert and very intelligent dog," Park remembered.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Watched Arco this morning. What’s staying with me (as much as the bonds of love & friendship) is the complete abandonment of the adults of their children. Left to a droid workforce for their care, education, and protection from climate disaster. The adults of 2075 suck!

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm very self aware about how much I talk about my kid. So much that at work the conversation breaker people toss my way is 'how's your kid?' (oof!) But heck, they are fun exciting to talk about. And yes, completely energy-consuming.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Often wondered what it would’ve been like to be one of these so-called risk-taking teenagers who believe they’re invincible. I’ve don’t recall feeling invincible a day in my life.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In the far away future Arco is from, people have put family above all else…caring for others is tantamount. Valuing life, communicating with life (birds). They never stopped looking for Arco.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The big thing about them that you couldn’t fall over… that they balanced for you. And that would be enough to get people to pay up and zoom around on them.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Such a great example of media and PR hype going overboard and being a complete dud out of the gate. All predictions South Park and Arrested Development both called it. Even NFTs and Google Glass were reported on with a dose of skepticism and critique.

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BrianMcLachlan @brianmcl.com · 02/10/2026

I was going over some of the trends/eras of illustration with my students today and Corporate Memphis created the most conversation. It was compared to a business man in a happy face mask, Arial & pop music. Good in contexts like brightening up a train station, bad in masking the cruelness of tech.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Oh fun! I didn’t expect you to share your slides, thanks! Yeah this covers broad commercial illustration trends pretty well. There were micro-trends throughout. I’ve been surprised by how long ‘Memphis’ has stuck around.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

And my son *loves* Star Wars. But something clearly didn’t sit well with him when the grown-up caregivers go absent. Even if you get hovering bikes and droids in that bargain.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My 7yo sitting beside me said (unprompted) that he hopes it doesn’t come to this with AI and robots. He didn’t care about the holographic decor and tech of 2075 either: ‘What’s the point?’

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Thanks! Watched it this morning with my son 🌈

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James Kochalka Superstar @kochalka.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

ARCO is a GREAT movie. Now on Hulu, Disney, Kanopy…and available to rent elsewhere youtu.be/e4RrOe8IbI8?...

youtu.be

ARCO - Official Trailer - In Select Theaters January 23 / Everywhere January 30

YouTube video by NEON

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Smo - Screaming for vengeance @smomotion.tv · 03/10/2026

Fleischer Studios quietly uploaded the ORIGINAL superman short from 1941 to their youtube: youtu.be/Izw59y7yVio?... Some of the most well animated shorts to this day [and still the best Superman!]

youtu.be

Superman, released September 26, 1941 was the first of Fleischer Studios' acclaimed Superman series!

YouTube video by Fleischer Studios

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Curious what other trends/eras you covered. Good convo to have with students!

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I know!!! They show up even more.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ads that pop up and follow me around featuring a product I looked at *once* are like a creepy combination of a ghost and mosquito that won't leave you the hell alone. GO AWAY.

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Littledigits @littledigits.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

being in animation, its not from AI. the streaming bubble bursting cuz everyone hopped on the grain cuz it undermined unions, less regulations and more mergers are what lead to the loss. AI is just what people think but it started way before that

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

True! Though I do think having some common culture helps.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Or, maybe the 20th century was a mass culture blip made possible by radio and television. We’ve lived in geographic bubbles (villages and towns) for most of the human timeline.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Media bubbles have always existed. There’s just way more of them now (maybe?) and as they become more numerous they microsize. But the smaller they get, the less we’ll share culturally. We’ll only have the weather.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

They do still have the Lego Classic line, which encourages free building. But it's not what fills up the toy shelves.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It isn’t their core at all, sadly. As happy as I am that they are a thriving company, it’s sets that look like real things people recognize (landmarks, licensed IP) that drives the current aesthetic. (Almost disguising the bricks altogether)

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Got some ‘vintage’ Lego from a friend, look how fun these bricks are. And they’re not Duplo. Lego designed for kids to appeal to kids in the same joyful sprit of old school Fisher Price. (Orange Dulpo block for scale to demonstrate they are Lego system)

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I did too, haha. But I as well say chuh-ry-angle

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Patrick @vectorpark.com · 22/09/2026

Among other things, this post does a great job of disentangling the classic notion of "AI" — how can we use computers to solve problems in smarter and more efficient ways? — from what LLMs are, and do

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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯

Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to finance

themselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.

What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What’s most revealing to me is how dystopian the music industry was (is) even before this stuff showed up. Factories chiefly valuing efficiency and lower wages. Quantity, output. I guess I’m not surprised, but it’s grim.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Was at first skeptical, and I’m hopeful for further eps that get deeper into legal and moral reality of theft. But you’re right, it’s a very curious journalistic window (for me as a complete music outsider) into what happening and how it’s being used. Thanks for recommending.

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Vincent Alexander @nonsenseisland.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This 1953 Woody Woodpecker scene resembles the gross-ups you see in REN & STIMPY and SPONGEBOB many years later.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In case this *they knew what they were doing* headline slipped through the cracks ‘A Microsoft executive called the training of artificial intelligence models the "largest theft of labor in human history," … same executive called it "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.’ -from WaPo

Media
Microsoft exec called Al the largest theft of labor' in history, court records show The quote headlined an unsealed document in the New York Times's copyright case against Microsoft and OpenAl.
Yesterday at 5:47 p.m. ET

A Microsoft executive called the training of artificial intelligence models the "largest theft of labor in human history," according to a legal brief filed by the New York Times and unsealed Thursday. In another instance, according to the brief, that same executive called it "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.

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Bob Flynn @bobjinx.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What’s great here is that they are painted cartoon gags without falling into gross-out territory (which yes, also funny, but gets stale when you do it over and over)

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Tim Bolton 🐿 | 🏹 Ranatuor of Meriadoc 💍 (He/Him) @timbolton.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Tove's illustrated version of the Hobbit arrives soon in English for the first time. I love Tove and her work. Here's a thread with some thoughts about one of her most (in)famous #Tolkien pieces.

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