iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

@alexgibneyfilm.bsky.social According to IMDB, this is the full “cast” of the documentary MUSK. I truly hope this is an incomplete list. Kara? Cory? Why tech talking heads? What are *they* doing here? A nearly 4hr movie with no Tesla employees, owners interviewed? No VCs, ex-board members? 🤷‍♂️

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Poor little Apple just became a FIVE-TRILLION-DOLLAR company. Maybe now they can afford to fix their completely broken iOS Music app. [Who am I kidding, being unable to play MP3s that you OWN is a FEATURE to this company, not a bug…🤷‍♂️]

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A rare rainbow in the north-north-west this morning.

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Sometimes I wonder if CNN sells one or more slots in its “cnnmoney premarket” stock list to loser penny stock companies lookin’ for a, er, boost

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Awful crowded in the Pacific

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Fewer than 1000 people in the US, with a population of over 340 million, have paid to see this film in a cinema. That’s 0.000247% of the population. Pretty good flick. I dare ya to defy the odds and go see it: THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Molly I’ve so far listened to over 2/3 of your excellent, wonderfully-told episodes of the WLG podcast, and having recently finished reading Gil’s excellent NERD REICH, I keep wondering at what point these two threads merge to become Weird Little Nerds? 😎 @socialistdogmom.bsky.social @gilduran.com

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

TIL that not a single pair of Meta‘s creepy, privacy-invading AI spy-glasses has sold at Walmart’s eyewear department here in Santa Fe, but that customers are buying them at Walmarts in Albuquerque.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What IS it about movies featuring humans and dogs as main characters, where every five minutes there must be yet another scene of the dog slobbering its tongue all over the face and mouth of the human? Or show the human drinking from a water bottle the dog *just* licked? HEART OF THE BEAST, man. 🤷‍♂️

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Movie idea: HARD PASS When reporters from three major news outlets lose access to the fascist-held White House, they team together and find new ways to dig in, get reams of evidence from whistleblowers, and expose long-held, party-destroying, bombshell secrets the fascists all thought were safe.

Similar phenomena happened on the PLATO system FIFTY+ years ago; kids would discover unused, abandoned notesfiles (think: message forums) originally intended for some educational-mission purpose, and move in and start yackin' until they got caught (which might not be ever).

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Theory: These days, Apple uses its Mac and iOS operating system software updates as a gambit by which the company has a chance to once again re-set all the AI, iCloud, Siri, and other mothership settings back to whatever default states most benefit Apple, overriding users' wishes.

Sure, I’ll admit I can be slow to catch on, but yeah, this time it took me four years to realize everyone else on Bluesky drives a black-smoke-belching toxic-particulate-spewing diesel vehicle and they get touchy when prices go a wee bit high at the pump 😱😵‍💫🤷‍♂️

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

@gilduran.com Finished NERD REICH. A great, though disturbing & infuriating, read. One question: It seems like these broligarchs are so obsessed w/ creating global chaos w/ democracy/nations unraveling, that they view the climate crisis as an *accelerant* to the chaos, thus, a GOOD thing. Agree?

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Almost had me fooled there, fake-Paypal scammers, but, oops, your fake mailing address generator-script seems to have broken, lol 😂

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

An interesting 🧵 on Season 5 of Netflix’s FAUDA which bolsters my hesitation to watch it. I’m simply not tolerant of propaganda from anywhere by anyone and Season 5 sounds like it is full of propaganda. I think I’ll wait for NAZA should any distributor have the guts to show that in the US.

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I grew up in the DC area and saw many amazing things at The Kennedy Center, a magnificent building and home to many lifelong memories. The idea that that orange-faced rapist mobster criminal shitgibbon could simply destroy it at the stroke of a pen, is inconceivable. Capitol’s next. Putin’s rotfl.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I mean, does *anyone* take Netflix’s recommendations seriously? A random-number generator written in BASIC on an Apple II could have come up with these suggestions. But I fear Netflix required a data center the size of Delaware, powered by the nukes at Three Mile Island. Blues Brothers? Pompeii?!

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

THE WEIGHT was good. Worth seeing. A rare action-adventure that feels like SORCEROR meets DELIVERANCE. It’s easy to imagine Eastwood or McQueen in Hawke’s role if this were a 70s film. Good directing, good script (couple of nice red herrings), good cast, good lensing. Good flick!

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

RESIDENT EVIL is a misnomer. RAMPANT STUPIDITY would be a better title. If there’s one thing I can’t stand is fumbling, incompetent protagonists. This is based on a VIDEO game? (Never played.) It’s a remake of other R.E. movies?! (Never seen.) Zach Cregger’s worst movie yet, by far. Pure garbage.

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Politics aside, I’m baffled just how some empty, autotuned, corporate, vapid, record-label-algorithm-slop-music performer like Ed Sheeran, fills stadiums with thousands of people paying more than they can afford just to hold up their smartphones to make videos of said algorithm-slop-music guy. 🤷‍♂️

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

TFW you know something's wrong, for days on end. I texted a good friend of mine on Sept 1 to see how he was doing after surgery in Aug. He replied, still in hospital. 2 weeks later, I text again, no reply. Today I get a text from him—but it's from his son telling me.. he died. That's all I know. 😳

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hmm, in a first, this morning I found Google ignored me appending “-ai” to search terms and showed me its AI Overview slop anyway. I verified I’d typed “-ai” yet still got the slop. Tried it again later, on other random search terms and now it works ok. Glitch, or a hint at what’s to come?

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

So let me get this straight: In order for AI to work, and in order to justify 2000 Bluffdales‘ worth of data centers, every human on the planet, and ALL their personal info MUST be hoovered up into the AI maw. Gates is pledging $1B to grab people living outside AI’s grasp. For “equality.” Riight.😵‍💫

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Béla Tarr’s THE BOURNE IDENTITY

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$4.85 TRILLION company so intent on telling its own customers to f*ck off if they dare try to own their own music rather than stream it, it refuses to fix such a wide swath of bugs on iPhone and in MacOS that it's now virtually impossible to even add music or a playlist to a phone, or do much else 🤬

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Seen this morning on the back of a pickup truck in Santa Fe. (Bigger question: would Jesus really drive a gas-guzzler with a planet-killing exhaust pipe like that?)

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make a band edible Jethro Mull

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AMERICAN DOCTOR - powerful, devastating, infuriating documentary on the genocide of Gaza. Find a screening. Go. See it.

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Perhaps it’s time to start a GoFundMe to pay some undergrad college journalists to go to Kentucky and go all Woodward and Bernstein on the state, no stone unturned, every source checked, to find out once and for all wtf is up with McConnell. I mean, mainstream media clearly prefers no story. 🤷‍♂️

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HOPE is the wildest, most insane, action-packed, exciting, thrilling, bonkers movie I have seen in A LONG TIME. Bigger than JAWS + CLOSE ENCOUNTERS + PREDATOR + JURASSIC PARK and very very Spielbergian. LOVED IT. SEE IT.

Why the World’s Largest Megaproject Collapsed | WSJ

TIL about a wildly ambitious Saudi city-building project called NEOM which WSJ says is toast. Interesting video, for sure. Imagine if the super-wealthy, especially those who’ve made their wealth from oil and gas, spent their wealth cleaning up their damage instead? 🤷‍♂️ m.youtube.com/watch?v=GbB3...

m.youtube.com

YouTube video by The Wall Street Journal

Antidisestablishmentantaranism? No. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Hey, Star Trek warned us about Fetterman some 60 years ago, not to trust that guy

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So…. the multibillionaire Patriots owner just wanted to take in views of, er, Lake America, then head back to the same airport he’d taken off from?

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

What in Hades IS this thing? Look at the look “George Washington” is giving on that thing. He seems disgusted at this whole state of affairs. Is this an ACTUAL United States quarter I was given with change at some store the other day?

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Two turntables, a microphone, and a $57 million Bombardier Global 6500 private jet.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Want to disrupt your Bluesky doomscrolling overnight? No better way than to follow @celebplanes.bsky.social and receive the resulting ONSLAUGHT of non-stop, er, as it were, updates of private jet flights all over the world. It is fricking INSANE. You'll want to invest in aviation fuel, holy fck. 😵‍💫

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Imagine pursuing your startup dreams—in Gainesville, FL—and describing your company as a “Visitor Relationship Management” firm, which the entire WORLD knows and HATES. 🤮🤬😡 Say hello to the guy responsible for paywalls everywhere: the “Admiral” himself: Dan Rua innovationsoftheworld.com/dan-rua/

innovationsoftheworld.com

Dan Rua, CEO - Admiral - Innovations of the World

Dan Rua, Runnin’ Down a Dream in Hogtown

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

TFW you try to copy a huge playlist (you spent years working on) from your Mac to iPhone and one button-click (“Sync”) and —poof—gone from the Mac. How such a destructive thing can possibly happen on a Mac is flabbergasting. Apple’s entire Music app on iOS+MacOS is a shambles. $4.5T company. 😡😱🤮🤬👀

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Why The Guardian always insists on lowercasing acronyms has been a longtime mystery. This headline is a beautiful example of how silly that policy looks in practice.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Are you effing kidding me? Substack is giving my email address out to effing republican political operatives and signing me up for their effing newsletters? I don't even subscribe to anything on Substack so how do they have my email address!?

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I have never understood the attraction to intentionally lighting a fire, releasing huge amounts of CO2 gas and PM2.5 particulates into the air as a huge public celebration, be it Burning Man or Zozobra in Santa Fe. Smoke is bad. m.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe2...

m.youtube.com

Sights and sounds from Zozobra 2026

YouTube video by The Santa Fe New Mexican

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Impressive and concerning at the same time, and no doubt El Niño is at least partly responsible: there are 3 hurricanes churning in the central Pacific right now. 👀

Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

What a lousy weekend for movies. Oh, to be at Telluride, but they were sold out long ago.

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Brian Dear @brianstorms.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I think I parked my car in front of an Ent. 🤷‍♂️