iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

“I must now think carefully about how to deal with this completely new and unforeseeable circumstance, since as a professional journalist person my high-level academic training involved having the part of my brain which deals in basic pattern recognition violently cauterized with a hot steak knife”

BlueSky posts from Peter Sterne
@petersterne.com

Journalists writing about Trump's plans to send the National Guard to cities in blue states have to think carefully about how to frame it.
The federal government (including the National Guard) call it an anti-crime narrative.
But it increasingly feels like that's a pretext for military occupation.

I don't think you can entirely discount the
"crime" narrative, especially when governors are pushing back by arguing that crime is down so they're unnecessary (implicitly accepting the premise).
But I do think you need to foreground that Trump is ordering military occupations of US cities.

August 23, 2025 at 9:42 PM

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

happened to be in the passenger seat crossing the Potomac towards Rosslyn around 4 PM; rolled down the window and lucked into this excellent (if I do say so myself) photo of the old Key Bridge Marriott mid-demolition. (Context via @arlnow.bsky.social : www.arlnow.com/2025/01/31/d... )

The last of a crumbling former hotel—the Key Bridge Marriott, closed in 2021 and condemned in 2023. Still 12 stories tall but now only a couple rooms deep… and you might not enjoy the amenities.

Between the hotel and the camera are leafy green trees. In the foreground is the teal railing, and one of the light-posts, of Key Bridge itself.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

“Bae Systems: Our Warfighting Technologies Are ‘On Fleek’”

Washington, DC Metro bus, fully wrapped in an advertisement for “BAE Systems,” whose tagline and imagery could not be more clear in communicating that they are a defense contractor of some kind

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Pokémon Go x MLB merch seems to be up for order. …I hate it. 1.) why does every Nats thing have to be fucking MAGA red 😩 2.) what in the off-model Y2K fan site is this art?!

Screenshot of order page on the MLB app showing Pokémon Go co-branded merch for six teams

Red jersey with janky-looking Pokémon art

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Fellow Virginia voters, if you’ve got some time today, PLEASE call Tim Kaine & Mark Warner about the *other* attack on trans healthcare this week. I modified the MadyCast template & abridged it to voicemail length—for a call to Warner, he’s also on the Finance committee (and don’t call him Kaine 😅)

Hi, I’m NAME, a constituent from ZIP CODE. I’m calling to express my dismay at a particular provision of the Republican reconciliation bill, which would ban federal funding of gender affirming care for patients of ANY age under Medicaid and ACA plans. This bill would impact many of my friends and remove access to lifesaving healthcare. It is a violation of basic human rights.

As a member of the Budget Committee, I know Senator Kaine has the ability to request the Parliamentarian to rule that certain provisions violate the Byrd rule. This provision specifically violates subsection 313(b)(1)(D) and 313(b)(1)(A) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. I beg the senator to please convince the Parliamentarian that this provision is clearly not related to the budget—it is meant to strip care from me and other trans people, because we are trans. It’s an unconstitutional and discriminatory provision that MUST be killed BEFORE the Senate votes to approve the bill. To be clear, a “no” vote on the bill itself is NOT enough here.

At the very least, Senator Kaine MUST speak out against this provision on social media, in committee hearings and on the Senate floor—his constituents will be watching.

I hope Senator Kaine will be sure to raise a point of order about this, and emphasize to the Parliamentarian how small of a portion of Medicaid gender affirming care is—likely under $1 billion.

I look forward to hearing the Senator’s plans to challenge this provision of the legislation. It is a matter of life and death for me and my friends.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

There are a couple great ones from @zachweinersmith.bsky.social / @smbccomics.bsky.social on this, including one about “we’ve created artificially intelligent students.” And this other one, which I think of *constantly*: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-0...

Woman wearing silly parody of a college pride hat says “the easier college gets, the dumber you look for not having a degree.”

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

oooh that sounds good! Here’s the recipe I use, it’s adapted from a postcard lol. And I gave them 22 min at 400 F, which turned out perfect imo. #muffin #muffins #MuffinRecipe #recipe #BlueberryMuffins #baking

Maine Wild Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups Maine wild blueberries
- (aka 1 pint basket)

Preparation
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin pan.
- Beat egg slightly, stir in milk and oil.
- Mix in the dry ingredients until the flour is moistened. Batter should be lumpy, do not over mix.
- Add the blueberries.
- Fill the muffin cups and bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Yields 12 muffins.

Notes
2025-06-11, in Maine
- added 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ginger, scant 1/4 tsp vanilla
- baking cup liners in that aluminum tin that’s

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

no, of course! What an opportunity! Here, I’ll do a big post with alt text once the weekend’s done, but these are my faves so far:

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

It still makes me chuckle, tho, that the guy who composed for all Ryan Coogler’s films— including Sinners and both Black Panther movies— and also (co-?)produced all the Childish Gambino albums (Glover approached him when both worked on Community)— looks like this

Picture from Wikipedia of Ludwig Göransson, Swedish composer born 1984. Shown in 2018, Göransson is a white man with blue eyes, long brown hair and a scruffy chin.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

I know we’re all dealing with The Horrors today but if you have a sec (after you’ve called your reps) please tell my sweetie @melbeast.bsky.social how cute they are in the glasses that protect their pretty eyes from The Bad Screen 👓😚

A pretty white person with shoulder-length red-brown hair wears over-ear headphones along with anti-computer-glare blue-light glasses in a black frame

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Sandygast Spotlight Hour success: *two* shinies (vs my previous “none”)! If you know what the regular version looks like, you can see why I wanted to grind for these ✨🏝️🏰 #Pokémon #PokemonGO #GoSnapshot #PokemonGoAR #ShinyPokemon #Sandygast #Pallosand #Groudon #PrimalGroudon

The Pokémon Sandygast, Pallosand, and Primal Groudon stand on a pebbled walkway by the open gate of a historical fort park. All three are their striking dark-gray-and-gold Shiny forms, as opposed to their usual colors.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Found myself making this image just now, because so far being forty is awesome

Still of the scene from “Taken” (2009) wherein Liam Neeson’s character is talking on the phone to the assailants have just kidnapped his daughter, saying “I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have… are a very particular set of skills.” But he’s also wearing the iconic red-and-white hat of Ash Ketchum from Pokémon.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

“‘Give me a writing credit and I’ll give you enough traumatized kids to fill a basketball arena,’ that’s the Stan Berkowitz Promise”

Screenshot of a wiki entry showing Stan Berkowitz’ writing credits for Superman: The Animated Series and its successor Batman Beyond. Highlighted are the titles of some episodes with particularly EC Comics-like endings: The Way of All Flesh, The Late Mr. Kent, Disappearing Inque, Earth Mover, Lost Soul, Sneak Peek, and April Moon. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

this comic by @3psboyd.bsky.social & @polygoncherub.bsky.social surfaces in my brain so, so often (www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/reside...)

Comic titled "Residents" from Three Panel Soul dot com, by Matthew Boyd and Ian McConville. An exhausted-looking nurse and an equally exhausted-looking doctor stand next to each other in a hospital. The nurse, slumped, says "how come they make residents work 36-hour shifts? That seems dangerous." The doctor replies "well, there's a very good reason the surgeon William Stewart Halstead set that standard over 100 years ago." "Is it related to cocaine?" asks the nurse. "There is some cocaine in the story," answers the doctor.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

*deep breaths* alright, went back through my own older pics. Does look like #PokemonGO changed how shadows render around the end of December. Maybe they’re still tweaking it & this guy got A/B’d into a different group than everyone else? Rare but not unprecedented… I’ll back down. (…for now… 😤 )

Crop of an otherwise-unedited Pokémon Go AR photo from December 9, 2024. The legs of a Genesect are visible standing on a concrete sidewalk. The rendered shadow “cast” by the creature on the sidewalk is blurred & diffuse.

Crop of an otherwise-unedited Pokémon Go AR photo from January 6, 2025. The bottom half of an Excadrill is visible standing on dirty snow. The rendered shadow “cast” by the creature on the snow is darker and sharper than the shadow in the Genesect picture, with visible pixelation at the edges.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

someone in the local Pokémon Go group is trying to convince me he took his “Pokémon Go AR photos” (left) with the stock Pokémon Go app (my results, right) which has me somewhere between “arguing with the kid who said he had a backyard pool of ninja turtle ooze” & “playing the Zapruder film on loop”

Crop of a “Pokémon Go AR photograph” of a shiny Magikarp on a person’s hand. The “shadow” “cast” by the Magikarp is diffuse and blurred, and does not show the Magikarp’s whiskers. The scene beyond is a bright water scene

Crop of an actual Pokémon Go AR photograph of a shiny Magikarp on a person’s hand. The “shadow” “cast” by the Magikarp is sharp and pixelated, and DOES show the Magikarp’s whiskers. The scene beyond is a normal kitchen

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Bun-zuh. Cinnamon bun-zuh. (Why yes, I do plan to say that every time I have cinnamon buns for the rest of my natural life) #food #breakfast #cinnamonbuns #bagel #egg #sausage

A metal pan of freshly-glazed cinnamon buns. Beyond, a plate with a bagel & egg sandwich plus a couple loose sausage links.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Oooh, these are good AF… especially the ones currently out-of-stock, of course, lol. Will keep this in mind for future. Thanks for the tip!

A “trans rights” enamel pin, $11, sold out

A “they/he” enamel pin, available at Little District Books for $11

An enamel pin with a happy cloud and a pink-teal-lavender rainbow below the words “everything is fucked.” $11, sold out.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Found this series of Across the Spider-Verse blind-box figurines recently. All cute, but at $17 I was getting one. IMO, there’s a clear standout… used my old HeroClix box-weight-in-hand skills and, got ‘em! The best one: “Holding a Cat” Spider-Man! So now he’s my desk bud & the box is my pen cup. 😊

Atop a white table sits a black plastic computer thingy, with many black computer cables behind it against an off-white wall. Atop this is a brightly colored figurine of Miles Morales, hero of the Spider-Verse movies, leaping through midair with a quizzical expression on his spider-man mask. He holds a rotund orange cat wearing a cat-shaped version of the classic, red-and-blue Peter Parker Spider-Man costume. They are held up by an orange plastic strut so as to be above a bright orange plastic base resembling the multiverse portals from the Across the Spider-Verse films

The store display of the full range of Pop Mart “Across the Spider-Verse” blind-box figurines. All nine regular figures are displayed on tiered shelves in a transparent case. Below are cases of nine boxed figures per case. One has a price tag of $16.99. A case of nine has a price tag of $152.91

On a white desk a small black cardboard box holds pens. The size of the box shows the “editions” available in the Pop Mart “Marvel Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse Series Figures.” The “regular editions,” quoted as 1 in 9 odds, are shown and listed as: Miles Morales, Holding a Cat, Gwen, Spider-Man India, Spider-Punk, Peter B Parker, Jessica Drew, Spider-Man 2099, and Miles G Morales. There is also a blank outline of a figure labeled as “secret,” with 1 in 108 odds. If you know the movie you can tell it’s almost certainly a figure of The Spot, the film’s villain.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

resurfacing this extremely reasonable centrist compromise

cait @cait.bsky.social •3h

i think we should charge drivers more money actually

cait @cait.bsky.social • 3h

i think there should be a maximum allowed size for vehicles and if you want one bigger than that you have to pay 10 million dollars.

Aterminus estee @ubergreen.bsky.social

ooh, and even after paying the ten million dollars you are automatically considered at fault for all accidents involving the vehicle and also it is legal to kill you for any reason

January 6, 2025 at 2:11 PM

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

To me this reads less as an “aww 🥰” and more as an “oh no 😰”

one of those yellow-and-pink-ish “golden haiku” signs that the business district “golden triangle” in downtown Washington DC puts in the sidewalk planters. This one reads:

“Dad’s pocket knife
the space between us
whittles away

—Edward Huddleston”

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

the world as I’ve known it is absolutely ending in my lifetime (very possibly within the next ten years) and being on this website about it is a fucking bummer, but— I personally had a really nice afternoon.

clip from the 2008 film Cloverfield, starring Michael Stahl-David as Rob Hawkins and Odette Yustman as Beth McIntyre, Rob's girlfriend. In this final scene, footage taking place about a month before the monster attack that makes up most of the movie shows Beth and Rob sitting on a Ferris wheel at Coney Island, as Beth nods at the camera and says “I had a good day!”

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

all these fucking nerds with their thirty-page writeups from 2018 hosted on 1998 GeoCities-ass websites, and not one of them can tell me HOW TALL the damn BUILDING is? What is the internet even FOR?! Christ almighty...

screenshot of, I shit you not, "Clem's Baseball Blog," a web site that looks like it was designed based on HTML tutorials from a physically printed how-to book predating the September 11th attacks and which is an eye-searing lime green. The site is hosting a stadium description of Nationals Park - built in 2008, and this site stating "last updated: July 3, 2022."

Screenshot from "ballparkratings.com/ballparks/nationals-park/" which shows a robust "table of contents" and then gets right into a thorough review of the "local scene" around Nationals Park. The page is just text, poorly formatted, with the occasional side-aligned inset image. If you exported HTML from goddamn Microsoft Word it would probably look better than this. Also if you are on this page and you hit "print" it tells you the printed version will be THIRTY THREE PAGES LONG.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

guy who organizes our local #PokemonGo group had dropped un-subtle hints he’d appreciate some celebration of his upcoming birthday. So yesterday I took a box of “white” cake mix + a box of red velvet, made #PokeBall #cupcakes, & before the Gigantamax Snorlax event we ambushed him a week early lol

A 12-cup mini-muffin tin on a baking sheet. The cups, with cupcake liners, are filled half-and-half with red and white batter. It’s a little fast and messy, but perfection isn’t the point here haha.

Same tray, baked. The cupcakes have risen well after 14-15 minutes in a 325 F oven

11 of the mini-cupcakes on a paper plate. The white-cake half of each has been frosted with white icing, leaving the red half exposed

Fifteen mini-cupcakes on a paper plate. The red halves of the cupcakes have now been frosted with red icing, and a black stripe applied on the line between the red and white icing. They resemble the sides of Poké Balls, from the Pokémon franchise

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

I wonder if the person who wrote this tweet knows how frequently I think of it although I guess the “#diversity” part is still on administrative leave

Screenshot of a Twitter post by Arlington County Bike Lanes (@Arl VA bike lanes), reading:

New York subway ads are for like Cheetos.

DC metro ads are like "Sen. Warner, please ask your intern Kaylee to authorize the purchase of 1 million TLAMs 😘 --Lockheed-Grumman Atomics #diversity"

8:54 PM • 2/5/24 • 27 Views

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

“do it, Dad. Make me become The Joker, but for the cause of good” is sufficiently implicit here, right?

Link to a New York Times opinion piece by DAVID fucking BROOKS as an outgoing iOS message.

Sent 8:56 PM.

Subsequent sent messages read:

Seen online with the commentary, "i am going to Lose My [...] Mind if the seed crystal for an antifascist general strike ends up being david [...] brooks"

Even wiling to swallow the rise of bile at the claims of American universities being "shrouded in a stifling progressivism" (false, bad-faith, contrary to the call for unity that is his larger point). If someone's pushing the Overton window in a helpful direction, I'm not here to kick their shins right now.

Delivered

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

every. little. bit. helps. *gritting my teeth so hard that shards fly out* It’s good… to have you… on board… *an entire molar pops through my cheek* …David. Brooks.

Excerpt from a New York Times opinion piece by David fucking Brooks, who does his usual “two good points as the bread of a dogshit sandwich” writing:

People flock from all over the world to admire our universities.

But like all institutions, they have their flaws.
Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don't matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Wow, this one from the way home might be… even worse? I think? I maybe gotta get out of this town.

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Me, seeing this shiny: 😀 Me, seeing this CP and knowing how flee rates work: 😰 Oh please, oh please… …yes! #Pokémon #PokemonGO #ShinyPokemon #Floragato

Pokémon Go screenshot showing that the player has encountered a shiny Floragato wearing a hat (this is rare). Its CP is 1,405, raising the odds that it will escape capture and run away. The player has given it a Golden Razz Berry, and is preparing to throw an Ultra Ball, raising the odds of capture as high as possible (without wasting a Master Ball).

Pokémon Go screenshot showing that the player successfully captured the Floragato from the previous screenshot! Hooray! The player has favorited the Pokémon, named it “Up 2 Get Lucky,” and tagged it “Mirror,” “Photo,” and “Rare Costumes”

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Big work meeting soliciting feedback from this year’s conferences & ideas for next year’s

iOS messages screenshot. User’s messages read:

Can I say that we should actually address the elephant in the room that America is now an openly fascist state and they're looking to destroy 90% of education and make the last 10% a state-controlled luxury good?

I can't say that, can I (and keep my job)

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J.S. Aughtnik 🏳️‍⚧️🚺🤷🏻‍♀️ @catastrobot.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

*sigh* somehow, the ads at the Pentagon Metro station got even more fascist

In a Washington, DC subway station, a large advertisement on the wall reads - in large white lettets on a dark blue background - “dominance starts with production,” in all caps, with “connect the factory to the fight” below it in smaller orange letters (also in all caps). It’s an ad for some kind of military AI to create plausible deniability for human agency in drone strikes

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