iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Some guy who never got over Erin Esurance: Well, this doesn't get me horny at ALL.

Say hello to Liberty Biberty!

(some yellow looking tribble with blue eyes and a Statue of Liberty hat which is supposed to get you interested in Liberty Mutual Insurance)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Oh, what a shame this strip mall vape store was abandoned twenty years before vaping was invented.

VAPE - KRATOM - CIGARS
Strip mall vape store signage that's aiming for a white-on-red (red-on-white?) cloud of smoke vibe, but in execution looks like extreme sun damage...or the price you pay for taking the low bid on your graphics.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

For those who are interested, Tom Roche from WWOZ New Orleans posted the CBS Newspath affiliate memos for September 11, 2001 to a public Facebook group earlier today. In retrospect, one kind of stands out. "This is precautionary only at this time."

From CBS Newspath, 9/11/01:

All
^NN-ChicagoSkyline-Live Picture
URGENT
Attention Stations:
CBS Newspath Chicago is uplinking a live WBBM picture of the Chicago Skyline on
Telstar 6 3E (ku digital).
This is precautionary only at this time.
Regards
Newspath Chicago

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Settle my curiosity. What's John Lennon's hand doing in this picture? #Beatles 1️⃣ The time-honored British salute (Two of Us) 2️⃣ The American version (This Bird Has Flown) 📊 Show results

A 1965 photo of John Lennon in the Abbey Road studio making a rude gesture at a photographer, but it's uncertain which one. Paul and Ringo are also in the picture, kind of out of it.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, that's...ONE way of putting it. 👀

Bluesky trending box on the afternoon of August 26, 2026. Highlighted: Celebrity deaths spark Grim Reaper jokes.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Buddy Holly From the Original Master Tapes. It came with my first Columbia House bundle, but was the first one I put into the player. "That'll Be The Day", leaping from the most complete silence that a 1980s stereo could conjure with crystal clarity, was how the digital era introduced itself to me.

CD cover of Buddy Holly From the Original Master Tapes (1985). The color palate, with Buddy being "reanimated" in pastels, feels like the most 1980s thing about the collection.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

You've already got a good collection here, but one more for good luck.

1965 photo from the Mark Lewisohn Complete Beatles Chronicle book, where John (with acoustic guitar) flips the bird to the cameraperson during a studio session. He's seated with Ringo (at drums) and Paul (with bass), and the other two are less expressive, especially with their hands.
p.203 in the hardcover

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

If George Jetson's birthday rates a post, this definitely does. #RayBradbury #OTD

John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social):

"Today is August 4, 2026," says an automated voice in a house devoid of people near the start of Ray Bradbury's post-nuclear-war tale "There Will Come Soft Rains".

Bradbury's story first ran in the May 6, 1950 issue of Colliers, a few days before appearing in the book _The Martian Chronicles_ The story is still under copyright, but you can get the book from many libraries and bookstores. Collier's also ran many other stories over the years; many issues can be found here: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Thinking a lot about the irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand lately. #BookSky #WillaCather

The Episcopal residence was an old adobe house, much out of repair, but with possibilities of comfort. Father Latour had chosen for his study a room at one end of the wing. There he sat, as this afternoon of Christmas Day faded into evening. It was a long room of an agreeable shape. The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand. There was a reassuring solidity and depth about those walls, rounded at door-sills and window-sills, rounded in wide wings about the corner fire-place.

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather, Book 1, Chapter 3

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Even the parts of Google that aren't explicitly AI are starting to worry me.

Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. starring Charlton Heston … the Vampire Slayer

(Wikipedia link with jammed-together description)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

It reminds me of the fast food tradition of never making your dining rooms cozy enough that people actually want to stay there.

Fontaine Fox cartoon, October 17, 1917.

The gentleman taking the next seat in the one-arm restaurant brushes his coat over the terrible tempered Mr. Bang's lunch.

(In the dining area of said one-arm restaurant, a row of men sitting in seats which look like school desks (but worse). One of them (Mr. Bang) has knocked off the hat of another with a ferociously lobbed piece of pie.)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

N. California TV Guide, June 15, 1965. ITV aired 65 episodes of Big Night Out, and I get the funniest feeling this was the only one that made it to the US. #Beatles

TV GUIDE CLOSE UP -- 7:30, 5 (KPIX San Francisco, CA) THE BEATLES - Variety

'BIG NIGHT OUT'

Special - The Beatles (Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, pictured to the right) are interviewed and sing five of their hits. Joining them are songstress Jackie Trent and the Lionel Blair Dancers.

Mike and Bernie Winters are hosts for this half-hour film which begins with the Beatles returning to England after their 1964 US tour. Included in the question asked the group is what type of fan mail have they been receiving.

(TV Guide, June 15, 1965, Northern California edition. Note that CBS gave 7:30 Tuesdays back to their local stations during the 1964-65 season, so this wasn't a network broadcast.)

WATCH IT!
THE BEATLES
"Big Night Out"
Tuesday/7:30 PM

Psst...we're being watched!

(KPIX San Francisco, CA advertisement on the opposite TV Guide listings page, where the heroes of a generation (in standard publicity shots) and the accompanying ad copy are surrounded by an oval of CBS eyes. Although this was a big market CBS affiliate, the network wasn't programming shows at 7:30 Tuesday during the 64-65 season, so this was a local broadcast.)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

kojira.github.io/bluesky-lice... According to whatever's behind this, I am very generous with the like button and have the velocity of a pigeon wearing ankle weights, but that's nothing you didn't already know.

Bluesky License for ChiselerNeil. License class: CITIZEN.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

See, there was this thing people had started tinkering with called "shortwave", but skepticism about whether it was actually useful was still in the air. Y'know, I've run my mouth too long. I'll tell you that part later.

Long Waves Best?

The virtues of short-wave broadcasts are not, however, yet proved; for on January 1st-2nd of this year Daventry made its first real attempt to transmit a special programme to America on 1,600 metres. Music and speech were picked up clearly at Belfast, maine, superceiving station, relayed on a short wavelength to Bound Brook, New Jersey, re-broadcast throughout the American continent, and simultaneously picked up at the British receiving station and relayed back to 2LO.

(excerpt from Wireless World, January 13, 1926)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

By midnight ET, reception reports came in from 29 US states, Havana, Buenos Aires, Bermuda and Peru, but one was special: A.G.D. West, assistant chief BBC engineer, reported that the US relay had been received at the point of origin in London, a first. Everyone was lucky shenanigans didn't ensue.

A grand howl:

One member of the small party present at the studio inquired what would happen if 2LO had relayed the programme, as it was received from WJZ, to Daventry for retransmission--his idea apparently being that something in the way of perpetual motion would thus be achieved. The result would have been that 5XX would set up a howl that would have been heard right across the American continent.

(excerpt from Wireless World, January 13, 1926)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The NY Times talked about how the sound from England came through "in peculiar, undulating sound waves", which matches what's on the recording, but like the first time some of us heard a RealAudio stream over dial-up, quality must've been secondary to the miracle that it could be done at all.

NY Times 1/2/1926:
Undulating Sound Waves.

The music then came in and was recognized as "When You and I Were Seventeen." Both the words of the announcement and the strains of the song came over the air in peculiar, undulating sound waves, which gave one the impression of being at the ocean shore watching huge waves break on the beach in regular time beats, or of being on a ship at sea in heavy weather.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

By 7:30 Eastern, conditions had improved enough that New York was able to retransmit a band remote of Jean Lensen's band from Ciro's Club in London...which, going by the Radio Times, was what 5XX would've been sending out anyway. The RT didn't actually mention any international broadcasts.

Radio Times schedule for 5XX Daventry (note the absence of any mention of international broadcasts here):
10:30 a.m. -- Time Signal and Weather Forecast.
11.0-1.0 -- The Radio Quartet and Emilie Waldron (soprano), John Turner (Tenor), Annette Claire (Piano).
1.0-2.0, 4.0-11.0 -- Programmes S.B. from London.
11.0-12.0. -- Jack Howard's Band from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
12.0-2.0 a.m. -- Jean Lensen's Ciro's Club Dance Band.

Picture of Jean Lensen's Band c. 1928: Probably Fred Aspinal (piano), Jean Lensen (violin), Ben davis (saxophones and clarinet), Billy Bell (banjo), Raymond Lensen (bass) and Jack Olivieri (drums)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The London relay was scheduled for 7 Eastern, with Big Ben striking midnight, but atmospheric conditions were against them, so violinist Godfrey Ludlow did the honors for something that even a century later is still live broadcasting tradition: stalling for time.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The big production began at 6:15 EST with an address by RCA's David Sarnoff. No existing recording, but considering his company would launch soon-to-be broadcast centenarian NBC by the end of the year, the cut-down version in the NY Times has its own whiff of the future.

New York Times 1/2/1926, with an excerpt from a broadcast speech by RCA's David Sarnoff: "The great significance of the demonstration which radio broadcasting is making tonight is in the vista which is opened of national as well as world service by radio. Superpower broadcasting brings into view that exchange of national cultures which can only serve to enrich and strengthen our own institutions. It brings into view a national broadcasting service that will transmit to every home in the land the cultural and educational advantages developed by the best thought of the nation. It brings into view a system of service by radio, which will help to place the most modest home in the village or on the farm on a par, culturally and educationally, with the richest home in the metropolitan city."

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Thanks to American radio historians, we know that the existing recordings were on early electrical 78rpm discs cut at a Victor recording studio. What has come down to us is thirty-three minutes of a multi-hour broadcast, capped off by a concert from Victor artists John McCormack and Lucrezia Bori.

A detailed program what John McCormack and Lucrezia Bori performed on the January 1, 1926 international broadcast, with selections mostly drawn from the classical repertoire, orchestra conducted by Josef Pasternack, as listed in the January 15, 1926 issue of Talking Machine World.

"At the conclusion of the public program, Mr. McCormack was induced to offer an encore, singing 'Mother, My Dear,' and at the close extended greetings for the New Year to the unseen audience in a manner that was characteristic." Some, but not all, of the selections in the printed program still exist on the surviving Victor recordings.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Anyway, that was the atmosphere of experimentation which led to January 1, 1926, and the first properly organized attempt by the American stations to link the entire western hemisphere through radio, and 5XX Daventry would play a role. So, the broadcast itself...

ENGLAND TO BE UPON AIR

International programs are scheduled tonight.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

A second attempt was successful enough that the press started speculating about whether regular UK-to-US relays were in the future...and indeed, England was already finding its way into American radio mailbags on a regular basis. I have some thoughts on why, but first things first...

BRITISH FANS ARE PUZZLED BY ANNOUNCERS (1925)

London, March 28 -- British listeners-in are extremely puzzled by the American announcers' expression "stand by." In response to many letters of inquiry the explanation was published, showing that the term was based on the fact that most announcers were trained as ships' operators.

The English fans are particularly interested in Station KGO, Portland, Ore., where the announcers refer to the studio floor as the "deck" and the walls as the "bulkheads" and other nautical terms which are now explained.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The New Years Day 1926 international broadcast was a culmination of years of testing the limits of early radio, and just nine months after WJZ New York's first "brave attempt" to rebroadcast London via 5XX, before the official opening of the Daventry site, with "atrocious" results.

United Press via Trenton Sunday Times, March 14th: "The most significant piece of radio news during the past week was the brave attempt made by station WJZ, New York to rebroadcast the program of station 2LO, London.

"From the viewpoint of the casual listener-in, the results were atrocious, with a super-preponderance of static's squeals and howls, and with but an occasional something resembling the music which was supposedly picked up.

"However, from the viewpoint of technicians and radio enthusiasts, the event proved to be a little more than a mere magnificent gesture."

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Just to underline the childness of this operation, the tarp of shame reminds me of one of those writing tablets we used in first grade with a pencil as thick as a horse's leg. #KennedyCenter

The tarp-covered name of the Kennedy Center as captured on the MS NOW stream at 9:37am EDT. The tarp is a pattern of two thin lines and one thick one randomly broken up by a dotted line which would appear to be seams.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Before I caught a fuller whiff what was brewing this morning, my first thought was Clifton Fadiman's advice for reading Don Quixote. But there's a big difference between "feel free to skip this tipped-in short story that adds nothing to the plot" and "all dialogue all the time, baby."

Clifton Fadiman on Don Quixote in The Lifetime Reading Plan (1960 edition):

"However, if you use, as I suggest, a complete translation, do some skipping. Whenever (or almost whenever) you come to a goatherd or a shepherdess, some drivel lies ahead. Skip all the interpolated pastoral yarns that pleased Cervantes' audience but bore us stiff. Skip every bit of verse you meet; Cervantes is one of the world's worst poets."

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

It looks like Tom's Guide was the only one that attempted "continuing coverage", and they bailed out yesterday morning. That might not be the worst thing, since all they really did was restate what they were seeing on Downdetector and post a bunch of headlines over stock photos. #TFiber #TMobile

May 28, 2026 at 11:02 AM
Reader spoke to T-Mobile

(AI-rendered picture of a someone in a hoodie sitting at an unbranded laptop in a featureless room, implying that reaching T-Mobile fiber's customer support is l33t hacking skill. Which, all things considered, might not be wrong.)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

"Here's where we stand — and we want to be straight with you." Then four paragraphs of corporate evasiveness. No, I'm not snickering. That's just how I breathe during pollen season. #tmobile #tfiber

T-Mobile Fiber form letter as posted to the T-Fiber reddit (with the final line added by the poster):

New email:

Important Update Regarding Your Internet Service Dear T-Fiber Customer,

Here's where we stand — and we want to be straight with you.

We replaced hardware earlier today and saw some customers come back online, but we're not done yet. Some connections are still unstable, and we know every minute offline matters.

Our technicians are on-site right now and won't leave until every customer is fully restored. This has turned out to be more complex than expected, and we're not taking shortcuts.

We'll send another update the moment we have a resolution — no radio silence.

Thank you for bearing with us.

T-Mobile Fiber

ChatGPT ass email lmao

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

After another number from London, under a waterfall of atmospheric noise, the announcer says it's coming from something he's calling the "British Broadcasting Company". The Royal Charter was still a year away. #BBC #Longwave #1920s

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

In honor of #BBC Radio 4 LW closing down for the final time, a trip back to New Year's 1926, where 5XX Daventry was trying to use longwave to bridge the Atlantic...and how that sounded in America. This is a snippet of a miracle recording that shouldn't exist. I promise, it's the real deal.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Repost with the Russian agent that spies on your posts

1980s wrestler Nikita Koloff, pictured with his "uncle" Ivan

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Because they want That Man off the air as quickly as possible, the Byron Allen era of toothless CBS late night begins TOMORROW. Friday's schedule: Comics Unleashed followed by an Allen-produced quiz that's so off-the-radar that TitanTV thinks it's something else from 60 years ago. #Colbert

What TitanTV is convinced Friday's CBS midnight block is going to look like, specifically 12:37:

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK
Game/Quiz 10/28/1968
Lloyd Thaxton hosts a game show in which five celebrities are asked questions, then two contestants are asked to identify which celebrity said which answer.

That'd probably be a better show than what diehards are going to get.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I had at least one of those, and I seem to remember you did, too.

Five champagne glasses come together in a toast.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Good to have these handy. Not that I could've posted it here, of course. #BlueskyDown

BLUESKY IS DOWN. YES, AGAIN.

A framed collection of intensely blue butterflies (image borrowed from BicBugs, with apologies).

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Graphite art pencil on index card. Adding the cocktail toothpicks seemed like a good idea in the moment.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Give me your favorite non-Trek performance from a Star Trek actor. Gotta go with Leonard Nimoy as the murderous doctor whose hard-hearted arrogance makes Lieutenant Columbo lose his chill in "A Stitch In Crime".

Dr. Barry Mayfield (Nimoy) in conference with prospective murder victim Dr. Edmund Heideman (Will Geer).

Dr. Mayfield, seated behind his desk, laughs loud and long while taunting Lt. Columbo, who is about to have one of his very rare no-chill moments.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

For @ifbookspod.bsky.social : That time Dale Carnegie almost wrote a chapter of How To Win Friends and Influence People about what to do when you go to jail, but took a vacation instead.

There were few men or women whom Dale Carnegie could not win over, once he was in their presence. But there was an unwritten chapter to How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie realized there were some people for whom none of the rules applied. It was impossible, under any circumstances, to get along with them. The unwritten chapter was to deal with those times when ‘‘somebody has to go to jail, be spanked, divorced, knocked down, sued in court.”

Carnegie later said that he never wrote the chapter because he had an opportunity to take a vacation in Europe before he could complete it. Thus he had to send the book to the publisher without his final word on human relations. Given the difficulty of reconciling such a chapter with the rest of the book, the vacation was probably the better course of action.

(from Dale Carnegie: The Man Who Influenced Millions by Giles Kemp and Edward Claflin (1988, p. 153))

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Especially the part where she's so hung up on being first that she gets the details wrong.

"The FBI Washington Field Office's National Capital Response Squad has responded to a shooting at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. The subject is in custody."
(FBI statement as reported by a BBC News live blog)

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Today's mood: cautiously optimistic. But only to a point. theonion.com/at-long-last...

Imagine a roaring arena packed to the rafters with pathological liars. High above you in the nosebleeds are podcasters, screaming that you’ll die if you don’t buy their skincare products. Below, on the floor, imagine demonic battalions of super-influencers physically forcing people into home fitness devices designed to dismantle their bodies bone by bone and reassemble them into a grotesque statue of yourself. Out of the throngs, an extremely sick looking man approaches you. He puts his hands on your shoulders. He explains that he is your life coach and that you owe him $800.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

JM Ockerbloom checks in with the part of the Roman Catholic catechism that Baby Catholic Vance forgot about.

John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social):

Since various public figures have brought it up, here's a summary of the "just war" doctrine, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P81.HTM

This is best understood as a *minimum* Catholic standard for entering into and conducting warfare. As a few sections (e.g. 2306, 2311) imply, there's also a substantial tradition in the Church for renouncing violence entirely.

Pope Leo's recent remarks reflect the "rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy" the Catechism insists upon.

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The ChiselerNeil From The Black Lagoon @chiselerneil.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Trans Day of Visibility: a big enough deal that it's trending twice.

The trending window of the Bluesky web interface at around 10am EDT, with Trans Day of Visibility in the #2 and 4 slots. This list moves surprisingly fast. In the time it took me to make this screenshot, the #2 knocked "Hegseth" out of #1 for half a second.

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