iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A deeply profound post from @lizhynes.bsky.social primarily addressed to cishet men, but words that should be read and processed by all. Screenshotting just the ending here, but those words hit the hardest if you've read the ones that lead up to it. lizhynes.substack.com/p/free

i want you to think beyond yourself. beyond your mother or your sister or your daughter. i want you to finally see our common selves. i want you to imagine everything you are, everything you’ve ever said or done or seen or created, your proudest moment and your favorite song and the movies that make you cry and the hardest you ever laughed, reduced to

free pussy

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A show I loved so much I made a video essay about it with @justtanner101.bsky.social intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/1...

Screenshot of Bluesky post from James Poniewozik: But the show I want to single out-the one on my personal 10-shows ballot that did not make the list at all—is this beautiful, and apparently now largely forgotten, creation. Do yourself a favor and seek it out.
(86 Ted Lasso to make room for it.)

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

My poor little Livie is like, yes, this is what I deal with every day

Photo of two cats laying down in adjacent office chairs. Cute sweet cat in the foreground looking at the camera, demon jerk cat (but he means well) napping in the background.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I mean, cats, am I right? Seriously, though

Photo of a cute (redundant) cat sitting in a very large Chewy box and looking at the camera like she knows this is basic cat shit but what else can she do, right?

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

There’s also this part, where he could only enlist when got OFF the meds that presumably helped to keep him stable.

Screenshot of text from the article:

“Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said.

He was eventually able to enlist.”

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

This is a cat checkpoint. Relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone.

Low-angle shot of a sleepy cat on cat condo platform, head resting on a paw

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Writer (and @ndftt.bsky.social alum) Liz Hynes says a profound goodbye to a profoundly good human in Stephen Colbert and offers a requiem for the Late Show. lizhynes.substack.com/p/good-night

Screenshot from the post: "much has been said about what this means For Democracy, and of course the answer is nothing good. it is scary and bad and i’m obviously enraged that 200 excellent jobs, many of them union, have been deleted from the entertainment landscape. i’m furious that my brilliant friends were putting out popular, quality work and are now needlessly adrift in an industry that’s eroding at alarming speed. but i spend a lot of time being mad — occupational hazard. we can put that on the shelf for later. i can’t let my fury for what should still be eclipse my gratitude for what was."

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

What the fuck is this new fresh hell of an AI icon sitting at the bottom of my Google doc. Quit getting all up in our shit!!!

Screenshot of the bottom of a Google doc, where the evil Gemini icon rests

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Analyzing Trump decisons🤝 Santos figuring out weird cases #ThePitt

Screenshot of Santos from THE PITT, with text of her quote overlaid: "I just think, 'What's the stupidest thing this person could have done?" and assume they did it.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Within you (and my house) are two cats: one fired up to take a swipe at the world and one worried about what happens if the swipe misses #caturday

Low-angle photo of a cat on the top of a cat tree taking a right-pawed swipe at the camera. His name is Coley, and he is a scamp.

Cat laying down on her side and looking at the camera with a pensive face. Her name is Livie, and she really wishes there weren’t so many scary sounds in the world.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

The four coolest people (not) on the planet

A livestream screenshot of the four astronauts on NASA's Artemis II mission in the Orion spacecraft. They're all laughing and seemingly having the time of their lives.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

God bless the Chicago karaoke bar we went to tonight that had this glorious trio of photos just outside our door #BearDown

A horizontally stacked trio of photos featuring 1980s Chicago Bears icons Walter Payton and Jim McMahon, on a wall between a pair of karaoke room doors

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

It was a good day to be in Chicago

No Kings March photo. A handwritten sign says “The power of the people is greater than the people in power” as the crowd walks in front of the Trump building in Chicago

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Search your camera roll for “Hell”

Screenshot of two skeets.

Top one: Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsk... • 7m
Mariners fans must be smoking cigarettes like the file photo of Homer

Bottom one: Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bs... • 34s
Here's the thing with sports: when you're in the high-pressure playoff spaces, it might feel like hell. But that's the greatest thing about sports fandom: you get to feel it. You get to live and die. Feel it, live it, embrace it.
You might never forget it, and how many things are like that?

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Fittingly enough, every single word of this fierce piece of writing is crucial. But these particular sections of words are my favorites.

Screenshot of text: I am sick to death of this — of the tech industry deciding it can do what it wants without consequences. Everything is a subscription, everything is harder to use and enshittified. Everything is built on something that was stolen or degraded. So-called AI – which is not intelligent at all – is being shoved into everything, and makes nothing better (quite the reverse). “Move fast and break things” now extends to the reputations and identities of respected professionals and creative people. And you have the nerve to presume we should all put up with every outrage, with every act of destruction, with every theft. I don’t. I won’t.

I don’t condone this. I don’t condone what Grammarly has done, to myself or anyone being touted as an expert on your site. I don’t condone any of these slop machines stealing people’s work without compensation and filling people’s minds with shitty art or crap writing that is full of inaccuracies.

Screenshot of text: You should all be ashamed.

You should be ashamed of where you work. Not just Grammarly or Superhuman or whatever comically dumb name you come up with next. Almost everyone running tech firms, most people in positions of responsibility, pretty much every C-suite type — congrats, you’re all making the world a worse place. People used to be excited about tech, now they dread what data you're going to steal next, they dread what violation of privacy or the environment will turn up next. There are people in tech who want to do good, but they’re consistently outvoted or stampeded by selfish hucksters and thieves. What the vast majority of those with power are doing or enabling is shamefully disrespectful and destructive. Everyone hyping and shilling for all this? You shouldn’t be proud of making people dumber or stealing from people. Because LLMs and the whole AI hype machine — it’s just idiocy, plagiarism, greed and theft on a grand scale.

Screenshot of text: These plagiarism machines simply regurgitate what has been fed into them. They are not capable of true art, real creativity, the kind of structure, nuance and depth that are the hallmarks of worthy acts of creativity. These slop machines are wrong a lot of the time, they encourage people to do terrible things, and they are simply bad for the world. I feel sad for anyone who uses them, because they’re degrading the human condition — the ability to know and care and understand. All this theft, stupidity and degradation is not only bad and harmful — it's unnecessary.

Because actual writers and artists and creative folks are right here! All we want is baseline respect and reasonable compensation. But the snake-oil salespeople involved in pushing these the hallucinating plagiarism machines on the rest of us think any compensation is too much! The executives ruining human discourse and the planet – they must be lavishly paid. Actual creators — we get exactly nothing. No money, no respect, no consent.

And so, from the bottom of my underpaid, deeply creative heart: Fuck you.

Screenshot of text: What’s wrong with you? Seriously, what is wrong with you? Why do you want to shit on entire swathes of human endeavor and wreck the planet while you’re doing it? Why are you so determined to be awful and amoral? Everything about your priorities is messed up, and you should all be heartily ashamed, abashed and embarrassed.

Go fuck yourselves. And get my name out of your mouths.

Sincerely,

Maureen “Mo” Ryan

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

I bought this cap to wear at a Notre Dame Gender Resource Center panel on sports, media, and masculinity last week, and in only a few days since, it has doubled in cultural value.

Black ball cap with lettering that reads “Currently thinking about Heated Rivalry and political revolution”

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Welp, the post right before yours sure set the stage

Screenshot of posts:
Quote post: D(oc) Oc(k) @frittersandclam.... • 15m this happened to me during a week long power outage. my husband is T1D and we needed refrigerator for insulin specifically but also it was late summer and so hot. me saying repeatedly "but you know there is a week long power outage" didn't move them at all. i was furious.
Embedded post: Maryn McKenna @maryn... • 10h In America, where irony is dead, a hotel chain uses a policy denying shelter to local people, for fear of accidentally housing homeless persons...
To deny a reservation to the author of a much-lauded book on how American economic unfairness forces working people into homelessness.

Immediately preceding post: treb @treblaw.bsky.social • 15m
what sick disgusting company or individual at said company are we going to learn about today
21 019R乙
iamelle @ Miamellehouie net • 24m

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

I tried to give this article a good faith read, but here’s where I tapped out.

Screenshot of a paragraph from the article: “Andrew, for his part, was unable to adopt the performative allyship that had become expected. "I always thought I was an effeminate nerd growing up... but my way of expressing myself now puts me on the most masculine end of men in media," he told me. "I started to pick up on the fact that there wasn't much room for people who even speak in my timbre."”

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

This was immediately after Coley spent about 10 minutes in 25-degree temps outside in the catio

Cat standing at a heat vent with his face up against the grill

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Subscribe to The Onion to keep up with the latest tech developments

$THE ONION Al Chatbot That Only Responds 'Huh' Valued At $200 Billion TOOL REPEATS SINGLE-SYLLABLE EXPRESSION OF MILD INTEREST PALO ALTO, CA-Hailing the new product as a "game changer" in the development of large language models, Silicon Valley insiders confirmed Tuesday that an AI chatbot that only responds "huh" had been valued at $200 billion. "The new HmmAI chatbot is like nothing we've seen before, able to answer 'huh' to text and image-based inputs with a muted indifference indistinguishable from that of an actual human being," said industry analyst Debra Nelson, adding that the new chatbot had already replaced the flesh-and-blood therapists of tens of thousands of users. "HmmAI is at the bleeding edge of artificial intel-ligence, responding to prompts about recipe ideas, ancient history, or even advanced nuclear physics with the word 'huh' in just a fraction of a second. This chatbot is going to revolutionize productivity and is worth every penny of its $200 billion valuation. Having a whole team of experts who exclusively say 'huh' right in your pocket isn't just science fiction anymore, and if you don't incorporate HmmAl into your company's workflow right now, you're going to be left behind." At press time, HmmAI representatives were downplaying allegations that the chatbot continually saying "huh" had convinced hundreds of teenagers to kill themselves.”$

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Failed to properly lock my bike up today on campus and found it up in a tree. I salute those keeping honored ND traditions alive. 🫡

Mostly a photo of a tree, but if you look closely, there’s a bicycle in there

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

How many iconic photos can one man have?

At the Dr. Oz presser, Oz and others in the background attending to someone who passed out, while Trump stands at his desk, facing away from the drama, looking annoyed he’s not the center of attention

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Love those AI fact checks. Is this like Ceci n'est pas une pipe?

AI search result: “The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, not in a lake.”

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

This kid here, he mattered. He didn’t think so, and he could no longer stand to be here. But he mattered, and I loved him.

Photo of two people, and I’m sorry I can’t describe more because I’m crying too hard

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

In one of my classrooms this term, a screenwriting prof left this on the whiteboard after day one. No one ever erased it, so it looked like this on the last day. The crumbling surface gives apocalyptic vibes, and “Bundlé Savé” probably is fitting for the last traces of this version of US humanity.

Photo of a whiteboard with a long handwritten list of recent TV drama titles on the right side. In the middle is written "Bundlé Savé," a catchphrase from an insurance ad. Across the top starting on left corner, the outer plastic layer of the whiteboard is starting pull away from the surface, crumbling over another set of handwritten notes detailing storytelling elements like relationships and conflict.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

I got this one yesterday when the Cubs’ Jackie Robinson Day celebration made me wonder if they had any Black players on the roster. (Dear reader, Tucker and Suzuki are not Black.)

• Google Al Overview

The Chicago Cubs' 2025 roster has several Black players, including notable stars like Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki.
The roster also features other players of color, although the team is predominantly white.
Black Players on the 2025 Cubs:
• Kyle Tucker: Acquired from the Houston Astros, Tucker is expected to be the Cubs' everyday right fielder and a key hitter.
• Seiya Suzuki: The Japanese outfielder is also a significant part of the Cubs' lineup. o
• Other Players of Color: While the majority of the team's stars are white, the Cubs roster also includes players of color from other parts of the world.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

When your article about the value of media that doesn’t have to privilege a return on investment to engage an audience really proves its point

Screenshot of an article about Trump admin attacks on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting where the article largely blocked by pop-up ads and subscription pleas

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Didn't protest today but did step away from #SCMS25 to go to the Field Museum and support science & education. Walking there, I came across the Cancer Survivors’ Garden, and this plaque struck me. Government-funded scientific research has taken us so far. (birds also clearly did field research here)

Bottom half of the image is a black stone plaque that reads "Cancer is the most curable of all chronic diseases." There are a few streaks of white bird poop on it. The top half of the image is slightly out of focus, shows the lawn of the park and Chicago skyscrapers in the background.

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Just got a photo of this from the cat sitter while I’m out of town. A clear sign that she doesn’t quite trust that guy yet.

Cat sitting upright under a dining room chair with wary look on her face

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Here is Coley discovering the magic of vinyl

Cat crouching next to a phonograph and staring intently at a record

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

For a timeline cleanse or some such, here’s my dear Livie (Olivia) and Coley (Colman) tonight

Cat with eyes half-closed and tongue in mid-lick

Shallow-focus photo of a cute cat (redundant)

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Chris Becker @chrisbecker.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Someone requested a transcript for the @aca-media.bsky.social episode featuring NPR's founding program director Bill Siemering, and putting that together offered a very profound listen/read right now. aca-media.org/aapbep6notes

Bill Siemering, after reading from NPR’s original mission statement, which he authored: The idea that people need to be informed is fundamental for us to survive as a democracy. We have to have intelligent citizens. I might say that now, one of the dangers of our country’s democracy is so much public ignorance in our society. Now some people might argue that, well, a journalistic enterprise shouldn’t be that kind of thing, but I was believing that this is more than just a passive transmitter of the news of the day, that it has a larger mission than that.

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