iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 1h

Every one of Trump's aides + advisors needs to get their turn to explain to the judge, jury + American people why they participated in + enabled the illegalities of this administration. All of them should be stripped of all their assets to make restitution to the victims of this reign of chaos.

President Zelensky addresses world leaders gathered in Poland for the Warsaw Security Forum.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 3h

Fast forward 50 years: developers tracked down the heirs holding the deeds to all those worthless underwater properties. Need I say she no longer needed to babysit in order to afford a comfortable retirement. What had been a whole lot o' nothin' nowhere near anywhere is now smack dab in the city.

Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, California 1981 1:00000 topo map

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 3h

We had a babysitter, a retired a schoolteacher, whose family came to California over a century ago. They bought land sight unseen like many lured west; upon arrival, they discovered they + hundreds of others had unwittingly bought swampland. Coastal wetlands to be more precise.

Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, California 1902 1:62000 topo map

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"That was a war that should never have started." The only time Donald Trump has spoken the truth. But then he had to turn around and blame Ukraine for being invaded (and for HIS blunders). The man is an existential threat to humankind. The country that needs to get a new leader is the United States.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Miniature fotomo paper model: "Gay Hockey Romance Bookstore" 68 mm x 35 mm x 75 mm

Paper maquette miniature:
"Gay Hockey Romance Bookstore"
68 mm x 35 mm x 75 mm

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

cherubic baby face & flirty smile. Well, he ain't so young + he ain't so pretty now. But the real ugly is his rotten moral core, revealed to the entire world yet ignored in the US, probably because he's surrounded by so many other like minded cretins. *which, needless to say, was all of them

Marco Rubio in 1996, volunteering for the Bob Dole campaign (who probably would have fired him, had he known how Rubio was going to turn out).

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

How can any government employee -even masquerading as an ambassador- wrack up a HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR AMERICAN EXPRESS BILL? I'm sure I could hit $100K with an American Express card after a couple of espressos on Avenue Montaigne. But I'm 9095 miles away + don't have my own platinum card.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, US Ambassador to Greece and shopaholic.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And people wanted that. They wanted America to do better, to be better. Giving up on that idea of what America could (and should) become was never an option. But the main obstacle in achieving that, as we would discover, was not from abroad, but right here amongst us. It WAS us. Well, some of us.

TIME Magazine honors journalists as their "person of the year" to spotlight attempts in America + around the world to prevent the truth from being published or broadcast.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Every night, multiple Americas appeared on the evening news, in contradiction with each other. The Civil Rights Movement + the Vietnam War were shown in real time.The warts-and-all images of the tumultuous era turned everything people thought they knew about the United States upside down.

Walter Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. During that era he was the most trusted man in America. His was a simple, unadorned, straightforward approach considered the zenith of professionalism + integrity.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Anne Carson. Some two dozen books, with nary a gay hockey player. When she got the call informing her she'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature, she was in Iceland, listening to the wind.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Somewhere along the line the laptop decided to put on a playlist of dance music from waaaaaaaaaay back. Dang. The music was so much better then.

Screenshot from "Children by Robert Miles [Dream Version] (1995)

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

California has 246 billionaires (depending on who's counting), 85 of them are among the wealthiest people in the US. The latest iteration of anti-Prop 40 ads warns 'it's not just a tax on billionaires! It's a tax on all you -ahem- we mean, all of us!' Shoulda been on the books a long time already.

Malibu City Limit Sign, Pacific Coast Highway.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I've been a grown up long enough to know something of the scale by which America as I was told it was is different from the America that is. Yeah, it's disappointing. There were, so it seemed, enough people willing to put in the work to bring it up to what it should've been. What the heck happened?

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Some Mondays are more mundane than others.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Every time they bring up "escape containment" or something thereabouts, my mind goes directly to Westworld (the 1973 original, with Yul Brynner as the robot gunslinger you never want cross paths with). The sorryass excuses the techboys keep mumbling makes me suspect they're thinking the same thing.

Yul Brynner plays a robot gunslinger in Westworld (1973)

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Secretary of Stale + the Secretary of Warped will never admit it, but one of the reasons much of the world has just about had enough of the United States has to do with upwards of 100 million unexploded cluster bombs, landmines + other weapons of war, scattered around the globe in 68 countries.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Changing trains at the LAX Metro Station

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Traditionally when the temperature hits the century mark, I make my way to Go Get 'Em Tiger for their espresso milkshake, but with today heat + gravity + drag I'd never get that far.

When the temperature hits 100° we break out the affogato.
Lavazza espresso with Häagen-Dasz coffee ice cream.

100° midday temperature today. First weeks of autumn are always more summery than the last few weeks of summer.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The difference between then + now is the Pentagon never appeared unruffled. The public face was self-assured, no histrionics or public outbursts. Stateside, at least, the Pentagon had a carefully crafted image. The message was clear: calm, rational men were ensuring the safety of the US. But now?

President Johnson meeting with military brass.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Walking down the street I was suddenly struck by I didn't remember the last time I had pine needles crunch under my feet. Soon enough, I recalled when & where, but my feet still have a hankering for a path through the woods.

Waterfall in Solstice Canyon near the Roberts house. The trail is located right above PCH in Malibu near Point Dume. The lower part of the trail to the waterfall is a fairly easy hike, connected to the vast trail network of the Santa Monica Mountains National Park.
*Not the last place I hiked in the forest, but one I used to visit any time I could get away. You can actually get there on Metro.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

No whipped feta. Trader Joe's has their own house brand (but it wasn't the one I was looking for). So, I made it. A tiny victory, but a big sense of satisfaction. Didn't have any luck during quarantine making my own tortilla chips. But at least I gave it a try.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I wasn't planning on watching the California gubernatorial debate but I ended up watching it anyway and I'm sorry I did. He comes off as what they call back in the UK as a posh git. He's been an American citizen for all of 5 years, so good on him running for office. His Fox News accent is thicker

California candidates for governor Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton debating on television.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not sure if this route using the train is going to take a little longer to get home, but it doesn't matter because I'm taking the train option.

Metro E Line station platform with the skyline of downtown Los Angeles in the distance.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The wind was really rustling through the palms this afternoon! It sounds something like a cross between Howl's Moving Castle and an old school locomotive.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

From 1964 until the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the Pentagon held daily press briefings. The number of American and Vietnamese casualties became a nightly feature on the evening network news shows. The number of Vietnamese casualties, both civilian as well as the Viet Cong, was pure fiction.

A typical Pentagon news briefing in the 1960s during the Vietnam War.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to jail.

Illustration of the classic Monopoly Man is being hauled off to jail by a police officer.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What if the rabid religious fanatics trying to jump start the End of Days are pushing through the building of data centers + letting AI run loose, because they think it'll hasten the Apocalypse?

Building in Los Angeles destroyed in the Rodney King Riots.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What I really loved about this was the architecture & design of Rick's Café Américain. Not 'til years later did I learn almost all the extras in the scene were actually refugees from Nazi occupied Europe. Later still, I noticed, none of the Moroccans were singing.

Casablanca: the scene where Victor Lazlo has the orchestra play "La Marseillaise."

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

When it was revealed President Nixon had an "enemies" list it shocked the country. Among the names were the most respected journalists & editorial cartoonists in the country. Overnight it became a badge of honor to have made the list. They got invited to all the best parties. Nixon made them heroes.

The full list of names on Nixon's enemy list, as published in the New York Times.
(1973)

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Palm trees on Ocean Front Walk, Venice, California.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Made it to the beach while it was still officially summer.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Downtown Los Angeles on the safe side of rush hour traffic.

Hope Street looking south from 5th Street

Grand Avenue looking south from 5th Street.

Olive Street looking south from 5th Street

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Rubio wants to investigate Abdul El-Sayed's citizenship. As it so happens, El-Sayed was born in Detroit, which has been part of the United States since 1787.

Early map of the territory that will become Michigan

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Of all the possible scenarios, selling it to the Saudis was not on my list.

This is what Saudi censors do with Western media.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Since they haven't made a Heated Rivalry Moleskine yet, made my own.

Small (7 cm x 10 cm) Moleskine style cahier. Cover photo is Barlochan Cottage, Lake Muskoka, Ontario.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I didn't notice when POS POTUS first posted his grandiose United States America map, that for some reason known only to him, he exempted Belize + the Dominican Republic from inclusion. I wonder if that was meant as an insult or some sort of charitable act.

A map of North America posted by the president of the United States showing the US flag superimposed over the whole of North America
...except for Belize and the Dominican Republic.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I hadn't watched the news for hours, but I decided to interrupt not watching the news to plop down on Highway NS-311, just south of Tatamagouche in the North Shore region of Nova Scotia. Rachel Reid used the peaceful town as the model for Avery River in "The Shots You Take" & it's easy to see why.

Highway NS-311 just south of Tatamagouche, in the North Shore region of Nova Scotia.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

How much, if any of this is necessary? Let's start with the camo, shall we? WTF is he trying to blend in with? Which pocket does he keep his chewing gum in, and is it accessible in an emergency?

POLICE ICE uniform with lots of handy accessories.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The average age for a member of Congress currently is 58.9. Mitch McConnell is the senior senator from Kentucky & Chris Gallant is running for the 1st Congressional District seat in New York. One of 'em is more than 20 years beyond the average age, the other is more than 20 years below.

Chris Gallant, 37, veteran, pilot, air traffic controller, running for the 1st Congressional District of New York (the western half of Long Island, including Suffolk County, Queens & Brooklyn).

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You don't hear many Republicans at the moment talking about America's reliance on foreign oil. And you ESPECIALLY don't hear them talking about how renewable energy sources reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Saudi Arabian oil field. Photo by Fahad Shadeed of Reuters

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Abrupt stop in Sunday morning ragescrolling to find ourselves just outside Buskupice, in the West Pomeranian Volvodeship, Poland. Just the place for a peaceful late summer Sunday stroll, yes?

Road southwest of Biskupice, in the West Pomeranian Volvodeship, northwest Poland.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Simple summer pleasure: the foam on a root beer float.

Root beer float with vanilla ice cream, mostly foam.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Somehow, they think bicycles are wrapped up with DEI + climate change. But then it all makes sense: Old Man Trump probably never gave his kids a bicycle to ride. So now that he's all growed up, Donnie hates bicycles. He hates seeing them, and he especially hates seeing happy kids riding bicycles.

A post by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in which he rants against bicycles as being "DEI" and "climate change," as he proceeds to eliminate federal funding for anything to do with bicycles + bicycle safety.

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Mark Haile @circuitmouse @circuitmouse.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Nicolas Cage's mansion is all of an 11 minute stroll along the beach from Marc Attanasio's oceanfront home. Maybe when that sand is replenished, he could spare a dump truck or two full of sand to help his neighbors with the sinkhole problem.

Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio's oceanfront home on Broad Beach, Malibu

Nicolas Cage's mansion on Lechuza Beach, Malibu

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