iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I fear we crossed that Rubicon when ICE hunting for human beings for sport proved to be less of a political game changer than the price of diesel. I can hear George Carlin from the other side yelling "I f*cking told you so!"

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Anakin & Padme: Attack of the Clones Meme

I guess that means they won't have "I was in fear for my life" as an excuse for shooting unarmed people for "resisting" right? Right?

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ALT: Anakin & Padme: Attack of the Clones Meme

A sad truth is that for a great many parents out there (a lot more than I think we're culturally attuned to acknowledging) the appeal of parenthood is having a small human they can control. That you can't fathom it speaks well of your character.

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I'd file this under "Turnabout is fair play." All of these companies and their investors have been banking on AI as a magical labor crushing machine since COVID. I have zero problem with them getting a taste of their own medicine.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

George Carlin really was ahead of his time, and a lot more than the hour-and-a-half he claimed.

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Indeed. Tillis never served in the US house; he went from the NC State House to being elected to the Senate in 2014. He's just talking out his ass for the audience of one.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Hence with the "most." Air strikes like that require a relatively small total volume of personnel to execute, making it possible to cherry-pick units with Trumpy personnel. Even then, refusing an order w/o specific evidence that its an illegal target beforehand is indeed sticking one's neck out

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thankfully most service members see this and clock Hegseth for the poseur that he is. While most might not be willing stick their necks out in opposition, they aren't gonna go out of their way for him (or Trump) either. Most will just do the bare minimum to get by like that absurd birthday parade.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Indeed. Along similar lines, Robocop was not supposed to be a documentary.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Its almost as if party leadership is hedging their bets so they can get in on some of that sweet, sweet graft. At this point if Democrats do anything that makes zero political sense my default assumption is that there's some kind of graft in the mix that leadership wants to protect.

Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Still not a funny as the Olympic anti-doping guy Dick Pound. Tuck is funny, but Pound remains the funniest Dick.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

George Carlin's "It's a big club, and you ain't in it" remains evergreen.

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Reposted by Clem

Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Let's stop using anodyne labels like "the immigration debate" or "controversy over migrants" and start referring to things accurately. "Expelling children who, by law, are entitled to remain in the country" or "imprisoning toddlers in concentration camps" or "pogrom"

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Two decades of comedy being dominated by punching-down assholes did a lot of lifting on this. That world really went downhill after Carlin and Pryor died.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Its what the incentives lead to. Stenography and credulousness right now seem to be massively incentivized in MSM, and people tend to seek the path of least resistance. William Randolph Hearst is laughing at all of us from hell.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Tim Ryan (a white dude no less) was competitive with JD Vance in the '22 Ohio Senate race, and the DSCC to cut him off because he wouldn't sufficiently kiss Schumer's ring. Flipping the chamber is secondary to protecting the graft, to which they likely see her as a threat.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Indeed. "Rehabilitation" is a euphemism for enabling them after-the-fact. Its a bad joke. There is a badly needed conversation to be had about men's mental health (and the shitshow that mental healthcare is in general) but "rehabilitating" abusive monsters sure as hell ain't part of it.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

He knows that we all know. He just doesn't care because he fears no consequences for anything ever. On so many levels this era has been an object lesson in what men do when they neither fear nor face any consequences for anything.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The usual suspects on the Supreme Court overruled that order on the shadow docket like a day later. They own this every bit as much as the TN officials do.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Michael Tracey is a profile in the Unifying Theory of Fuck That Guy. Because fuck that guy.

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Bill Corbett @billcorbett.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The BEST thing that true believers in AI could do is stop evangelizing to people, like me, who think it sucks. Do the hard, years-long work of detaching your beloved technology from the worst people in the world right now: shameless fascists driven by greed and domination. They’re YOUR partners.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

💯 We don't have a technology problem. We have a psychotic billionaire problem and a craven leadership problem. Its impossible to have a real discussion about the limits or utility of technology when the people controlling it are depraved and the people supposed to be checking them are corrupt.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This. The whole reason COVID has been memory holed is because it was the first time in decades workers actually had some kind of leverage and our entire political and financial classes linked arms and prioritized destroying that over all other concerns, including prosecuting an insurrection.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Most do very clearly do not, but some few of us have the gas can on standby.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

💯 An underappreciated factor in the mass proliferation of AI slop is the degree to which it's built around middle managers gaming internal metrics and bullshitting clueless bosses.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Among other sources of graft. I suspect most of this project will be an exercise in how much of the DoD budget the principals and their assorted interests can steal. If these people are consistent about anything it's finding ways to make money disappear.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is why we all need to stop humoring the culture of obliged credulousness. So much of this could have been avoided if our governing and media culture didn't give well positioned criminals the benefit of the doubt by default.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If it's clear they're gonna lose they'll strip and burn everything within their reach. Any Democrat taking office in '29 will need to rebuild all Federal institutions from scratch. This will likely be impossible, which is the point.

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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Everything is a crypto rug pull scam, from the meme coin bullshit to the AI bubble and fake apocalyptic panic and the entire stock market. One lie after another to grab as much money as possible before the bottom falls out.

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Innsmouth Looksmaxxing @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

To Catch A Predator was always a security blanket for the idea that there’s no threat to your kids from hearth and home, it’s all sweaty, barely-functional freaks, and I have a lot less sympathy for people clinging to that in an era when we know about Trump/Epstein/sundry religious institutions

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oligarchs are far from a monolithic unified cohort. While they practice class solidarity against the rest of us by default they will hit their rivals when the opportunity presents. Each oligarch is on no-one's side but their own, and that's their biggest weakness. Tapping the Elmore Leonard sign.

Wonderful things can happen when you sow seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes.

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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

the clintons have a lot to answer for for the shitty people they put in positions of influence throughout the democratic party. it has significantly hobbled progress for over 35 years now.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think this is as much a behavioral problem as it is an educational one. Media literacy isn't just something one is taught; its a discipline that requires practice and can atrophy. The toxic soup of bad faith, trauma, bigotry, exhaustion, chaos, etc. that we live in is caustic to that practice.

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Reminder: a non-zero number of voters don't know what party Trump and/or their congressional candidates belong to. Republican candidates know and exploit this. Dem consultants do not, being so terminally DC bubbled that such thoughts never even occur to them.

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Yep. Dem leadership values protecting the leadership clique's opportunities for graft above all other concerns because that's what cements their control over their caucuses and fundraising orgs. The only thing Dem leadership is serious about is protecting the lifestyle to which they are accustomed

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The IMAX-level projection is so very real.

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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Crimes oblique to humanity.

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Reposted by Clem

people like bret stephens simply cant comprehend of a world where straight white men like them aren't the main character of every facet of human existence all the time. its fucking exhausting. they have to be the guy in the movies, in academia, in books, in music. every fucking thing has to be them

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Almost instantly. Trump's corruption is the only thing preventing the AI crash, and once he gets fully lame duck'd AI bros will get their paper shorted hard. Plus, if the Republicans lose, they will immediately go scorched earth on the Federal government. Anything they can't steal they will burn.

Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Because that will piss off the donor class. The first priority of Dem leadership is to protect the seats and the attendant graft of their little clique. Remember; they were more upset about a few of their number being primaried by DSA candidates than by literal concentration camps.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Frank Herbert nailed it with "fear is the mind-killer." It's why bigots use primal fears to sell their poison to the masses. Convince a parent that [insert targeted minority here] are coming for their children and things like morality, rationality and humanity go right out the window.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Our culture of atomized individuality, working as intended. Decades of the toxic culture of individuality has atrophied our collective practice of the forms and habits that build and nurture community, particularly among white people. Rugged individuality has always been a divide and conquer game.

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Clem @clemgrakata.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Exactly. Neoliberalism is largely 1920's Neoclassicalism with a fresh coat of paint and a few airbags stapled on. Its also no coincidence that this took off in the mid 1970s, right when the people who learned the lesson the hard way during the 1920s and '30s were shuffling off this mortal coil.