iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Also if COVID hadn't been deadly but had just been explosive diarrhea, lines for that vaccine would have been out the door and around the block in every city everywhere

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

"Sir, there appears to be a dread outbreak of explosive diarrhea! We don't know where it came from!" "I see, oh me oh my, what a dangerous situation this is. I assume you've already checked the explosive diarrhea factory, right?" "..." "RIGHT?" www.npr.org/2026/07/17/n...

npr.org

Iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell linked to cyclospora outbreak in 5 states

Federal health officials have identified a single supplier of the produce from Mexico that was served in Taco Bell restaurants in five states.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

My sink was clogged so I bought a plumber's augur. Now my sink is still clogged but I can see Mario's future

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

"Some salaried white collar workers shop at Aldi now instead of Wegmans, it's basically 1935 out here" is one of the most NPR-ass takes I can think of

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Nothing says you're in touch with the people than running an article about shopping at Aldi as if it's a piece about food insecurity. You're just...shopping at Aldi. Something I was apparently supposed to be embarrassed about before now? But good news, now it's fine www.npr.org/2026/05/11/n...

npr.org

It's not shameful, it's savvy: The shoppers redefining how to save money on groceries

Many facing economic pressures and frustrations have begun shopping at budget grocery stores and warehouse clubs in lieu of traditional supermarkets, with priorities shifting in pursuit of good deals.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

among this account's best work, and that's saying something

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Piranesi is shorter and better

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

One of my friends told me that once he started reading it he ended up finishing it as fast as he could because he "needed to get the book out of his house as quickly as possible" and that's a ringing endorsement for me. I read it a long time ago and liked it well enough

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

whoops Expanding lol. I do genuinely love this album I apparently cannot remember the name of

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Fully one of my all-time favorites. To this day I cannot believe I found The Expanded Universe at the record store for $6

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I'm this guy, who might be unbearably upset but also might just be singing a little song

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I have that Faeries book! I had no idea he also worked on the Henson films but it totally makes sense now that I see them together

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

definitely curious about the purposes and intentions of these fellows

A close up screenshot of the Trump Jesus showing a winged figure wearing a tripointed crown flanked by what appear to be the ghosts of Call of Duty NPCs.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Once again, just like "cashierless" stores and "self-driving" cars, "automation" basically just means "Exploiting those to whom we should instead be paying reparations"

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I used to have a really long and carefully crafted discussion about chatbots in my syllabus but if I am correctly understanding what he means here I think I can delete all that and just say, "Sam Altman let them use ChatGPT to kill people and you can personally do something about that."

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Fellow educators take note, especially those whose administrations are actively trying to make OpenAI's products regular parts of classroom instruction.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Look, Sam can frame this any way he wants, but if he's saying that ChatGPT is going to be used to kill people, the college students who make up his core user base aren't going to follow him there. Students who are desperate or insecure enough to cheat still possess basic decency and compassion.

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Reposted by NATE!

ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

The Sermon on the Mount, by Beryl Lewis, before 1965, 📸 by @ScottStrazzante

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I don't know guys, the PS5 port of Starfield just looks kind of weird to me for some reason, not sure I can place it

A screenshot from Bethesda's game Starfield with a spaceman in the foreground and a planet with vertical rings in the back. There's also an image of the orange cartoon cat Garfield superimposed on it. It's Starfield Garfield. That's the whole joke, unfortunately.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

lol good work duck duck go

A screenshot of a duck duck go search for "flag with no meaning" in which the search engine's top result is the yellow snake "don't tread on me" bullshit gadsden flag

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

ICE agents in 2012 vs. ICE agents in 2025. ICE gives us nothing to be nostalgic for but putting these Cobra Commander cosplay goons back into tshirts and frumpy cargo pants would be a start

ICE agents in blue uniforms wearing tshirts and cargo pants.

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Reposted by NATE!

andré carrington @andrecarrington.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

via The New Yorker, Ellis Rosen cartoon

One panel comic with one person saying to another: Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury. Like so many others in tech, I draw inspiration from completely misunderstanding those authors

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

- furiously transcribing this onto the flyleaf of my copy of the lyric book -

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

I've wanted to cover this song for, like, a decade, and I know what an absolutely BANANAS choice it is to try to do all the parts of a song like "Christmas Unicorn" yourself. My "version" even ended up being about ten minutes longer than the original, and again, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Look, I don't know what to tell you. I don't particularly have a lot of time on my hands. I just kind of can't stop myself when an idea like this strikes me, and Sufjan Stevens' Christmas albums always get me through this dark and horrible time of year clownschooldropout.bandcamp.com/album/youre-...

clownschooldropout.bandcamp.com

You're the Christmas Unicorn, Too, by Hermeticist

2 track album

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

"I always liked Aslan a little better than Jesus...While the image that Jesus conjured up in my head was a blurry amalgamation of Jim Morrison and Allen Ginsberg (without the glasses), Aslan was always crystal clear: the golden hair; the strong, soft paws; the sexy, sonorous tone of his voice."

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

I think I've definitely shared this before, but if you are thinking about the 75th birthday of Narnia, as I am, you might enjoy this piece I wrote about re-reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe after leaving the church as an adult. the-rambling.com/2023/04/06/i...

the-rambling.com

Edmund - The Rambling

Nathan Schmidt rereads The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and comes to terms with the ways in which he grew up to become Edmund Pevensie, the ...

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I'm always down for dancing about architecture and this absolutely hits the spot: warrington-runcorn-cis.bandcamp.com/album/interi... #musicsky

warrington-runcorn-cis.bandcamp.com

Interim Report, March 1979, by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

10 track album

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

catch me on this pod like Bartholomew Cubbins

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

This is a straight-up #dungeonsynth song, like, I have heard these exact textures on dungeon synth albums. In 1986, Ray Lynch predicted the exact aesthetic that a certain type of indie game soundtrack would be going for, and he did it on an album called Deep Breakfast www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8mE...

youtube.com

Pastorale / Ray Lynch

YouTube video by Ray Lynch - Topic

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

This isn't my campus newspaper anymore but it's still great to know that nobody stops the IDS. Without their persistent coverage of our unionization efforts, we would not have been successful at demanding raises for grad workers. Network journalists could learn a lot from these brave students.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Claims about the "inevitability" of generative AI prove how accustomed we've become to a magic hat economic model in which one in every thousand hats contains a rabbit, but if we want our money to mean anything, we have to collectively pretend that all of them do. 999 invisible rabbits.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

If ChatGPT cost $4.99 a month I would never see another chatbot-generated essay

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

This is what I've been saying, put more clearly by an actually knowledgeable journalist. If you want to Have A Company, you have to Sell A Product. A lot of companies take a while to turn a profit, but all the ones who do have one thing in common: selling a thing www.theregister.com/2025/10/15/o...

theregister.com

: If you build it, they will come and expect the service to be free

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

...What are they going to do when the appetite for slop deteriorates? As the novelty of image generation wears off and they pivot to video, what's the next step? Virtual slop reality? At some point you have to actually provide a usable product that doesn't rely solely on 21st-century attention spans

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

"Some AI is being used to make images and videos online" is perhaps the funniest possible way to respond to "What are the benefits of AI?" Yes, these things are primarily sausage grinders that feed the products of human arts and culture back to us as slop... www.npr.org/2025/10/14/n...

npr.org

Data centers are booming. But there are big energy and environmental risks

How tech companies and government officials handle local impacts will shape the industry's future in the U.S.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

This is super cool and interesting; also props to Dr. Tegos for knowing that people would be bored and trying to help (although I wonder how effective this tactic ultimately was)

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

I had to break it off with Herbie....he was just so high maintenance

Two guys in driving helmets sticking out of the top of Herbie the living car from the movies, a classic VW bug with a 53 on his hood. One of the guys is spitting out water because of my amazing joke.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

There should be a name for the specific kind of seasonal affective disorder that comes from the fact that fall doesn't happen anymore and it's going to be eighty degrees in October. I guess the word for this is eco-grief but I want a word that captures specifically how much I miss fall.

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Perfect morning working music; also the CD came in a square wooden box like a cajón 🤩 secretstashcomps.bandcamp.com/album/pe-a

secretstashcomps.bandcamp.com

Peña, by Compilations

15 track album

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

If the Incredible Hulk eats a giant, Hulk-sized sandwich with his big green mouth, does Bruce Banner have to try to pass a Hulk-sized green poo poo later? Does Bruce Banner worry about this? Cuz I guarantee the Hulk is not worried about this for a second

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

The alt text is perfect: "WHEN YOUR ON A ADVENTURE AND YOU RUN INTO ANOTHER GUY RUNNIN AROUND STEALING SHIT WHY ARE THEY YOUR ENEMY, SEEMS LIKE YOUR JUST COWORKERS IF YOU ASK ME"

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Alas, it was shame that drove me to evil

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NATE! @corndruid.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

@optional.bsky.social how could you make such a terrible pun

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