iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 3h

Carry On Being Severely Traumatised for Several Years.

The Oddbod monsters from Carry On Screaming. They look like werewolves but with with huge square foreheads. For some reason, they're wearing boiler suits. Scared the living piss out of me.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’ve been trying to think who James Blunt reminds me of on #CelebrityTraitors. Just realised it’s Clare Balding.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I get the impression you could ask this Pope about the best three-album run of the 1980s and he'd have a take.

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Catherine Crichton @catherinecrichton.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

So excited to see the cover for my novel based on the life of Irish artist Harry Clarke. It tells the story of his controversial Geneva Window as seen through the eyes of a young female assistant in Clarke’s studio. Set in 1920s Dublin, publishing January with @stairwellbooks.bsky.social

The cover features a highly detailed stained glass panel by Clarke. It features the character of Nelly from Liam O’Flaherty’s Mr Gilhooley. He picks her up from the street and she dances for him wearing only a thin veil. The figure of Nelly is depicted with a head of golden curls. Her pink veil, decorated with tiny star and heart shapes and a yellow zigzag border, seems to float around her. Clarke used a photo of a dancer from the Ballet Russes as inspiration. Cover text reads ‘The Window, A Novel, Catherine Crichton’

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Only yesterday I was thinking it's weird that it's spider season and I haven't seen any big ones yet. Anyhoo, I was just in the kitchen and the bottom line is, we have to move house.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I can’t believe I have to have a real job when all I really want to do is go around solving mysteries with my capybara sidekick who sits in the sidecar of my motorcycle wearing little goggles.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

When he was in trouble with his mum as a child: ‘Igward Pop! Get in here right this minute, young man!’

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Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Caravaggio, Painter, #BornOnThisDay in 1571, in Milan ‘The Taking of Christ’, National Gallery of Ireland

Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’, National Gallery of Ireland

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 24/09/2026

Sometimes I read things that make me sorry I can read.

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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's called film "footage" because camera operators initially held the cameras with their feet. That changed after a film shoot in 1931, when an operator got a foot cramp and was forced to hold the camera in his hands. The "footage" he got that day was extraordinary. That man's name? Hans Cameraman.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

‘We’ve invested heavily in this new technology. All employees have to use it. You have no choice in this.’ ‘Wow, sounds like you really trust it.’ ‘We hadn’t finished. ON NO ACCOUNT SHOULD ANYONE TRUST THE NEW TECHNOLOGY THEY HAVE TO USE.’

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PoliticsJOE @politicsjoe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"Your boss is a credulous dolt who will give your job to an AI that can't do it." The truth about AI is dumber than you think, according to Cory Doctorow. @doctorow.pluralistic.net

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

None of these productivity so-called 'experts' ever mention the method most of us use to feel like we're making progress, which is padding out our To Do list with things we’ve already done and then immediately ticking them off.

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

a lot of people act like there's a trade being offered where we give up trans athletes in sports and in exchange fascism is defeated forever

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Watching #Strictly. My daughter said Josh Widdicombe looks like a toddler who just had a pair of glasses strapped on and is seeing his mum for the first time.

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Lloyd Shepherd @lloydshepherd.com · 19/09/2026

Just read this utterly fantastic interview with John Swartzwelder which has brightened my day considerably. doinit.substack.com/p/john-swart...

doinit.substack.com

John Swartzwelder, Sage of “The Simpsons”

My Interview with a Reclusive Genius (his first)

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Avian Face-Tool 🦡 @beakmoo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Himself has done a packing list, which is normally my job. One of the items on the list is "suitcases" and I cannot stop laughing.

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Jason, ex Inferis @benedictsred.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

We didn’t have fidget spinners when I was a kid. We had cigarettes

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Loving his Kanye-style 'oh great now I gotta be responsible for this green orb' face.

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Angus Dunican @angusdunican.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

What a truly excellent series of acting choices this fifty seconds of television presents…

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This whole Ed Sheeran business has me half-sorry I did his tattoos for him.

Front and back shots of a shirtless Ed Sheeran. He's completely covered with tattoos - a lion, a teddy bear, a shark, a bottle of Heinz ketchup, for some reason - each one shittier than the last. It looks like someone gave a six year-old 8 cans of coke and a box of markers.

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Alex Steed @alexsteed.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

It'd be funny if back where they come from, E.T. is not especially bright.

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GylesNaMopaleen @gylesnamopaleen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

So saddened to hear Bonnie Greer has died. She was a true friend to Ireland.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My coping strategy at work: mentally replace 'AI' with 'the boss's 8 year-old nephew, Jimmy.' 'Let's speed it up using the boss's 8 year-old nephew, Jimmy.' 'As ever with the boss's 8 year-old nephew, Jimmy, check it twice.' 'This whole thing's a disaster. Bloody boss's 8 year-old nephew, Jimmy.'

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Justin Sherin @wychstreet.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I say this for anyone who doesn’t know, because a lot of people still don’t - Palestine is serious business in Ireland. It’s real in ways it is nowhere else in the West, & after what Sheeran did an Irish person couldn’t work with him & go back to Ireland. Fair play indeed.

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brent @murrman5.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

[whispering to paramedic before I pass out] save me but not enough that I have to go to work tomorrow

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Nothing I like better than getting down to some funky grooves or, if time is tight, a single groof.

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Chris Brody @chrisbrody.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

3-y.o. has interpreted the “lemon” from “easy peasy lemon squeezy” as an all-purpose intensifier. If something hurts: “Owie” If something *really* hurts: “Owie owie lemon owie”

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The American President called for a united Ireland. Everyone just shrugged and moved on because it’s commonly accepted that he’s mentally incapacitated.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm very tired. I read this headline and went 'No way, how?'

Screenshot of Internet headline. Text reads 'Shane Lowry leads by four ahead of final day as putter catches fire at Amgen Irish Open'.

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FᎪᎢ ᏩᎪNᎠᎪᏞF @sofarrsogud.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I'm finding out way too much for someone who fucks around so little

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General Boles @generalboles.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Congratulations to whoever decided to put the notoriously size-obsessed Trump next to Ireland's biggest unit

U.S. President Donald Trump attends an arrival ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin on September 12, 2026 in Dublin, Ireland.

Behind him is an Irishman in military uniform who is a good foot taller than Trump

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Lawrence Miles @lawrence-miles.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It's 25 years to the day since Channel 4 (UK) pulled "Friends" from the schedule because they were worried about showing anything set in New York, but replaced it with "Futurama", which is also set in New York and features a vehicle flying into a building at the start of every episode.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Trump intervening in the Middle East.

Screenshot from The Simpsons. Homer is 'fixing' a camera. He has one eye closed, concentrating hard, as he prepares to hammer an electric drill into it.

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Una Mullally @unamullally.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Large protest in Dublin on Saturday against Trump's visit to Ireland. Meeting at Parnell Square at 1pm. Large coalition involved including; Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, PBP, Sinn Féin, Labour, Social Democrats, Green Party, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Amnesty, Irish Neutrality League etc.

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National Protest: No Welcome for Warmonger Trump!

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The worst liars alive today are the DIY people on YouTube who tell you something ‘just pops right off’. Nothing ever just pops right off.

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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Pretty sure I've seen a headshot of Person Familiar on the wall at Steven Toast's agent.

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Steven (with a PH) @sjksalisbury.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

[handing a picture of a very healthy person to my doctor] so I was thinking something like this

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Frank Ray Whitehouse (He/Him) @wheeltod.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

One way to tell if you own too many snakes, is if you own a snake.

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Ciara | Ciaraíoch 🎨 @ciaraioch.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Irish political parties in power looking at attempts by governments around the world to appease the far right absolutely not working

But it might work for us meme from Arrested Development

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Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

4 years since The Rock did one if the all time tweets

Rest in peace to Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II. A great woman who sat on the throne as long as anyone in British history.
Sad she will never get to see #BlackAdam V IN THEATERS OCT 21st

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

In which Simon Harris dangles a pocket watch and tells us we’re very sleeeeepy and also we should haaaaate people on social welfare and also none of this is Fine Gaaaaael’s fault.

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Damien Owens @damienowens.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ugh, I’m so sick of learning valuable lessons.

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