iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 22h

Socrates: So how then ought we raise children? Me:

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 23h

my mug of coffee is not itself marginalised but it will fight to be on the

A photo of a table labelled ally side table

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 06/10/2026

Tuesday evening. I managed to: a) drink some tea b) do some work

A portrait orientation photo showing a fountain pen being held in front of a blurred notebook. The setting is a cafe.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 05/10/2026

Here’s another view of the NCC-1701-D. Look at those handsome Bussard collectors.

A photograph of the Lego starship enterprise from Star Trek next generation showing a view from the top

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 05/10/2026

Our eldest kid and I just finished building this: the NCC-1701-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The photograph doesn’t convey how large and heavy this thing is. An absolute unit. My favourite parts to build were the nacelles. Very pleasing. Overall, a joy.

A photograph of a Star Trek starship made out of Lego, against a library wall. Light is illuminating the front of the starship, making the blue deflector shield glow.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 05/10/2026

Oh, and before you say "it's probably the cover," that's the Australian cover. The US/UK edition that was probably available in Kuwait was this one.

a light blue book cover with simple illustrated black and white books stacked variously

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 05/10/2026

I know Banned Books Week has an American focus, and understandably so right now. But my book THE ART OF READING was banned in Kuwait, and I still don't know why. I even asked the consulate, but got no reply. #bannedbooksweek

a book cover that shows a stylised illustration of a woman reading, with only her legs, hands and feet visible. she's against a mottled green background

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 03/10/2026

Last year, we bought this quiet, low-maintenance lawn mower.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 03/10/2026

I am not a Car Guy at all but, if you buy this for me, I will drive it around.

A photograph of a 1973 Green convertible jaguar alongside other convertible cars in a park

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 02/10/2026

Uh, just a little guy. Sometimes he's a bookend.

a photo of a small bronze figurine of a classical soldier with sword and shield

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 02/10/2026

Sometimes I look up from my desk and encounter a view so nerdishly “Damon” I have to take a photograph.

A landscape orientation photograph showing the top shelf of a writing desk. There are plants on top of the writing desk, many of them about antiquity. There are also potted plants, and a Lego shuttle from Star Trek.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 28/09/2026

Here’s another view of Venus, but with more smoke. (The government is doing burns to avoid bushfire.)

Lit-up mountains behind a calm sea at night, Venus bright above clouds

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 28/09/2026

I can’t believe I came to Lois McMaster Bujold so late. I read THE CURSE OF CHALION earlier this year, and I can’t get enough of her fantasy and science fiction. Palpable characters, living plausible lives in vivid worlds. Often deeply moving, but very rarely sentimental. And so very *embodied*.

A hardcover book being held before a wall of books. The cover shows sixteenth century folks on horses in front of a high castle

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 28/09/2026

🎶 Venus on* the mountain top 🎶 *above

A photograph of a river at night time, the river being a light silvery indigo, with an ombré of dark blue to light blue above dark clouds then mountains dotted with lights

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 26/09/2026

Ah! www.lego.com/en-us/aboutu...

The LEGO SMART Brick is packed with technologies that bring play to life including sensors, accelerometers, light sensing and a sound sensor as well as a miniature speaker driven by an onboard synthesiser, and much more, in addition to easy wireless charging.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 26/09/2026

Here a shelfie of mine, with some overlaps with the above.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 24/09/2026

Repost with an image of your favorite James Bond (wrong answers only):

A photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche in a Prussian artillery uniform, holding a sabre

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 23/09/2026

I don’t understand anything anymore.

Two plastic tombstones with skeletons DJing

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 23/09/2026

Men: lesbians! they're like us in bed! but worse! Lesbians:

a still from the film "portrait of a lady on fire" showing a blonde woman smiling comfortably with a brunette. they're both in 18th century clothing

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 21/09/2026

How your latest email finds me (if you know, you know)

a scene from the original robocop film. in a high office, a man in a suit points a pistol offscreen

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 21/09/2026

We are making it so. Here’s our progress with the LEGO Enterprise NCC-1701-D, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It just needs the nacelles and edge of the saucer. The set was a birthday gift from our eldest. The photo doesn’t do justice to the size & weight of this thing. It is *hefty*.

A photo of a Lego starship from Star Trek against the background of Books

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 20/09/2026

Artist: You sure that’s what you want? Paramount Executive: Picard is a space giant. He comes from the clouds.

A screenshot of the paramount landing page for Star trek the next generation, showing Picard rising from a purple cloud

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 20/09/2026

“Leisure without studies is death, and a funeral for the living.” (Seneca, Letter 82.3) (“Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura.)

A bronze statue of the philosopher Seneca by Olmos, showing him in a robe against a blue sky. He’s clean shaven and holding what looks like a scroll

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 20/09/2026

"It had been known earlier to women." I love this understated line from the Online Etymology Dictionary, on the clitoris.

The anatomist Mateo Renaldo Colombo (1516-1559), professor at Padua, claimed
to have discovered it ('De re anatomica,"1559, p. 243). He called it amor Veneris, vel dulcedo "the love or sweetness of Venus." It had been known earlier to women.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 18/09/2026

It's 3am. You are Menelaus. You wake sweating and panting, still in your armour, having dreamed about right clicking.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 14/09/2026

I’m getting so much use out of this screenshot.

lan Boudreau @ianboudreau.com
Everyone involved should be brutally humiliated
7:05 AM • Jul 1, 2026

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 14/09/2026

the subwoofers in this uber

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 12/09/2026

One of my favourite kinds of meal: Putting Assorted Things on the Table.

Photograph from above a table, showing a plate with bread some pieces of cheese, some hazelnuts, hummus, some tomatoes with olive oil oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary, and some Kalamata olives

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 11/09/2026

Waiter: Who’s having the Black Forest cake? Heidegger:

A black-and-white photo of the philosopher Martin Heidegger smiling, seeming to wink, and holding up one finger

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 11/09/2026

I just saw this page on Reddit, from a Spanish edition of Comenius' seventeenth-century language textbook. There's a particular knot of muscles in my brain that's massaged by columns like this.

three columns of writing, with Latin on the left, ancient Greek in the middle, and Spanish on the right. The heading says "Chapter 5" in each language.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 10/09/2026

I just got the reminder, and immediately went to grab myself a calendar -- but you don't ship to Australia! Will there be any chance to snag a copy here?

an illustration of conan the cimmerian, by ernie chan. conan stands glaring at the viewer, his chest bare

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 10/09/2026

Few people know this, but the "X" in "X-Men" stands for "Microsoft Excel". They use a lot of spreadsheets.

an illustration of kitty pryde at a laptop, sitting on a bed in blue slacks, a white top and pink cardigan

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 08/09/2026

"I think this is the biggest thing that normies miss."

My father in law is a practicing, prominent mathematician of more than 40 years experience.
He's used it to write math papers with colleagues, and he believes the contribution of the Al rises to the level that you would give it coauthorship if it were human.

I think this is the biggest thing that normies miss. A year ago Al was mediocre at coding but could be occasionally helpful, now it can produce solid architecture concepts, and the leading models know definitely more math than I do (and I have a masters in physics).

Think about where this will be in five years.
Or ten

Difficult to say because this doesn't scale linearly on any front. I used to be in the camp that thought that we would hit a wall of diminishing return before we get this far with what still mostly amounts to deep learning.
One thing I am reasonably certain about is that local models will catch up.

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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 04/09/2026

This Finnish guy has been teaching himself Sumerian, and sent a cuneiform tablet to the British Museum to check his progress. They just emailed him that they've sent him something in the post. I'm now thrilled and excited for a total stranger! Clay tablet mail! www.reddit.com/r/Cuneiform/...

a photo of a hand holding a cuneiform tablet

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