iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Testing a livestream. We could be reading bluesky posts together... send to a loved one with the text "us."

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rising sunlight just painting the cloud tops

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The print version headline framing of this story manages, with considerable struggle, to be even more infuriating.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I did NOT know that this line was stolen from him, but that makes it even better. TIL!!

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the time honored advertising technique of telling everyone your category sucks and no one should want to be associated with you

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No, literally they did. Ad spending report is here. Rs spent $730M, Dems spent $137M, all negative. americaforward.us/tvcongress/2...

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We tried to stop it. We had ads, data, polling going back to 2022. Everyone ignored us. This all could have been avoided. It’s agonizing.

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They sure are trying though…

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

not exactly a meme i was ever remotely expecting to make or see

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How’s that been working out for him

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Some great news here: big majorities want to prioritize changing the system over just stopping Trump, including a quarter of Rs! But rather than target those entirely gettable and plentiful Rs, some Dems are still saying they want to work with him. It's madness.

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34% of Black people, 33% of whites and 30% of the Latinx lean Christian Nationalist. Good to remember. @prri.org research, last updated in 2025.

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This🤬🤬🤬 guy. Dems were RUNNING ADS touting their support for this awful thing. (which was and is idiotic, but never mind that) It was very widely reported at the time that Trump personally intervened to kill it so he could use it to whack Dems over the head. Paxton is a flat liar.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

they’re really just so perfect

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"hang on i need a second to get my bloody mary roast chicken out of the oven"

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

R Immigration and ICE: 997 unique ads @ $410.1M and 30.9B impressions Dem Immigration and ICE: 489 unique ads a total of $219.8M and 18.9B impressions Dem ads are still mostly indistinguishable from R ads, this kind of thing. But not totally. A few Dems are starting to run against ICE.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I have some extremely bad news

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Updated silly Senate map. In rough order of un-unlikelihood: Blalaska, Blohio, Blexas, Bliowa, Blansas, Blississippi, Blebraska, Blorida, Blouth Carolina, Blarkansas, Blidaho, Blyoming. I kid obvi, but these are all places where there's at least some evidence of R collapse and D fight.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

She’s not the sharpest, she frequently finds both treats and laps too difficult to operate. But she figured a box out tonight, I’m proud of her.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

And yet, still we get Dem ads like this from Turek.

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Strong email from @aoc.bsky.social putting down a marker on how to deal with both the proximate economic risks from AI and the longer term ones.

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Excellent interview here. Just want to flag one thing: straight issue trust or issue preference and weak/strong are all pretty easy to poll. Understanding why people - even an individual, let alone big groups of voters - think Dems are weak, even with openends or in qual, is much more difficult.

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There’s a whole-ass book on this, Lenz’s Follow the Leader from 2012, and it’s one of those oddly delightfully written academic tomes. Also something people typically figure out on their first day or two of knocking on doors.

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The same shift is about to happen with persuasion. I guess the thing to do if you completely change your strategy is to just never acknowledge it’s changing or why, let alone anyone else’s work. Just plow ahead with the new thing because everyone in DC has the attention span of a goldfish on meth.

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Elites in the broadest sense - like, people with budgets - absolutely!! I sort of feel like I should read this whole thing but I think I’m just going to take the W and get back to work. This is literally what we’ve been working on for 7 years and he has roundly ignored us. wtf

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Also, wtf. His WHOLE THING has been that persuasion is so hard that it’s not even worth consideration. Cf this and 7M other things: chartingthewayforward.substack.com/p/political-...

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Well that’s quite a pivot from chartingthewayforward.substack.com/p/political-...

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You can understand how we have a nationalized media environment and people's brains process information in generally pretty similar ways regardless of where they live, right? This was an anti-ICE contrast ad, tested early Oct 24. Persuasive almost everywhere and not demobilizing.

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That is exactly the kind of ad we tested. Blue Rose's testing is less sophisticated than ours; they don't look at effects across party or ideology, or at mobilization. That ad only moves very conservative and Trump voters. And it massively demobilizes everyone. And this was before ICE went insane.

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Last Fox News poll of OH, Trump approval trend

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hmm (last Fox News poll of OH)

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Trump is at 43 in Ohio Demographics are not determinative ordinarily and particularly not this cycle

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