iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I have developed a sophisticated universal labeling system.

Photo of a white countertop with a denim-blue tile backsplash. The camera is looking down towards a can of garbanzo beans and a mint-blue sippy-style water bottle. The can has an orange sticky-note with "beans!" on it in red marker. The bottle has a blue sticky-note with "not beans!" on it in purple marker.

You correctly conclude that no other labels are required in the universe.

Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/07/2026

Peter Fischli & David Weiss Snowman, 1987–1989 / 2026 Copper, aluminum, glass, water, and coolant system. Per the label: _Snowman_ is formed from periodic injections of vapour that crystillise into ice. The sculpture is powered entirely by a solar panel.

Photograph of the wooded edge of a garden. Nestled under the trees is a rectangular grey freezer with a window in the front (like a glass door but not actually openable), on a concrete plinth. A classic three-ball snowman fills the freezer. A sign on a post is situated a couple meters to the right of the installation. The words on the sign are not legible from the photo.

Closer view of the installation, which nearly fills the frame from top to bottom.

Close-up of the snowman's head, somewhat out of focus, and a bit obscured by the reflection of trees in the glass of the window.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

The electrical outlets are happy to see us here. Copenhagen.

Photo of a pair of white plastic Danish-style electrical outlets, side by side, mounted on a white wall. The holes in each outlet form a pattern reminiscent of a smiley face, two circular eyes over a cheerful semicircular (flat part on top) smile.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/07/2026

Someone in the train signage design office is either naïve or clever.

Photo of a signage sticker on a pair of sliding doors, very close-up on the doors showing handles for pulling them open on the left, and glass (upon which the sticker is attached). Train-interior-y stuff can be seen through the glass. The sticker depicts two hands at the left and right edges, pulling open a sliding door. There is an icon of a running person (white on a green background) in between the open doors.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

The god of war and LP records watches over the underworld here. Oslo.

Photo of a cast iron manhole cover. There is a circular pattern of three rings of plus-signs / crosses around the cover. At the center is a depiction of a person holding several arrows (as in bow-and-arrow) in their left hand and something resembling an LP record in their right hand. They are crouched down over a naked woman whose body curves, following the circular shape of the cover.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

It turns out there are a lot of these around the city.

Photo of ten more of the same shape brass plaques as shown in the original post. At the bottom of the picture two sets of feet can be seen, smaller feet in red sneakers and larger feet in dark brown boots.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

In honor of a resident who was deported to Auschwitz. Oslo. Approximate translation: HERE LIVED SALOMON TOMSINSKY BORN 1891 DEPORTED TO AUSCHWITZ 1942 KILLED 1942-12-01

Photo of a rounded-square brass plaque embedded in pavement. It is engraved with the text:

HER BODDE

SALOMON TOMSINSKY
FØDSELSÅR 1891

DEPORTERT 1942
AUSCHWITZ

DREPT 1.12.1942

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

[excerpt from the museum label] In 1968, three employees from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK crossed the border to East-Berlin. Shortly after, an electronic sound generator called Subharchord was secretly sent to Oslo. The instrument was […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Photo of a Subharchord, which is about the size and shape of a compact upright piano. It has a short piano keyboard, with a grid of dials and buttons both above and to the left of the keyboard. The controls are on a dark gray panel, the sides of the instrument are black, and the rest is white.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

Early tape echo unit, made in 1957 by Roger Arnhoff. Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, Oslo.

Photo of the front and top (looking down) of the tape echo unit. It is a vertically oriented rectangular prism in general shape, clad in metal. Towards the bottom of the front is a VU meter and a panel with a dial and a few buttons. The top has a tape loop wrapped around some capstans and recording and playback heads.

Better view of the top with the tape and all the gubbins. Careful observation reveals that the heads on the front part of the loop are continuously adjustable along a track.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

The Jewish quarter (original-ish "ghetto" [*]), Roma. [*] Actual origin was Venice.

Photo of a square cast iron looking drainage grate, embedded in concrete (concrete barely visible around the edge of the photo). The drain is created through a series of vertical slits rounded at the ends, in two rows of six each. Between the two rows are the lettering:

S.P.Q.R.

and in smaller type at the bottom-right;

FONDERIA PISANO
—— SALERNO ——

Photo of a square cast iron looking utility access panel, embedded in cobblestone paving (paving barely visible around the edge of the photo). The panel is rounded at the corners and has what looks like holes into which a removal tool might be inserted, at the center of the left and right edges. The majority of the panel is covered in a pattern of raised squares in a grid set at 45° from the main shape. Toward the top is the lettering:

SPQR

and toward the bottom:

FONDERI MACCHI
BUSTO A. – MILANO

Photograph of a square cast iron looking utility panel embedded in a mix of various types of worn pavement. It has a hole into which a removal tool might be inserted vertically centered on the left side. The majority of the panel is covered in a checkerboard pattern. Lettering on the panel reads (top to bottom):

italgas [stylized flame atop the "l"]
GRUPPO

GAS [large type, enclosed in a debossed square]

PISANO
SALERNO UNI EN 124
1 5 0 1 C 250

Photo of a square cast iron looking drainage grate, embedded in cobblestone (paving somewhat visible around the edge of the photo). The drain is created through a series of vertical slits rounded at the ends, in two rows of four each. Between the two rows are the lettering:

S.P.Q.R.

and in smaller type centered at the bottom:

S.A.F.O.D. [in a curvy-ish typeface with a bit of personality, and underlined with a line arched slightly upward]
TORINO

There are a couple cigarette butts at the edges of the grate, and some sort of plant (green leaves) can be seen stretching up from under the grate towards three of the middle slits.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2026

Remember in the late 1990s when the folks in charge of Zapata Petroleum decided to try to cash in on the fad and become an Internet portal company? Came to mind for no particular reason.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/05/2026

Bee butt! (Zoom in.) Eugenia Street Steps. Bernal Heights, SF CA.

Close-up of an orange flower, with some roundish green leaves in the background, all against a couple of concrete stairs. The careful observer sees a Bee butt perfectly centered in the central indentation / tunnel of the flower.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/03/2026

TLDR: Indications that LLM deployment is eating the early-career "seed corn" of software engineering and other "AI-exposed" jobs. digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/upl…

Graph showing relative headcount of various age ranges over time. Title is "Headcount Over Time by Age Group Software Developers (Normalized)." The horizontal time axis ranges from 2021 to 2025, with a dotted line marking mid-2022. To the left of the dotted line, all age ranges cluster together with a positive slope. To the right, the lines diverge, with "early career" falling dramatically while "mid-career 2" maintains an upward trend. Other age ranges fall in between these two extremes.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/02/2026

Happy First Radian Day, to those who celebrate it! milk.com/first-radian-day First Radian Day celebrates the 58th day of the year. 58 ≅ 365.256/2π. That is, it is the day during which the path traced by the Earth around the Sun, starting from the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Diagram of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, showing a one-radian arc of the Earth's orbit with a distance label 1 AU and also the radius between the Sun and Earth labeled 1AU.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/01/2026

Great illustrated explainer about the larger context around San Francisco's flooding and sewage back-up problems that show up in the rainy season: missionlocal.org/2026/01/san-franci…

Illustration of a (relatively inactive) storm drain at the edge of a body of water, with the following caption overlaid at the top-right:

When the heavy rains overflow sewer grates, what comes up isn't just rainwater, but everything residents try to flush away.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/12/2025

My kind of heavy metal hard rock. Museum of Natural History, NYC.

Photograph of a very large stibnite crystal, which is a half-ton lump consisting of spiky black crystals. It is lit from above, making some of the spikes appear to be various shades of gray. It looks like the sort of crystal that would be the frontman (frontstal?) in a Norwegian death metal band, even though this crystal came from China.

A close-up of the same crystal, looking spiky and black and gray.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/12/2025

Traditional Chanukah: Latkes with a side of duros de harina.

Photo of a tray lined with paper towels, on a stovetop, with a pan partially filled with oil partially visible off to the side. The tray contains a bunch of latkes, along a small pile of wagon-wheel style duros de harina.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/12/2025

"Hooded Oriole" by Talavera-Ballón. Corner of 18th and South Van Ness, SF CA. www.talavera-ballon.com

Photo of a painting of (presumably) a hooded oriole sitting on a line branch in front of a blue sky background, labeled and signed by the artist in the lower left. The painting is on a sidewalk utility box, and it is photographed from the street, straight on (minimal perspective on the painted surface). A red-painted curb is in front of the box, and a fairly plain flat wall of a building (painted cream and brown) is behind it.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/11/2025

Update: I think it was in fact a 3.8 in San Ramon. <https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc75260871/executive>

Shake map of the quake, indicating an epicenter in San Ramon (though not actually labeled with text). San Francisco, to the west and partially visible, is labeled and shows a shake line indicating mild shaking. Concord to the north, Fremont to the south, and Livermore to the southeast are all within a more energetic shake zone.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/11/2025

My local young gentleman wanted to share this drawing of a hepteract (seven-dimensional hypercube) on social media, and I hereby oblige.

Photo of a line drawing of a 2D projection of a hepteract in hot pink colored pencil, on a white piece of letter-sized paper. The paper is laying gently on the kneeling lap of a young gentleman wearing muted green pants. A small bit of his hands and green shirt are also visible at the top of the frame.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/10/2025

Veggie kefta hummus wrap, kefta made with Impossible ground (semi-improvised recipe). Very happy with the results!

Lavosh bread sitting flat on a bamboo cutting board. Centered on the bread is a pile of ingredients, including a log of kefta, two globs of hummus, some sliced green olives, some chopped cucumber, and some chopped and caramelized scallions. A slather of hummus and hot sauce peeks out from under it all.

The lavosh all wrapped up into a burrito-ish form.

The wrapped wrap, cut in half on a slight bias, with the cut ends both facing the camera, such that the filling is visible.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2025

There are many pictures of the Salk Institute, but these ones are mine.

Photo taken at the entrance to the courtyard at the Salk Institute. Four(ish?) story concrete buildings flank a stone courtyard, which together frame three sides of the sky including a bank of clouds straight ahead. A narrow channel divides the courtyard. Raised planting beds are partially in view on the left and right.

View along side the courtyard, under the right-hand building. The view is parallel to the courtyard, and the building creates a corridor which is alternately shaded and out in the open. The openings are fairly square in shape, and the visual effect is along the lines of a rectilinear snail. A wall in the foreground has a built-in chalkboard upon which the following has been written, artistically:

Symphony at Salk
a concert under the stars

View from a landing of an outdoor staircase of the right-hand building, looking at another outdoor space of the same building. The courtyard is beyond that, and the other building is further in the background. Rectangular slivers of sky are visible towards the left and right sides of the photo.

Close-up of one of the benches along the courtyard. An orange traffic pylon is next to it, with vertical wording reading "…Y OF / …AN DIEGO" with the cut-off parts obscured both by the bench and by white retroreflective tape on the pylon.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2025

You probably need some more ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS in your life. youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2oQ0ageO8&si=… CC @Ranjit

Picture of a Japanese man seen from the chest up facing the camera, staring right at it with a calm serious expression. The background is black. He is wearing a shirt covered in black and white stripes of varying widths, and his left hand is cradling a long rectangular board with black-on-white striped markings. His right arm is raised, brandishing a wired barcode reader.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2025

Unexpected Gorton sighting in Katamari Damacy Reroll (2018 rerelease of the 2004 original of the series). Unclear (literally, I looked for screenshots) if the original used Gorton. CC @mwichary

Cropped screenshot from the game in question, showing the label "SPACE MUSHROOM" in the upper-right corner, in white on a black background, in Gorton. The screenshot is dominated by a cartoon mushroom whose cap is covered, top and bottom, with the Prince and many of his cousins (characters from the game).

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2025

Spotted this gem next to the stacks at the Hagley Library. Wilmington DE. As context: The Hagley Library was founded by members of the du Pont family, whose original Delaware business was manufacturing black powder.

Framed advertisement which looks like it's something like a century old. The main text reads:

Forcite Powder

The Safest & Most Powerful
High Explosive

IS ENTIRELY WATER-PROOF
AND FREE FROM NOXIOUS GASES

American Forcite Powder M'f'g'. Co.
New York•

There are two oval-shaped drawings (not photographs) in the middle. One depicts a scene of a train crash, with the following text below:

The above is a photograph of a wreck that occured without explosion at Woodstock. Ont., February 16th 1901. Under the tender of engine 724 is what was left of car 29.990, G. T. R., loaded with FORCITE POWDER; the largest piece left of the car was a door.

The other drawing depicts a single rail car with an exploded-looking corner, with the following text below:

The safety of FORCITE POWDER is shown by the appearance of this car photographed directly after collision on the Philadelphia & Reading R.R., February 3d, 1886, loaded with FORCITE POWDER containing 60 per cent. of Nitro-glycerine.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/06/2025

I am pleased as punch to release Lactoserv v0.9.3, which is the second stable release of the v0.9.* series. Lactoserv is a web application backend toolkit and standalone web server, written in Node. This release is mostly about development tooling and has […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Screenshot of the rendered changelog. Original Markdown:

Breaking changes:
* None.

Other notable changes:
* New class `net-util.JsonUtil`, with just one method... so far.
* Got CI set up to build and test with multiple versions of Node. As currently
configured, it uses Node v20, v22, and v24.
* Updated linter version and dependencies (and tweaked config).
* Updated Jest (unit test system) version and dependencies.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2025

@fritzoids @williampietri I am reminded of this famous response to an empty legal threat (see image). Perhaps: To whom it may concern, I feel you should be aware some asshole is sending out AI slop and signing your name to it. Very truly yours, …

Cropped scan of a typewritten letter (like, literally produced on a typewriter). Text reads:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP.

James N. Bailey,
General Counsel

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2025

As with every June 1, I am reminded of this incredibly insightful piece by Kekeflipnote <https://youtube.com/@kekeflipnote> entitled "Brands when Pride Month ends," which in turn reminds me to remain extra skeptical until July 1.

Caption "See you in hell fruits" over a cartoon of a cheerful-looking cat liquefying a bunch of colorful fruit in a blender.

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Dan Bornstein @danfuzz.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/05/2025

I am pleased as punch to release Lactoserv v0.9.2. Lactoserv is a web application backend toolkit and standalone web server, written in Node. This release has nearly no notable changes and is mainly being made to indicate that the release series can now be […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Rendered changelog entry. Original markdown:

Breaking changes:
* None.

Other notable changes:
* Updated allowed Node versions.

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