iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 08/01/2026

In terms of resolutions for 2026, I've only got one

On top of that, I’m officially in my late 30s, and I feel the rapid approach of a “give no fucks” attitude to the wide world of nonsense that seems to be everywhere in our present moment. It’s time to rise above the slop and focus on what really matters. Although it’s important to recognize that the interrelated material effects of tech enshittification, political destabilization, and regular climate disaster all require collective action to effectively oppose, I feel increasingly called to do everything in my personal power to “de-enshittify” the world around me.

Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 24/12/2025

The time of the sea-goat is now. Bunker down in the storm and get ready to realize all of your earthly ambitions (reading books and solving crossword puzzles)

Me coyly eating ice cream from a waffle bowl

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 08/12/2025

The face you make when you're definitely not terrified to realize that the man who has been lying to you for months and who refused to leave your house when told is your magical anonymous internet crush

Meg Ryan's character crying at the end of You've Got Mail when she sees Tom Hanks' character

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 05/12/2025

Turns out this is a really bad idea when `lower` is a 15-digit number lol Still stuck on #AdventOfCode day 5, part 2 but brute force is not the way to go in this lifetime

Some Go code looping through the lower and upper bounds of a set of numbers

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 28/11/2025

Here's my kofta b'siniyah 🇵🇸

A tray of perfectly grilled kofta laying on a bed of tahini, garnished with parsley and paprika.

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 28/11/2025

While you all were simping for turkey, we were reveling in the glories of Levantine Thanksgiving

A dark wood table handsomely laid out with green placemats and plates for 4 people, with numerous Levantine foods.

Printed menu card for "Levantine Thanksgiving, November 27, 2025." Main items include Kofta B'siniyah, Salatat al-Bundura, and 'Arz mae al-Baharat.

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 26/11/2025

Whether or not this feature is being used for AI, it sure has made me way lazier in what I let in and keep around in my email. I just turned it off, which removes the multi-inbox auto sort thing, and what was 10 unread emails jumped to 19K 😳

Gmail inbox showing 19,274 unread emails

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 01/11/2025

I shocked myself by unexpectedly beating Silksong. I honestly had no idea I was on the final boss

Silksong game completion screen: play time 37h 53m 29s

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 27/07/2025

Nothing better than gypsy punk under a summer desert sky — Gogol Bordello in Pioneertown, CA

View from the second or third row of the pit: a ragtag group of a half-dozen musicians play raucous carnival punk on a stage underneath an expansive twilight sky

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 01/06/2025

Hard proof that the rapture happened early this morning

A street covered in purple jacaranda leaves with a rectangle hole where a car was parked

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 30/03/2025

The Midwesterner in me is still sometimes astounded that you can be in Los Angeles County and see wilderness like this

The Devil's Punchbowl — a desert geological feature of giant, tilted sedimentary rocks forming a bowl-like depression, with 8,000-foot San Gabriel Mountains in the background. It looks like it could be the entrance to Hell

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 19/03/2025

After over a year of practicing tai chi two times a week, I am "graduating" to the sword form tonight and am pretty stoked

A Chinese sword with red tassels and yin-yang symbols on the blade and scabbard

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 08/03/2025

Friday night Tarkovsky—this is my Lent

Film poster for Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice: a group of people watch a house burning in the distance

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 09/01/2025

Yes, the Mike Davis essay is still (always) relevant in a city that cultivates amnesia toward the realities of living in an environment whose natural mode is periodic catastrophe

Excerpt from "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn": The 1930 Decker Canyon fire was a worst-case scenario involving 50-year-old chaparral and a fierce Santa Ana. Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames, 1,100 firefighters could do little except save their own lives. As the firestorm unexpectedly wheeled toward...

...the Pacific Palisades, there was official panic. County Supervisor Wright, his nerves shaken by a visit to the collapsing fire lines, posted a hundred patrolmen at the Los Angeles city limits to alert residents for evacuation. Should the "fire raging in the Malibu District get closer," he gasped, "our whole city might go." Ultimately, this apocalypse (which may have given Nathanael West the idea for the burning of Los Angeles in his novel Day of the Locust) was avoided - no thanks to human initiative - when the fickle Santa Ana abruptly subsided. In hindsight, the 1930 fire should have provoked a historic debate on the wisdom of opening Malibu to further development.

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 24/12/2024

Picked these up today as birthday presents to myself; or, my tastes in a nutshell

Two vinyl album covers: a single of Aretha Franklin's Jump to It (a stylized silver plane on a black starry sky) and a recording of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (an art nouveau-ish typography and illustration)

Two book covers: The Magician by Colm Toibin and a book of Alexander Rodchenko's photography

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 16/12/2024

Shamelessly selfie-ing with friends' cats like I don't do this every hour with my own cats

A sulky tabby cat named Trout leans in for a selfie with Daniel, who is smiling happily

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 04/12/2024

I don't know what's going on here but I'm keeping the French house flame alive apparently

I was in the top 0.2% of Daft Punk listeners

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 04/12/2024

You post your Spotify wrapped, I raise you my YouTube Music recap Meet me at the nexus of baroque and house

My top 5 artists of 2024: Daft Punk, Vikingur Olafsson, Caroline Polacheck, Charli xcx, The Smile

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Daniel Saunders @daniel-saunders.com · 19/11/2024

Post a perfect album from the '90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains. Hold up why does this default list continue after Nirvana lol