iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 27/09/2026

wow didn’t expect to see sylvester stallone diss the cure in this nyt interview

NYT: You talked about how no one would return your calls in Hollywood for a period in the late 1990s. And this was when you had movies that didn’t do well: “Judge Dredd,” “Daylight,” “Get Carter,” “Driven,” “D-Tox,” “Avenging Angelo.” I came across an interview you gave to The New York Times in 1992. The article quotes one prominent Hollywood agent who said: “I think he’s a diminishing asset. With every film he does, he goes down a little further. He’s the new Burt Reynolds.” How do you explain this period of not-so-great films? Was it a quality-control issue?

SLY: It really was. I didn’t apply myself to the actual quality and the components — in other words, the right director, the right co-star, the right advertising, the right theme song.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 15/09/2026

these maniacs really did it

screenshot from an email that reads "GFiber is now gFiber." if your screenreader doesn't make the distinction, the "g" at the beginning of the second one is lowercase instead of uppercase. that's all. that's the whole difference.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 15/09/2026

every so often, trump cooks

“It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history,” he wrote.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 14/09/2026

tried to understand the gap between the way people i know (including from this very website) talk about this stuff and the concerns casar has that led him to introduce legislation, since it’s pretty large!

TM: AI skeptics, especially on the left, sometimes say that the existential risks are really just marketing from Al companies, and that the technology is still basically a chatbot using fancy auto-complete. What does that miss?

GC: Some of the folks that care about this on the left are concerned about AI risks as they exist now. I think we should be concerned about Al now and AI later. This is not a marketing ploy. We're hearing from AI researchers who are quitting, or who are inside the companies, about the dangers. I haven't heard of many marketing strategies where the CEOs are trying to get themselves dragged in front of Congress and subpoenaed. Ford didn't try to sell cars by saying "Our cars could spin out of your control, explode, and kill you and your friends."

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 14/09/2026

i’m extremely tired of hearing about ai but given that the congressman from my neighborhood is the one who introduced the “ban ai superintelligence” bill, i figured i should at least talk to him about it

Texas Monthly: The discourse around superintelligent Al shifted recently, but you put this bill forward before that happened. How long have you been focused on this?

Greg Casar: I've been hearing from and meeting with Al experts for years now, and I have been very concerned that Al development was headed toward creating a couple of trillionaires while making all Americans less free, less employed, and less safe. Nate Soares is an Austinite who's a longtime expert on the dangers of superintelligence, and I read his book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, which in many ways lays out what we're experiencing this year. What sounded like sci-fi is now actually really happening to us, and it's time to regulate this out-of-control Al before it gets worse.

TM: Over the past couple of weeks, the conversation seems to have shifted from "this thing is going to take all the jobs" to "this thing is going to kill us all." How has your thinking changed?

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 13/09/2026

Name a non-LOTR character who could resist the One Ring

sylvester stallone as rocky in rocky. i checked and it is definitely stallone and not the kid from the movie about rocky who plays stallone. sylvester stallone could not resist the one ring, only his character rocky could.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 11/09/2026

it appears right-wing orgs have found messaging against talarico's clever wording in his fox interview

APP Warns Talarico Still Extreme on Trans Issues Despite Recent “Retreat”
"Texas families should not be fooled by this sleight of hand"

Washington, D.C. — Earlier this week, Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico appeared to retreat from his previous positions on transgender issues in an interview with Fox News. However, a review of his statements reveals this apparent shift is mostly rhetorical and that Talarico still holds many positions well outside the mainstream on gender.

Talarico claimed to oppose “trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness” [emphasis added]. However, many on the left deny that allowing trans-identifying boys into girls’ sports endangers anything, and Talarico himself has stated that male athletes “causing problems” in girls’ sports “does not occur” in Texas, calling into question whether he believes there is any instance in which a trans-identifying athlete could endanger women or girls.

“James Talarico is running scared. He knows his gender radicalism is a deal-breaker with Texas voters, but he also knows his far-left supporters refuse to give an inch on these issues. So he is attempting a good old-fashioned Texas two-step—seeming to moderate on girls’ sports and sex changes for minors while not really changing his position on either issue.

“Texas families should not be fooled by this sleight of hand, which is why APP will be continuing to educate them between now and November on Talarico’s radicalism.”

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 10/09/2026

just a lil bit obsessed with this san antonio restaurant owner that has been crowdsourcing ideas for which ai-generated concept to put in the restaurant space they have never been able to make work

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 10/09/2026

feel like i understand the 2 percent of pro-dsa republicans better than the 3 percent of maga democrats tbh

screenshot from a quinnipiac poll that shows what the tweet says.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 10/09/2026

at least this one actually was blatant trademark infringement

a tee shirt from born united featuring buc-ee, the beaver from buc-ee’s, in tactical gear. it is unmistakably the real buc-ee.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 09/09/2026

they are really dedicated to this mission

i tried to write "ass" using the emoji symbol with an A in a black circle, followed by a numeral 5, followed by a dollar sign, and it still won't let me write ass on airpods.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 09/09/2026

this is censorship, apple has lost a customer

screenshot from apple.com where it gave me an error message for trying to put "ass" on a pair of airpods.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 04/09/2026

i sound most like i am from a state i’ve never even stopped in, but also i score a 53 percent for the stated i’m most similar to and a 50 percent for the states i’m least similar to, so i am guessing this just confirms that i moved around a lot as a kid

basically what the post says but in case you’re curious, i sound like im from delaware apparently.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 02/09/2026

how talarico could win in texas: paxton struggles even with very conservative voters; 16 percent of less ardent conservatives actually plan to vote for talarico. combine that with talarico’s 72 percent support from moderates (and nigh-universal support from liberals), and he’s got a stew going

the crosstabs from the poll cited. it backs up what the tweet says.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 02/09/2026

overall, trump is ten points underwater in texas, which is the biggest margin we’ve seen here since the access hollywood tape

a trend line of trump’s favorability. his previous high on the chart was nine points, frim a different pollster, also from august.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 02/09/2026

new poll from texas public policy foundation and overton insights finds that twenty percent of republican primary voters strongly disapprove of donald trump

screenshot of poll crosstabs. 19.6 percent of republican primary voters have trump at strongly disapprove. notably, 63 percent of voters who didn’t vote in either primary also strongly disapprove.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 31/08/2026

if there is one thing i wanted to get across when writing about erykah badu, it is that on top of her talent and everything else, she is just cool as all hell

Those collaborators skew young. Earl Sweatshirt, who was not yet three years old when Baduizm, Badu’s debut, was released, drops a guest verse; Steve Lacy, a fellow affiliate of Tyler, the Creator’s Odd Future collective, offers soaring vocals on “To the Moon (Plan C)”; newcomer DJ Creole Princess—whom Badu introduced at a show in Austin last year as the daughter of her longtime friend and occasional tourmate Yasiin Bey—brings bars to “I Just Play a Part.” In the listening room of Shyboy, a Gen Zer tells Badu that while listening to the album, she heard it as a bridge between the past and the future. “I was just waiting for y’all to grow the f— up,” Badu replies, referring to the connection she’s long felt to the children of the nineties. She explains that while kids born in the seventies and eighties had hearts that beat steadily, babies from the nineties had an “irregular heartbeat,” before tapping out the famous opening drum rhythm of her 1996 debut single, “On & On,” on the head of her microphone.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 31/08/2026

i have done a terrible thing

a can of liquid death sparking water. the flavor is peanut butter cup. the can is brown. there is a skull on it. it is sixteen ounces.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 28/08/2026

this weirdo does not care that it is august in texas, she is sunbathing anyway

a very pretty brown and white husky lies in the sun looking very happy.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 28/08/2026

the two things that struck me most about netflix's vince young documentary are 1) how desperately he sought out father figures throughout his career, and 2) the way jeff fisher, who as his coach as a rookie ought to have been one of them, was just such an absolute dick to him, even years later

Near the end of the documentary, in what's perhaps the film's most telling moment about the relationship between the two, Young reveals that he wrote Fisher a letter years after both player and coach were finished in Tennessee. It said, "I hope you can forgive me for how I handled a lot of things with the Titans" Fisher never responded. When asked why, Fisher said, "He spelled my name wrong."

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 28/08/2026

every so often, wikipedia serves you up a truly unpredictable sentence

By 1994, Mister Sinister was popular enough that Chef Boyardee used him to advertise its pasta.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 25/08/2026

my favorite thing about the texans’ rivalry uniforms is how hard the team worked in every explanation of the design elements to pretend that the houston oilers never existed and this is all just a wacky coincidence

a photo of houston texans pass rusher danielle hunter in the new rivalry uniform, which looks like the Houston oilers uniform.

a photo of warren moon in a Houston oilers uniform, which looks like the texans’ rivalry uniform.

screenshot that reads: “On their webpage explaining the uniform choices, the Oilers are never mentioned. In fact, reading about the inspiration for the gear, one could conclude that the city of' Houston never even had an NFL team
before the Texans arrived in 2002. Instead, we learn that the helmets are white because that's what the Texans' founding owner Bob
McNair envisioned back when the team
debuted. The blue, meanwhile, has nothing to do with the Oilers-rather, it's the same blue you'll find in the city's famous street tiles, a pattern which appears in the uniform's helmet and shoulder stripes and which perhaps only resembles the shade worn by the Oilers by coincidence. (The Oilers, of course, may have been influenced by those same tiles, though their Columbia Blue shade didn't directly mirror it.)”

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 19/08/2026

oh no i went to look how the sports media dudes are talking about this on x, the everything app

a retweet of the author's tweet to the story from some guy named dennis dodd that reads: "This is the story of the off season (on field). Brett did what no one else has been able to do for a decade— speak to Art Briles about his life, Baylor and future."

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 19/08/2026

this is like the sixth thing i think about when i hear art briles's name, but i definitely think about it a lot

During the trial, Fortenberry asked Briles about Beating Goliath—and Briles claimed he had no knowledge of the book, saying that it was “written about me” and that he’d never read it. Fortenberry attempted to clarify, holding up a copy of Beating Goliath to ensure Briles hadn’t confused it with Art Briles: Looking Up. The coach insisted that he wasn’t mistaken. He was, he said, more involved in the publication of the authorized biography than in that of the memoir. He testified that he didn’t remember approving Beating Goliath or signing a contract for the book; he only grudgingly acknowledged that he had participated in a book signing for the memoir at the Baylor bookstore in 2014. When Fortenberry asked him if he was paid for the book, he declared that all of the money had been donated to charity, and when Fortenberry said that giving the money to charity didn’t mean that he hadn’t been paid, Briles insisted that he hadn’t.

When I described the testimony for Yaeger, the coauthor of the book, he was surprised. “Nothing about the way you reflected it could be further from the truth,” he wrote in an email on Thursday night. “I just reviewed the book contract with St. Martin’s, which was signed by Art and his agent received Art’s portion of the advance.”

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 18/08/2026

this is a cool yard, wonder what it would look like if i invited a bunch of my AI generated friends to hang out

the back of a house in daytime. there's a deck and a firepit and a few trees and some half-covered grass, which is normal for Austin in the summer.

the same back yard, except this time the trees are an emerald green and the sky is a richly saturated blue. the lights inside the house are bright even though it's the middle of the day, the ground cover is extra green, and a bunch of people who are not real and do not exist stand unnaturally motionless around the fire pit, which is burning despite the fact that, again, this is texas during the daytime and so in reality it was probably at least ninety degrees fahrenheit (32 degrees celsius) outside.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 18/08/2026

what it looks like on redfin / what it looks like on streetview

a dramatic, low-angle shot of a two-story house with a moody sky hued with purples and pinks. light peaks through each window and the entire perimeter of the house is dotted with lights that illuminate the ground.

same house but it's the google street view. it's daylight, there's a neighboring house very close next door, leaves on the ground, trash cans in the street, etc. just looks like a regular degular ass house.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 18/08/2026

funniest AI-in-real-estate ads thing is when they're just used to dramatize/saturate the lighting and colors of exteriors, like the spell won't be broken the moment the buyer looks at the actual place and it turns out to be regular and normal. i bet this house isn't actually in the shire

an idyllic scene of a creek with improbably green vegetation for a texas summer, with golden rays of sunlight poking through the leaves and reflecting off of the similarly improbably-full creek.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 15/08/2026

this is fascinating and answers how it survives being copy to ascii, but also “it randomly decides between ‘grey’ and ‘overcast’” hurts my feelings as someone who decides which word to use based on the mood i wanted to set, sentence rhythm, if i like the today/grey rhyme or want to avoid it, etc

What is watermarking?
Large language models like Claude work by generating one word at a time. Each time the model decides on the next word, it chooses among a list of potential candidates, ultimately selecting the most sensible or likely based on the preceding text. Take the sentence "The weather today was cold and...". The next word is very unlikely to be "sugary." But it is quite likely to be "overcast" or "grey." Under most circumstances, it doesn't matter much to the reader which of these latter two words the model ultimately chooses-the meaning of the sentence is largely the same either way. In cases like this, the choice is settled by a random number.
Watermarking uses low-stakes choices like these —which occur many times over a piece of generated text—to leave a pattern in Claude's responses. That pattern is undetectable to the reader, but is detectable to anyone who has a key that encodes it. When watermarking is used, choices are still made at random, but the source of the randomness is different. Instead of using an arbitrary random number generator to pick the next word, watermarking uses the key and a few words that come before to settle what word the model should pick. That is, the words that Claude picks are still random, but now, one can check the sequence of words and see if it's consistent with the choices Claude would make if it was using the key. If it is, one can assign a probability that the text was generated by Claude.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 14/08/2026

help me figure out what’s going on in the photos from a house listing. these are identical shots, staged vs. non-staged. the camera doesn’t move so i don’t think a person took both photos. i’d guess AI but does AI know how to put a kurt vile record on the wall, or a neil young book on the shelf?

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 07/08/2026

the fact that the talarico campaign highlighted this exchange from his breakfast club appearance is so funny to me

WATCH: TALARICO ON LEGALIZING WEED

Charlamagne tha God: Why do you wanna ban weed?

James Talarico: No, no, no, I’m for legalizing weed

Charlamagne: Oooooooooohhh

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 21/07/2026

birdsky, is this a yellow-crowned night heron? he was very large and hanging out in the creek by my house today and he sure looks like one, but audubon says it’s unlikely one would be in austin this time of year

a large bird that you can’t really tell is large since there isn’t much to compare it to, scale-wise, in a tree surrounded by other trees. it has grey feathers, a black face, and a yellow stripe on its cheek and the top of its head.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 13/07/2026

i went to add the on-sale time to my calendar and it remembered all the other times i did this back when they used to offer it

i typed “pasta pass” in all caps and my calendar auto-suggested three previous entries with similar names.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 13/07/2026

our long national nightmare is over

email announcing the return of the olive garden pasta pass.

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 04/07/2026

if i had more wall space in my house and enough disposable income to spend $700 on something i half love and half hate i would buy this immediately

a thomas kinkade style painting of the claremont/byrne era x-men playing baseball

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 04/07/2026

found this v important reddit post from five years ago, theories abound in thread

from r/rockybalboa: Why is Apollo's American flag trunks vastly different when Rocky and Tommy wears them?

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 28/06/2026

been getting a few of these scam letters pretending to be someone who run a (real) book club or literary festival with a bunch of AI text that has ingested a summary of my book, but this is the first one i’ve gotten for someone else’s book

subject: Your Book Helps Parents Understand
Teen Culture with Curiosity Rather Than Disconnection

body: Hi Anja Schmidt,
While preparing titles for our upcoming reader spotlight, The Plugged-In Parent Almanac 2023 immediately stood out because it addresses one of the biggest modern parenting challenges in a way that feels practical, relevant, and genuinely empathetic.
What especially caught my attention was that the book does not approach teen culture from a place of criticism or fear. Instead, it encourages parents to better understand the entertainment, trends, online spaces, and cultural influences shaping the lives of tweens and teens today. That perspective feels especially valuable in a time where many families experience growing generational disconnect (and then it cuts off.)

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 21/06/2026

seems like a weird frame for a story about 63-year-old falling?

Rolling Stone headline:
“KARMA: METALLICA'S
KIRK HAMMETT
FALLS OFF STAGE
DAYS AFTER ENRAGING SWIFTIES” subhed: “A week after wearing a "Taylor Swift Is a CIA Psyop" shirt, guitarist plunges into crowd during band's Dublin concert.”

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dan solomon @dansolomon.com · 17/06/2026

gonna be Wife Guy here real quick and tell you that THE HOG QUEEN, the horror short @katcraft.bsky.social wrote/directed, is available to watch online for the next two weeks as part of this package of queer horror shorts from the atlanta horror film fest! it’s hogs, y’all!!! filmfestivals.tv/horror