iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I am a different David Ellison, so there’s no need to tag me for these things

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Sunn O))) but it’s Axiom and Manuel from On Cinema

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I had a dream where I read a paper that showed that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, speech recognition models couldn’t handle certain kinds of embedded clauses, so English speakers en masse abandoned these constructions and they became “lost” and vanished from the language

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

When this baby (the Angel of History as imagined by Walter Benjamin) hits eighty-eight miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit

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Reposted by David Ellison

Greg Spotts @spottnik.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

“Having a car should not be a requirement to building a life of one’s choosing.” 🚶 🚴‍♀️ 🚌 🚆 -Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson at the Sound Transit Crosslake Light Rail Opening

Mayor Katie Wilson speaking at Sound Transit Crosslake Light Rail Opening

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Reposted by David Ellison

Gasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

A baby whale is born with 10 female whales and one male helping. During the most beautiful event that happens in life—birth—whales were very chatty. We found vowels during the birth event as well. @projectceti.bsky.social The paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Okay okay fine I will “always historicize.” But not because you told me to.

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Staying up all night to invent a movie theater popcorn that’s completely silent

Nadine Hurley, from Twin Peaks. She’s sitting on the floor with her drape runner and a bag of cotton balls

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I do not want to work. I want to read books and listen to my songs of the humpback whale LP instead

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

More than ever I wish that awful man did not have the same name as me

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Reposted by David Ellison

Important Records @imprec.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Absolutely heartbroken to learn of the passing of the singular, inimitable Eliane Radigue. I have everything to say and nothing to say so I'll simply pass along this link to an interview I gave on Eliane and her work. She is now, officially, eternal. www.museoreinasofia.es/en/radio/son...

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Still all blissed out from an especially good weekend of music: Saloli and Visible Cloaks, then Geologist and Bitchin Bajas. Good music is good for my soul

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

I wish I didn’t get so irritated by book blurbs that say “a meditation on [subject].” But I also wish people would stop writing that

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Mike Davis in late 1993 perfectly predicted that 32 years later I would read Vineland and the Sprawl trilogy and wrote this review of Virtual Light with me in mind, it would seem

As a result, our perceptions of the future now wrench back and forth between two, seemingly polar visions. On the one hand, techno-hucksters seduce us with hyperboles about data superhighways, global networks, expert systems, and virtual realities. They assure us that we are on the threshold of an Information Millennium that will guarantee even the humblest optically-wired hut access to an infinite “digital sea” of imagineered pleasures.

On the other hand, we are confronted daily with the four horsemen of an incipient global apocalypse. The first is called Unemployment, as third world megacities (which now plausibly include Los Angeles and Moscow as well as Jakarta and Mexico D.F.) overflow with bitter postindustrial underclasses, nearly half a billion strong, who have become redundant, as either consumers or producers, to the world market. The second is Plague, as the world AIDS epidemic reveals biological pathways open for the invasion of other nightmare ailments, from penicillin-resistant TB to Ebola fever. The third is Tribalism, as multiethnic states, undermined by multinational capital, shatter into deadly shards of ethnic and religious hatred. The fourth horseman, of course, is Ecocide, as the exploitation of nature is accelerated to keep pace with falling terms of trade and rising international debt.

In the end, Virtual Light shares much of the generous spirit and slapstick humor of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (1990). The Bridge is recognizably Vineland’s intergenerational counterculture regrouped against the silicon fascism of the year 2005. Chevette is not unlike Prairie Wheeler, Pynchon’s daughter of the Revolution, while Skinner could be a later version of her hippie dad, good ole Zoyd Wheeler.

From similar perches on the seacoast of Ectopia (respectively the Redwoods and British Columbia), Pynchon and Gibson have written comic utopian novels that unabashedly defend the dream of the Commune. Given the cargo cults built around their names, these expressions of sentimentality and radical hope are also acts of considerable personal modesty. For Gibson, in particular, Virtual Light is a revealing move. No longer just the Seer of Cyberpunk, he may be becoming the Jack London of the wild youth of the ’90s.

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Dad said I'm allowed to immanentize the eschaton

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Okay, in that case I’ll put it on my list and will let you know if I get around to it

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

You’ve got the wrong guy, that’s a different person with the same name as me in the article :(

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Fredric Jameson on Gene Wolfe: "The work of Gene Wolfe, richly developing in the spaces between fantasy and SF, can perhaps serve as a central exhibit in these debates: for myself, I acknowledge its quality but feel a deep reluctance to abandon these generic distinctions."

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

I just saw Wormrot at northwest terror fest earlier this month and they were outrageously good! Really blew me away

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

the empty string is invisible to the naked eye

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Happy Birthday to the late, great Gene Wolfe! Here’s to many reads, and many rereads.

A shelf full of many books written by Gene Wolfe

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Best book I’ve read so far this year

The cover of Russell Hoban’s novel “Riddley Walker,” showing a puppet against a white background. A cat looks at the camera from behind the book.

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Drinking an outrageous amount of Taiwanese oolong lately

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Shiva came into my life unexpectedly about a month after my beloved Sylvia left it, and I’m so glad she did

A black cat with very long white whiskers and green eyes looks toward the camera

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

I thought it was worth it and I'm glad I did! But it doesn't really "pick up," exactly, I just got better at reading it by the time I got to the end

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

yes! I loved it but it was very slow going, I kind of chipped away at it for a couple months until I got to the end

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Last night I read an explanation of Jameson’s “ideologeme” as being like a phoneme for class discourse and it felt like a light bulb coming on

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

daydreaming about a multi year sabbatical to work on my emacs config and catch up on reading

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Picked up my dearest Sylvia’s ashes today. I miss her so much

A memorial clay paw print from a cat, with text reading “Sylvia”

A grey and brown tabby cat looking at the camera and lounging happily on a bedspread.

A beautiful grey and brown tabby cat with green eyes

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

Reading all day long to get in the mood for the death metal show later

Two books side by side: “Titus Groan” by Mervyn Peake, and “The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act” by Fredric Jameson

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

My beloved Sylvia left the world last night and I will love her forever

On the left, a man wearing headphones and glasses smiles at the camera sitting on a couch. On the right, above his shoulder, a beautiful gray tabby cat sleeps facing the camera on the back of three couch.

On the right, a man sitting in front of a couch smiles at the camera. In the center, a happy tabby cat rubs her head on the corner of his glasses.

A beautiful gray tabby cat rests on a blanket. In front of her is a rainbow catnip toy. She seems to be bathed in a halo of light.

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Reposted by David Ellison

Love All Day @loveallday.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

Two new Norm Chambers releases on the anniversary of his passing 🙏 panabrite.bandcamp.com/album/seasid...

panabrite.bandcamp.com

Seaside Variations, by N Chambers

5 track album

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

This talk title from the Emacs conference is my sleeper agent activation phrase

A listing for a ten-minute conference talk titled "Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today"

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Loscil and Lawrence English last night

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a deep orange screen

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a cloudy purple screen

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a screen of blue, pink, and orange

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a screen of grey, pink, and white

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 03/10/2023

drafting a post: the "rules based international order" was when all the linguists implemented their models in prolog. okay never mind, bear with me please i'm still working on it

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 03/10/2023

had one of those one hour "technical phone screen" job interviews early this morning and my beloved cat jumped up on the table right behind me and threw up on camera 20 minutes in, i completely lost track of what i was talking about

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 27/09/2023

I heard a good sentence the other day with "the ways in which that," double complementizer style. Really wish I'd written it down

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 21/09/2023

Kai Ashante Wilson's novellas "The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps" and "A Taste of Honey"

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 19/09/2023

One of my crackpot theories is that my cat likes my drone records. Today I put Stuart Dempster on and she lies down on the couch right in the best listening spot where the speakers point

The cover of Stuart Dempster’s album “Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel”

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