iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The great romantic tragedy Godzilla (1998, which is presumably the original Godzilla).

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It's a competitive category! (American bittern, according to Google Images) www.buzzfeed.com/fatbirdfeed/...

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Must be photoshopped (kidding). Or maybe from Avatar.

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

It's versatile. Probably A but could be B.

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I'm no lawyer, but IP (mostly copyright) comes up in some of my classes. My favorite there is to identify the layers of IP of this one (photographer, actor's likeness, character, tattoo artist, original tattoo copyright, etc.). I guess I could add in an AI edited version of the photo too...

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Agreed it's not a reliable benchmark, but it found Waldo when I tested it back in December with Gemini Nano Banana Pro. Prompt: annotate the image with a bright red circle around waldo. add a green circle around the funniest thing in the image.

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

I'm assuming you meant this hyperbolically, but for context the current youth unemployment rate is almost half as bad as it was at the peak of the Great Recession (which thankfully for my age is not yet multiple decades ago). fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14...

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

What's a good examples of a game mechanic that illustrates a key historical insight? What's a mechanic that distorts understanding?

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Awesome. Some art is timeless. I really want to know what's going on with this guy and his noble steed...

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Sounds like the people call out for a "sequel" to Pentiment but in the style of cave paintings... And/or various art styles of horses through history (Mongols, ~1300 AD):

A painting of a Mongol horseman attributed to Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322 CE). Made in China during the Yuan Dynasty (1260 - 1368 CE). Hanging scroll; colors on silk.

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

This kinda came up in their most recent podcast:

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Relevant comic, from: www.kevincomics.com/comic/enhance/

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

That was a human (presumably) winning entry in 2024. Claude, following your sci-fi prompt but in this style:

The Dream Auditor
Morris Kreplach had audited seventeen thousand, four hundred and thirty-two dreams, and not once—not once—had anyone dreamed of something genuinely interesting, unless you counted Mrs. Henderson from Topeka whose recurring nightmare about being chased through a grocery store by sentient produce had at least displayed some creativity in its selection of weaponized vegetables (the Brussels sprouts were particularly vindictive). But on this gray Tuesday morning in 2157, as Morris plugged his neural interface into the overnight batch from Sector 7, he encountered something that made his coffee cup slip from his trembling fingers and shatter against the linoleum floor of the Department of Subconscious Revenue like his sanity would moments later.
The dreamer was listed as Subject 7749-B, a maintenance worker named Janet Kowalski who lived in a cramped efficiency above a noodle shop and whose tax file indicated she possessed all the mathematical sophistication of a particularly dim turnip. Yet her dream—her beautiful, impossible dream—contained equations that danced across Morris's screen like luminescent poetry: calculations that described the curvature of space-time as if it were putty in cosmic hands, formulas that mapped the precise location of every quantum particle that had ever existed or ever would exist, and most disturbing of all, a mathematical proof that reality itself was nothing more than an elaborate debugging session run by bored graduate students in a universe one dimension higher than ours.
Morris stared at the scrolling numbers, his bureaucratic heart hammering against his ribs like a caged physicist trying to escape tenure review, because he realized with dawning horror that Janet Kowalski's dream wasn't just mathematically impossible—it was mathematically true

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Me continuing to try to feed the children, who find an infinite variety of ways for food to end up on floor:

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

So far only ChatGPT passes this exciting new image generating benchmark (Gemini and Copilot's versions were too deformed):

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Thanks! Ha, well put. I do enjoy a good technopanic. Surely THIS time the new form of communication, entertainment, and/or tech is actually making everyone stupid... (said for the last 3000 years) xkcd.com/1601/

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Hard to tell what's just nostalgia but arguably Portal. The cleverness of the puzzles and writing don't depend on the graphics or context.

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

'Tis the season for playful good! The Play Make Learn conference returns 8/21-22 at UW-Madison. This year's theme is Messiness. I'm eager to see what looks like for teachers, librarians, game designers, artists and the rest of our awesome community. Submit Proposals: go.wisc.edu/PMLsubmit

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David McHugh @davidmchugh.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Metaphors for AI are fascinating - what's the most interesting you've come across? E.g., stochastic parrots, distorting carnival mirror, digital microplastics, blurry JPEG of the web, sketchy and forgetful intern, etc.

"Photorealistic image of a funhouse-style carnival mirror with a tall, wavy, and uneven surface, designed to distort reflections. The mirror reflects the vibrant text 'AI' in a bold, futuristic font, its reflection stretched, compressed, and warped in a playful yet slightly uncanny manner. The mirror is framed in ornate, vintage-style wood with a weathered carnival aesthetic. The background depicts a lively carnival scene, with strings of colorful lights, blurred crowds, and festive booths, creating a surreal and dynamic atmosphere that highlights the metaphor of AI as both a reflection and distortion of reality."

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