iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Like, it’s not art, but it is something a chatbot will simply never accomplish. The discursive equivalent of throwing up on the salad bar.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Most pro-AI takes are so bland and pedestrian that you can see why anyone expressing them would think they could be replaced by a chatbot. But occasionally you’ll encounter one so terrible and unhinged, it inadvertently demonstrates the uniquely human illogic that no computer will ever replicate.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That watering can will get you nowhere, baby! Not to mention that a sprinkler would sit nicely in the middle of the baby/farm work Venn diagram.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Which really helps clarify that these were not genetically engineered super farmer babies, but regular human babies made to toil in the fields, unaware of even the most basic irrigation techniques.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I can imagine them waiting with a smirk while their bosses reviewed it, only for them to come back with a single not to add a “No GMOs” sign somewhere.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I can imagine the poor designer getting conflicting instructions to show cute babies and also show the wholesome nature of the food by showing the fields where it was grown. I can imagine that designer saying "fuck it" and submitting this as a joke.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Savvy marketing people recognize that new parents like looking at babies, so adjust their packaging accordingly. But sometimes they overshoot and imply some major child labor violations.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yoda [rematerializing]: And yet another Skywalker, there is. [Turns back into Force ghost]

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

People without the skills to produce goods or provide services learning they are somehow also bad at making money off of other people’s skills. Just failing at being leeches before the whole world.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I would like to see the mediumest amount of ads, please.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ads on paid tiers is wild, but it does present the most straightforward marketing stratification imaginable. Now you can chose to run your ad in front of the richest people on the platform, or the poorest, or some third thing that is neither rich nor poor.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Having a cocktail. Thinking of Josh.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I suspect the Met can give away 70,000 tickets because they know they'd go unsold otherwise. I know my "let the Met die" position is unpopular (then again, so is opera), but I'd kind of like to see the mayor put his weight behind artists creating new art rather than reifying the European canon.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Pfft. If I wanted to watch ads I would go outside.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I get how tiring these conversations are (especially with every day being some chud’s first on the internet), but there are absolutely ways to explain that someone should care about other people!

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

(One need look no further than “moral” policy positions we disagree with. Focusing on the morality makes it about opinion and belief, when there are cold, hard facts that support one position or another.)

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Honestly, focusing on the morality of these positions has the effect of conceding that they aren’t superior logically and practically. The morality may be so obvious to you that the evidence shouldn’t be worth mentioning, but it won’t be to everyone, so is a bad argument to lead with.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The essay itself references logical and evidenced-based arguments for empathetic policies, but expresses dismay that one should need evidence to want people to not go hungry. At the time, seeing that frustration expressed was cathartic, but I hate to see it take hold as a moral refusal to engage.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

But I’ve seen people reference the title of the essay as a shorthand for “there’s no way to teach empathy,” which feels like a profound rhetorical failure. I fear that people have taken to heart that empathy is something intrinsic and inexplicable.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The essay itself is an expression of exhaustion at arguing with people whose opinions leave no room for empathy — a very 2017 sentiment that definitely still resonates today.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Almost ten years on, I still see people referencing that “I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People” essay, and I fear that (in typical social media fashion) the popular takeaway is what people assume the title means.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I hope this email never finds you because you're at the ice cream parlor.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

(this one is for all you Crash Test Dummies fans)

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm like J. Alfred Prufrock, but you can measure my life in sample spoons.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

All those moments will be lost in time, like ice cream in rain.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“That meeting could have been an email” is the thought of someone who wants more email. That meeting could have been a hot fudge sundae.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Dressed the baby in puffy pants today. H said she looks like MC Hammer, so I made her shimmy sideways and hummed some “Can’t Touch This.” H called the baby a Super Freak, which is just some top-tier reverse-interpolation.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

“Where’s Waldo?” is like “Finnegan’s Wake” in this way, he thinks to himself, somehow imagining this is what intellectualism is.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A panel CAN contain a lot more information than any regular sentence, but aside from exceptional circumstances, should probably still function like one sentence, with a clear subject, verb, etc. But this is getting into broader extrapolations of this "rule," which I haven't fully considered.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A panel shouldn't just be a vehicle for dialogue, but is a sentence in its own right, so needs a verb better than "said." It gives the artist more to work with and the reader more to resonate with.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And I think this really is the kind of "unwritten rule" that longtime comics readers have absorbed through osmosis, but probably never gets said to anybody. A comics writer knows instinctively to give specific acting beats across a dialogue sequence, but a prose writer may not.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Like a sentence, a single panel can tell a story, but a very simple one. And actually, that's the leg up comics has on prose: the setting, the characters, the costumes, the props, and anything else you can see can be present constantly. All the more reason to focus on the actions within the scene!

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I concocted that analogy to put it in prose writing terms, but I think "the panel is a sentence" has broader explanatory power that I think is valuable. Panels that don't have a clear verb function very similar to a sentence fragment. Panels that lack any specificity take on a childish simplicity.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And it can support much more than that -- adjectives, direct and indirect objects, heck, maybe even an adverb or two. And as with actual prose, the specificity of those elements are what gives the work style. Especially the verbs! Characters will stand around like mannequins without good verbs.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

And I think we don't quite set them up for success there, because I think there's a handy analogy that they could understand: a panel is the visual equivalent of a sentence. It should have at least a noun and a verb to be structurally meaningful (barring fragments for emphasis, obviously).

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

These are successful writers, so they understand the value of an interesting verb. The characters in their prose don't "jog," they "hustle" or "scurry." But they somehow take for granted that the verbs in a comic are the artist's domain, so lose that specificity that makes their prose sparkle.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

But the trend I've noticed is that these types of writers tend to be a bit too bare-bones with describing the actual events of the scene, so you end up with a lot of dialogue-heavy sequences. That tends to get misdiagnosed as writers being "writerly," but I don't think that's quite it.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Editors working with these types or writers know that they'll intrinsically understand dialoguing, but may need guidance with panel count, or extra care around not writing multiple sequential actions into a single panel, so we tend to focus more on those paneling fundamentals.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I should preface this by saying that all of the folks I'm generalizing here are highly accomplished (hence getting "stunt" cast on comics work), highly skilled writers. This isn't about their lack of knowledge, but about where prepping them for comics writing broke down.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I haven't worked much with new writers, but I have had occasion to work with seasoned writers from other media who were relatively new to comics. I've noticed a trend across those experiences that has gotten me thinking about the unwritten rules of comics that might bear spelling out to novices. 🧵

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I’ve been intentionally avoiding anything to do with the HP show, but HBO just auto played an ad for it, and was shocked at the Kevin Sorbo-ass casting energy it’s putting out. Were Gina Carano and Scott Baio unavailable?

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

…but the doctor says “I cannot operate on this boy — he is my son. Also, I’m supposed to be operating on the great clown, Pagliacci.” How can this be?

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

How tired of winning do you have to be to exude such wimpy tattletale energy?

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

As Santayana said, those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to be surprised by literally everything.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Bless your naive little heart that you have faith left to lose in tech mega-corporations, but we went through the exact same thing last year. We never had to guess what Google would do when presented with this scenario.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I get that every day is somebody’s first day on the internet or whatever, but it is genuinely baffling that people are surprised by this. Does the Gulf of Mexico ring any bells? Is this site populated exclusively with goldfish?

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

She’s going to call me “Pops” after the sound my knees make.

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Drew Baumgartner @dbaumgartner.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Paid advertising space will become as untrustworthy as phone calls from unknown numbers. There might be enough suckers to justify the expense, but the blurring line between ad and scam will mean fewer people trust any advertising.

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