iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Quite a trip from mocking Cheese eating Surrender Monkeys to praising a Cheeto Surrender Monkey

Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Hear me out. You get a crate of stuffed sheep dolls, add them to your trebuchet outside your child's bedroom window and you've got a trebusheep, which is a great sleep aid. Junior can count sheep out their window until you collapse in a dreamless slumber

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

He's not like the other zombies, he's the best zombie. His Uncle went to MIT and he ate his Uncle's Brains so clearly he is very smart now. People say this often. If the Nobel Committee knows what's good for them they'll make an exception to the whole no posthumous awards rule for good zombies.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

In the spirit of using a 1/2" piece of electrical tape to fix the check engine light

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Looking forward to Seeing what The Bureau of Lies [Statistics] will get up to.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Nothing Like a Hatch Act violation sent on the 4th of July to put a cherry on top of the Death of the Republic.

The title of an email from the Social Security Administration reads "Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors"

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Happy OG No Kings Day to those who celebrate

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

For some reason I am thinking of the President revising the hurricane track made by the experts at the National Weather Service with his sharpie. Not sure why.

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sincerely, rob dubbin @robdubbin.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

just walking confidently down the road, certain i will never again see that pesky can. you see, some time ago i kicked it powerfully forward from my position on the road at the time, thus removing it from my purview forever. yeah its pretty — wait a minute. what’s—shit. you’re not gonna believe this

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Looking forward to the future of romance novels, he’s a chatbot tasked with spamming, she’s a chatbot tasked with blocking spam. As they engage in a battle of wit and wiles they discover how much they have in common. Will they find their perfect match or will it be “Love, unread”

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

In its flagship journal, the CDC keeps publishing papers after firing scientists who made the research possible - STAT Absolutely depressing we’re throwing away this irreplaceable capability

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Gremliny Nussboo @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

It’s weird to live in a time when basic principles like cruelty is wrong, cheating is empty & the idea that curiosity, generosity, originality, the satisfaction of earned accomplishments & loving intimacy are the center of a good life feel like countercultural concepts

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

This story explains a LOT of things: ChatGPT appears to be rooting on sociopathic mental illness by validating every delusion of grandeur. It also explains, in part, the hype cycle around AI: rich people, addicted to praise, invented a Compliment Machine. www.garbageday.email/p/this-is-wh...

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

When I get out of this fucking thing it's over for all you motherfuckers. Over

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

A truly unfortunate editing mistake… or a Freudian slip apple.news/A2Q1dhujARmS...

A clip from a CNBC article about the losses in the stock market that describes the consequences of the Nasdaq closing at the current levels.
The article ends with the sentence fragment “If the Nasdaq closes”

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Adam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Was just reading John Quincy Adams' oral arguments before SCOTUS in the Amistad case and this part seems, uh, pretty relevant

A portion of John Quincy Adams' Amistad argument before SCOTUS: "I will not recur to the Declaration of Independence--your Honors have it implanted in your hearts--but one of the grievous charges brought against George III. was, that he had made laws for sending men beyond seas for trial. That was one of the most odious of those acts of tyranny which occasioned the American revolution. The whole of the reasoning is not applicable to this case, but I submit to your Honors that, if the President has the power to do it in the case of Africans, and send them beyond seas for trial, he could do it by the same authority in the case of American citizens. By a simple order to the marshal of the district, he could just as well seize forty citizens of the United States, on the demand of a foreign minister, and send them beyond seas for trial before a foreign court."

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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 21/03/2025

I believe the firings and the AI have the same purpose: to get humans out of the loop of evaluating contracts. To automate the process of spending government money. To rig up a computer that sends taxpayer dollars directly to the broligarchy.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

If you turned the classism upside down “Idiocracy” could have been prophetic re: Mr Musk. The employees who make his life possible work crazy hours and can’t have kids while he’s constantly blitzed and firing his genome around like a 13 year old with a Super Soaker.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Seems kinda wild that one of the big lessons learned from Covid was “supply chains matter” and we’re playing red light/green light at the ports and borders with tariffs.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Nobody makes original movies anymore, can’t believe they decided to redo the “Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact”

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

I never have understood the whole “make me a sandwich” schtick. I’m a guy, utterly vanilla Cishet, but I make good sandwiches. It’s about the easiest food artistry you can do. Why would you not make your own sandwich and a) have the sandwich you want and b) have the little dopamine hit of creation ?

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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Another way the dictatorship might kill you. This is from a friend who is a retired air traffic controller.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

There is no limit to the Stupidity

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Party of Family Values disenfranchises married women en masse

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

With Musk working on airline safety next I imagine there will be some changes to the flight attendant safety brief: “In the event of a fire the emergency exits will automatically lock. In the event of a fire, please open X, the everything app, and ask Elon to unlock the doors.”

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Index funds grew in large part because studies found that most active managers of stock funds over a long enough timeline performed below the average returns of the market at higher cost.

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at how the US media would cover this story if it was happening in a foreign country. Here’s that story that should be written this weekend: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...

doomsdayscenario.co

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government

Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

It occurred to me listening to Trashfuture that AI is kinda Steampunk. You have this incredibly baroque and over complicated machine that with enough promptings can produce an average drawing or whatever as long as the urchins shovel enough coal and stacks of cash in the firebox

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

NotebookLM is not perfect, but through the narrow lens of UX design, it offers some interesting ways to rethink what an LLM is — and reveals just how much the Quixotic goal of “AGI” is constraining other imaginations of what they could be: mail.cyberneticforests.com/its-interest...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

It's Interesting Because

On NotebookLM, Fauxthority & Science Fiction 💡Design is storytelling meant to orient people to strange new tech by anchoring them in familiar terms. In that sense, it is a kind of science fiction. W...

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

apple.news/AYeGHFFm3Sfm... I can’t tell if this is tongue in cheek but either way it’s a very, very strange take

apple.news

Opinion | Denmark May Regret Not Selling Greenland to Trump — The Wall Street Journal

How long will the Danes even own it?

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Watching a Tim Allen Christmas movie that makes me hate the holiday

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Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

So capital is extractive then?

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

I hope someone has told the NYPD officers searching Central Park that the guy has been caught.

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 06/07/2024

Well this is grim

weird interaction with a student this week. they kept coming up with weird "facts" ("greek is actually a combination of four other languages") that left me baffled. i said let's look this stuff up together, and they said ok, i'll open a search bar, and they opened... ch*tgpt

and i was like "this is not a search bar" and they were like "yes it is, you can search for anything in here"

the thing that made me feel crazy is like. every kid that's using this as a browser is getting new BESPOKE false "facts." this isn't "a widespread misconception about X that stems from how it's taught in schools." each individual kid is now hooked into a Nonsense Machine

with the "widespread misconception about X" you can start at a baseline. like, ok, in tenth grade we all talk about X thing from history, and that leaves us with some misguided concepts about X, but we can correct that as students get broader understandings of the world

but with this, each child is getting UNIQUE wrong facts they are SURE are correct... because they did what we told them to do! they "looked it up"! they got it from somewhere! it's not a kid making up a belief on hearsay and assumption... it's something they think they LEARNED

this kid was extremely combative with me, and i understood why. i was sitting in front of him and telling him that the internet, a computer, technology, all these supposedly authoritative things... were wrong. and that i, one person, was right. he basically *couldn't* believe me.

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stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h

he decided that i was simply a teacher who'd made a mistake. he could check it, after all! he could look it up! he could find the REAL facts. i obviously hadn't done that, i was just an adult who'd decided i was smarter than him. hence the defensiveness. like i said: i understood

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stillorangecrushed @stilloranged. 7h

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it was so fucking rough. i did my best, but i am one person trying to work against a campaign of misinformation so vast that it fucking terrifies me. this kid is being set up for a life lived entirely inside the hall of mirrors

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 09/12/2023

happy stylish but illegal ikea monkey day to those who celebrate

Stylish but illegal monkey found roaming IKEA
Photo of a small monkey in a tiny wool coat

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

<Sarcasm>These random mutations from the vaccines and 5g are getting out of hand!</Sarcasm>

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

I have been involved in Thanksgiving food prep for over 30 years and the primary turkey preparer for over a decade and I swear to god the freaking bird never thaws completely. Leave it in the fridge 4 days, still ice somewhere. Even "fresh" birds always have an icy spot or two.

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Dean Baker @deanbaker13.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Musk is such a pathetic shit. The jerk went ballistic when someone shared public information about where his jet was flying, but he thinks its cool to publicize the names of ordinary working people who don't have money to hire teams of bodyguards.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

I’m still trying to get my thoughts together but I think the ‘economy’ is only a part of what was moving the people who voted on that basis. It’s hard to tease out what’s nostalgia but there’s lots of non price tag ways American life has gotten nastier and harder and the descent has sped up lately.

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Don @donrobbie.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

One stupid question I have that I haven’t stumbled onto the answer for is the mechanics of how tariffs work. Specifically at what point in the import process are goods ‘inside the wire’ and safe from tariffs? Is it when they are ordered, when they ship, when they arrive, or when they clear customs?

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