iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Yesterday’s lunch. Peak Cajun cuisine IYKYK

Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Back from a month in southern Louisiana. Temps didn’t change the entire drive back up. Feels like I’m still there. Less rain and humidity but man… hot.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Bellicose manchild wants the Nobel Peace Prize? Fuck Trump.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

My cousin weighs in on my IG post. It’s gonna be a great summer, back home and down South.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Trump doesn’t look like he’s enjoying his little birthday party.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

(I should also add, since this is blowing up - by my tiny standards lmao - that “no thing” was Elizabethan slang for vagina so, yes, Hamlet is calling King Claudius a “pu**y”. You can decide for yourselves if that particular connotation of the term extends to the current case)

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

It really comes down to race and racism. It’s inarguable. So when people voice their criticism by saying “Why is everything about race to y’all?” Because y’all made everything about race in the first place! Like, are y’all even paying attention? If y’all didn’t start none, wouldn’t be none.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

🤣 This is on track to be my biggest post (which isn’t saying much, I know). But as much as I love Hamlet and how much Hamlet means to me, I can live with that.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

“No thing” was yonic and “thing” was that phallic. But yes. That’s exactly what he was doing. I love that entire exchange. “Much Ado About Nothing” is such a great title and most people don’t realize what it really means.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

After spending a decade on studying policing and incarceration of kids, you’re absolutely right. This is what so many want the police doing. Just keep those Others in line and away from us.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Many Sheriffs in Louisiana have specifically relied on small town folks not doing anything about them. For over a hundred years now.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

POTUS claimed the Los Angeles riots led to “many deaths” Yet, more people have died because of Trump’s parade than have died in LA as part of the “riots.” I’ll leave y’all to determine who the real danger is.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Was the story about the 101st Airborne Ranger who died practicing for the parade confirmed true? Feels like it belongs in this list too.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Hamlet: The king is a thing ... Guildenstern: A thing, my lord? Hamlet: Of nothing.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

We’re on an autobahn to autocracy. I knew we were in for terrible things but I grossly underestimated the speed at which we’d be blowing through guardrails

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

We only recognize one kind of crown in Louisiana. We only throw parades for one kind of king in Louisiana. #NoKings Happy No Kings Day for all who celebrate.

Photo of a Mardi Gras crown, lying on top of green, yellow, and purple Mardi Gras beads

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Like… I want to see OKC win but when I’m watching the game, I end up pulling for Indiana. WTF is that?

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Good point. There is no greater deterrent right now than nuclear weapons. All they are doing is giving the deterrence argument more credence. Foreign policy is just administrative myopia at this point, with a ‘might makes right’ ethos behind it.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

It’s the size of a walkable neighborhood. AI news stories are running rampant making it look like the final stand in The Walking Dead. It’s weaponized for propaganda. Now we’re seeing why the Trump admin wants to control AI themselves for the next decade. Control the medium, control the message

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

It was plastered all over the news in 🇨🇦, too. People asking me, knowing I’m 🇺🇸, what the hell was going on. Saying at least it couldn’t get any worse. Oh, sweet summer children.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

I actually think this has a chance to go from his only strength to a real liability. The cracks are already showing with the exceptions and concessions he’s already looking to make. The brutality cannot be ignored.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

“Thirty-eight years ago…” 😳 Damn I got old fast

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

It’s really just a way to get a tuned out audience to focus up. I prefer a good chiasmus, but even Shakespeare had heroic couplets and internal rhyme and repetition. It serves the same purpose, but is also a testament of how far we’ve fallen off. “To be or not to be” to “let me be clear”

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I’ve worked in schools in impoverished communities back home. Youth prisons. I can only imagine how many more broken and traumatized families there would be in your line of work. Kids who battle for a chance and face odds longer than we can fathom

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

It’s not about quelling violence. It’s actually the opposite. He is fomenting it. He is actively stoking it. He’s rooting for it. Because that will give him the cause to drop an incommensurately large hammer to the adulation of the rabid Roman Coliseum Redux fans of his

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

They were so happy. Dad was carrying a big area rug. They were here now and looking to make a home their own.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

As a Louisiana native, it’s embarrassing. He’s so stuck in the 1800s he probably thinks tarring and feathering is actually still a thing.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Just stopped by a pasta place to pick up a lasagna for dinner tonight. Next door, there’s a paint store. There was a family of four, recent refugees, picking out paint for the girls’ new room. Seeing these two girls, probably 4 and 6, excited about their new room and house. F*ck the haters.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

“Let the [protesters] play ‘Neck’!”

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Reminds me of this bit from Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk”:

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I lived there for years. He can do no wrong. People will applaud as they are caught up in the pepper spray mist while shopping at HEB.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Thanks! When I was growing up, I fetched countless beers for my dad, uncles, friends at hunting and fishing camps. Uncle Gilbert (great uncle) was my favorite. It sounds silly but when I was a kid I thought that when I grew up I would drink the beer he did. Dad was a Bud drinker so he didn’t approve

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Throwback to this wonderful memory from this time of year. PhD graduation with our oldest (now 15! 😬) and UofT used this photo on their socials and coverage. I was flattered and excited but I also know it was 100000% because of her overwhelming adorableness.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I’m a Miller Lite drinker. It’s brewed domestically by Molson and sold as a domestic product in Ontario. I think the photo they chose is a bit misleading.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Coded language for Old Stock Canadians. But not too old. Don’t go back too far. Just far enough when white people started to arrive.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

When the medium is the message, you control the medium.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

U.S. universities are the bane of democracy, I thought? Woke Indoctrination Centers that need to be purged of malcontents? But now they’re good enough that offering Chinese students a place in them is part of his trade agreement? Trump has had a lifetime of having and eating cake.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

You’ve ceded the high ground on free speech and ideas. You’re in the dustbin of democracy. Make room for the adults.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

We’re not reading journalism. We’re reading euphemism.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Summer. AKA strawberry and rhubarb season!

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

The comms team is killing it. The narrative lilt fits Trump’s voice and rhetoric so well It’s also not hard to do because Trump’s administration is a firehose of lies and manipulation and hypocrisy. The difference isn’t in the challenge of calling out, but calling out when everyone else is silent

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

What is the point of conservatives telling us to read 1984 and quoting from 1984 and then doing absolutely nothing when it’s unfolding right in front of them?

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Seeing Logano, Bell, Larson, Elliott, and Blaney running Top 5 at the @nascar.com All-Star Race is a crazy good Top 5 to watch in this track. NASCAR got this one right.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

I thought growing up a @neworleanssaints.bsky.social fan would’ve prepared me to be a #Leafs fan. I was wrong.

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Jonathan Arendt, PhD @drarendt.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Yup! Should be ready to go for our summer visit. Their seasoning is my everyday go to.

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