iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20h

That comes from reading just two words in the poem instead of reading the sentences they’re in, though It’s this:

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

From which I can’t help associating

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I was just messing around with a crossword-making program and this emerged @greenmountainbhoys.bsky.social

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The show is on YouTube. In the 13th episode: Dana Carvey, Meg Ryan, Mickey Rooney, Wendie Malick, Nathan Lane. 1982. @multiversalplus.bsky.social

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

“Law enforcement is investigating”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Look, they have things in common

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Doing a little math here …

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

The @vermontgreenfc.bsky.social game was honestly almost silly. I’ve never seen a 9–0 soccer game played. The Green’s keeper looked really lonesome for nearly all of the second half.

The Green’s keeper and a sunset behind Virtue Field and the Redstone Campus

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Mine is that Nicolas Cage actually ate a cockroach for a scene in Vampire’s Kiss. In fact, I’ve heard he did it twice because the first take wasn’t great.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I’m gonna tell my grandkids that this was Angine de Poitrine

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I’m gonna tell my grandkids that this was Angine de Poitrine

Worker & Parasite from the Simpsons (a Soviet-era Itchy & Scratchy analogue)

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.” (Sometimes if you observe the world carefully, what seems like a riddle in a poem snaps right into clarity. It’s barely even a metaphor.)

Birch leaves budding but not yet emerging

A cluster of leaves emerging on (I think) an apple tree

Leaf clusters coming in on a cherry tree, I think

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Drop your crime-fighting Catholics

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

President of Iran: 1. Respects Jesus as a prophet (as Muslims do) 2. Subtweets like a badass 3. Fixes his damn typos

Tweet from Masoud Pezeshkian:

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex), I condemn the insult to Your Excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran, and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. I wish you glory by Allah.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Best I can manage are a few crocuses and some squill that hasn’t quite opened up yet.

Two clusters of pale pink crocuses and a clump of unopened small dark blue flowers (squill)

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Also, the cubes of “brain-drain” nutrition served in Granny Goodness’s orphanage on Apokolips …

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

So now … deceptive negotiating is grounds for … extrajudicial assassination?

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

People shooting at each other isn’t political? A global climate disaster overcome by cross-cultural collaboration and sacrifice isn’t political? “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” said a better writer. (A page from my Orwell zine)

Writing really shouldn't just be "content," valuable only because of the time it passes or the attention it captures on behalf of a platform's advertisers.
Even the most escapist stories have Meaning - and, in fact, are MADE OF MEANING.
Every story suggests meaning in the way it allows some possibilities and forecloses others, in the way it imagines success, failure, justice, or the closure of a happy ending.
Suppose you are reading a fantasy about a band of rebels pushing back against an oppressive power.
Of course this plot in itself has a political vector of resistance. But it also matters —MEANS something—whether the climactic stroke in favor of good is accomplished by the Hero of Destiny, or by a mere Little Guy with talent, luck, or fortitude... or by true Collective Action. Each of these stories suggests a different politics. As Orwell says elsewhere, no story is actually free of politics: “The opinion
that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude."

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Wait … are you a mod, or a rocker?

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

And here’s another little satirical sonnet I had an idea for this afternoon. (Bits of Shakespeare in this one.)

Let Us Cook (using some old rhymes)
The frog-pot boils before our very eyes:
We had a fairly democratic state, Then, heedless of the watching sheep-boy's cries,
Somebody welcomed in the wolves of fate.
Where once the faerie fliers sang of hope,
Gross kleptocrats made sure that they possessed
The camera, the bank, the stethoscope,
Or The atmosphere, the map, the best, the least.
Poor rebel kids, rough punks, and rogues, despising
Their bosses more than mere reports can state,
May manage somehow still to stir a rising
And lift a torch beside the golden gate.
We'll burn for what we hope the future brings.
Till then, I scorn to change my state: No Kings.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I sort of went simple with mine.

No Kings protest sign that reads, “DEFUND ABOLISH IMPEACH”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

A variety of signs from the #NoKings protest in Winooski, VT. Nice coverage of “The New Colossus.” I saw I think about 200 people (and quite a few dogs) in a small town, drawing honks from the passing traffic.

No Kings protest sign that reads,

“SEND THESE, THE HOMELESS, TEMPEST-TOST TO ME” — EMMA LAZARUS, 1883

No Kings protest sign that reads, “NO NO NO”

No Kings protest sign that reads, “GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE.”

No Kings protest sign that reads, “PETE HEGSETH LIKES NICKELBACK”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I gotta defer to Orwell, in “Why I Write”: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." It seems disingenuous for Weir to ignore the politics of his own plot. Cross-cultural friendship as the solution to an environmental crisis has a politics.

… As Orwell says elsewhere, no story is actually free of politics: "The opinion
that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude."

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I had a little idea for a satirical sonnet this morning. (With hat tips to big-statue poems by Shelley and Lazarus, naturally.)

His Statue of Victory
It isn't finished, but I've seen the mock-up,
And I can say it's wretched. I refuse
To dignify this dire imperial cock-up:
A gilt colossus, straddling Hormuz.
With chilly sneer and combed-up pompadour
And rhinestone laurels for a diadem,
He'd mock the homeless, hungry, tired, and poor
As if a whim would let him piss on them.
What balls it took to drape him in a flag
Of stars and bars and crosses — it's absurd:
A fatcat boasting in centurion drag,
"Look on my mighty Damoclean sword!"
They said it was about the price of eggs
Then built this pair of vast and trunkless legs.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

post a non religious picture you think of as holy

The original stuffed toys that Winnie-the-Pooh is based on: Eeyore, Pooh, Kanga, Piglet, and Tigger. They look pretty good considering they’re more than a century old.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

(One can also reformat that Spidey-Scorpion fight to make the action more legible, which speeds it up even more.)

Spider-Man webs the Scorpion’s face and feet, and wrestles his mechanical tail off. Then Scorpion grabs Spidey’s wrist.

Spidey and Scorpion exchange blows for the rest of the page.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

You might find this interesting: Once, years ago, I subtracted the Lee dialogue from a Ditko fight scene, just to see what would happen. It was instantly much more legible as comics (and lots faster!)

Spidey fights the Scorpion and talks the whole time.

Spidey fights the Scorpion without talking.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Show somebody who absolutely rocks a hat and isn’t Indiana Jones.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Name your fav movie score or soundtrack. (Maybe not my favorites, but the ones I currently return to the most.)

Cover of the “Sorry to Bother You” soundtrack

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

“Fifty thou’ a year’ll buy a lot of beer” … was a good lyric in Austin in 1986

The single of Timbuk3’s “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Hegseth got me thinking about the Fightin’ Jesus

“Bob” Fights the C.O.N.S.P.I.R.A.C.Y., a Subgenius image featuring the two Stark Fists, the Xists, and the Fightin’ Jesus

Close-up: the Fightin’ Jesus, with his automatic rifle firing, attacking the Hydra that contains the Moral Majority, the Pink Boys, and the Anti-“Bob”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Search for “Hell” in your camera roll.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

I love the hoatzin. I drew this guy way back in 2011. “The hoatzin is a South American swamp bird, a majestically bemohawked turkey-goose-pigeon of a thing,” I wrote. “I dig the hairstyle, but the major reason I like the hoatzin is that its chicks have an anatomical anomaly…”

Same head drawing, plus a full body one and a scruffy chick, showing the thumb claws

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

If you see this, post a robot

The ED-209 robot from Robocop, not good at stairs. Text asks, “What are you overlooking in your current situation?”

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Richardson’s illustration of when she asks the stick to beat the dog has stuck with me a long time.

In Richardson’s illustration from the Volland “Great Children’s Stories” an old woman asks an anthropomorphic stick to beat an unseen dog, while her pig looks on.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

I’m growing convinced that it was in the Volland “Great Children’s Stories” illustrated by Frederick Richardson. This is the Table of Contents. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Contents:
The Three Bears ....
The Travels of a Fox ..
The Little Red Hen ...
The Lambikin
The House on the Hill.
The Straw Ox
..
The Three Little Pigs..
The Three Billy-Goats Gruff
Chicken Licken . . . . .
The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen
The Old Woman and Her Pig
The Cat and the Mouse .
Little Tuppens . . . . .
Johnny and the Three Goats.
The Gingerbread Boy. .
The Wolf and the Fox..
Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse
The Bremen Town Musicians.

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Isaac Cates @drisaac.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

I’ve set my tools down. It’s not much, I know, but I’m joining the strike.

A poster for the National Shutdown today

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