iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 1h

Sorry to hear that. We went through something like that with my mom.

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Gail Simone @gailsimone.bsky.social · 6h

You guys want to hear a short but adorable story that happened right in front of me at the baggage claim in NYC yesterday? I wasn't part of it and there are bits I didn't catch but holy crap, I can't stop thinking about it.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 5h

If GOP internal polls weren't roughly as bad as the public ones, they wouldn't be moving campaign funding around the way they are. As always with Republicans, ignore what they say and pay attention to what they do.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 17h

Okay, right. I'm moving "Invent a warp drive" closer to the top of my to-do list.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 23h

We do okay cooking together, but the secret is that the only time I'm the cook is when I'm cooking alone. If it's both of us, they're the cook and I'm the assistant.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 23h

They could just make it clear that the deal is only for straight cis white people.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yeah, I think a lot of people - including, I suspect, much of the GOP leadership - don't understand that gerrymandering can backfire. I really hope that happens this time. I hope it happens A LOT.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Obviously, Goldwater was a RINO. Probably a secret commie. As other folks have noted, Watergate seems to have given the GOP a permanent complex. They are committed to preventing anything like that from happening to one of their own again. Even to the level of continually protecting Trump, FFS.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This society is so incredibly messed up about apologies and forgiveness and justice and so on. And 99% of that comes from how those concepts are misused to perpetuate privilege.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I dunno. I think at that point the scams will end, because our digital overlords will just yank out our bank accounts, investments, and etc directly. Why would they deal with us meatbags if they didn't need to? We'll starve to death, but at least we won't have to deal with spam anymore.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

(Some of those, if they're actually coming from a legit campaign, just reek of desperation. I *get* that the stakes are very high, okay? But your digital flop sweat doesn't give me much confidence in your candidate.)

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

What percentage of those claim that they're coming from a political candidate? (Texts too, which is worse for me.) It's hard to know which are legit from a candidate or not. And it's hard to know which are "Ai" generated or not.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Does the Pope really think he has more weight in this debate than, um ... [checks back] ... some person with a social media account named "Spectro"?

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Congratulations, all of Bluesky now hates you and/or is scheming about how to steal your place. (Srsly tho, I'm happy enough being 15 min walk from our town market, an honest-to-goddess chocolatier, and a lovely town library. And a 15 min ebike ride to the best bakery/cafe in the area.)

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It reminds me of that classic Larry Niven story called "Humanoid of Steel, Influencer of Kleenex".

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's interesting how often it's the case that someone who claims they did something "to make a point" end up unintentionally making the point that they're acting like an asshole. My go-to example of this is the guy in our small town who flew the Confederate flag for a while "to make a point". 🙄

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And women's suffrage after that. Which *seems* unlikely, but ... not as unlikely as I wish it was.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Delusional *and* dishonest. (Some folks are treating this as an either/or. It's not.)

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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

1. Let's not say goodbye to Eric Schmitt just yet. His story is about more than a power-mad senator falling on his face. It's part of a larger story about the Republicans defending the leader of an insurrection against the United States.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's good news that NY Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed Leticia James special prosecutor in this case, and here remember that Hochul became governor because Governor Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign in disgrace because of his serial sexual harassment...

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"His dream of being JD Vance's vice presidential running mate seemed to go poof on live TV." [snort] I don't normally harsh on someone's dreams, but ye gods, that's such a pathetic dream. Like dreaming about being an on-call plumber for a backwoods BBQ, beer, and prune pie shack.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

(Yes, this could be seen as self-referential and it sorta is. But my working presumption is to give people the benefit of the doubt unless/until it's pretty clear that they're using bad faith arguments.)

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is exactly right. While "creation science" will probably never die, it does get a LOT less attention than it used to. Because why bother? Using flamethrowers on strawmen may be entertaining for a while, but eventually it probably gets boring and not worth buying the fuel.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Do some people believe that, or are willing to pretend they do? Sure. Are any of them people whose vote can be influenced with a reasonable response? No. Laugh, eye-roll, move on.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Laughing in their faces is the *best*. Well, possibly second to pointing out how creepy weird they are. It was particularly funny to see him call the entire Democratic Party "communist". Pathetically desperate move.

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Cowboys past and present are: Black, Indigenous, Latino, immigrant, queer, trans, radical, female (and the ones in rodeos rely on rodeo clowns to keep them safe). And that pro-democracy pro-Constitution patriots despise this dimwitted pile of hatreds. I've met cowboys and you, sir, are no cowboy.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Especially on the identity politics of white cis straight (etc) men. That is, after all, the original and still the most entrenched political identity in the US. And generally speaking, the easiest to manipulate.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The fact that election-related measures pushed by Republicans almost always negatively impact more Democrats is, of course, purely coincidental. And I am Marie of Roumania.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They're disappointed in us and angry at the people running us into the ground (and their enablers) and keeping a worried eye on us. But they seem to have more long term confidence in us than much of Bluesky does.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

IS it a majority of Canadians, though? It's only anecdotal, but when my spouse and I visited Canada last month, the usual reaction to finding out we were from the US was to express sympathy. And often a confidence that we can *eventually* turn ourselves around.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A related thing that pisses me off is when people in heavily red states are hurt by Trump/Republican policies and some stupid-lazy asshole says, "Serves them right" or some other garbage. Someone who doesn't have anything more intelligent than that to say should STFU and sit down.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I've seen a couple of churches who, when they had solar panels installed on their roofs, left a cross shaped gap in the middle.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It does make me wonder what could be done with the solar panels themselves, when installed. They all have to be slanted in the most efficient way and direction, but one could do interesting things with carefully placed gaps. If it didn't affect the project too adversely, of course.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm not a visual artist, but I think if you're creating a large image on a flat horizontal surface, it's very difficult at best to make it work from a ground-level perspective. Most of the Nazca images in South America weren't (re)discovered until humans could fly over them!

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Jonathan Slater @jonathanslater.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How cool

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I strongly suspect that Trump only bothers to pretend to like that 38%. He doesn't even pretend to like anyone else. Maybe not even himself. (Though he obviously *loves* his self-image version of himself in some creepy obsessive sense of the word.)

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I dunno where I thought the alt-text was going to end up, but that was def not on my Bingo card. )Also, very cool image.)

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

They're kinda telling on themselves, aren't they? It's a little embarrassing to see. Sorta like a straight guy insisting that women never really enjoy sex.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dorothy Parker would've been a shitposter extraordinaire. (In a good way.)

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Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Protest in Democracy spotlight would not be complete without some analysis of climate protests: "The right may remain protected on paper while arrests, prosecution, financial penalties and lengthy legal proceedings gradually raise the price of exercising it."

globalvoices.org

When the right to protest remains, but demonstrating comes at a price

Since the 1950s, Europe’s democratic and human rights system has developed through the gradual strengthening of protections for political expression, assembly and dissent.

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E. Allyn Bloom 🇺🇳🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 @ericallyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Diplomacy is not this administration's strong suit. But I can't think of anything that *is* their strong suit, at least in a positive sense. It's going to take a long time to clean all this shit up.

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