iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Nice to know there is still an appreciation for the classics

Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

a neg intended to cause insecurity in the target for the purposes of manipulation, even if the wording could be identical. You could still say that a culture of insult flirting probably isn't healthy, but if that's the dominant way dating is done I struggle to condemn any particular person for it.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That's an interesting point. It sounds like a wild dating culture if every flirtation opens with an insult. If your friend was just following the unwritten social rules and everyone recognized that and so understood the intent was not to harm or degrade it becomes differently weighted than

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'm afraid personally I'm more inclined towards a definition where pickup artistry is necessarily morally suspect and the morally acceptable use of some of the same practices is defined as something else. But I'll admit that apart from the historical context I don't have a particularly good reason.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

But if you wanted to define pickup artistry as simply the use of certain social practices when interacting with others then you could pick the ones that are not inherently bad and use them without manipulative intentions. In theory you would have a morally acceptable pickup artistry.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That intent to manipulate no matter if it is effective seems like the key point for me when thinking about the wrongness of this stuff.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I think negging is already morally loaded as a term. As I understand it, it is a backhanded compliment intended to make someone feel insecure without making them mad at you. It seems like the same comment can either be a perfectly acceptable flirt or a neg depending on intent.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Pickup lines are often a perfectly acceptable part of flirting, a way to break the ice and gauge interest before attempting a more serious interaction. Negging may be a different category though.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

But what you are talking about is more interesting! I hadn't fully understood the nuance. I think you are right that, when decontextualized, there is nothing inherently wrong with certain pickup artist practices. Wearing a silly hat to the club is obviously fine in isolation.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I just caught up on that reply thread! When I think of pickup artistry I think of the culture and ethos first. So I was mentally defining pickup artistry as something like "taking part in a particular male subculture that emerged in the 90s, dedicated to sexual manipulation." That colored my replies

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This is why I think it's important to say that pickup artistry is wrong irrespective of its effectiveness. Most women are not successfully manipulated by pickup artists, but I want to say that the pickup artist has still committed a wrong against them, dehumanization by viewing them only as a means.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Absolutely women's full agency needs to be taken into account! The people who don't are in a way committing the same kind of wrong as the pickup artists themselves by not recognizing the full humanity of women.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I agree with your view here. I just want to add that pickup artistry is also more than just the techniques, it emphasizes a mindset and culture around them. My instinct is to be Kantian about it and say the root problem is that it requires viewing others as means rather than ends.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

With enough time it might be ok. My sourdough was unusually weak today, I ended up letting it rise for over twelve hours before it had risen enough to bake.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Upset to report that the French are right. A chocolate sandwich is extremely tasty.

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julia 🌋 @hypv.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

endnotes are a plot by big bookmark to sell twice as many bookmarks

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm glad to hear the third volume is so good! I feel that about volume 2 compared to Sawnn's Way too. It's still excellent but a half step down. I think my favorite bit of volume two was the section with the narrator desperately trying to understand why everyone else praised a particular actress.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This needs to be me again soon. I'm only two volumes in, and I keep getting too busy to start the third.

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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A now-retired Phil twitter legend once said to me ‘arguments are just to give people an excuse to agree with your view. The thing that actually *motivates* them to agree is showing them how things look nice from your view’

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think both the discerning smut reader and staid philosopher need more contemporary options in the style of de Sade. 50% dense philosophical writing and 50% graphic sex scenes. It would raise the tone of AO3 comments and liven up conference discussions immensely.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Feeling the draw back to reading a bunch of Hegel. He's truly brilliant and yet so unhelpful for most of my projects.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

The master's house sucks so bad, but I have his tools here with me so I think I can probably dismantle it

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The existence of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has ruined my ability to talk about Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. I keep calling it "Strange New World" in front of students.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I find this an extremely interesting observation from my backwards looking postmodern position. There is something almost Baudrillardian about a society which instantly transforms the present into history and so views its own present existence through a historical lens.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all events into historical representations." - Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't know if it's my favorite, but I recently watched Night of the Lepus and was smiling and laughing the entire way through. Watching that movie was like receiving a warm hug, a bowl of soup, a lung full of nitrous oxide.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Last night I had a dream that the doctor from Voyager was made federation president. Now I wait to see if that was a premonition or just the fever.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A Night to Dismember, directed by Doris Wishman. It's one of the first slashers, she started making it very shortly after the release of Halloween. I recommend seeking out the original version on YouTube, it is quite interesting.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

While watching Star Trek it's cool to see that horned melons and Buddha's hands are the most popular fruits in the galaxy. Every culture seems to eat them, including in the delta quadrant.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Could be weed, could be salted liquorice. I guess I'll have to watch the movie to find out which

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What a walk down memory lane that sentence was

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In this case I've Heard the Ammonite Murmur. I have no memory of ever having heard of this film, but at some point in the past I decided I wanted to watch it.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Finding obscure films on my Letterboxd watchlist that I know nothing about, no one I follow has seen, and I have no memory of adding.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Reading Althusser is annoying because he's both extremely clear and extremely repetitive. For a second I genuinely thought there was a printing error because he used the same two sentences word for word.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'm currently doing it with The Legend of Tomiris, a Kazakh film based on some extremely sketchy history from Herodotus.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The problem with movies about historical events is that invariably ten minutes in I will pause the movie and then spend longer than the runtime of the film reading about those historical events. I just can't stop myself.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Watching the Russian dub of an Italian film because the version actually in Italian only had English subtitles for 50% of the dialogue.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You clearly have both the passion and capacity to make that possible, it would be really cool to see you teaching in Gaelic! I've never quite had the right brain for picking up languages, so I'll keep teaching in English, but I have a lot of respect for language preservation projects.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That sounds like an excellent idea! I really hope you can make it work out

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Hell yeah, I really gotta get to the theater this week to watch it

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Mandy (2018) lives up to the hype! Absolutely beautiful movie that actually has something to say about psychedelics, their history and culture.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I think he became significantly more free love libertarian as he aged, even if he was somewhat inconsistent in living out those principles. Almost everything he wrote from 1961 until his death espoused variations on that view.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It's funny to me to defend "Heinlein's ideas" in this book because Heinlein himself didn't really agree with the political ideas of Starship Troopers, at least not for most of his life. He was a weird kind of free love libertarian, incredibly against any kind of strong central government.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My go to is Italian trash, although these might be too big Dario Argento's Phantom of the Opera is extremely crazy, and more fun than the negative reviews let on. Lamberto Bava's Demons is a wild ride once it gets going. Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik and Planet of the Vampires are both fantastic too!

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

How am I so bad at sleeping that I injured both my left elbow and right wrist? Just keeping both arms in terrible positions somehow.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I'm completely with you! I decided he was funny when I saw The Suicide Squad, since then I've only seen evidence confirming that he's great at comedy.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I tried grinding the leaves to boost extraction. It works well for all three. The black tea style leaves are the most interesting and closest to real tea, but with no bitterness at all. There is some hope for this project, especially if I can find a more bitter leaf to blend it with.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'd say it's a bubble in the way the .com bubble was a bubble. AI, just like the Internet, has clear uses that can be economically viable, but the sector is so superheated with investment money that it's untenable. To your second question, no I don't think those specific concerns are justified.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'll try this again in the spring with new leaves to see how much of a difference it makes. With my current batch, I'm tempted to try grinding the leaves into matcha to see what they are like when I can get maximum extraction out of them.

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Fopling @fopling.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The first taste test results! I've learned that mulberry leaves are naturally a bit sweet and have no bitterness at all. The tea was less flavorful than I'd hoped. I think my leaves were harvested too late in the season so the tree had already started pulling nutrients away from the leaves.

The "green mulberry leaf tea". A teacup, the picture taken from above to show the nearly colorless liquid inside. It's only barely more yellow than pure water.

The "oolong mulberry leaf tea". Picture of the teacup taken from above to show the extremely pale yellow tinted liquid inside. A bit more color than the green, but not much.

The "black mulberry leaf tea". Picture taken of a teacup from above to show a lovely amber colored liquid inside. This actually looks like tea!

Tasting Notes:

Green mulberry tea:

Western style, 200° water, 4 minutes, 2 cups of water for 1.5 grams (too weak). Almost no color, slightly sweet taste, a bit like weak camomile. After several more minutes in the pot the sweetness increases, but no additional flavor and minimal additional color. Will try again with more leaves and hotter water.

Oolong mulberry tea:

Western style, 200° water, 4 minutes, 1 cup of water for 2 grams of tea. Light yellow color. On the nose a few toasted notes and some vegetal notes. Tastes a bit like real tea! There is still the same sweetness, stronger in this brew. There is a bit of a toasted breadcrumbs note, but it's faint. Some nice green flavor too. None of the floral notes I was hoping for. After a few more minutes of steeping the flavor is the same. Will try again with more leaves and hotter water

Black mulberry tea:

Western style, 212° water, 4 minutes, .5 cups of water for two grams of tea. Beautiful amber color. On the nose, sweet forest floor notes. Definitely still damp leaves and dried fruit. Tastes a bit savory, still with classic mulberry sweetness, surprisingly vegetal for a black tea, no bitterness at all. Certainly the most complex of the teas, though still a bit weak even at a high leaf to water ratio.

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