iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Compare and contrast. Our youngest dog, Sam, on June 2nd and October 9th (six months old). They grow so fast!

Image taken on June 2, 2026, of the poster (short, greying beard, blue ball cap, white/red/black plaid shirt over red polo) with a very young German shepherd pup in his arms, wearing a colorful harness. Pup is looking up at the poster.

Pic taken on October 8th. Poster is in roughly the same position near the exterior wall of the house. Pup, now 6 months old and much larger, is standing on the ground in front of him, again looking up into the poster's eyes. Pup is now wearing a black basket muzzle, as is the style for fashionable chicken assassins this season.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

So the five-bar discrepancy... was Trump's cut? Just spit-balling here.

A paragraph from the linked article, reading "During their search of his home, investigators seized about 300 gold bars, federal officials said, along with about $2 million in U.S. currency and 35 luxury watches. Initially investigators said it was 303 bars, but on Tuesday revised that figure to 298 bars."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Saw this on Gander, where the poster said it originated here on Bluesky. If anyone knows the origin, please let me know and I'll link back for proper attribution in a following comment.

Image of an attractive female protester, holding a cardboard sign on which someone has digitally inserted the words "'We can't tax rich people on unrealized stock gains because they haven't sold.' Then explain why my property taxes jump when my home value climbs. I didn't sell. I didn't cash out. Yet I still owe more off a higher assessment. Funny how 'unrealized' only works in one direction."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Shared by my daughter on another platform (origin unknown).

The original post reads "I hate when people are outside when I'm trying to parallel park. I need some privacy."

To which a commenter responded, riffing on a well-known song by REM, "That's me on the corner. That's me at the stop. Light. Moving my position. Trying to keep. An eye. On the curb. But I don't know if I can do it. Oh no I turned too much... I haven't turned enough..."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Harry In Your Pocket I was pretty young, but my parents wanted to catch a movie and that's what was playing.

Poster for the 1973 film Harry In Your Pocket, starring James Coburn as the titular head of a pickpocketing ring ("wire mop").

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

...and played Mr. Miniver opposite Greer Garson. :) He's pictured in an uptown mural with other notables including Donald Sutherland and Stompin' Tom Connors (both born here), and Louis B. Mayer, who lived here in his youth.

Image of a mural on Charlotte Street, Saint John, NB, taken from a CBC article. The portraits include actors Walter Pidgeon and Donald Sutherland, singer Stompin' Tom Connors, and Golden Age film mogul Louis B. Mayer, among others.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Took two of our boys for a walk. For their first time on the split-lead, I think they did okay. Big guy (Sam) is 5 months old, little guy (Wembley) is 5 years old.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sometimes, the way headlines come together onscreen is very striking. Thanks for the involuntary twinge, @arstechnica.com.

Screencap from the home page of Ars Technica, captured at 0730 Atlantic time by the poster. Upper headline reads "AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack."

The next headline, just below it, reads "FAA tees up $875M AI tool to help manage air traffic congestion."

What could possibly go wrong?

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

LOL Well, I was born just after JFK was assassinated, so I think I know that one without clicking.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A fun read, thanks! It's not impossible that had my ADHD been diagnosed at 15, rather than 59, I'd have been tempted down that path myself. I remember you mentioning Leuchtenburg before, and being very impressed. I'd found this in a thrift store not long ago, and read the hell out of it.

Poster holding his paperback copy of William Leuchterburg's "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal"

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Pretty much sums up the past several days' comments.

Top half of screencap is a picture of Dolly Parton as a young woman, probably from the early 70s. Bottom half is a Threads post by user Krista Demcher, reading

"Imagine spending 80 years on the planet, writing over 3000 songs, winning 11 Grammy awards, 10 CMAs, 1 Emmy, countless nominations, having 55 top 10 hits... and at the end of your life, no one talks about that. Instead they talk about the kind of person you were; how you loved others well, how you stayed true to yourself, how you were generous and would champion others, and how you inspired others to do the same. If that's not the goal, I don't know what is. RIP Dolly.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If you've been having the kind of Monday that gives Mondays a bad name, here's your antidote: Baby bunnies becoming acquainted with fresh kale stems from our garden. :) #homesteading #bunnies

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Kinda gives a vintage Draken vibe, to my eye.

Image of the vintage Saab Draken, the Swedish air force's main fighter jet of the 50s/60s.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Yes, our little Wembley also shows the face of a small dog with large regrets. The irony here is that he's a hairless Chinese Crested, so the burrs adhered only on his head and his tail.

A black, hairless Chinese Crested dog, with the distinctive head hair that gives the breed its name badly tangled in burrs. His eyes tell a melancholy tale of bad decisions and lingering regrets.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Ah, okay. Here in Canada those are called Rockets. Fun story: 2 of my younger cousins once got into a competition over who could go longest without eating their Halloween candy. In their mid-30s they opened their respective hoards for local TV. The Rockets candies were absolutely unchanged.

Rolls of fruit-flavored "Rockets" candy, jumbled in a bin. In some places, similar/identical candy is sold under the Smarties name, which in Canada is the candy-covered chocolate confection that inspired M&Ms.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I have a copy, claimed from my grandparents' bookshelves. :) Loved the story of how an art school classmate created Popeye, with his absurdly incorrect anatomy, to piss off an instructor who'd been a stickler for that.

Poster's hand holding a copy of Bill Mauldin's "sort of memoir," The Brass Ring. Cover illustration is a Mauldin cartoon of himself as a young man, riding on a carousel horse, spearing a brass ring with an oversized artist's paintbrush.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

This spring I cut back the overgrown rose that'd been crowding the old red currant bush, and pulled out a mile or two of Virginia Creeper that'd been smothering it. The result? I got 665g from it (1.5 lb), rather than the usual scant handful or two. Not bad for one bush.

A red currant bush in bright sunlight, showing thick clusters of bright-red fruit lining the canes.

A square, vintage Tupperware storage container holding roughly 1.5 lbs (665g) of red currants, not yet cleaned for the freezer (still have stems attached, a few small snails hiding among the berries, etc).

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Turns out our new pup really, REALLY loves the water.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I had it on 8-track, just to complete the whole "age verification" thing.

The cover art for Kraftwerk's early hit album Autobahn.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Not that I'll be doing much there until the desktop browser client goes live, but I like the privacy focus, absence of algorithm, etc. Also it's part of the ATmosphere, so you can keep up your Bluesky connections from there if you wish.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Oh, wait... forgot to check the "possible hallucinations." This one's closer to the mark in a couple of important respects.

From the "possible hallucinations" section of the poster's "In the Weights" ranking, Claude Haiku names me as "food writer and chef," which is accurate. I have indeed written a *bunch* of culinary content, but relatively little of it was recipe development (also cited in the summary).

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Huh. I wondered if I'd be in there, as a journeyman freelancer of no particular distinction, and it appears I'm in Gemini. I'm Canadian, mind you, and not a journalist, but I show up in Muck Rack as one, so (shrug).

A screen capture from website "In the Weights," showing that the poster's work freelance work has been scraped for Google's Gemini 3.1 Lite model. I'm misidentified as an American journalist (I'm Canadian, and write informational content for various sites), but the model is at least accurate about the type of content I write.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Yeah, the colours are just about right. That's quite amusing. (For those who don't know, this is the logo of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.)

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Our big girl is a mix of Cane Corso and Anatolian Shepherd on her mama's side, and Tosa Inu on her father's side. Our neighbours have problems with deer, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, etc. ...we do not. They seem to think she's bad news.

A large Tosa Inu/Cane Corso/Anatolian Shepherd cross (could they come in any other size? I don't think so). Her fur is mostly tan, but darker around her muzzle, and in this photo she's taking up most of an eight-foot garden bed.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

An illustration, because this morning my phone isn't on the charger:

A black cat, named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, curled up on the poster's lap at his standing-height desk. Ergonomic keyboard, coffee cup, and old-guy desk clutter (meds, and reading glasses) are visible at the rear, and a jug of water can be seen resting on top of a small trash can on the floor beside the desk.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

There's a statue on the site, memorializing workers lost to on-the-job injuries. The city holds an annual Day of Mourning for victims of workplace injuries on April 28th. Sadly, the province is now largely controlled by our own homegrown oligarchs, and the labour movement is on a tight leash.

Crowd gathered around a statue commemorating workers who lost their lives on the job. Union members and other bystanders add to the wreaths already surrounding the statue, as the city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, marks its annual Day of Mourning for those workers on April 28th.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

A shame @fathernathan.bsky.social doesn't post here, but for the kind of missionary work he does, Twitter (I refuse to call it X) is definitely a target-rich environment.

Twitter (I refuse to call it X) poster heather[redacted] posts "I have LGBT fatigue," with a laughing emoji. Father Nathan Monk replies "You should upgrade to LGBTQIA+ then. It has more features and better range."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

No matter how sore and grumbly I am when I roll out of bed, a few minutes with these little ones fixes me right up. This is actually an evening photo (hence the peels, from dinner prep), because I seldom have my phone with me in the morning. #bunnies #homesteading

Young Flemish Giant rabbits (about 6 weeks old), in white and varying shades of brown, enjoying an evening snack of carrot, turnip, and apple peels.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

An under-appreciated film with a fine cast. It's on a shelf about three feet from my shoulder as I type this.

Close-up image of DVDs on the poster's bookshelf, with the movie Flawless visible at the center, between Pearl Harbor and Road to Bali.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Clearly I'm not the only one who eagerly awaits your daily post:

An error message from Firefox, reporting that Cory Doctorow's site pluralistic.net is "temporarily unavailable or too busy."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Huh. Well this was timely, in light of the above (posted by @michaelemann.bsky.social):

A list of references posted by author and climate scientist Michael Mann, answering another post about the viability of Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs). The highlighted citation is to a 2025 paper by Dr. Joseph Romm of Penn, titled "Smaller nuclear reactors (SMRs) are a costly dead end, especially for AI."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Because of (gestures broadly) all of this, here are some cute kits from our most recent litters, born Good Friday through Easter Sunday, and therefore literal Easter Bunnies. Enjoy your timeline cleanse!

A three week-old Flemish Giant rabbit kit, with blonde, butterscotch-coloured fur, standing on its hind legs to examine the miniature photo set the poster uses for bird/bunny photography.

A three week-old Flemish Giant rabbit kit, with grey-brown fur, sitting up to examine the miniature photo set the poster uses for bird/bunny photography.

A three week-old Flemish Giant rabbit kit, with black fur, standing in a corner of the miniature photo set the poster uses for bird/bunny photography.

A three week-old Flemish Giant rabbit kit, with brindled grey and butterscotch-coloured fur, standing warily in a corner of the miniature photo set the poster uses for bird/bunny photography.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Caught the kittens in "recharge" mode (it doesn't last long). Happy #caturday

Image of two kittens, the female (left) patterned in light and charcoal grey stripes, the male (right), stripped in back and mixed greys. They're curled up together, napping cheek to cheek, on their cat tree.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

My daughter sent me this one. I don't know who that guy is, but I like him already.

Image is a screen capture from another site. The background image is of a man in a yellow sweatshirt and blue jeans, seen only from roughly mid-chest to mid-thigh, with a circular image of a person in a lab coat handling a sample jar labeled "sperm" inset in the middle. The headline accompanying the image reads "A Danish sperm bank called Donor Network introduced a policy which does not allow men with IQ below 85 to donate their sperm.

Commenter Steven M. replied "Hmmm... I'm not sure the IQ of sperm really makes a vas deferens...," to which commenter Richard replies "Alright, this guy is allowed to donate."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I haven't posted a "homestead timeline cleanse" for a while, so here you go. Baby quail are awfully cute, aren't they? This little guy's about 5 days old. The picture is a closeup, so it's hard to judge scale, but if you leave out the legs it's about the size of a large chicken egg.

Image of a small baby quail in the poster's hand. The quail is looking at the camera with its head slightly askew, and its immature plumage shades from yellow on its head to white on its belly, with bars of black and silver striping it lengthwise. It's a variety known as "fairy," and the adult plumage looks rather different.

Image of a small baby quail in the poster's hand. The quail is looking at the camera with its head turned to the right, and its immature plumage shades from yellow on its head to white on its belly, with bars of black and silver striping it lengthwise. It's a variety known as "fairy," and the adult plumage looks rather different.

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

I live just a few km up the road from Hampton. As you approach it from the highway, you'll see a large sign proclaiming it to be Humphrey's birthplace. Just bought this book from my local library's sale shelf; haven't read it yet but Humphrey figures largely in the index.

Cover of the book "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," by Mary Ann Glendon, published in 2001 by Random House.

Canadian link: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/a-world-made-new?sId=ec79a9b0-de2f-401e-8a1f-cb618914b168&ssId=cm8ti6DtKaogXr8qxz72c&cPos=1

US link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-world-made-new-eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-mary-ann-glendon/bd5179ffb8f9683b?ean=9780375760464&next=t

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

My daughter spotted this one on another site, and knew it would amuse me:

Post from a social media site (possibly the former Twitter?) by user Dr. Elizabeth Haven Hawley, reading:

"Annual shout out to my mom, who said she wanted a small filing cabinet for mother's day when working on her dissertation. My dad got her a microwave. For two weeks she left several manila folders in it and wouldn't let anyone use it -- until my dad procured a filing cabinet."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Originated on Tumblr, currently going around on Facebook:

Tumblr user asthedeathoflight:

The best way to become immune to freebirthing anti-medical intervention in childbirth propaganda is to follow a sheep farmer on instagram. I mean this. People will try and tell pregnant women not to go to the hospital because their bodies were built for childbirth and it is difficult to know they are lying. Unless. You have witnessed the epic highs and lows of being a shepherd during lambing season. Ewes are undeniably more built for childbirth than we are. Their hips are less weird and their babies less bulbous. They are living the ideal freebirth scenario. And yet the humans watching over them during lambing season exist in a constant state of anticipating needing to give medical intervention because even a sheep is not designed to give birth so well that human interference is not often necessary. And EVEN WITH humans watching and helping ewes and lambs STILL die. Like, pretty frequently. Sheep have spent a million years giving birth just out in a field completely on their own and they still die constantly under near-perfect conditions.

Humans have spent the past 500,000 years frantically trying to make up for having extremely fragile infants and bodies that make childbirth extremely difficult by leveraging the whole of our intelligence and technology and collaboration towards trying to make pregnancy survivable for both parties. You are not honoring your ancestors by giving birth at home with no medical intervention. The midwife you are idolizing would have wept tears of joy hearing about the vitamin K shot and tears of rage to know women and babies are still dying of the things she spent her life fighting even after we invented the cure.

Tumblr user bethanydelleman:

(also your suffering is not glorious or necessary, take the epidural)

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Feels pretty relatable. Father Nathan hasn't posted much on Bluesky, sadly, but he's a worthy follow on other platforms.

The post by Father Nathan Monk reads:

The other day, after finishing work on my third essay about everything going on in the world today, I bellied up at my neighborhood bar for a stiff drink. I must have looked downtrodden because a dude a couple of barstools down from me said, "Everything good, bud?" I responded with "I write about politics."

Without missing a beat, he put his hand in the air as if to usher the bartender over and said, "Can I buy this dude a drink? He's having a rough one."

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fred-decker.bsky.social @fred-decker.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Timeline cleanse: here's a 2-day old quail chick for you. Scale is hard to judge, in this kind of picture, but the little guy's slightly smaller than a hen's egg. They grow so fast! At hatching they're about the size of a medium grape.

A tiny, recently-hatched coturnix quail in the poster's hand, with a cat tree and a few other items visible in the background. The little bird's head is turned so it can peer at the phone camera with no small degree of suspicion.

A small two-day old coturnix quail in the poster's hand, peering up at him between chirps of protest. The bird's down is mottled in off-white and brown on its chest, and darker red-brown mottled with black on its wings and back.

A third view of an infant coturnix quail, this time from above, showing how the brown and black down on its head and back form "racing stripes."

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