iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I don't really go on insta enough to study the algorithms there but I saw someone here with a well rendered portrait of a guy casually holding his wallet and keys and they used Wallet and Keys as hashtags and... I.. you can't convince me that's the best use of limited space for hashtags. No way.

Right? It was a good stab, but the Internet never ceases to stay ahead. 🤣🤣🤣

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Also, you should know that using hashtags to write quirky, funny things on a post where you want people to appreciate your hard work is like when girls do duckface in selfies to avoid people thinking they're vain; you can do that, but it's kinda cringe and it doesn't really work.

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I mean, nobody is stopping you, but it would probably help if you're writing/drawing manhwa/manga boylove stories as that's what #pleaseloveme currently seems popular amongst. Wasn't this a fun exercise? 🤣

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Baby's first lesson on marketing via hashtags: If you want to use good hashtags as an artist, find artists who get engagement and who you think would share an audience with you. Make a list of the hashtags they use. Before YOU use a hashtag, search it. Are these people you want to be grouped with?

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 2h

Sometimes I see the hashtags artists use and I'm just like "oh, honey, this... this is not how you do marketing. You are good but this is bad."

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"Based on averages reported by users, issues with this business may take 4 calls totalling 3 hours to resolve!" Bet your ass someone would be revamping their customer service to avoid this.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 2h

You know what'd be an interesting set of statistics to add to business review sites? When you had a problem and called for assistance... 1) How long total did you spend on the phone? 2) How many calls, waits, or transfers did it take to solve it? I imagine a lot of businesses would sharpen up.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 3h

Tori Kelly being cut from American Idol before even making it past the preliminary stages will always be an indictment of the show's process. For two years after she struggled on her own and turned herself into a Grammy winning artist. If she was that close but couldn't make the top 16? They failed.

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Steve Buscemi: How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?

I've just seen someone use the phrase "indie products" with no additional context and I think that might be the game dev equivalent of this theme:

static.klipy.com

Alt: Steve Buscemi: How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?

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I don't disagree, but also like... Any parenting style without boundaries is gonna be a doormat. People get weirdly hung up on the word gentle without grasping all it's really saying is "do not rely on fear of the unknown and arbitrary punishments. Make them a knowing participant in the process."

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Some people in my inbox annoy me so much I'm tempted to attach a textfile named Anthrax with the only text in it reading "Be glad digital mail limits me"

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MrBeast Told Billionaire Mark Cuban He ‘Spends Millions of Dollars Reverse Engineering the Algorithms on Each Platform’ So He Never Runs Out of Ideas

I need you to understand how utterly unsurprising this is. On every level, this is an insight you would have never needed to share with me. This man has spent his life hungry and thirsty--no, ravenous and parched--seeking success through attention. The greatest tragedy in his life is that it worked.

barchart.com

Cuban is impressed by how much effort MrBeast puts into understanding social media algorithms.

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I think an aspect is mythologizing; in our minds, some stories are rooted in real worlds and some are rooted in the fog of legend. Myths are pared down to only what is necessary to give the figures in them their impact and scale. Real stories can answer questions like how the set pieces got there.

(Bonus points if the consequences are either entirely natural such as "breaking this toy means you won't have it anymore" or directly logical "if you hit me, I won't take you to the park because I don't reward people who hurt me." Good consequences connect cause and effect as direct as possible.)

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I know not everyone understands principles of gentle parenting and some have internalized this weird media representation where it's "let them walk all over you" but good gentle parenting explains consequences beforehand and helps them understand how they have the choice to cause them or not.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 14h

I just saw a short video by a wildly popular young high school teacher where he announces one of his most successful strategies is announcing consequences in advance, allowing them to choose to continue or not, and then following through. Babe, that's gentle parenting. I *need* you to know this.

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De-policing your thoughts includes recognizing when you're policing the potential guilt and suitable punishment of people with whom you have no relationship. Society has enabled us to judge people who share no community or communion with us. We are still unpacking how unhealthy it is for us all.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 14h

He's currently got three toiles he's sewn and is having her try them on so he can mark them up. He plans to take them apart to use as patterns when he switches to his nicer materials.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 14h

I have a friend who may have stumbled across the greatest gift to his partner he'll ever come up with. While teaching him sewing, I casually mentioned some things he might make. The next week he sat down with a slip of paper and said "I took my fiancee's measurements. How do I make a bra?"

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It is unspeakably embarrassing to campaign for an award *after* someone else gets it. It's too late. They aren't going to see you in a better light as you insult the process and winner. Even if they reselected you to win, you will forever be remembered as a sore loser. Shut up and lose gracefully.

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Sims follows Fight Club rules. 🤣

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*slays people with impunity. Also spellcheck. It knows what it did.

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And others glomming on to suggest being mean to NPCs is bad or picking digital flowers is bad or whatever "People should always be moral, even in environments they know are artificially constructed safe spaces" take suits them.🙄

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(Just like I can pretend the floor is lava but am not burned when I stop, and I can pretend my dearest friend died but am not grief-stricken when I stop, I can pretend to be a villain who always people with impunity and not be murderous when I stop, because *I choose what rules end with my play*)

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(The TL;DR for the folks in the back is that an essential element of *all play* is defining the arbitrary constraints wherein arbitrary rules do and don't apply. We can act immorally during play because *being allowed to act immorally is one of the arbitrary rules we temporarily accept during play*)

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 16h

I desperately need gamers with Opinions™️ about the morality of misbehaving in games to do the scholarly work of studying what a Magic Circle is, and why Play as a fundamental element of human development includes *moral play* to develop stronger moral values. Some of these takes are embarrassing.

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He showed up in his normal everyday clothing to blend in with true serfs, offered them money in exchange for poorer clothes when called on it, and answered the blindingly obvious question "where are you from" with the meticulously planned strategy of "I don't know." Buddy, spycraft ain't for you.🤣

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 16h

I'm reading a berserker character who, of his own recognizance, is attempting to sneak into a hostile territory and pretend to be native to learn about his enemies. It has never occurred to me that someone could be so thoughtless and so incredibly BAD at subterfuge. It's past comedy into pity.

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 17h

Like house training, for real.

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Heh "You love who you love, but the *way* you show that love kinda sucks." 🤣

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His false humility is what kills me. He pitched that opening like "aww shucks ma'am, I ain't got but this heart and these two hands to give it" but turned so nasty the moment he discovered she could politely decline. Which is it, sir? Are you a compromise or a catch because you can't be both.

"Buddy, you had this woman checking on your health and you iced her out because 'she nags me'. You are not getting introduced to a single living soul until we have therapeutically beat that out of you with a shovel. The dateable version of you should feel a sense of shame remembering it."

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If I ran a matchmaking service, my service for men would start with a comprehensive diagnostic where they submit their entire text history with romantic matches and any dating app profiles and conversations, followed by a qualifying period of therapy where I tell them when they're ready to date.

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Like I'd love to hear somebody like Tinashe cover Are You That Somebody.

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There should be a thing for the estates and foundations of deceased musicians like Aaliyah where newer generations of musicians are tapped to do tribute albums reimagining their original albums for charity. A chance to both remember all they were and could have been, and help the world.

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Yessss, these are the opeds that real life and the Onion are racing to write!

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I'm patiently waiting for the oped titled "I spun up an AI agent to pick an anniversary present. It stole my wife. I'm worried for our future." You know it's coming, I know it's coming, we just have to wait together to laugh about it.

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You spend your childhood searching the legacies of great people for the seeds from which their greatness grew, hopeful you share the same. You spend your senescence instead searching for the seeds from which their humanity grew, comforted to know that greatness is a mantle with a person beneath.

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My favorite remembrances of famous people aren't the laundry list of their incredible accomplishments, but the quotidian facts of their existence. It's the way they hated thunder or loved jam and butter on toast but hated putting a buttery knife in the jam. These are the facts where a soul lived.

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Technically a spoof of one, yes.

Forcing myself to share more of my writing. A scene in which the protagonist encounters a traditional matriarchal society.

"I will forgive you your mistakes as you are foreign to our ways, but it is not the place of sons to lead us." Lady Tithia smiled humorlessly at me. "My son is a good boy, but like most men he is careless. They live such free lives, our men. They are strong and fearless and fiery in the way that only a creature who will never need to carry a life can be."

I frowned. "So your men, they have no place in ruling at all?"

"Them? How could they?" She tittered. "What would they know of enduring? Their strengths are so temporary. A hard shove does not keep a roof standing."

"That seems… unfair."

The whole situation was bewildering if I was honest. I didn't know how to tell her 'Hey, that seems really sexist' politely. Nobody covered "how to dismantle surprise misandry 101" in anthropology classes.

"It is, in a way, but they are not made for the hardships of responsibility. It's not their fault. We are but different creatures. It is their place to delight and excel and inspire, and ours to nurture them and guide them and be the safety they have known since birth. No, my son and my House will need a good, firm woman's hand to guide them safely, not a boy with a passing whimsy to rule."

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Heh, not quite but the real actress, Summer Howell, is not more subtle.

Howell as Carrie. A little less makeup, but the same arresting features.

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Oh my god, a VERY old school friend reminded me of a funny moment from my childhood. Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up? Me: A problem. I was perhaps a challenging student.🤣

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People mistreat people. It's unlikely to change in any given society. That said, the WAYS and TIMES they feel empowered to mistreat each other is a function of societal values and norms. Imagining those social constructs and how even everyday language might adapt to them is so fascinating.

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