iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 10/10/2026

Everyone's clamoring for a Digger popcorn bucket.

A Digger popcorn bucket in the shape of one of his cowboy boots

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 10/10/2026

Secret MVP of the "Carrie" miniseries. Chuckling every time she's there. The Maya Angelou line!

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 08/10/2026

At a work outing to a Fall Fest carnival where fully 80% of the signage is AI-generated. Note the multiple attempts at "jalapeños" and the "beof" line.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 29/09/2026

Corn straight off the husk is a new one for me, CTA-wise.

An eaten cob of corn under a Red Line bench seat, right next to the fresh green husk it was pulled from

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 25/09/2026

Speedrunning pitchforks. Though, as a big "we'll see" guy, I reserve doubt for how much of a reckoning there will actually be.

Passage from the New Yorker:

'But now Trump is losing a crucial part of that base-a rapid and unexpected decline best tracked in the portion of the electorate that expresses strong support for the President, which has dropped sharply to just thirteen per cent in recent surveys. "I feel like I was sold a bill of goods," one formerly solid Trump voter told the Times' Sabrina Tavernise. In another recent survey, sixty per cent of white likely voters without a college degree- a critical part of Trump's base-said that they disapproved of how he is handling the cost of living. MAGA isn't punishing the panicking politicians; it's joining the panic.

'And this, to me, is the real surprise of 2026: the President may be brought low this fall not by the Democrats who would crawl over broken glass to defeat him but by the very voters who sent him back to the White House in the first place. Iran, it seems, may finally have done what January 6th and all the rest of Trump's countless misdeeds could not. Has Donald Trump's lame-duck era already begun?'

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 21/09/2026

It 2026 in this "Lanterns" ep, according to the title card, so John Stewart is grabbing one of the last sixers of Schlitz to ever be bottled. 😢

Screenshot from Lanterns, of a six-pack of Schlitz getting pulled out of a convenience-store fridge

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 13/09/2026

Always enjoyed the movie. Finally enjoying the book. Responding to it more than either "Kavalier & Clay" or "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," I think because campus novels just feel like home. They never fail to make me miss Iowa City.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 30/08/2026

New downstairs neighbors are having a proper rager and let me crash for a few. They're doing karaoke in the living room. They had me try some of this. Whole thing made me feel ten years younger for twenty minutes.

Bottle of Brazilian cachaça de jambú that says

"(Numbing) Try me!"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 29/08/2026

Crazy how fast she's adjusting. Already walking about the house unassisted. Only time the sling helps a little is getting up the stairs. Otherwise, she says, "Get outta my way!"

Ruth in the house, graduated from the cone to the donut

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 28/08/2026

Just out here catchin' the Chicago eclipse like everyone else.

Luner eclipse, with just a sliver of sunshine gracing the moon's top

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 27/08/2026

Our poor Ruthie had to become a tripod this week. She's a little mad, but she's movin'.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 23/08/2026

They're just making up whatever as genre categories now.

Netflix category titled "Kinda Chic to Care So Much"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 16/08/2026

Latest dalliance with workplace fiction, one of my favorite subgenres. Forty-four pages in and enjoying it. It's also wild how much DNA it shares with "Then We Came to the End," and they came out around the same time. Something specific was in the corporate water.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 08/08/2026

Heavy reading day. Got just over 100 pages left of the latest book club book, and we meet tomorrow. Let's get it done.

Cover of Kathleen Alcott's "America Was Hard to Find"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 07/08/2026

But we got this, and I'm counting it.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 27/07/2026

Tried to get a picture from my office's patio, but it doesn't do it justice. It's like winter hours came early this year.

Downtown at 4:45 p.m. in summer, when you would expect the sun to still be shining bright

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 23/07/2026

She couldn't be happier the smoke has cleared.

Dash, on a rock next to the lake, out for a long evening walk

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 19/07/2026

Either something's wrong with this PurpleAir sensor, or someone's positioned it directly in front of the exhaust pipe of a running diesel truck.

Screenshot of a PurpleAir map with a dot showing a score of 3537

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 17/07/2026

We officially hit it over here. 🫤

Cell phone display reading
Fri, July 17 76°F
500 AQI

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 10/07/2026

Oh, is it "Obberny"? Cool, thank you for providing an appendix to understand what the fuck that means.

Page enumerating the names of the Karhidish days of the month, from 1 to 26

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 06/07/2026

Oh, no, I must exorcise my RSS feed.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 05/07/2026

Spooky combo of smoke and fog up in Rogers Park as the ordnance explodes all around.

Rays of light streaming through the fog at an intersection along Sheridan

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 05/07/2026

Celebrating the (appropriately) dark, rainy semiquincentennial by starting Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping."

Cover of Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 23/06/2026

As a surprise, Amelia has brought me to the tapping of the final Schlitz keg at The Long Room. 😭😭😭😭 Goodbye to my paternal grandfather's preferred beer.

The Schlitz-branded tap handle at the bar

Schlitz memorabilia behind the counter, including old cans and bottles and a classic cooler

Amelia clinking my last glass of Schlitz

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 19/06/2026

We're sat for Australia vs. USA.

Me and Amelia at the bar. I've got my Australia team towel over my shoulders.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 15/06/2026

Update: passed by again, and the lights were on! They soft-opened June 1. Took a pic of the menu. Will definitely be stopping by again to try it out!

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 15/06/2026

Rogers Parkers, does anyone have a status update on Paga Nini Cafe in the Jarvis Square mini-mall? I see the paper's come down from the windows, and it looks inviting inside (I even see pastries), but I haven't seen any news items about its opening or hours.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 15/06/2026

Damn, what a beautiful day in Chicago.

View looking northeast from the Bryn Mawr Red Line stop

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 02/06/2026

Mama dove and her two little dovelets in the back parking lot. Didn't want to get too close and freak them out.

Mother dove on the left, two smaller developing doves on the right

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 30/05/2026

Young fellow on the train paging through these three library books. Man's on a revenge journey for the ages.

Cover of "The Mystic Arts of the Ninja: Hypnotism, Invisibility and Weaponry"

Cover of "The Complete Ninja: The Secret World Revealed"

Cover of "Essence of Ninjutsu: The Nine Traditions"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 28/05/2026

Something going on between Bluesky and @openvibe.social lately? Whenever I open the app, Mastodon loads fine, but Bsky just hangs and hangs, as shown.

Screenshot of profiles connected on Openvibe. Mastodon has loaded, Bluesky has not.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 28/05/2026

New teas just for the office.

A quintet of Harney & Sons tins for the following varieties:

-East Frisian
-Scottish Afternoon
-Tippy Yunnan
-CTC Assam
-All India

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 23/05/2026

It's probably always gonna be "The Electric Lady" for me, for personal reasons. So many good memories of listening to the whole thing on long runs when it first came out.

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 21/05/2026

I got annoyed with having to go to the milk dispenser two floors down with each cup of tea, so I bought myself a little milk pitcher for the office that I just go and fill once first thing in the morning. What stage of middle age is this?

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 18/05/2026

The pictures I'm able to take don't do justice to just how dark downtown Chicago is right now. Turned into Gotham in minutes.

Downtown, looking down Washington St., toward the lake, which is obscured by stormy fog

The buildings around the old Boston Store, surrounded by low, dark clouds

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 17/05/2026

Starting the next book-club book. There's a freelance magazine writer as a character, talking about getting work in regional and in-flight mags for two dollars a word. 😭😭😭😭

Cover of Colson Whitehead's "John Henry Days"

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 14/05/2026

I get that these employees are under great pressure to use AI for their work, but if their leaders actually expect them to be this blind and injudicious about it, I have a hard time imagining their companies lasting. They're playing with the brooms from "Fantasia," and we know how that went.

From a 404 Media story:

"There were almost no productivity gains using IDE-based Al tools. Al-generated code ended up with more bugs because I am working on distributed web apps, highly complex multi-system things, so giving the LLM context is very difficult," a software developer at a small web design firm told me. "Another developer on a contract working with me at the moment generates massive amounts of code, leaving me with 1000+ lines of pull requests to review and it takes massive amounts of time to do this. This leads to me feeling more tired and burned out than I've ever felt in my entire life.
The cognitive overhead of switching between prompting, coding, checking the LLM's output is a massive energy drain. It has not been a productivity booster at all, it feels like a speedrun towards severe mental exhaustion."
The developer in fintech I talked to also said that one major problem with LLMs is that it can generate more code than developers can properly vet or explain. "The sheer breadth of code makes it impossible to be critical enough and then you're either throwing it away or submitting it and feeling scared there might be really low quality stuff that if someone notices will make you embarrassed (and even more embarrassing to say: 'oh i don't know what that is, the Al did that')," he said. "Or worse, you ship it without someone noticing and that is really hit or miss."

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 10/05/2026

This is how I wound up starting Roberto Bolaño's "The Savage Detectives," btw. Does not start as strong as "2666," but part I is a LOT of juvenilia. Hopefully the second part'll surprise me.

Hardcover of "The Savage Detectives," by Roberto Bolaño, with the slip cover removed

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 10/05/2026

Someone's looking stupid with her tongue stickin' out.

Dash, on the floor, eyes glazed over, with the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 29/04/2026

Share this Salinger quote with all the influencers.

"I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash."

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Geoff George @geoffdgeorge.com · 25/04/2026

Could also watch the scale-model trains go round and round for hours.

Scale-model train exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry

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