iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Tomorrow I will upgrade from a Pixel 7a to a Pixel 11 pro. Meh. Remember when phone upgrades were exciting? 13 years ago the iPhone 5s came out. Since then every new phone has just been an iPhone 5s.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

If you watch tonight's "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver (and you should!), you will see a close-up of me around minute 20. I'm with the rest of the New College faculty as Chris Rufo weaves a tapestry of lies and exaggerations for us.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

ICE's budget is $28B/year. 131mm households in the US. Your family pays $214 annually to a grown-up version of the most awful kid you went to high school with. You purchased him a gun and some flash bangs so he can scare people more effectively as he roams. I wonder if something bad will happen.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

My colleague Dr. Aibek Musaev and I were wandering around Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a castle on a mountain in Alsace, this afternoon. Me: How would you get millions of tons of stone cut and carried up here? Aibek: Oh. Hmm. The TAs would do it, right?

Aaron and Aibek on a drawbridge in a castle in Alsace.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Following the takeover of New College by MAGA extremists, the graduation rate has dropped to 40% and professors are concerned that the students need remedial courses not offered by the school: www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sar... This is what happens when loyalty, not competence, gets you the job.

podomatic.com

New College has a student retention problem

More than two years after the takeover by the governor, New College of Florida for the first time recognized it has a retention problem. At a special board meeting, the new provost presented to the tr...

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

I love Bill Withers, but to me "Lovely Day" sounds like someone turned a leafblower on in the middle of the song: "Such a lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." Did anyone in the studio ask, "Bill, would you consider holding that note for just a beat or two so people don't, you know, contemplate self harm?"

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Quick etiquette tip: if you are going on a long flight, don't wear perfume or cologne. Your fellow travelers didn't get to choose it and probably don't want to breathe your choice for several hours.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

The USD and English are heavily utilized around the world. As Trump's antics quicken their path to irrelevance, could fixes to English delay its replacement? For example, we could fix spellings: "Tair the paper" and "A teer ran down his cheek." etc. We still have some time to make English better.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

All the LLMs seem to have been trained on my books, so I can prompt them with "Write ___ as Aaron Hillegass would." The result is often a bit of a caricature of my style, but I can hear my voice in there.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

"MacOS used to be so developer-friendly." Said each time I explain to a user how to launch an app that wasn't downloaded from the App Store. Murmured each time I do something like CXXFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/include -L/opt/homebrew/lib" python3 -m pip install plyvel One day soon: Linux full-time.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

On most of the bulletin boards in Georgia Tech's CS department

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Reposted by Aaron Hillegass

Peter Baker @peterbakernyt.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

This chart shows how much of an outlier Trump is historically. Even Biden, who had the next highest disapproval when he took office, still had a plus-20 differential. news.gallup.com/poll/655955/...

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Reposted by Aaron Hillegass

Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

We're finally dismantling the federal government! Sure hope it doesn't serve essential functions that I've taken for granted my whole life

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

When I downsized recently, I sold many boxes of books to a local used bookstore. The other day I was browsing in that store and thought, "Wow, they have some really terrific and unusual books here!" And then I realized: most were tomes that used to be mine.

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Aaron Hillegass @hillegass.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

I am a proud graduate of New College, and I was teaching there when Chris Rufo and the other MAGA extremists were made trustees. It breaks my heart to see what has become of my school.

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