iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Considering that Montaigne invented blogging, it's not that remarkable that 400+ years on, he still hits the mark.

Photograph of a quote from the Essays of Montaigne, "No man is exempt from saying silly things. The misfortune is to say them painstakingly. 'Indeed this man with mighty toil will utter mighty trifles.'"

Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

As someone who lived im California until he was 4½ and has since lived uninterruptedly in Maryland, but was raised by two non-Marylanders, I'm surprised/not surprised my dialect is so Maryland focused. I appear to have escaped the Florida contagion I keep seeing.

An image of the 50 States and the geographic similarities between regional dialects and my own speech patterns.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

"A world controlled increasingly by markets is one in which power is difficult to contain, and in which the flow of power becomes progressively more difficult to predict." (1/2)

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I saw a comic today implying that the site formerly known as Twitter was too horrid even for a demon to try to corrupt people through and all I got was an image of a gleeful Screwtape rubbing his hands together excitedly.

"On Rereading Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus in the Age of Generative AI," by Maryann Corbett:

Simple enough: the man wants what he wants.
Exactly like yourself. Effort and study
bore people spitless; magic alone will serve
and presto, here’s the devil to provide it,
suave in his doublet. Your inner eye supplies
the pointed beard, the Elizabethan getup,
but those are inessentials. All he needs,
as per the catechism, is your assent.

A few strokes, pen or keyboard, and it’s done.
Describe the goods you covet, and voila,
they shape themselves before you, without even
the fuss of Marlowe’s smoke-and-mirrors stagecraft.
Ravishing women? Jokes at the pope’s expense?
Ha ha. Go, conjure anything you dream of.
Suspicions that there might be hell to pay
are laughable. At certain scenes, we laugh.

You knew, though—all along—where this was going:
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
Relax, dude. This is someone else’s story.
(Exeunt demons, dragging him away.)
Sit lounging as the hot-tub water warms
in which your brain will stew to a mess of pottage.
Comfort ye. Listen calmly to the screams.
There went your soul; you never felt a thing.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I am hoping that what I lack in sleep, I can make up with breakfast and coffee.

Breakfast at work; a plate of waffles with syrup, eggs with cheese, and corned beef hash. Butterscotch coffee in my cuneiform mug.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This is the Most Correctest Friday Thing that I have ever seen.

Two racks of beverages labelled LIFE WTR, but they're holding Coke, Diet Coke, and chocolate milk.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

To distant posterity—insofar as my language survives readable—I bequeath Three and a Half Ashurbanipals worth of screenshots and Half a Montaigne worth of my note app texts. Future graduate students can spend their best scholarly years correlating the one to the other.

Tweet from @frybreadwhore, July 30, 2023, 5:39 AM:

and to my great grandchildren i leave 42,567 screenshots

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

On one hand, I seem to subconsciously assume that all memory of me vanishes out of people's heads the moment I leave their sight and part of me is always surprised to hear that someone was discussing me outside my presence.

A tweet from Page Turner (@_Page_Turner) on May 19, 2023, 6;47 PM:

someone: *tells me a rumor they've heard about me*

me: ah yes, my lore

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Huh. Disney's copyright claim in graphic form. Shirt? Legally a Disney character. No shirt? Milne character in public domain. Literally: as long as Pooh wears that shirt, the Mouse owns him... ...which makes that below-caption more than a little creepy.

A three panel comic with one caption at the bottom.

The first panel shows Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse standing in the snow. Mickey has a coat while Pooh is unclothed and looks cold.

The second panel shows Mickey cutting the top hand of his coat off while Pooh looks om curious what Mickey is doïng.

The third panel shows Pooh now wearing his now-literally tradmarked red shirt and happy to be warm while Mickey wears his recognizable shorts, happy to have helped Pooh be warm.

The caption at the bottom reads, "Your greatness is not what you have, but what you give."

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

In the dark bedroom, I scan the bedroom with a small flashlight—trying not to wake my beautiful sleeping husband—looking for my griffin pendant. I resign myself to another. On the Metro, I reälized I had forgotten it too. I look down sadly and there it is, right there on my chest. Good morning.

Photograph of a copper pendant of a griffin, walking to the left with its head turbed back facing left and its wings outstretched, encircled within a rosetted border. The pendant rests on a black-painted wooden table.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

It's goïng to be a good day at work, but I'm already in Go Home and Snug My Hubby mode.

The older I get, the more I hate making extra stops after work. I drive home like I'm late for the house.

KATHSSUCCS

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

If only we had a story about a blatantly unreliable narrator telling his story to those whom he hopes will glorify him and sympathize with his plight. Maybe we could make a blockbuster movie out of it, set it in the Bronze Age or something like that.

Image of a tweet, purportedly from Andrew Tate, @Cobratate, reading, "“I am being held in SHU, the highest level of security which exists.

No commissary.
No visits.
No contact with the outside world.

My neighbor is a cannibal who screams throughout the night.”

The tweet was sent at 6;21 AM on 7/23/26.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Filming and filming in the widening horror, the producer cannot hear the editor. Marketing falls apart; the premise cannot hold. Mere slop is loosed upon the screen, the name-recognition tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of enjoyment is drowned.

A movie poster for the movie, "Ebenezer," starring Johnny Depp. The tagline for the movie is, "Before he was Scrooge he was... Ebenezer."
The movie comes out on Thanksgiving.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

This seems timely à propos now, though I wrote it 2ish years ago.

Muse, speak to me now
of that drowsy commuter
who wandered far and wide
after departing the sacred sheets of Bed.

They came to see many people’s commutes,
where they learned their customs,
while on the road and rail
their spirit suffered many torments,
as they fought to save their time
and lead their shoes to work.

But though they wanted to,
they could not escape other commuters—
they all plodded from their own necessity,
the fools.

They celebrated on the Caffeine of the Gods,
Gods of the Morn, and so they fought
their chances of fatigue
of getting to work everyday.

So now, daughter of Zeus,
tell us their story,
starting anywhere you wish.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I've never been into Satanic or demonic aesthetics—and it's definitely still not my style—but since happening upon this painting, it's been compelling. He's so... cheerful. It feels like a painting that Screwtape would not want me to have and I feel like that's a good reason to get it.

Photograph of the painting "Allegory of Satan (Lord of the World)" by Ludwik Stasiak.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This image of Poggio Bracchiolini always amuses me. His handwriting was considered so neat and legible, it became the basis of many type print fonts. His handwriting became formative for modern lower case Latinate alphabets. (1/2)

An example of Renaissance-era humanist handwriting from the hand of Poggio Bracchiolini.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Extra History's "South Sea Bubble" miniseries remains the most entertaining one they've done, methinks.

A screenshot from Extra History's series on the South Sea Bubble, showing John Blunt riding a flying unicorn on a blast of rainbow while an onlooker says, "Erm... that's a little unrealistic..." referring to the final outlandish claim the South Sea Company made that finally made the British investors reälize they were being defrauded.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

My pants button broke at work and now a quarter of a button is the only thing keeping my pants on. 😓

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The Ram of Eternity encourages optimism!

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Concerning the ministers of Augustus and his reformed Republic.

"Contemporaries were pained and afflicted by moral and by social degradation. True merit was not the path to success—and success itself was unsafe as well as dishonourable. New men emerging established claims to the consulate by brutality or by craft. The marshals might disappear, some as suddenly as they had arisen, but the practice of diplomacy engendered in its adepts the talent of survival, with arts and devices of subservience loathed by the Roman aristocracy: no honest man would care to surrender honour and independence by becoming a minister to despotism."

—Ronald Syme, "The Roman Revolution"

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

This London Fog was $5 and I don't think I'm getting another one at that size. Maybe I'm underestimating the cost of lavender-in-tea?

Photograph of a small cardboard cup with plastic lid sitting on a table.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

I have le morning coffee. I am a very jobber. I am badgedly bejobbèd and the day is order. It is once again the Day of GodThankness and I am a jobber.

A mug of coffee—one of my favorite mugs, with hieroglyphics on it—sitting on the very knockoffable corner of my desk (it was not).

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

It's either that in the earliest days of Christianity, the theology was pure and simple, everyone knew it was WHAT MY RELIGION THINKS IT IS AND CONTINUITY FIGHT CLUB IS ON SUNDAYS, then /those people/ came along and made it complicated and confusing and led everyone EXCEPT US astray. Or it's this:

A drawing of classroom teaching Christian catechism. The door is labeled "Membership Class." The teacher points to just one of the many branches of bifurcating lines from left to right and says, "So this is where our movement came along and finally got the Bible right." A student replies, "Jesus is so lucky to have us."

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

God once wrote me this beautiful poem. Can't read a word of it, but the handwriting was exquisite.

Two horizontal lines of clouds in the sky, resembling text.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Recommended. It's not just a history of the empire of the United States, but a history of how (mostly white) people from the United States have thought about our empire and how we've been taught to process its existence—and as the title implies, how we've been taught to /not/ process its existence.

Front cover of "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States," by Daniel Immerwahr. Cover art shows a central outline of the contiguous lower 48 States with Alaska, Hawaii, and "territories" immediately adjacent to that outline.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

There be twenty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who always by river posts Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Twenty Have turned prophecies o'er, Traced from the right bank to the left By mighty birds of yore. My humble apologies to Macaulay.

Photograph of a line of posts through a river, with a white bird perched atop each one, all facing right.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Make of this what you will. If there is something hobbity about me aside from being cheerful and short, it's that fame, prestige, and clout can miss me. As much as I love reading history, I don't want to be a subject of it.

Photograph of a page from "Dune," by Frank Herbert:

"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never persistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

—FROM 'COLLECTED SAYINGS OF MUAD'DIB' BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN."

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

The volume on the TV is a prime number. To the tenth of a pound this morning, I am exactly the weight on my driver's license. The Heavens align. O Gods of Comforting Routines and Fastidy, please accept this Venn Metadiagram and release the Dopamine.

Image titled, "Venn Diagram of Venn Diagrams," showing a triple Venn Diagram between "Information," "Things That Overlap," and "Circles."

The intersection of "Information" and "Things That Overlap" is "Redundancy."

The intersection of "Information" and "Circles" is "Pie Charts."

The intersection of "Circles" and "Things That Overlap" is "Eclipses."

The intersection of all three is "Venn Diagrams."

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

This is a real photo. Taken by me personally. I vouch that this bottle exists in real life. The marketing strategy that produced it may have been an AI hallucination, but unfortunately this is not.

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

"Oh, no, we just got that for the frame. We weren't goïng to keep the art." First that Montaigne/Salvador Dali book, now this. I may be unemployed, but I'm being /showered/ with treasures. 😍

A framed image of artwork from the 1911 World's Fair in Turn, Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turin_International

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Citations upon Request @hobbituscaesar.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Mewonders what other treasures await me!

Photograph of artwork of Salvador Dali depicting Montaigne at his home. The art is captioned, "Hommage a la France" and signed "Dali 1947."

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