iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 20/08/2026

AI capitalism is an irony-free zone

A screenshot of Google's AI summarizing, in bullet points, Maris Kreizman's essay that argues for friction in reading.

Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 28/04/2026

Talkie is a "vintage LLM" trained on data from before 1931. "Drink plentifully of warm gruel, or barley-water?" Hell yeah, this is what technology is all about

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 16/04/2026

The boy had a day off school and we swung by the local retro store/arcade

A boy in a green shirt and blue baseball hat playing a Street Fighter II pinball game

A display cabinet full of NES and SNES games and consoles

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 07/03/2026

This might be the part of this whole thing I'm maddest about

The cancellations, which clawed back more than $100 million, or nearly half of the agent's annual budget, threw many organizations into upheaval, forcing some projects to shudder. Now, documents filed in two lawsuits against the agency and DOGE reveal new details about how the mass cancellations took shape, [HIGHLIGHTED NOW] with little input or pushback from the agency's leadership.

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 04/03/2026

In a hotel in Grand Rapids and the art is extremely CAPTCHA-core

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's also printed at a very low resolution, looks like total dogshit

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 14/02/2026

Rome is a true cosmopolitan city.

A poster for a Ghibli/Evangelion concert in Rome

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 31/01/2026

When the babysitter bails and torpedoes your birthday plans, you're required by law to buy yourself a compensation gift

A bottle of Oban 12 Heart of the Harbour single malt scotch

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 11/01/2026

Don't know if I've ever been harder sold on a movie

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 10/01/2026

Jacket design peaked in the 80s

A first paperback of White Noise by Don DeLillo

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 15/12/2025

"For sale: Kegel exercise weights, one missing." - Ernest Hemingway

Post from a local Facebook swap group for kegel exercise weights that reads "Free new-in-box. 1 missing. Decided not for me."

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 02/12/2025

The collection is finally out of the storage box it's been living in for almost eight years

Many Nintendo and Super Nintendo games lined up in rows on a bookshelf

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 27/11/2025

As a person who grew up watching Red Dwarf, it's going to be very hard to not laugh every time I walk into my kitchen and see this toaster my wife picked out

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 14/10/2025

Very excited to read this, obviously

Q: without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?

Erin Somers: Fucking and sucking in the Hudson Valley

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 09/10/2025

Escaping from the airtight vessel known as New Jersey to see how this is

Title card for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" at the New York Metropolitan Opera

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 08/10/2025

If I have to use AI tools at work, I might as well use them to force an AI influencer to recite Taylor Holmes's 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots."

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 08/10/2025

Waiting for notes from my agent like

43. Do I, on some level, want to be haunted by my own fiction—in a Rube Goldbergian method of self-destruction—somehow unconsciously craving the very anxiety my story generates in order to obliterate all potential forms of pleasure that writing my story confers?

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 19/09/2025

Bookmarking this excellent @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social piece www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/getting-ye...

"If you create things for the public, you will get yelled at by dumbasses. Indeed, this is the primary experience of being the sort of writer that I am. If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a reference, it will not be understood; if you choose one topic, they will wonder why you didn’t choose another; if you try to focus on one thing, they will ask why you didn’t focus on something else. Your high-minded arguments will be dismissed as inscrutable, your simple arguments will be dismissed as unsophisticated, and you, personally, will be dismissed as the sort of lightweight who should try getting a real job. Ever thought of that?"

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 12/09/2025

Found this flipping through posters in a vintage store, and it seems to be signed by Miyazaki. Best 40 bucks I ever spent

A Princess Mononoke poster with a Japanese signature scribbled on it in Sharpie

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 10/09/2025

Bought myself a new job present and wowow it's been a second since I had a really good bourbon

A bottle of Rowan's Creek bourbon sitting on a liquor cart

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 13/08/2025

Trump's hand-picked Kennedy Center honorees are <chef's kiss>

"Trump, who said he was '98% involved' in picking the center's next slate of honorees, announced that the awards would be given to singer and songwriter. George strait; actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone; singer Gloria Gaynor; and the rock band KISS."

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 30/06/2025

Was reminded this weekend that my wife doesn't think The Simpsons is funny. Moral failing, or simply character flaw?

Legs standing in front of two Krustys with the caption "I'm seeing double here. Four Krustys."

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 19/06/2025

Finished a novel draft, celebrated with a burrito, lucked into a four-pack of incredible beer

Tacos Locos restaurant in West Orange, NJ

A four-pack of Focal Banger beer from The Alchemist

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 14/06/2025

Vibes at Boston's combo No Kings March and pride parade were excellent

Pride paraders holding signs that read "Resist with pride" in front of Boston's Trinity church

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 09/06/2025

Miyazaki on the Nintendo Famcom and Ronald Reagan in back-to-back paragraphs

Japanese anime is drowning in games-to the point where even the life and death of characters is treated as a game, and the creators have become gods and run into a dead end. It was inevitable that Nintendo's Family Computer would replace the anime boom. With real games, more people could participate in the stories and probably derive a little more satisfaction from them, too.

In the United States, movie makers became sick of this loss of motivation, and hitched their wagons to Ronald Reagan. They had reached the end of the road in depicting nothing but Nazi bad guys, and had to resurrect Soviets and their guerrilla henchmen as bogeymen.

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 06/06/2025

Catching up on Lazarus and they have the vibey murder ninja bad guy eat every day at... Peter Luger.

Screenshot of a subtitle from Lazarus: "Peter Luger Steak House"

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 01/06/2025

Who will get me David Lynch's old shop vac for Christmas, WHO

An auction listing for a shop vac from the David Lynch collection

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 28/05/2025

The face of a dog who uncovered a burrow of baby bunnies in the backyard's ivy and did NOT immediately murder them (he got a treat)

A black dog lying on a blue couch, looking with big dumb sweet eyes at the camera

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 07/05/2025

My four-year-old's reactions to Andre 3000's jazz piano album: "What IS this?" "This isn't music." "Is this a book or something?"

A screenshot of Tidal streaming the new Andre 3000 album

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 30/04/2025

"Galileo Explaining Moon Topography To Skeptic Cardinals" by Belgian illustrator Jean-Léon Huens (from @70sscifiart.bsky.social's wonderful newsletter)

Well, it's Galileo, explaining moon topography to some cardinals in red, one sitting at a telescope, who look pretty fucking skeptical.

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Ian Denning @ian-denning.com · 25/04/2025

On the plus side, this article led me to Joel Sternfeld's photos of the West Side Elevated before it was the High Line, on the negative side, look what we turned into a tame little urban park