iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

So, I tried out one of those “upload artwork of your original character and we’ll turn it into a figure” places. Very expensive, but pretty neat.

10 centimeter custom figure of a woman mech pilot.

Small mech pilot facing a large alien plushy.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 29/09/2026

I just reached the index today. Great job with all the sources and interviews.

“I Am the Night” cover in Apple Books, with a completion label indicating that I have finished reading it.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 28/09/2026

First time I’ve seen lyrics in Apple Music where the transcriber just gave up. (I suspect the missing line is “Road to Rio”, referencing the 1947 Bob Hope movie of the same name.) music.apple.com/us/album/bob...

Apple Music on iPad showing lyrics for the song “Bob Hope” by The Leaving Trains.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 27/09/2026

Funny. The EV ran out of wiper fluid because it doesn’t require oil changes, which is where we’d usually get the fluid topped off as part of the service.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 25/09/2026

This game is still so great.

Final Fantasy Tactics cutscene. Ramza and Delita on dock next to a ship in chapter 2. Delita’s dialogue: “You think to save a princess from a burning tower. in truth, you would but set her on a higher floor.”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 25/09/2026

We’ll count this as Lupin having already crossed over with Macross.

Man in the Macross City arcade playing a game that appears to be inspired by the chase sequence at the beginning of the Lupin the Third movie “Castle of Cagliostro”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 23/09/2026

Would that be Disney’s first adaptation of a board game?

Box of "Moana Gifts from the Ocean" board game.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 22/09/2026

You want a name for this platform, @jvl.bsky.social? Call it “NEW GAME +”:

You want a name for this plan, JVL, here’s your name:

“NEW GAME +”

Now I’m a GenX’er and even I know what this means. It means you play the game you just beat, but with all your gear, all your levels, and knowing in advance all the surprises that the game is going to throw at you. You know to level up your scouts and not to level up Aeris. You know that Gafgarion is going to betray you, so you take all the good equipment off him the battle before that so he doesn’t get to steal it.

And now that we’ve played through Democracy 1.0, we’ve got the inventory, but we also know what went wrong, the mistakes we made because we didn’t see the monster in the next chamber, and where we could have used a healer. This time we’re gonna cruise through and do it right.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 22/09/2026

Yeah, we kind of did push him over the edge. But we had a lot of fun doing it. Sorry, humanity.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 21/09/2026

OK, I’m narcissistic and weeby enough to have a #my9animes (pluralization debatable). I’ll spare you the infodump thread, but I’ll happily take follow-up questions if anyone has any.

Grid of nine favorite anime: Kimba the White Lion, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (second third of Robotech), Fullmetal Alchemist 2003, Rumbling Hearts, Angel Beats, Madoka Magica, Wake Up Girls: Beyond the Bottom, BanG Dream It's MyGO, The Café Terrace and its Goddesses.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 20/09/2026

Always impressed when a literary agent / AI bot wants to chat me up about a book I wrote 21 years ago. Hey, why don’t we talk up the advantages of PowerPC Macs while we’re at it?

Email from literary agent asking about the book “QuickTime for Java”, grabbing buzzwords and phrases from the book’s metadata in a facile attempt to make me think anyone has read it, oblivious to the fact that the book came out 21 years ago and the underlying tech is long since obsolete.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 19/09/2026

Mustang Mach-E go bzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 19/09/2026

When it does, it’ll show up as a blue “spinning star” icon at the top of the first tab (this is on iPhone):

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 19/09/2026

The Ford app just added AI. This is the greatest thing ever.

Ford app AI prompt, with the user-entered text "Write a 150-word story about Sailor Moon and Hatsune Miku kissing."

Under the gentle glow of a moonlit Tokyo skyline, Usagi Tsukino stood atop a quiet rooftop terrace, the night breeze catching her golden twin tails. Beside her, Hatsune Miku adjusted her glowing teal ribbons, a soft electronic melody humming faintly from the synth display at her wrist. The vibrant city buzzed far below, but above the streets, the air was peaceful and still.
Turning toward each other, Usagi smiled warmly, her bright eyes reflecting the starlight. Miku stepped closer, her digital glow softly illuminating the space between them. Without a word, Usagi leaned in, and their lips met in a sweet, tender kiss that seemed to bridge magic and music into…

one perfect harmony. As they pulled back, blushing beneath the moonlight, Miku shared a soft, cheerful smile.
Now that the magic and music are in harmony, is there anything I can help you with regarding your Mustang Mach-E
today?

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 16/09/2026

Joker voice: “And… here… we… go.”

GasBuddy app showing a Speedway gas station at the intersection of I-96 and Plainfield in Grand Rapids, Michigan selling gas for $4.99 a gallon regular. Yes, I know it’s six bucks in California, but nearly five is almost unprecedented here.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 15/09/2026

Only people from #GrandRapids will get this.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 14/09/2026

Chris & Kelly’s electric car go bzzzzzzzz…

GasBuddy showing gasoline at our local Meijer going for $4.59 a gallon. That’s really high for Michigan.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 14/09/2026

Oh, an even better one: Lost in Translation (2003) Bacon number of 1: Bill Murray to Kevin Bacon by way of “She’s Having a Baby”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 13/09/2026

Brazil (1985) I had to use the Oracle of Bacon, but Jonathan Pryce to Martin Sheen by way of “Echelon Conspiracy”, then to Bacon through “JFK”.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 13/09/2026

I saw this on r/videogames and while I’m sure someone will quibble with some detail or other, the overall point is inescapable. PS5 really has been a pointless exercise, and Switch 2 is running circles around it.

A chart showing Switch 2 and Playstation 5 exclusives. A banner notes that the Switch 2 has been available for 1 year and 3 months, while the PS5 has been available for 5 years, 10 months. Despite the PS5’s head start, there are more games in the Switch 2 column. Furthermore, about a third of the PS5 games are indicated as also being on PC, and some of the top titles like Wolverine and God of War Laufey have not yet been released.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 12/09/2026

Indeed. Enjoy PWHL Detroit getting a kind of junky shot past PWHL San Jose.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 12/09/2026

PWHL in a bad year for EA NHL is better than no PWHL at all. Here, enjoy Abby Roque with a top shelf goal.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 09/09/2026

OMG, Disney remembered that Atlantis The Lost Empire exists.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 08/09/2026

Just gonna leave this here today…

Excerpt From
The Very Soil: An Unauthorized Critical Study of Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Jen A. Blue

“But there is another form of hope, the hope embraced in the end by Homura. If things can and will get worse, then that necessarily means that at this moment, the universe is not at maximum awfulness; there must be something good in the world right now. That good can be sought out. It can be fought for, preserved for a little while. Entropy can be reversed locally.”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 08/09/2026

Holy shit, it's a Precious Moments figures come to life. www.hallmark.com/precious-mom...

Doe-eyed Precious Moments "First Communion" figure of a doe-eyed boy in a suit praying. Looking at this for more than five seconds may cause tooth decay.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 08/09/2026

@sarahlongwell25.bsky.social The fun part of pre-ordering ebooks is how they’ll load themselves onto my iPad while I sleep and be ready to read first thing in the morning.

Push notification from Apple Books: Your pre-order of How to Eat an Elephant is available now. Dive in.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 08/09/2026

Seems like a lot of this shouldn’t be tolerated at all. Spain was right about the fascists. www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

Spanish Civil War propaganda poster showing a fleet of fighter aircraft with a photo of a dead child superimposed atop them. The text reads: “Madrid: The ‘Military’ Practice of the Rebels. If you tolerate this, your children will be next.” The poster is attributed to the Ministry of Propaganda.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 06/09/2026

A bunch of people have recently found my fanfic, which has been on hiatus for 3+ years after the medical disaster, and now I feel depressed and guilty again that I’ve been away from it for so long.

Email from Archive of Our Own showing that multiple guests have left kudos on my fanfic, which is arranged as a series of books.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 06/09/2026

I thought this was Elizabeth II:

Movie poster for “Elizabeth The Golden Age”, a sequel to “Elizabeth” and therefore “Elizabeth II”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 06/09/2026

Finally getting around to watching the Shirobako movie. Can’t say I expected Act I to end with a dream ballet, but I’m not complaining either.

Miyamori walking down the street, singing with her now life-size dolls.

Big finish of the dream ballet, with Miyamori center stage and all the anime characters singing with their arms outstretched.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 05/09/2026

If it helps, the book booklet has a plot summary of how they’ve changed the story. Again.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 05/09/2026

Also, this quote from the booklet in the Manics’ compilation. Truth.

Center spread showing a photograph of a majorette standing along an abandoned and overgrown railroad track.

WE SHOULD ALWAYS LOOK BACK ON OUR OWN PAST WITH A SORT OF CONTEMPT. AS LONG AS THE TENDERNESS IS THERE - BUT PLEASE LET SOME OF THE CONTEMPT BE THERE.
DENNIS POTTER

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 05/09/2026

Buying compact discs at Tower Records like it’s still 1988 or something.

Three compact discs — National Treasures The Complete Singles by Manic Street Preachers, Tales of Mystery and Imagination by the Alan Parsons Project, and the 2025 Broadway cast album of Chess — along with a receipt from Tower Records.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 02/09/2026

Shiori Fujisaki approves of your request.

Nendoroid of Shiori Fujisaki from Tokimeki Memorial.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 02/09/2026

I mean, yes, kudos to the 20 animation nerds out there like me who recognized Cool Cat from the WB Dark Era being one of the Acme victims in the asylum, but that isn't exactly essential to enjoying the movie.

Clip from a Cool Cat cartoon, as used on his TV Tropes page.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 01/09/2026

My preorder downloaded to Apple Books overnight and I’ve already read the introduction.

“I Am the Night” table of contents pane floating above two-page spread of chapter 1 in Apple Books app in landscape orientation.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 31/08/2026

Just ordered Shirobako (+ movie) on BD, and bought Sakura Quest earlier in the week, because physical media is good and I don’t trust streaming anymore.

Order summary from Shout Factory showing Shriobako TV series and movie.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 25/08/2026

I’m too casual to know or have seen many anime that aren’t licensed, because that’s generally how I know about stuff at all. And the unlicensed ones I know of are kind of obvious choices (DYRL, Rintaro’s Phoenix) that must be blocked for other reasons. So, I dunno, how about the Book Girl movie?

Poster for the movie Book Girl (2010), showing the film’s characters.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 21/08/2026

First, you accept the blessings of the one true goddess, Hilda Valentine Goneril.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 20/08/2026

Oh look, I made Aaron Rodgers sad. That’s always a good thing to do.

Madden 26 post-game, showing a dejected Aaron Rodgers after his Steelers have lost 28-14 to my LA Chargers.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 18/08/2026

This is probably only funny to me, but

Olive Garden font generator graphic: “Kimi ga Breadsticks Eien” / “Your Eternal Breadsticks”, a play on the visual novel “Kimi ga Nozomu Eien”, literally “The Eternity You Wish For”.

God, can we just go back to calling it “Rumbling Hearts”?

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 18/08/2026

I knew the merch drops would just be the same old shonen shit, and indeed they are. Speaking of low-effort, I'm thinking of changing my Crunchyroll subscription to the "Something Went Wrong" plan for "__/yr" (plus applicable taxes).

Web interface for choosing a Crunchyroll plan. Among the options for yearly plans is one called "Something Went Wrong", with no details and no price.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 12/08/2026

Quote with a ridiculous movie you think people should watch.

Movie poster for Matinee (1993), featuring John Goodman as a movie promoter flanked by a giant ant over a movie theater marquee while a nuclear bomb explodes behind him.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 11/08/2026

I ditched my Newtype USA issues for a move and now wish I hadn’t. At least I have some of the Otaku USA history, for as long as their app keeps working. (EDIT… um, well, as long as the Pocketmags app keeps working)

Pocketmags app on iPad showing Otaku USA issues circa 2012-2013.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 11/08/2026

It’s the real-life story of the first home video game system.

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