iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 10h

I should have mentioned: it's far and away my favorite TV show ever. But you all know what a weirdo I am.😀

Scene from Pluribus. Carol and Manousos are standing are standing about 6 feet apart in the desert on the fringe of Albuquerque. He's sheltering under a pink umbrella, she's holding out the phone they're using to translate. Caption: "[Electronic voice] These weirdos have eyes up above."

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 11h

Apple TV: The Dystopia Network!

Final scene from Season 1 of Pluribus. Carol Sturka (Rhea Seahorn), visibly depressed, is walking past the shipping contain that a helicopter has just dropped onto her driveway. Behind her, Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel Vesga) gestures to it and asks "What is this?" She answers, wearily, "Atom bomb."

Brit Lower in Severance, in the scene were Helly R hijack's her outie's presentation. She's dolled up with fine clothes and fancy earings, and saying "And perhaps, most importantly, who are you?"

The dark interior of Silo 18 on Silo, where many stories of the massive underground bunker are visible as people crowd its walkways. A scene that manages to trigger both the claustrophobe and the acrophobe.

Jason Mamoa as Boba Voss on See. He's holding a sheathed katana and standing on a sad-looking bridge against a desolate winter landscape. His head is bent forward as if he's looking down, though in fact his character is blind.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 02/10/2026

More like Sterling Hayden. The whole Purity of Essence thing is very Trump 2.0.

Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, improbably firing a 30-pound machine gun from the hip through an office window as he chomps on a very Freudian cigar.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 30/09/2026

Does Rhea Seahorn count as a character actor?

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 27/09/2026

No, they're D. D. Harriman. If you've never heard of him, it's because you've never read Robert Heinlein. But every techbro has.

Cover of PAN Books edition of The Man Who Sold the Moon, by Robert Heinlein. Cover image is a wise-looking old man in a bubble-helmet space suit with cratered Moon looming in the background.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 25/09/2026

Israel has had 5 right-wing PMs since the 80s, when the left-wing Zionist movement that originally dominated the country's politics imploded. I think you'd find them all equally alienating. A couple were terrorists during the Mandate period, their violence directed at both the Brits and Arabs.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 25/09/2026

Listening to Menachem Begin, with his strident recitation of right wing blood-and-soil dogma, used to make me nauseous. I don't think Netanyahu is any more alienating, though he is far more venal and corrupt.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 24/09/2026

I remember back in 1988, somebody published a study linking oat bran consumption with cardiovascular health. So immediately you saw oat bran muffins in all the stores. Of course, these muffins were loaded with sugar, which more than offset any benefits from the oat bran.

Magazine ad for Hostess Oat Bran Muffins.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 24/09/2026

People pay attention to fiber. But protein is what's being hyped this week.

Two snack food bags with the word "fiber" prominent in the labeling.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 22/09/2026

I first saw one in a coin shop in 1966. I actually used one in 1970, when I took a computer programming class.

A Teletype terminal with copy holder, printer, keyboard, and paper tape reader/punch on its stand.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 22/09/2026

I think 5 is true across the board.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 21/09/2026

I think Doggerland was kind of like the Darien Gap: no roads.

On an episode of Pluribus, Manousos, brandishing his machete, looks warily at a chunga palm, with its scary-looking spikes.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 20/09/2026

Is it relevant to point out that Couch Street in Portland has nothing to do with furniture?

Black-and-white portrait of John Heard Couch. He's a classic 19th century American minor mogul: middle-aged with swept-back wavy hair and a chin-curtain beard, wearing a dark jacket, white collared shirt, and very restrained bow tie.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 20/09/2026

I think the absolute quintessence might be a *Jewish* Republican eating pork to express his hatred of Muslims.

Tweet from Rep. Randy Fine. Features a picture of pork brisket sandwich with melted cheese served with a side of sweet potato fries "Getting some protection against #MuslimTerror before my meetings at Pigwich, which has been featured on Diners Driveins and Dives! #IYKYK."

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 20/09/2026

Every time an imaginative, original show gets cancelled early on, despite finding a large audience, I think of this scene from Barry.

Scene from Barry where a soulless platform exec tells the creator of a well-received new show that's been cancelled after one episode. "Well, the algorithm felt it wasn't hitting the right taste clusters."

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 19/09/2026

MAGA is mainly unreflective dittoheads like this.

Ivan Justice, a 23-year-old bridge maintenance worker, gathered with his friends on a recent Friday in Pulaski to fish in the Salmon River. Justice said he agrees with “everything Trump does” and supports the name change. But he uses Lake Ontario in conversation to avoid confusion, only employing “Lake America” when he wants to aggravate people.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 18/09/2026

Like many things, an apocalypse is not as dramatic IRL as it is in the movies.

Scene from the first reel of Terminator. A chrome android with a skeletal angel-of-death appearance and glowing red eyes hefts a vorpal-looking weapon as something explodes in the background.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 18/09/2026

The suicidal Q on STV. I felt like he would have made a fun recurring character.

Garrett Graham in a Star Fleet uniform, looking restrained and slightly amused.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 18/09/2026

I was actually thinking of Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17, though the similarity might be more moral than physical.

A pale, translucent sheet of skin stretched in a tall metal frame, its scalloped edges pinned at the sides. A small face with narrow eyes, a tiny nose, and a red mouth sits near the top center, and faint red veins spread across the lower half.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 16/09/2026

Is Stuporman a friend of Supaman?

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 16/09/2026

For some reason, Spock was never even invited on the Ed Sheeran tour.

Leonard Nimoy as Spock playing a Vulcan Harp. He's looking weirdly soulful. The instrument looks kind of like a lopsided electric guitar played vertically.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 15/09/2026

For example, San Jose, where I used to live, has its mail shipped to Richmond for sorting. That at least a day's delay postmarking.

Capture of Google Maps display of a car trip from San Jose to Richmond, which runs almost the entire north-south length of San Francisco Bay.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 15/09/2026

The name is actually neither here nor there. It's called Portland because Francis Pettygrove was from Portland Maine. If he'd lost that famous coin toss, it would be Boston Oregon.

Sepia portrait of Francis Pettygrove. He has white hair and a beard, and looks like the 19th century pioneer and merchant that he was.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 13/09/2026

Name a non-LotR character who could resist the One Ring.

Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener/Chauncey Gardiner in Being There. His ambiguous social status is reflected in his attire: an old-fashioned tailored suit and tie, with a fancy homburg hat, over which he wears a dirty gardener's apron and thick working gloves. He holds a pruning tool. His face has the uncomplicated expression that we know reflects is mental disability, but the other characters in the movie interpret as a sign of deep wisdom.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 12/09/2026

Rando that I am, I have to mention the crossover comic book, The Primate Directive.

A couple of comic book panels. James Kirk (in classic Starfleet uniform) is in heated dialog with George Taylor (mostly naked).

Taylor: Ship? Then you still have your ship?
Kirk: Yes...
Taylor: And more men as well?
(Taylor is excited and grabs Kirk by the shoulders.)
Taylor: Then you can overthrow these apes and help me put humanity back on track!
Kirk: Colonel Taylor, One thing at a time. That's not why we're here.
Taylor: Who cares why you're here?! You've got to do something! They're butchers, I tell you! They're treating people like livestock!

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 12/09/2026

Best Star Trek crew, wrong answers only.

The cast of Hill Street Blues, a cop show that was considered very gritty in its time, but in this photo they're all smiling broadly like they really want to be your friend.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 10/09/2026

That's an automat. A shame those have disappeared from the US.

B&W photo of a man making a selection from a kind of restaurant vending machine.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 08/09/2026

I had to go to Google Ngram and look up when "cut to the chase" first started appearing in print. Sure enough, it's the mid 1890s, right when the Silent Era began. But it didn't become a common expression until the 1980s!

Buster Keaton being chased down the street by 75 or so police officers in the 1922 black-and-white silent film, Cops.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 07/09/2026

I am morally required to share my favorite example of sloppy Hollywood geography.

DVD cover for Krakatoa, East of Java. A balloon drifts by an exploding volcano that appears to be an entire island.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 07/09/2026

Date yourself with a snap of your first ever computer.

A PDP-11 computer from sometime around 1970. It's about the size of refrigerator, has a couple of small tape drives on the front, an array of diagnostic lights (familiar from any movie computer from that era) and an array of toggle switches.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 07/09/2026

Hey, if you're going to have anthropomorphic food, it really needs eyebrows.

The Radish Spirit from Spirited Away. It's an anthropomorphic daikon radish, resembling a paunchy middle-aged man. It's hat resembles a rice bowl.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 07/09/2026

Fred has an aggressive form of mouth cancer. Probably going to have to put him down in the next few days. Had the little dude since I moved to Portland 15 years ago. This is going to leave a big hole in my life.

A tiny black kitten with a white chest patch. Looking very curious at the camera.

Same cat, much older, lying back to back with a very large large tuxedo cat.

A recent photo of the same cat, this time with a solid black cat.

The same cat, at peak cuteness, perched on top of a bookcase.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 05/09/2026

Nothing gives you a feel for deep time like knowing that a sort of semiaquatic deer can evolve into a Blue Whale.

Graphic comparing a sleek, gigantic blue whale with its massive baleen-plated mouth, with an elephant (about 5 times as big) and a human (about 16 times as big).

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 04/09/2026

Have you read Lewis Baston's Borderlines? He has a lot to say on that subject.

Cover of Borderlines: A History of Europe, Told from the Edges, by Lewis Baston. Features a disused customs station the Belgian-French border.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 03/09/2026

I have zero faith in recycling as a serious way to offset the effect of single-use packaging. But I still do it, because the alternative is becoming a doomer, a life philosophy I have to reject out of hand. What we really need to do is generate a lot less waste. How? You got me.

A 120-acre garbage dump sprawls near Mumbai. The city skyline and Trombay Hill are visible in the background.

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 02/09/2026

I think we've all seen LLMs make mistakes that even a human with zero domain expertise could have avoided.

Google AI Overview for search "is tripe kosher". Answer: "Whether tripe is kosher depends on the religion of the cow."

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Isaac Rabinovitch @isaac32767.picknit.com · 02/09/2026

Fair point, but I still miss the days when Big News was willing to suggest that the emperor was naked.

New York Times headline about the Pentagon Papers.

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