iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Is this the guy that gets his hands burnt in the beginning of Terminator 2?

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I knew there was a reason this plane resonated with me

The bulbous and organically shaped Mon Calamari cruiser from Return of the Jedi.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

I can't explain it but this dog is Harrison Ford coded

A brown and white husky trying to catch a treat with one side of his mouth looking at the camera lazily.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Cheatlines pictured here in the kitchen

A screencap from the 1941 animated cartoon "Chef Donald" showing a Donald duck stirring ingredients into a bowl with a milk carafe and a non-descript metal shaker to the left and a jar of baking power and bottle of rubber cement to our right.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

The king was my JVC KD-SH707 car stereo that supported MP3 CDs, had a motorized faceplate, and an actual volume knob back when seemingly every other deck had up/down buttons for volume. Installed it myself in three cars.

The front faceplate of a JVC KD-SH707 car stereo. It's silver plastic with a black screen with square white pixels.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

My first player came later, a Diamond RioVolt SP100 MP3 CD Player. This thing got me through high school. I used it probably every day.

A Diamond RioVolt portable CD MP3 player that looks VERY late 90's early 2000's in design. Silver plastic, blue accents, semi-organic shaped buttons.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

I was there when my cousin opened his Eiger Labs MPMan F-10, the original MP3 player. Only had a 16 or 32MB Smart Media card and transferred songs over parallel port.

A picture of the Eiger MPMan F-10, the first portable MP3 player available in the United States. It looks like the black box for a deck of cards but with a tiny digital screen like you'd find on a cheap quartz watch and two glossy silver buttons to either side.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Defending not just AI art but Woody Allen in the same post, impressive. Going to link to the Oatmeal's post and screenshot Gruber's: theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A post from Jon Gruber's blog Daring Fireball that begins:

Good and thoughtful graphic essay by Matthew Inman, expressing why he dislikes AI-generated art. It’s been widely linked to, largely approvingly. I fundamentally disagree with the premise. Near the start, Inman writes:

When I consume AI art, it also evokes a feeling. Good, bad, neutral — whatever.

Until I find out that it’s AI art.

Then I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored. This feeling isn’t a choice.

I think it very much is a choice. If your opinion of a work art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else. If you refuse to watch Woody Allen movies because of his personal life, that’s a choice, but you’re choosing not to watch some of the best movies that have ever been made.

The post from Jon Gruber's blog Daring Fireball continues:

Stanley Kubrick said, “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically.

I think most “AI art” today completely sucks. But not because it was made using AI generation tools. It just sucks period. Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

We have this exact one for Hank and it’s mesmerizing. Obligatory Hank tax:

A brown husky mix dog laying asleep with his head nestled against the armrest of a brown leather couch.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Or this art for Virtuosity, a 1995 movie I had never even heard of. Gorgeous.

Blu Ray box for the movie Virtuosity held by a person's hand. It's a somewhat abstract illustration with angular tubes and a human head made of half filled in green coloring and half white wireframe with VIRTUOSITY spelled vertically bisecting in the middle.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

I had no idea Saul Bass directed a movie! Look at this box art.

Box art for the Blu Ray release of Phase IV held by a person's hand. A white background with black ants. The negative space around the ants creates a skull shape. The title PHASE IV A FILM BY SAUL BASS are set in red in an all caps typeface.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

I have been hunting for this specific sweater since this episode aired and I think I finally found it.

Don Draper played by John Hamm in Mad Men wearing a gray knit shawl sweater and white collared button down shirt holding a glass of presumably scotch to sooth his "hot tooth" as he sits up in bed.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Spent probably 4 hours in total getting my ancient QMK fork to compile again for this guy. Turned out I had accidentally deleted an important line.

A 65% mechanical keyboard, a Massdrop ALT v1 with cream, orange, green, blue, and gray keys. The keycaps are XDA Canvas with runic alphas and micons which have runic symbols instead of the alphabet. The backlight is set to an RGB gradient. They keyboard has a coiled USB cable

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Them, listless, staring into the distance: If only there was a way to marry my love of video games and the winter olympics fan-favorite sport of curling... Me:

A gaming pillow that looks like a large curling puck with a steam deck attached at the handle.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Upgrading your phone means getting garbage on your home screen

A screenshot of the icon for Apple's image playground app: an insipid AI generator doe-eyed cat...dog? set inside a blurred gradient bubble

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

If you see this post a vampire

Screencap from The Simpsons of Mr. Burns as Dracula.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

The SF Symphony hall still has CRTs in the lobby.

A black 27” 4:3 ratio CRT on a wall mount showing the live feed of the sf symphony stage.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 21/09/2024

“Ceasar Rimmer…yes I quite like the sound of that”

A picture of the smug, smeg-headed Arnold J. Rimmer from the tv show Red Dwarf

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 04/02/2024

A link that says "Delete my Account" is scary. If I click it, will my account just go poof? What does deletion actually mean? I like how SimpleFin handled this with one more word than you usually see:

A link that says "Maybe delete my account"

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 28/01/2024

How sure are we that he's not Patrick Gill's father?

An image of Patrick Gill, a white man who resembles Ralf Hütter, with shoulder length hair holding a "Giant Bomb" mug.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

Why does the Apple Movies cover art for Blade Runner: The Final Cut look like some generic LA Confidential rip off?

Screenshot of the blade runner final cut art from apple movies that looks like an LA confidential rip off

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

Got this incense holder that's meant for cones and couldn't really hold sticks. Nothing 30 minutes with Fusion360 and a 3D printer can't fix.

A circular ceramic incense burner with a smaller concentric circle in the middle. In the very center is a 3mm hole that's too big to hold stick incense, shown here with a stick of incense just outside the hole for scale.

A circular ceramic incense holder with a white 3D printed insert in the center holding up a stick of incense.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 22/12/2023

Is this the visual inspiration for Disco Stu? i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000...

Picture of Disco Stu from the Simpsons. A man wearing stereotypical “disco” clothes including purple sunglasses, a popped collar, and a flared white suit jacket.

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Jake Mauer @jakemauer.bsky.social · 21/10/2023

Came across one of Picasso's last self portraits from the Tête de femme series and realized the "man in the wall" in Smiling Friends has to be referencing it.