iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don’t know who discovered visible light but it wasn’t a fish.

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So far, so good, still Google Maps free. I know most other maps capitulated in time but at least they weren’t so damn eager to glaze our dumbass autocrat.

@mark-carney.bsky.social If someone in your team would like to explore how to reopen the former @onsciencecentre.bsky.social as the Future of Canada Expo, a permanent free experiential exhibition showcasing the best of Canadian tech, research, and industry, I’m visiting Ottawa and happy to explain.

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Perhaps she can lift a finger to reopen @onsciencecentre.bsky.social. Nah.

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Reposted by Jan Gray

This breathtaking NYT story about Trump's Russian entanglements includes three people who've been part of the operation to cultivate Trump since 2015: Bryan Lanza, Sheikh Tahoon, and Kirill Dmitriev. This is literally the culmination of the original plan. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

nytimes.com

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies

President Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of inter...

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The Future Initiative - Deutsches Museum

Just like @onsciencecentre.bsky.social, shuttered and gutted by troglodyte leaders, who can’t quantify its compounding cultural value, instead coveting the land the institution sits upon. Compare to the enlightened leadership of Munich’s Deutsches Museum: www.deutsches-museum.de/en/museum/ue...

deutsches-museum.de

The Future Initiative

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See the craptastic shuttering and gutting of @onsciencecentre.bsky.social. It’s difficult for troglodyte politicians and bean counters to appreciate the compounding cultural value of such institutions to future generations of taxpayers, and too easy to assess the choice land they are sited upon.

Eric Lipton NYT @ericlipton.nytimes.com · 03/10/2026

Reposted by Jan Gray

JUST POSTED: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have pushed a multibillion oil deal with Russia as part of peace talks that will bring profits to their family business partners. A new front for Trump-era conflicts of interest. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

nytimes.com

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies (Gift Article)

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Canada’s holocaustmonument.ca is next to the www.warmuseum.ca. A well spent day in Ottawa. Fast forward to 2026. You know what is happening, in your name.

Plaque at Holocaust Monument:

INCREASING
PERSECUTION
AND VIOLENCE
Jews in Nazi Germany faced ever-increasing persecution at the hands of the Nazis, government officials, police and security services. The German state introduced laws that stripped away Jews civil rights, including their access to education and choice of where to live. Restrictions, laws, arrests and pressure for Jews to leave Germany altogether broke down the social ties and bonds of solidarity they had with other Germans, isolating Jews from the rest of
German society.
The Nazis inflicted violence against their victims in the streets, in state institutions and in newly established concentration camps. Nazi officials and activists attacked and humiliated Jews in order to drive them out of the German economy and society. Communists, seen as a political threat by the Nazis, were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, and those considered disabled were forced to undergo reproductive sterilization. Other targeted groups also faced persecution and social isolation.

Plaque at Holocaust Monument:

“Nazi German firing squad shoots Jewish women in an open pit near Dubossary, Soviet Moldavia, in September 1941. Security personnel, soldiers and mobile killing squads shot hundreds of thousands of Jews, often into makeshift mass graves close to the victims' homes. Murderers and witnesses photographed such killings, which were difficult to keep secret.
© Imperial War Museum (HU 86369)

Plaque at Holocaust Monument:

“CANADA'S CLOSED BORDERS
Canada's restrictive immigration policies, along with fear and suspicion of foreigners, were a huge barrier for all immigrants wishing to enter the country. Such regulations were tied to the needs of the economy; economic depression reinforced widespread prejudices and led to stricter immigration policies meant to protect Canadian workers.
Immigration to Canada was extremely difficult for those seen as undesirable, including Jews, Chinese, people of
African descent and those considered disabled or physically and mentally compromised. Antisemitism contributed to the problems facing Jewish refugees. During an off-the-record discussion with journalists, a high-ranking immigration official was asked how many Jews Canada was prepared to admit; he responded, "None is too many." These barriers dashed any hopes European Jews had that Canada might be a place of refuge, and Jewish Canadians lacked the political power needed to change government policies.
By the end of 1942, the Allied governments knew about the mass killing of Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union and other German-occupied countries in Europe. Nevertheless, the
Canadian government refused to reconsider its immigration policies during the war. The pleas of the Canadian Jewish Congress were ignored. Fewer than 5,000 Jews managed to escape to Canada between 1933 and 1945.”

A mural etched in concrete of a modern day site past which the Germans drove concentration camp survivors in the last days of WW2.

Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“But remember please, the law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love, nor pity, nor forgive, If you make a slip in handling us you die.” — Rudyard Kipling, Secret of the Machines

From Geoffrey Wellum’s book First Light, p.72,

“The lights of the Harvard plunge earthwards and disappear from view. There is a dull thud. The noise of the banshees is cut as if someone has switched off a radio. The silence is deafening. Another dull thud, shattering and ghastly, and a red glow lights the night skyline behind those trees on the hill over there.

‘But remember please, the law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love, nor pity, nor forgive, If you make a slip in handling us you die.’
— Rudyard Kipling, Secret of the Machines

Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

<whistles for Jerome> HI FRIENDLY!!

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“You could never create a single account on a single Meta service, of which there are many, and you still aren't safe. If you're talking to someone who has installed Muse, Meta could, presumably, access, read, analyze, and upload that information to its services.”

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Reposted by Jan Gray

Alan Cross🇨🇦 @alancross.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

David Marsden, the greatest radio mentor anyone could have ever had, has died. Through his stewardship of CFNY in the late 70s and through the 80s, he helped change the musical lives of millions. #DavidMarsden #CFNY #TheSpiritOfRadio. www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/david-marsde...

ajournalofmusicalthings.com

David Marsden, the architect of CFNY and the Spirit of Radio has died | Alan Cross

David Marsden, the man who built the original CFNY and guided the station through its Spirit of Radio years, has died. He was 85. David suffered a fall

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

OK watching Silo. Every episode we are reminded how much we in Ontario treasured and admired our enthusiastic, learned friend in classic movies, Elwy Yost.

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

You may bring your spiders and salt — and a walnut — to the interview, just in case. BTW I like the NPR Marketplace show. @kairyssdal.bsky.social is a great host and steward of the institution.

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Back in 1980 our Waterloo Math Unix had /usr/games/scifi, a Markov chain (?) text generator of doomsday plots like: Earth catches fire then a washed up scientist discovers a solution then a horrible disease emerges then everyone misses their breakfast.

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Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What subsequently became of René off-screen was a cheap shot (and bad writing).

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Can’t we encounter a new giant space going amoeba, a metaphoric battle of superpowers and middle nations, a post AI civilization, a culture where telling the truth is obscene, a Klemperor rosette of worlds, a quantum black hole (yeah I know) accidentally dropped in the Earth, some weirdo virus, …?

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Next week on Strange New Worlds, Pike and the crew collide with an invisible time vortex / Q continuum space beacon and awaken in 1970s Southern California. To set history aright, Pike must conquer his fears and perform an aerial water ski trick over a sentient, grumpy, captive Alopias vulpinus.

Fly prepared. Bring food and water for an extra four hours in your seat. Also, I wonder about what to do for a fume event / cabin haze (bleed air oil contamination). I always have an N95. Probably ineffective. A disposable P100? Hard to justify for this rare contingency — unless you’re crew.

Then the captain announced they’d sorted the problem, an incompatibility between SEA gate power and the plane (??), and soon enough, we were off. That was a flight I had my fingers crossed it wouldn’t be necessary to reboot the Embraer en route.

We came back. Boarded again. Guess what. 2 more hours of rebooting the plane over and over. Definitely having the “fool me once shame on you …” experience. You would have thought they’d have it all sorted before cooping us up again.

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Another time. AC541? SEA-YYZ. Embraer E190. Sat for 4 hours while the crew rebooted the airplane (full power cycling) over and over and over. No AC. Opened the doors front and aft for a breeze. Scrubbed flight. “Come back tomorrow.”

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Next day we flew. No problem. Over Ireland, boss opens the conference mailing envelope. “Oh, the meeting was moved back a week!” … (We’d been too heads down to notice — but we could have done so while waiting to fly the day before.) We just stayed in UK an extra week. MS Winersh Triangle.

Jan Gray @jangray.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Forever ago sat becalmed at SEA with my boss waiting to fly to June? 1991? C++ Standard Mtg in London on a BA 747. After several hours, BA scrubbed the flight, equipment problem. “Come back tomorrow, same time.”

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“”Doug Ford’s @onsciencecentre.bsky.social overseers have also used their neglect of the institution as an excuse to shut it down. When some ceiling tiles needed repair, Kinga Surma and Infrastructure Ontario did not fix it, but commissioned a report, and used it as an excuse to close the Centre.””

“Trump's Kennedy Center overseers have also used their neglect of the institution as an excuse to shut it down. When a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, the Trump-appointed board did not fix it, but commissioned a 55-page report, and used it as an excuse to close the Center.”

Alas my story ends with a corrupt ignoramus politician, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and his toadies, abruptly shuttering and gutting @onsciencecentre.bsky.social on stupid, blatantly false pretenses. Now Toronto's children no longer have the opportunities and inspiration my generation enjoyed.

More experiential? I set type on a hot lead Linotype and printed it on a press. That experience secured my most important job interview -- years later the inventor of Microsoft Word asked me how a Linotype did full text justification to the left and right margins. Springs? No, wedges. I got the job.

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Ontarians, perhaps use this as an opportunity to share what @onsciencecentre.bsky.social meant to you, and what a crime against the people of Ontario it was to shutter and gut a beloved and important Ontario institution. @saveosc.bsky.social!

There were 550 exhibits. You could not try them all in a day. I loved the LASER show, burning stuff in a CO2 laser. We learned it used NaCl lens(es) because glass was opaque to that IR frequency. I loved the Powers of Ten film (the superior Rough Sketch), brilliantly mixing math, physics, biology.