iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 19/05/2026

This shot from a hockey game exemplifies how omnipresent gambling has become: it has THREE different companies advertised in one frame: FanDuel (twice), Kalshi and Circa -- plus 2x odds at the bottom.

a frame from a hockey game, with gambling references circled

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 19/05/2026

I wondered: How much has the legalization of online sports gambling transformed watching sports on TV? We got an AI to watch fifty hours of sports to find out. Every single game had gambling ads, promotions or other references. Every single one! But some sports had far more than others.

an event plot shows minutes in a typical hour of six sports featuring a gambling reference. NCAA women's basketball is the most, but it's almost all ESPN ticker's with odds. NHL hockey is second, with forty minutes shaded, mostly from in-arena ads. NBA basketball has the third-most. NFL football, NCAA basketball and NCAA men's basketball have the least -- about 4 to 5 minutes a game.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 17/12/2025

TikTok's algorithm knew how much Olympics content to give you four months early -- in April 2024. This chart shows quintile cohorts based on how much Olympics content users got during the Olympics (Jul/Aug). But -- amazingly -- the rank order of Olympics vids stays the same, even months beforehand.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremy-b-merrill-644b1412_how-does-tiktoks-algorithm-figure-out-if-activity-7407155110214250496-K9Bl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAKoE5QBuFNKEL2yq0MZ4ZtO-_pmoGqU1l0

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 07/02/2025

There’s no more Gulf of Mexico Division of the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s now the Gulf of America Division. As of Wednesday, the agency has also renamed the body of water even on obscure pages about mangrove swamps. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

A screenshot of EPA's Mangrove Swamps website, saying "Four species of tropical mangroves can be found around the Gulf of America. Their extensive root systems protect the coast from erosion and storm damage. The mangrove here (inset) is a red mangrove."

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 19/12/2024

Elon Musk's total view count on Twitter is way way bigger (16x) than that of Congress as a whole. chart by @kevinschaul.bsky.social

A bubble chart shows one huge orange bubble for Elon Musk's 127.6 billion views and a bunch of small and tiny green bubbles for Congress's 7.1 billion views

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 17/12/2024

Elon Musk has a political megaphone unmatched in modern society. He got a total of 133 billion views since July, and ~1/3 of his posts are about politics. His typical tweet gets more than 2.4 million views in just one hour, according to our novel view-count time-series dataset. 🎁: wapo.st/3VLjlI6

A chart shows the view count trajectory of Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's tweets, titled "Views of each X post in 26 days around the election". Elon Musk has many above 100 million, while Trump's are all less than 100 million.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 02/12/2024

I like this chart. It tells a story. It's a bimodal distribution, which is my favorite kind of chart. It tells me that I've got two kinds of things: A bunch of the things on the right, centered at 0.8 and some of the things on the left, around 0.1 to 0.2.

an untitled bimodal distribution, with a bit spike around 0.8 and a much smaller spike around 0.1. y-axis goes to 350 from 0.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 13/11/2024

TikTok's algorithm is super personalized -- and super opaque. So, my colleagues and I asked 1,000 people to send us their browsing histories, and we found: Most people get about 8% politics in their feeds, but a few get as much as 30%. gift link: wapo.st/40uSUJG

A histogram of the proportion of TikTok feeds that is about politics or social issues. The big peak is around 6-10%, with a long right tail towards 25% or 30%, and a small left tail towards 1% and 2%.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 02/10/2023

Sham trials for the real president Real trials for the sham president (but he says they're sham trials)

A screenshot of an email that says, with sham trial highlighted,
President Trump has delivered his remarks on the SHAM TRIAL taking place in New York – a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.

New York Democrats are trying to bring down the Trump Organization and impose the “corporate death penalty” upon President Trump and his family.

Just as President Trump is defending his family and his reputation from these corrupt tyrants, he will proudly defend the American people from the sick and twisted people destroying our country.

Please watch President Trump’s statement on the sham trial taking place in New York.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 27/09/2023

The ultimate rubric for a champagne phrase? a sham word is an adjective and a pain word is a frequent, common noun with a negative meaning that, when their pronunciations are combined (fudging the phonology), make a champagne compound word with non-negative meaning. Here are some more. (spoiler!)

metrics for my real friends, real tricks for my meh friends
focus for my real friends, real cuss for my faux friends
shamrocks for my real friends, real rocks for my sham friends
folkrock for my real friends, real croc for my faux friends
photos for my real friends, real toes for my faux friends
midrash for my real friends, real rash for my mid friends
medics for my real friends, real dicks for my meh friends
crappie for my real friends, real pee for my crap friends

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 27/09/2023

This analysis depends on NLTK, WordNet, GLoVe, a 333k-wordlist and the (criminally underused) Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary. No ChatGPT, no LLMs, no generative AI. In fact, ChatGPT's were TERRIBLE.

“Laughter for my true friends, heartfelt tears for my false friends.”
“Confetti for my loyal friends, bitter truth for my deceitful friends.”
“Hugs for my genuine friends, icy distance for my deceptive friends.”
“Sunshine for my authentic friends, thunderstorms for my treacherous friends.”

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 26/09/2023

I had to take the car in for a recall and chose the dealer that is right next to the terminus of a bike trail that goes to a wildflower-covered monadnock called Arabia Mountain.

A bike propped up against a rock shelf, covered in yellow wildflowers and a small section of trees.

A covered bridge, surrounded by trees, with a paved walking/biking trail going through it

A rocky mountain with a green island of young grass

A rocky mountain area with some yellow flowers and green shrubs, under a cloudy sky

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 26/09/2023

Back in 2013, the New York Times was in such bad financial shape (our 401K match was paid in company stock), that office coffee wasn't free, but cost $0.75 for a shitty knockoff-Keurig packet called Flavia that I've seen NOWHERE ELSE but this car dealership I'm at right now. It's still bad.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 25/09/2023

This week is Stand with Crypto Day. (This whole week, apparently.)

A screenshot of a phone notification that says

Do you stand with crypto?

This week is Stand with Crypto Day and it's time to take action. Email your Representative to su...

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 19/09/2023

This competition between hypothesized rules inside babies' brains, Yang says, explains how Old French where verbs always came second (like modern German) first let speakers skip the subject (like modern Spanish), which made the verb-second rule no longer as good -- so French became no longer V2.

a screenshot of a book page: All Western Romance languages had V2 in medieval times, perhaps a vestige from some ancestral language. All these languages, however, lost V2 later on, and all of them were pronoun-drop languages.

Our theory asserts that a +V2 grammar can *never* lose to a -V2 grammar, and that means that had a language had a +V2 grammar, it would not have been possible to change it into a -V2 grammar.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 19/09/2023

This is the explanation I would've wanted in undergrad: Languages change when toddlers, learning their first language in a two-dialect environment, choose a rule that explains most of what they hear, regardless of the dialect. From Charles Yang's The Infinite Gift. #linguistics

A screenshot of a book page, saying (highlighted), if the child picks the German grammar during the natural selection of langauge learning, it will work most of the time even when she has just heard an English sentence. ... the payoff the German grammar outweights that of the English grammar.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 08/09/2023

Drop something blue from your gallery

A photograph of a blue lake with a few pine trees in the foreground and mountains in the background, under a blue sky with a few white clouds.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 01/08/2023

update: the CFTC and a gold IRA company called Safeguard Metals "have reached a settlement in principle" on liability. The CFTC had sued Safeguard for allegedly defrauding its customers out of many millions of dollars of retirement savings.

a screenshot of a court filing that says

Pursuant to Section 7 of the Court’s Standing Order, ECF No. 13, Plaintiffs Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), the States (as defined in the First Amended Complaint, or “FAC” (ECF No. 104) and Defendants Safeguard Metals LLC and Jeffrey S. Santulan (collectively the “Parties”), hereby stipulate as follows:
Whereas, Plaintiffs and Defendants have reached a settlement in principle, subject to approval by the CFTC’s Commission and the various state authorities, on the issue of liability and as to a permanent injunction and other statutory and equitable relief, as set forth in a Proposed Consent Order that the parties will file with the Court for its consideration within the next 45 days following the filing of this Notice and Stipulation.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 16/07/2023

Nothing is diagonal in Colorado.

A photograph of several horizontal layers, the sky with a few clouds at the bottom, a railroad track, some green grass, a road, more grass, than gravel, with a few power lines and a road sign in the center.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 12/07/2023

Here's a picture of the Blue Ridge Mountains my dad took while we were hiking a week ago on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia.

a photograph of successively grayer mountains fading into the background and blending into the cloudy sky, with some trees in the very bottom of the foreground.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 10/07/2023

Facebook's group-recommendation algorithm is pushing me to join these RFK Jr. supporter groups. Facebook has previously said it would "permanently" stop recommending political groups. 🤷

a screenshot from Facebook with the header "Suggested groups". the first entry says "The World Needs RFK Jr" with metadata 1.5K members, 4 posts a day. The second entry says "CMC community".

a screenshot from Facebook with header "Suggested groups". the first item says Pomona College Alumni, the second says "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For President", 9.7K members, 10+ posts a day. Public group.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 06/07/2023

aww yeah I still got it baybeeee psst, want to know the secret? it's a little CSS magic trick I call float: left

three red boxes aligned vertically and labeled A B and C

some very basic HTML and CSS (actually JSX) for the red boxes in the other picture

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 04/07/2023

Hiked 26 miles of the Appalachian Trail with my dad over the past three days, from Hogpen Gap to Cooper Gap. Saw a deer, some turkeys and a diamondback rattlesnake. More pictures in thread ->

A picture of an old external frame hiking backpack leaned up against a big rock with carved into it Appalachian Trail, Hogpen Gap

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 28/06/2023

ain't no rule that says a pizza can't be an astronaut pizza deliveryman

an AI generated picture of an astronaut in space holding a pizza, but inside the helmet of the space suit is another pizza. earth is in the background.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 23/06/2023

the Bud Light theme is STILL going strong on the right wing. At least 69 influencers talked about it last week. This week, 45 influencers mentioned it, including Donald Trump, who sent a fundraising email listing Bud Light as a bad guy alongside the Chinese Communist Party and Dominion.

a chart showing an initial spike in April, then a sort of steady level since, of bud light mentions by right-wing influencers

a screenshot of a Trump fundraising email listing, in red type, The Chinese Communisty Party, Big Pharma, Puberty Blockers, Dominion Voting Systems and Bud Light

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 22/06/2023

Trump's line about Hillary "acid-washed" her emails is almost seven years old, it's getting to be retro just like acid-washed jeans

a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social post from June 13 that says "Will Deranged Jack Smith be looking at the thousands of pages of documents that Biden had in Chinatown then, when caught, quickly sent up to Boston? What about the 1,850 Boxes that Biden is fighting to keep secret. How about Hillary’s 33,000 emails that she deleted and acid washed? Will he be looking at the $5,000,000 bribe that was paid to Biden but that the Justice Department is trying to hide? Much more coming on that! We are living in a Third World Country. No Borders, Rigged Elections!"

with "How about Hillary’s 33,000 emails that she deleted and acid washed?" highlighted

a screenshot of Trump's Sept 4. 2016 tweet that says "The polls are close so Crooked Hillary is getting out of bed and will campaign tomorrow.Why did she hammer 13 devices and acid-wash e-mails?"

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 28/05/2023

Two years ago, we moved to a new house. I set up my birdfeeder in the backyard. But squirrels kept eating the birdseed! What's worse, Home Depot didn't have any baffles. So I took the obvious next step to defend the feeder. I built an AI-powered squirrel-repeller robot armed with a garden hose.

a gif of a squirrel eating at a birdfeeder, then getting sprayed with a stream of water and jumping off of the feeder

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 25/05/2023

My Duolingo streak is 2,000 days long.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 25/05/2023

"Even Fox News is banning me" David Horowitz, a guy who's been advertising his book a bunch on Newsmax for years, has lately made Fox the bad guy in his ads, which feels new and different.

a screenshot of an email that says Breaking News from Newsmax.com

Even Fox News Is Banning This Book!

Urgent Message from David Horowitz

Dear Friend,

My new book has been a runaway bestseller.

But it’s being censored.

Almost a total ban.

Even though my book sales far, far surpassed other bestsellers – the New York Times won’t include me on their bestseller list.

All the major networks – including Fox News – won’t even mention “Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last.”

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 18/05/2023

RT @zseward.twitter.com Oh, just a Supreme Court opinion casually citing Statista and a Forbes contributor , both of which cite the same viral infographic by a software company, which itself is aggregated from other, poorly labeled sources that are years out of date.

Oh, just a Supreme Court opinion casually citing Statista and a Forbes contributor , both of which cite the same viral infographic by a software company, which itself is aggregated from other, poorly labeled sources that are years out of date.

YouTube, 510,000 comments are posted on Facebook and 247,000 tweets are sent on Twitter. See Statista, Media Usage in an Internet Minute as of April 2022 (2023), ....,; Statista YouTube--Statistics & Facts; B. Marr, How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? Forbes, May 21 2018

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 13/05/2023

Are these still wildflowers if I planted them on purpose?

A pink wildflower with some yellow and white ones in the background

A purple wildflower photographed with a fence in the background

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 13/05/2023

Look at this cool duck sabering a champagne bottle I saw the other day in a restaurant bathroom.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 08/05/2023

turns out those rubber-banded bundles of cash stuffed in duffle bags used for (alleged) drug deals aren't very precise. $100 bills: 3,608. $50 bills: 880. $20 bills: 4,926. $10 bills: 125. $5 bills: 119. $1 bills: 3.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 06/05/2023

Ack! Forgot to write down the name of the artist who made this badass steampunk ship out of a tea urn and old bent silverware.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 06/05/2023

Please, call it the heckthread

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 04/05/2023

This sidewalk has crossing gates!

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 30/04/2023

He was a hedge fund quant, then he said "I do what I want." Can I make it any more obvious? www.wsj.com/articles/he-was-a-quant…

A screenshot of a notification saying "He was a hedge fund quant. Now he's become a thorn in the side of Wall Street"

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 28/04/2023

facebook ads tryna sell me a literal tinfoil hat

a screenshot of a Facebook ad from "Lambs" reading

Boost your brainpower and sleep like a dream with our EMF-Blocking Beanie! 78% of our customers report reduced headache, brain fog, and improved cognition. Don't let EMFs affect your health, get your beanie today!

Who will defend your body from 4G, 5G and Wifi radiation?
Lambs will!
NASA inspired fabric blocks 99% of radiation.

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Jeremy Merrill @jeremybmerrill.com · 21/04/2023

Last week, I wrote about an outbreak of scam Facebook ads that offer a bogus version of ChatGPT that really steals access to your accounts. I just got another one. At some point, ya wonder if Facebook is unable to stop its machinery from selling these dangerous ads and showing them to its users

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