iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 12/06/2026

My AI-generated slop of the day is a good palate cleanser. Love the hat!

AI-generated image of a koala bear wearing a koala hat in a car seat, holding its eucalyptus snack

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 07/04/2026

I am not happy about our April weather #Boston

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 16/02/2026

Excite still is hanging in, but the search results are kind of limited (but do you really need more than 3 links, anyway?)

Screen shot of excite.com search for Ask Jeeves

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 16/02/2026

And in other news about Web 1.0 faves, Lycos is down

Home page of Lycos saying their services are down

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 06/02/2026

Peggy Noonan is brilliant on why all Americans should be worried about the killing off of @washingtonpost.com (h/t @democracyeditor.bsky.social) www.wsj.com/opinion/a-la...

"I do not understand the figure of Mr. Bezos. Nice man, met him, always treated as kind of business visionary, and fair enough! But what is he about right now? I can’t believe the fourth-wealthiest person in the world (and in history) would dash his own historic reputation to curry favor with the Trump administration. For what, more contracts? He’s got enough contracts! It’s so small-time, so penny-ante. What matters is honor, that’s the thing that lasts, what history says of you, how you helped your country."

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 20/01/2026

Making this chart about @us.theconversation.com readership gave me joy - 1,447,331,134 pageviews to date (that we can count, plus all those online readers we can't count and print readership and video watchers)

Chart of cumulative pageviews to The Conversation U.S.'s articles, starting at 0 in 2014 and rising to 1.4 billion in 2025

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 05/12/2025

Happy Friday! This is my favorite question in this week’s @us.theconversation.com #NewsQuiz theconversation.com/the-conversa...

Screenshot of text; Pope Leo prefers to sing prayers rather than recite them. In response, the Vatican has launched a popular series of online tutorials called “Let’s Sing With”…

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 21/11/2025

This comment on a Facebook post I wrote made my day. I am human and unpredictable, whereas ChatGPT is entirely based on the probability of what word comes next www.facebook.com/theconversat...

Screenshot of a comment: At no point in the headline did I know what word was coming next

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 19/11/2025

My favorite sentence of the day, about the restart of the "Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania", by @walthickey.bsky.social www.numlock.com/p/numlock-ne...

Its companion plant on the same site, Three Mile Island Unit 2, was know for some other, more critical work in the late 1970s

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 09/10/2025

Google News seems to need a remedial course in "Physics"

Screenshot of Google News with three stories in a Physics section that are not at all about Physics

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 01/10/2025

A @bostonglobe.com farewell to the legendary @bostonteresa.bsky.social, a pioneer of online journalism, retiring after 40 years at the Globe. Her speech reminded us of how lucky we are to be journalists, and how important the work we do is.

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 11/09/2025

Having a beignet for the many unable to be here at #ona25

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 15/07/2025

From the new, free Substack of @us.theconversation.com, a look at Trump's settlements with CBS and ABC, from keen media observer @michaelsocolow.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theconve...

Graphic with text "I don’t think reporters, editors and producers plan to let Donald Trump become their editor-in-chief over the next three years. But we’ll only know by watching."

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 15/07/2025

Even the spammers are getting lazy these days #SEO

Screen shot of an email saying I’m a fan of your work on [Specific Topic]—you consistently provide real value to your readers. I’d love to contribute a guest post that complements your content and engages your audience.

If you're accepting submissions, I’d be happy to share a few tailored topic ideas for your review.https://theconversation.com/

Looking forward to the possibility of collaborating!

Warm regards,
[Your Name]

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 18/06/2025

White Americans aren't the only ones confused about how to mark #Juneteenth (as explained in this article on @us.theconversation.com theconversation.com/whats-the-ri...). So are LLMs. I asked one for a picture of a squirrel celebrating Juneteenth and this is what I got:

Squirrel in an uncle Sam hat looking happy, with white dude standing behind him

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 09/05/2025

Community colleges educate 45% of college students (at an average age of 27) vs 3% at selective colleges (where 75% are from upper two quintiles of income). Among the interesting facts at a fascinating panel on the future of #highered from @us.theconversation.com

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 07/05/2025

High-class advertising these days over on X - I paid a rare visit and this was at the top of my feed. I'm glad it's a verified account, though. I was worried this might be an imposter babe

Screenshot of a tweet with an attractive Black woman in a rather scanty bikini on a beach with the hashtag #NewProfilePic

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 20/04/2025

Today, the neighboring town of Arlington reenacted the English retreat. Note there were no gas stations or shops or ice cream trucks here in 1775 - just people standing up for their rights

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 19/04/2025

Some photos from today’s community parade in #Lexington to celebrate the kickoff of our nation’s semiquincentennial! Proud to live in a community that stands up to kings

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 18/04/2025

One of the ways I amuse myself at work is to send my co-workers a "#seal of approval" after I've edited something. After exhausting Giphy's options, I started to use Dall-E. Here are some of my recent favorites for a Friday feed cleanser

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 03/04/2025

Connections bot confirms what I already suspected - first time I’ve been declared “one in a million” #nytconnections (the games app allows me to limit my news consumption, a sad necessity)

Connection’s bot screenshot showing 1 in a million uniqueness

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 24/02/2025

The article cited by Grok does not exist, and the link it gave (while resembling a link of @us.theconversation.com) is to an article from our Brasil edition that the reader who got this response thought was just a bad link: "It appears to redirect to a Portugese language article about bees."

Screenshot from the Grok AI chatbot, which was asked for a link to an article about the ethics of robotics in warfare, and hallucinated a story from The Conversation

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 24/02/2025

Bing's Dall-E does better on pointillism

AI Generated seal image with brightly colored coral and vague pointillistic dot texture

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 21/02/2025

For hoots and giggles, here's a Google Image search for the same prompt. The first picture, while not truly abstract expressionism, is a piece of art for sale with the SEO-optimized title of "Seal Abstract Expressionism No.1 Canvas Wall Art Print Framed". And it's at least slightly abstract.

A seal with abstract colored spots on it

An abstract expressionist painting entitled "The Red Knight & the Floating Seal"

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 21/02/2025

TIL that Dall-E has no idea what #AbstractExpressionism is. At least when you ask for it to give you a picture of a seal in that style. I guess its pilfering of art history is not as extensive as I thought

A photorealistic seal sitting at a desk, with 3D geometric shapes decorating the wall behind it.

A photorealistic seal in a multi-colored wave with multicolored spheres in the spray

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 14/02/2025

Wouldn’t it be great if option 3 were true? Another great #news #quiz from @fritzholz.bsky.social theconversation.com/the-conversa...? utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky

Screenshot of the question 3 of the quiz.

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 05/02/2025

I’m back from vacation and none of the eventualities I laid out to my team as reasons to contact me (war, pandemic, concentration camps, etc.) happened during my weeklong escape

Hand holding up a pina colada with palm tree and tropical beach in background

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 28/01/2025

I keep expected @us.theconversation.com's follower growth on #BlueSky to slow down. But instead it keeps going up. It's almost as if people here value facts.

Chart of daily follower growth, with 1-200 for the first few weeks of the month, then around 500 since January 19, and then 1400 today

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 06/01/2025

"Investors Business Daily" was not the first thing that came to MY mind on reading this ad, but maybe in the target audience it would?

Screenshot of ad saying Discover the Benefits of IBD / Round out your investing toolkit with the resources of Investor's Business Daily

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 03/01/2025

Post a photo you took - with no description - to bring some zen to the timeline.

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 17/12/2024

I keep tapping the “this link” text in my local shopping newspaper and nothing happens. This is one of many reasons why we need better hyperlocal #journalism, and why I support the Lexington Observer and others during #NewsMatch

Press release for Santa Teas printed in newspaper with four dates and the text “Bookable via this this” next to each

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 05/12/2024

A great piece on #BlueSky from @cfiesler.bsky.social, which starts with users' epitaphs for the bird network: theconversation.com/bluesky-isnt... (from @us.theconversation.com)

Tombstone with text on it X (Born Twitter) "The world is a better place for it having existed, and a better place now that it's gone."

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 05/12/2024

My co-workers are horrified by my announcement that I have reached #inbox70K

Screenshot of gmail with 70,000 unread next to the Inbox label

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 05/11/2024

I asked Bing to generate an image of "a seal voting" and it generated this #ElectionDay

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Joel Abrams @joelabrams.com · 22/10/2024

I didn't realize that search-optimized headlines ("How many electoral votes does Alabama have?") were a thing in print #journalism now

Front page of The Tuscaloosa News with the headline "How many electoral votes does Alabama have?"

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