iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Most TV is just this now.

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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 28/09/2026

mukhtar ibrahim, founder of the sahan journal, and ubah ali, a former WCCO reporter, have just launched the somali brief, an independent media outlet where somali americans can tell their own stories www.thesomalibrief.com

thesomalibrief.com

The Somali Brief

The Somali Brief is a digital-first media platform covering the stories shaping Somali American life.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 16/09/2026

17 new public bathrooms. Across all five boroughs. Because you can’t wait — and you shouldn’t have to.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Between Rhea Seehorn, Stephen Root, and Matthew Rhys, the Emmys have briefly redeemed my belief in the underlying goodness of humanity. Incredibly well-deserved awards!! Widow's Bay is crazy good! Justice for Kim Wexler! Ah, man. Lovely stuff.

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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 15/09/2026

YEAH

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Saw this at the Trylon last night, it holds up, and will always hold up. What a film!

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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 13/09/2026

i already like sagal’s strong coffee and bur but love them now for this rejection of AI in favor of a charming, hand drawn menu board instead stop in if you’re at cedarfest! we must support businesses who don’t use AI

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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 08/09/2026

All else aside there is nothing I want or need genAI to do for me. I like reading. I like doing research. I like playing around in spreadsheets. I like interviewing people. I like writing. I like doing these things for myself because I take pleasure in the doing and they make me a better thinker.

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BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL AKA PRESIDENT FOOTBALL @edsbs.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Reacher singing this while beating you to death with a running push mower

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Norm Charlatan @normcharlatan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Our county runs monthly fix-it clinics where you can bring in broken items and handy volunteers will try and fix or mend them. Our food processor stopped working, and a kind, older guy walked me through troubleshooting, identified a problem with the handle mechanism, and fixed it right there.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I don't write many personal essays. But when I do, it's because something legitimately moved me. To my surprise: trying to figure out why we cover something as absurd as the Fair led me to some strange places.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Spending the morning parked in a Substack comment section yelling at someone from Falcon Heights about their $25 street parking charge during the Fair. Look, just be cheerful about it! "Hey, suckers, if you don't like the fee, just park somewhere else! Otherwise, pay up ya mugs!"

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#1 Lifelong Houston Cougs Fan Brandi 😾 @itsthebrandi.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Subscribe to @heavytable.com for the most comprehensive state fair food preview from the actual day of the fair

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Thrilled to be done with the relentless eating and drinking of the Minnesota State Fair, and be in the middle of the writing and photo editing of it all. Our team of writers / photographers / illustrators is legitimately amazing, and I think you'll love the work they do (if you don't yet know it.)

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Heavy Table @heavytable.com · 26/08/2026

We've gathered a thick stack of twenties, a pile of tickets, a sheaf of maps and checklists, and we're ready to rock the Fair tomorrow so that we can bring you a fearlessly critical Friday morning roundup of cheers and jeers. See you at the Fair!

The founder of Greater Tater gestures as he serves customers at the 2025 Minnesota State Fair. Joshua Feist / Heavy Table / File

The Heavy Table team of about a dozen writers and photographers and illustrators, assembled at the 2025 Minnesota State Fair under a big blue State Fair arch. Nathan Wold / Heavy Table / File

Some horrific jalapeño-studded doughnut thing from the 2025 Minnesota State Fair. Becca Dilley / Heavy Table / File

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kate bush’s husband @airbagged.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

RIP TO ONE OF THE GREATEST TO EVER DO IT

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Some academics used AI to write op-eds. I spoke @chronicle.com. Making complicated things legible to broad audiences is the whole goddamn work and no, you can't outsource it to LLMs. www.chronicle.com/article/prof...

But to David Perry, associate director of undergraduate studies in the history department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and the author of a book on public scholarship, using AI to “edit” or “condense” is synonymous with using it to write. Cutting down an article or generalizing it for a broader audience is “what writing and thinking is about,” he added.

“Writing complicated things that are accessible to a public audience and that are short enough for public-audience attention spans is hard — it is harder, in many ways, than writing at length and writing only for your 20 most compatible colleagues,” Perry said. “It’s just a practice. You have to decide to put in the work.”

The work of being an academic, Perry said, is to make complicated things coherent. Michael Socolow, chair of the communications and journalism department at the University of Maine at Orono, agreed, calling it a “cop-out” for a writer to say they “only” used AI for the basic mechanics of composition. He added that he’s concerned about what senior academics model for both junior academics and their students when using AI.

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taylr @taylordahlin.com · 23/08/2026

now that it’s dark, the bike jousting has begun in minneapolis

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I am stumbling upon more and more AI "articles" in the wild, and it sucks. These stories look like writing when you first inspect them, but they're really poorly crafted in some important ways. 1/7

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John Moe @johnmoe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

🎶 Reacher with a kitten, I know, I know, it’s serious 🎶

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Lily @lilywrites.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

i'm sure you have been waiting with bated breath to hear about my PERSONAL AI POLICY, so here you go!

Lily: When ChatGPT came out, I had a kind of immediate "uh oh!" feeling about it that, I think, has been thoroughly vindicated! That feeling mostly came from seeing just how immediately the undergrads my friends and I were teaching started to cheat using it, to be honest. The work they churned out using it was flat, samey, and cloying — in those early days, LLMs were very fond of ending short stories with a pat moral. As a result of that feeling — and of the research on cognitive debt from AI use that's come out since then — I decided pretty quickly that, since I was a writer by training and profession and using an LLM would, most likely, subtly and irrevocably change my writing style, I just wouldn't use one for anything.

And I haven't! It's been pretty easy, to be honest; I got along just fine before 2022 and have just kept doing what I did back then. I am very good at using a normal search engine (I use DuckDuckGo on the no-AI mode), and I don't know why else I would want to use an LLM. I have been informed by my tech-inclined friends that LLMs can be good for coding help, but I have no interest in learning how to do anything in that regard beyond the basic HTML and CSS I use to make intentionally janky-looking websites. I do sometimes worry that my love of a proper em-dash (option-shift-hyphen on a Mac keyboard!) might make people think I've been using Claude or whatever, but I hope my overuse of adverbs and frequent misplaced commas make it clear that a human is typing these words.

As far as my policy for other people using AI: I don't intentionally read, watch, play, or listen to anything that used AI in any part of the creative process. (I'm sure some things slip through the cracks, of course.) This is, fundamentally, a selfish position rather than an ethical one: I like art because it lets me connect with other humans, and I find art that's made in part or whole by algorithm kind of sad. I'm under no delusions about AI going away any time soon (you can run…

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

My favorite review to write is a new or undercelebrated place that's kicking ass and taking names. My next favorite is a new place that's swamped by intoxicating hubris. This is the second kind of review.

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columbo out of touch thursday @ootcolumbo.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

happy thursday friends! currently burning alive in yet another heatwave but still we persist

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Main detail that caught my eye about the Duluth Chamber president being bounced for a 2nd DWI: There exists a 99 proof Concord grape-flavored liqueur. Could this be the most horrible (aesthetically, morally, etc.) alcoholic beverage on earth? bringmethenews.com/minnesota-ne...

bringmethenews.com

Duluth chamber president out following drunk driving arrest

Matt Baumgartner has been accused of driving under the influence twice since taking on the role in 2021.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

One of the funniest cocktail roundups I've ever edited in tomorrow's newsletter. John Garland is a gem.

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Ian @comicbookian.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Woke up today and could not stop thinking about the Wise Old Tree.

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fraser ramon @fraserramon.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

You know nothing about cheesecake

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Doug Mack @douglasmack.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Among other things, I just do NOT understand why you'd do this if you're a wealthy writer with the ability to hire a researcher. I make pocket change compared to this guy and I *pride* myself on diligent, original research, even when it's hard/annoying. The challenge is the joy IMO.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Decided to relax with one of my favorite films, Apocalypse Now, which I digitally "own" on Amazon. The captions were off, which was irritating, but whatever. But then I discovered why: Amazon replaced my "masterpiece" version of AN with the "bloated and not that great" version.

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JacketDan’s Stunt Spooktacular @jacketdan.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

They keep telling me media literacy is dead but then I see videos like this and I know it jot to be true

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ibuprofen enthusiast @premiumfrye.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Somebody ran around Longfellow and painted up all these temporary traffic signs and it rocks

Photo of a residential street with several construction signs. The back of the signs are all spray paint with cartoon faces that sort of look like the cookie monster in various colors

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columbo out of touch thursday @ootcolumbo.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

the day is here once again

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Caught "The Palm Beach Story" (1942, dir. Preston Sturges) at the @trylon.org last night. Stunningly funny. Always astounding when a 80+ year old piece of media hits with the full force of, say, a really good Tina Fey project. Super tight writing, great gags. Some dated/cringey racial stuff... 1/2

A colorful poster for The Palm Beach Story featuring a beach umbrella and illustrations of its four stars (Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, and Rudy Valley. Via Wikipedia.

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JeanneL @jeannelakso.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

In today’s @heavytable.com, @jrnorton.bsky.social writes a great piece about Indigena by Owamni, a deep dive into local arepas, and I eat some really good ice cream.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I'm working on a new book, and right now I'm in the "transcribing a seemingly endless stack of interviews" part of the project. I just hit 40,000 words, which feels pretty good. I am not using AI or any speech-to-text software; I am listening to hours of interviews and typing them out.

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Blake Leyh @earlofedgecombe.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

"Enough." From The New Yorker, May 16th 2005.

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

-- Kurt Vonnegut

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I was just at a neighborhood market yesterday, and a 5# bag of sugar was priced at $13.50. Costco has 10# bags at $7. I appreciate that Costco's whole deal is delivering affordable goods, but I would be fascinated to hear how the neighborhood sugar got priced at 4x.

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Rachel Holliday Smith @rachelholliday.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

related, I have sent this @drewmagary.bsky.social column to so many people lately. it really speaks to the moment of what ALL publishers — of any size, content type, funding model — are up against right now

sfgate.com

Google hates you

"The repercussions of Google's pivot to AI will be vast and horrid."

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Heavy Table @heavytable.com · 09/07/2026

Just posted some initial thoughts on the 2026 new Fair foods. This year we'll be out at the Fair in force (as always!), with a ruthless eye on value as prices spiral ever upwards.

heavytable.substack.com

2026 Minnesota State Fair New Foods

First thoughts (and some perennial warnings) about the list of new Fair treats.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Thank you, unsolicited press release, for educating me: "I am writing because you might be interested to learn that MN is the #1 most grill-obsessed state in the country, and its favorite food to grill is Green Beans."

A screenshot from a press release: With the 4th of July coming up, we looked at national search data to see which states are the most passionate about firing up the grill this summer - and MN made the top 10.

I am writing because you might be interested to learn that MN is the #1 most grill-obsessed state in the country, and its favorite food to grill is Green Beans.

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James Norton @jrnorton.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Just attempted a two-day, 70 bay leaf / 1/4 cup of whole allspice jerk chicken + banana ketchup + coconut beans + rice recipe that was so catastrophically successful that I might have to open a food truck.

A cutting board laden with about four pounds of bone-in, freshly smoked and grilled jerk chicken pieces. It looks obscenely good.

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