iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

(But they are both figures worthy of respect.)

kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Note to people following the Nobel Prize in Literature who are bad at names and/or used to surname-based citations and might fall into this trap: Anne Carson (winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature) is _not_ the author of Silent Spring (_Rachel_ Carson, who died 60 years ago).

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In case anyone needs to hear this, "we tried to execute her twice and she survived both times" is literally starting a religion material, if you tell the story right.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It is difficult to communicate to native Finnish speakers how it feels to call a person _it_ in English, both in terms of how nobody would ever think of using it as a generic gender-neutral pronoun and in terms of the objectifying meaning that people who use _it/its_ pronouns often actively seek.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Historically, and still in spoken language, _se_ is used for both animate and inanimate referents. _Hän_ is also used without regard for animacy, but is distinguished from _se_ on the basis of other criteria (see en.wiktionary.org/wiki/h%C3%A4n for more details).

en.wiktionary.org

hän - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The animacy distinction between _hän_ and _se_ was a conscious decision made by the philologists who standardized Finnish in (IIRC) the 1800s — much like the rule against "split infinitives" and such in English.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Americans and Finns have very different concepts of what is an appropriate amount of sugar or salt: kechpaja.com/usfi/2026/06... #usa #finland #america #usfi #culture

kechpaja.com

Sugar and Salt

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Alright! I am starting yet another #blog, about differences between Finnish and American culture: kechpaja.com/usfi/2026/06.... I make no promises about posting frequency vel sim, but will try to write things regularly. I certainly have a lot of relevant stories to tell. #finland #america #culture

kechpaja.com

Introduction

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot saying "why should I let you spend an hour writing something I could generate in 30 seconds?" to a human face — for ever. (This is a post about #ai.)

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Reposted by kechpaja

Kelvin Jackson (Kei) @puujalkavihrea.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Finland's right-wing government is currently raising healthcare fees. Not just implementing policies that raise the cost of medicine and private care — although that too — but raising fees charged for _public_ healthcare visits and procedures. 1/7 #politics #finland #ForAmericans

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

And because it's a noun that doesn't need to be pluralized often, speakers don't have to decide how to situate it in the root-and-pattern system. (I notice the part where the /m/ in zamān is from the root and the /m/ in makān is pattern, but there's nothing weird about that cross-linguistically.)

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

When I said No Kings, I meant you too, Charlie.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

The idea of space colonization by sending frozen embyos to another planet to be gestated and raised by robots came up in a Discord I'm in, and now I want to write a story exploring what the resulting society would be like. But I also worry it might be so horrifying nobody would ever read it.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Uralicists playing _Iron Lung_: Elävä kala ui veren alla.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Okay, I suppose I'll reactivate this for a while.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

How are we more than halfway through January already?

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Reposted by kechpaja

Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 17/01/2026

This is a fun thread! Bonus fun fact: the etymology of MINute is the same as minUTE, ie the first small part of an hour A second is the second small part, and before we had milliseconds we had thirds! www.etymonline.com/word/minute

etymonline.com

Minute - Etymology, Origin & Meaning

"sixtieth part of an hour or degree of a circle," late 14c., from Old French minut (13c.)… See origin and meaning of minute.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Relatedly: one of my most profound social realizations — from a few years ago — was that in terms of pure numbers, basically every friends-and-family holiday party is significanntly more exclusive than the Met Gala vel sim. (Also read the thread.)

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Natürlich, sie sind S-Tier-e.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Account reactivated, for now at least. Still primarily on Mastodon, though.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Summarizing things with AI is basically intellectual homeopathy.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

My software job ended a month and a half ago, and for various reasons it will be a while before I start actively applying to jobs again. I have bandwidth for _some_ tech stuff right now, though, and if possible I would like to do something I can use to demonstrate that I haven't lost my skill.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Stupid question, but: what sort of personal and/or open source tech projects look best on a resume?

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Reposted by kechpaja

Kelvin Jackson (Kei) @puujalkavihrea.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

DISvam qaStaHvIS turqu le'yo' boghoy SapwI' vIDa. tuch lupaQ SapwI'pu' 'ej tuch luneHbogh luDelmeH mu'mey puS ghItlh 'e' tlhobta' le'yo' boghoy DevwI'pu'. chaHvaD QInvam vIngeHta' jIH: puujalkavihrea.fi/2025/07/01-t... #pride #TurkuPride #turku #lgbtq #klingon

puujalkavihrea.fi

Turku Pride: tuch wIpaQ

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Reposted by kechpaja

Kelvin Jackson (Kei) @puujalkavihrea.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

I will be volunteering at Turku Pride this year. The Pride organization board has asked volunteers to write a few lines about what sort of future they would like to look into. I provided the following text: puujalkavihrea.fi/2025/07/01-t... #pride #TurkuPride #turku #lgbtq

puujalkavihrea.fi

Turku Pride: Looking to the Future

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Reposted by kechpaja

Kelvin Jackson (Kei) @puujalkavihrea.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Toimin vapaaehtoisena tämän vuoden Turku Pridessa. Priden hallitus on pyytänyt vapaaehtoisia kirjoittamaan lyhyesti siitä, minkälaiseen tulevaisuuteen he haluaisivat katsoa. Toimitin itse seuraavan tekstin: puujalkavihrea.fi/2025/07/01-t... #pride #TurkuPride #turku #lgbtq

puujalkavihrea.fi

Turku Pride: Katse tulevaisuuteen

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

I've now switched from i3 to Wayland, and it was worth it: kechpaja.com/blog/2025/06.... #wayland #sway #i3 #linux

kechpaja.com

Migrating to Sway and Wayland

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Today is ten years since gay marriage was officially legalized in the USA: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergef.... I just wish we could celebrate that in a more hopeful context.

en.wikipedia.org

Obergefell v. Hodges - Wikipedia

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

What does it say about your politics if you consistently produce the initial /ʕ/?

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

I unironically used to describe myself as something like "anti-gender" (I forget the exact words) back before the term got co-opted. I've never completely understood how it came to refer to the side that's _pro_ enforced cisheteronormativity.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

I increasingly have to actively ignore this hole when watching Star Trek.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

That isn't the only way to solve this problem — another option would be portray teleportation as akin to the Culture series' displacement, where objects are moved through space without being disassembled — but the problem does have to be solved.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

I increasingly understand the decision to not even try to include any sort of teleportation device in The Orville (even though that decision was probably made more for IP reasons than anything else).

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

The ability to take a person apart and put them back together at the subatomic level, allowing for biofilters, transporter clones, turning adults back into children, and similar tricks, would change society and life so radically that the resulting world would be unrecognizable to modern viewers.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Possibly unpopular #StarTrek opinion: Transporters as portrayed in the show are one of the biggest worldbuilding holes in the entire fictional universe.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

@slotkin.senate.gov Hey! I — a constituent — appear to be subscribed to your newsletter using a deadname and outdated (gendered) honorific. What is the process for updating the name and setting a nonbinary honorific? There is no clear way to update subscription settings in the latest email.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

TIL (well, technically yesterday) that the Finnish word used to refer to a carnival ride is _laite_ — the generic word for 'device'. Linguistically there is nothing weird about this, but I absolutely would not have guessed.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

I'm not sure I can fully verbalize exactly why yet, but this fills me with rage.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Aside: there is a scene in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds where Lt. Uhuru is researching an ancient language by digging through a stack of old books. This is very realistic despite the 23rd century setting: old infrequently touched sources rarely get effectively digitized, let alone translated.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

You do need multiple languages to study it effectively, though. You'll have to deal with sources in German and Russian at least, and probably also Finnish and Hungarian (depending on what exactly you're doing). Many of those sources haven't been translated.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

It's more that the department and major I was applying to taught in Finnish — you can do Uralic linguistics in quite a few languages, and a lot does happen in English (although I'm not sure about fully anglophone courses of study?).

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

My kingdom for a queer and trans space that explicitly bans communist imagery.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

If you're going to smoke, please do it somewhere other than directly below my apartment. Some smells are genuinely intolerable.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

If I go to sleep, is there still going to be a world when I wake up?

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Klingon: *uses same word for playing a musical instrument and turning on a device* English speakers: "oh, how weird and exotic!" English:

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

I'd be interested in seeing analyses of mass social movements in countries without a deeply ingrained Christian tradition, and comparisons between them and analogous movements in heavily Christian-influenced cultures. Are there any obvious citations to follow here?

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Why is it that _literally every financial service_ now requires some form of two-factor login that cannot be counted on to work reliably? It just isn't good enough to only _maybe_ be able to get into my own bank account.

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Me: Trans as in transatlantic Them: But transatlantic is the Americas! Me: Okay, but _I_ went the other way. Them: ... Me: ... Me: Okay, fine, I'm Atlantic-fluid. (The Atlantic is an ocean, though. Does that make me... salty?)

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kechpaja @kechpaja.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Bonus points if it also makes it practical to host my friends' serverless functions as well with little added hassle.

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