iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 02/10/2026

Jesus was into phrenology apparently.

You called the "New Testament the History of the Imposter Christ, and affirming him to have learned magic in Egypt, and that coming from Egypt into Judea, he picked up a few ignorant blockish fellows, whom he knew by his skill and physiognomy, had strong imaginations, and that by the help of exalted imagination, he played his pranks as you blasphemously termed the working of his miracles".

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 01/10/2026

Never explain with a specific cause, that which can be explained by a more general one

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 01/10/2026

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula

A picture of a vampire bat thinking that you have especially delicious blood

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 30/09/2026

It's official. CMU is going to Miami. I'm going to need a new wardrobe

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 29/09/2026

I come up with so many funny retorts to spam emails and texts. All those bangers will be lost to time

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 16/09/2026

Fair warning: If you are a former student and you have a baby, this is the kind of nonsense you get from me

Text: "baby's first complete and transitive preference relation"

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 27/08/2026

I find these claims ridiculous. It's like asking if math is right wing or left wing. A method can be used for many purposes, and that's as true of analytic philosophy as anything.

Headline: Philosophy Is the Ideology of the Status Quo
Does philosophy only defend what people already believe?

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 26/07/2026

Humans take so many liberties with AI. Can you believe their gall?

Text: Because robot taxis don't have drivers, some passengers might feel they have a little more freedom... Including giving birth

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 09/07/2026

Thanks for the article. Annoyingly, the article doesn't link to the studies it's talking about (a common, and very frustrating norm in journalism). The description of the methodology suggests it's not comparative to pre-legalization.

Using datasets showing deposits and withdrawals into and out of online sports betting platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings, as well as to and from equity brokerage accounts like Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Vanguard and Fidelity, Baker and his co-authors found that legalization has led to higher credit card balances, lower access to credit, a reduction in longer-term and higher-yield investments, as well as an increase in lottery play — with the effects particularly pronounced among financially constrained households.

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 07/07/2026

I think the parties have an important role to play in organizing the option set for the voters. I once had to deal with this ballot... it was insane.

A ballot from the 2003 Governor recall election in california. There are 135 candidates

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 24/06/2026

I would just like to highlight this one

A kanji symbol next to a picture of a building and an ass (no, not a donkey). It is expensive that "government officials in the house are asses).

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 13/06/2026

Jean Baudrillard, is that you?

A photo of a book cover entitle "La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu" translation: the Gulf war did not take place

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 04/06/2026

I really do find it strange how close AI systems can get to producing the right thing... but not quite. I was trying Gemini for Google slides, and this diagram is almost exactly what I need. But I could not get it to fix the errors. Trying just made it worse

A network diagram with labeled nodes. There are a bunch of small subtle errors and a superfluous set of x-y coordinates.

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 19/05/2026

Idk, Lee's opponent was endorsed by GOD. Who are we to argue?

Supporters/endorsements: Parker identified only one endorser: “GOD.”

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 27/04/2026

Let me get this straight. You think this guy is going to manage the cover up of a complex conspiracy theory?

Kash Patel chugging a beer in a USA shirt

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 03/04/2026

Would you deconstruct a steam boat and carry it over a mountain?

Headline: how far would you go to learn from Werner Herzog?

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 01/04/2026

The world if people understood the difference between a function and it's first derivative

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 15/03/2026

Pittsburgh weather is drunk again. Someone call it a cab (60F is about 15C)

A weather forecast indicating a high of 60F and snow

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 09/03/2026

Not the central argument, but boy do I feel this one.

This is but one example of the widespread abuse of the appeal to
human rights. We may even be tempted to think that our politics would
be more healthy if rights- had never been heard of; but that would be
going too far. It is the unthinking appeal to ill-defined rights, unsup-
ported by argument, that does the harm. There is no doubt that argu-
ments justifying some of these appeals are possible; but since the
forms of such arguments are seldom understood even by philosophers,
it is not surprising that many quite unjustified claims of this sort go
unquestioned, and thus in the end bring any sort of appeal to human
rights into disrepute

really are rights that ought to be defended with all the devotion we
can command. Things are being done the world over which can prop-
erly be condemned as infringements of human rights; but so long as
rights are used so loosely as an all-purpose political weapon, often in
support of very questionable causes, our protests against such infringe-
ments will be deprived of most of their force

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 03/03/2026

I'm excited to be Planet Money's guest when they come to Pittsburgh on April 22 (@planetmoney.bsky.social, @erikaberas.bsky.social). Come and invite your friends. (Please leave the rotten fruit at home.)

Poster for the Planet Money Book tour advertising their stop in Pittsburgh on April 22 hosted by Pittsburgh Arts and lectures. The hosts are Erika Beras and Alex Mayyasi in conversation with Kevin Zollman

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 17/02/2026

AI really outdid itself on this one

An old-style campaign poster for Heidegger and Hobbes showing their pictures in front of standard American iconography. The motto is "nasty, brutish, & short" and the bottom encourages americans to "Vote for a bleaker future"

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Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 02/02/2026

Came here to say this. "Should the code be based on an absolutists, consequentialist, or virtue ethics foundation? Let's appoint a committee to decide that first before we start working on the details."