iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My Sofirn IF22a (a flashlight) really was a life saver tonight. We had a massive rainstorm and the gutters clogged and it has a narrow beam with phenomenal throw that let us see the blockages all the way down the length of the house even in the pouring rain.

A picture of a purple flashlight with a black clip.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I kind of feel like we need an ad campaign of fake ads encouraging people to maybe really personally unacceptable health decisions to save money. Just to hammer home how awful our system is. You know if you're poor pull your own teeth and buy a blender so we don't have to fund universal dental care.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is a struggle. Omaha is a pretty sunny place. Once in a while it'll be this dreary in like the dead of winter, but even that is rare.

15 straight wet days in Omaha- a soggy streak rarely seen in local history.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Do you not get a lot of clouds like that there? I think they're the most common sort here. But having lived a lot of places things like that turn out to be surprisingly variable.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I'm not convinced that the rise of the AFD has been fully contingent on immigration. In countries all over the world we've had the rise of these right wing movements and it doesn't actually seem particularly well correlated with the amount of immigration.

A screenshot of a post that says "Except that Germany (among other European societies) has robust social welfare and other state benefits and that still hasn't stopped the AFD's rise, because the AFD's rise is mainly about immigration (and therefore identity).

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Currently trying to find some colorful hard laid cotton cord. I got a sample spool a while ago from one brand (ganxxet) and I really like it, but getting more has been challenging. They seem always out of stock, you kind of have to buy during a sale, and shipping is ridiculous unless you buy a lot.

A lilac macrame clutch purse with a fringe I made for my sister.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I've heard several economists do that and land on "someone just made it up" and not it was/is a device similar to a pencil sharpener for making dowels, poles, and round tenons. Which is in fact what it was.

An adjustable diameter antique widget with wooden screws.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Acrylic dice are actually quite cheap to make and while you often see them for $10 or $15 you can get them for $1 or $2 a set if you wait around for sales and are willing to buy a few sets.

Novelty Easter dice with bunnies on them. I'm a big fan.

Two D20s with bunnies on them in different colors.

A very different style of dice. I have trouble describing them. But the faces have relief carvings with bright colors.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I am thinking of putting the whole collection on a display with a carved sign over them that reads, "In this house we believe in probability."

5 glass jars with bamboo lids upside down each containing two sets of 7 resin polyhedral dice.

Two sets of polyhedral dice in a jar one dark one light being held up.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

The Atlantic editorial board reviewing Jacob Beckert's background check before hiring him.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

@iwriteok.bsky.social This series of episodes is phenomenal. One thing: A "surrey with a fringe on top" is actually not a reference to Surrey the place but to a style of horse drawn carriage (pictured) which would have been something a country person would have thought was quite fancy in like 1890.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I just spent a while tying snake knots. :)

A long string of Tibetan snake knots in rainbow paracord.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Those are very cool. In Tennessee there was a massive and hideous statue of Nathan Bedford Forest that a man sculpted out of fiberglass bathtubs that was kind of a shrine of sorts to white supremacy. Thankfully it finally got removed in 2021. I like the Marian bathtub grottos infinitely more.

An indescribably bad equestrian sculpture of Nathan Bedford Forest with a pistol. His horse looks like it's throwing him.

A close up of the horses head and Forest's upper body (in the statue). It looks really ridiculous and unhinged.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Apparently the NYT is just having AI write captions for images now and publishing them without checking. Which is crazy given that it's not good at that.

A screenshot of a NYT post with an image of a woman walking in the street in front of a bus under a mural of a woman holding a baby wrapped in an Iranian flag. The caption reads "A woman waves an Iranian flag in Tehran, Iran. The authorities imposed an internet blackout during the war with the United States and Israel. Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times" Clearly there is not an actual flag in the image and no one is waving anything.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Apparently the NYT is just having AI write captions for images now and publishing them without checking. Which is crazy given that it's not good at that.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

If you see this then post your getaway vehicle.

A schematic of the Project Orion spacecraft designed by the US in the 1950s and 1960s. It was to be powered by detonating roughly one small nuclear bomb per second behind it. It had a large shield and multiple stages of shock absorber to even the force out. The concept was tested in a variety of ways and engineered in detail and actually is very workable. The idea was formulated after solid metal objects from near nuclear tests were found surprisingly intact at large distances after nuclear tests. A thin layer of plasma forms at the surface of the object the blast is incident on and that can shield the object while it's accelerated by the expansion of the superheated plasma. It's immensely more efficient than chemical rockets. But setting off a bunch of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere (even small ones) is not generally advisable for a variety of excellent reasons and the plan was dropped when the US and Soviet Union agreed to stop doing atmospheric nuclear tests.

A diagram of one of project Orion's propellant charges. It is designed to focus a nuclear blast in the direction of the spacecraft and accelerate a superheated plasma to provide as much thrust as possible. It's hard to overstate how wild it is that these were actively being engineered and they were planning to test prototypes in the near future when The Limited Test Ban Treaty went into effect in 1963.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out

A small lavender macrame bag with a wrist loop and a fringe

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I pictured a halberd because Swiss guards, but an antipope made sense when I saw the Avinion papacy thing. I wondered if they were threatening to elevate like Cardinal Dolan or Cardinal Burke as some kind of rival pope or something. It seems farfetched that even those two nuts would do that though.

An image of the Swiss guard marching in a line wearing brightly colored striped uniforms and helmets with red feathers. One man has a spear with a leaf shaped blade and the rest have halberds with the exception of the man leading the group who's uniform is a different color and who has no obvious weapons.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

I'm in the middle of this book, which so far is very good, and it goes through a lot of the histories and specifics of this whole strategy (though no Overton so far) and how it has spread to and manifested differently in different countries. So I've been thinking about all this too much.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

I was shocked I scored this high. I'm missing a whole color receptor in my eyes lol.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

This is what a pattern maker's vice looks like. The jaws swivel so it can grab irregularly shaped objects. And then the whole vice can be rotated in the normal axis to face any direction (and locked).

An image of a pattern maker's vice attached to a workbench. I wish I knew how to describe it. It's cast iron and sticking up from the bench and has wooden jaws.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Spring will be here someday.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

@patrickwyman.bsky.social I was listening to your Tides Q and A and I thought you might be interested to know there is a fantasy novel centered around a fictionalized version of a late antique siege: Sixteen Ways to Defend A Walled City by K. J. Parker. It's fun.

The cover of Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City. It is a faux medieval illuminated manuscript and has a column of black and white stylized spearmen on the cover.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Fuchida systematically lied about Japanese naval operations in any area foreign scholars couldn't easily check. He got his account published far ahead of any other histories by manipulating postwar censorship. His work is long discredited in Japan but continues to be cited by anglophone historians.

Cover of Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story
Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Why does my Google search say of Sigma Aldrich's methyl iodide page: "Discover the power of Iodomethane (Methyl iodide), an award-winning colorless liquid!" I can't actually find that text on Sigma Aldrich's site.

A google search for methyl iodide. Sigma Aldrich's page says "Discover the power of Iodomethane (Methyl iodide), an award-winning colorless liquid!"

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Now I have some supercooled sodium acetate solution.

A round one liter flask on my counter full of a clear solution of sodium acetate liquid. It has plastic wrap over the top.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

75% acetic acid and 500 grams of baking soda. It's not violently reacting because the reaction is endothermic and it's made itself too cold to go fast. In fact I think a lot of the acetic acid froze for a while.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Do you remember when tons of people believed satanic cults across North America were engaging in the mass ritual sacrifice of infants? Michelle remembers.

A marketing photo of Peppridge Farms Farmhouse Thin and Crispy Butter Becan cookies.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

It's funny, historians often say T. E. Lawrence looked nothing like Peter O'Toole and I'm always slightly baffled. They certainly look like different people but if you told someone they were brothers or father and son I don't think people would balk at that.

T E Lawrence in uniform circa the first world war.

Peter O'Toole pretending to be T E Lawrence in traditional Arab garb.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

A late post for November 11th. A poem by Wilfred Owen. "Dulce et decorum est" means "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." It's a line by Horace.

A page from a book:

"DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Notes:

Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”"

Handwritten below in pencil:
"Oct 1917
revised Jan-March 1918"

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

I'm colorblind and they just looked like a smudge to my naked eyes. I wouldn't be sure I saw the northern lights without the camera.

Northern lights from the corner of my front yard. There are trees in the foreground and some bits of houses.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

AI eBay descriptions are soooo bad. They all sound like: "This highly collectable vintage unbranded phillips screwdriver has a plastic handle and would make a wonderful addition to your home."

A grungy plastic handled flat head screwdriver with a plastic handle on an off white background.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

My only beef with it is it was incredibly difficult to open when I got it. I did some things to break in and lubricate the mechanism and it's much better now. The small blades still need to be a bit less stiff but it's pretty close to ideal other than than. And too stiff is better than loose.

A slipjoint pocket knife with two small and two large blades out. The knife's scales are brown bone, the blades are satin finished steel, and it has shiny silver trim.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

I am weirdly anxious about reprofiling one of the blades on a pocket knife i want to make into a dedicated whittling knife. It's not going to be complicated or difficult.

A slipjoint pocket knife with one small blade out. The knife's scales are brown bone, it has shiny silver trim and a shiny silver emblem on it that looks like a stylized fish to me but is probably supposed to be a shield.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Gotta keep the cereal and nut content out of the feed?

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Clearly they need to be like a sports team and have designers do alternate uniforms for them for different cases and stuff. Gotta keep the public tuning in to jurisprudence and buying the Canadian judiciary merch.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

As a bonus they reference this musical fan remix of Jamelle and explain where it came from.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

I also have a 300mm F4 that also works with the 2x teleconverter and is much more physically manageable and a 400mm f5.6 that's not really usable with the teleconverter but is a fantastic lens and is extremely portable for a long lens.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Gorgeous 💜 My solution to not having money was to learn to shoot manual lenses and buy vintage. I have a colossal 500mm f4.5 m42 (Pentax screw mount) lens with good optics. I can shoot at 1000mm with a 2x teleconverter. It's super heavy and challenging to focus, but it's a fun challenge.

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Lacci @lacci.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

I'm eating an excellent pawpaw we grew in our front yard 😋 #NativePlants

A picture of a pawpaw on a white plate cut in half. One half is just the skin because it's been eaten. A spoon is on the plate. It's a soft fleshy kidney shaped fruit with big black seeds that looks a bit like a papaya but doesn't taste similar. The plate is on a floral placement and dappled sunshine is shining on the scene.

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