iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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David Gregory-Kumar @drdavidgk.bsky.social · 5h

Anyway. Please enjoy this DAZZLE CAMOUFLAGE NARROW BOAT!!!! (You probably can’t see* it, it’s centre frame) (*or at least accurately torpedo it)

A narrow boat in the distinctive abstract black and white WWI “dazzle” camouflage.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 9h

I’d love to see the final product, if you’re inclined to share. Also, I’m curious: the Army engineers in France had a huge printing plant that produced maps and I think other stuff. Is this the technology they used? Or was this more of an expedient at lower, tactical levels?

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Risa Brooks @risabrooks12.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

With Hegseth in the news this week, I’ve noticed him using a particular rhetorical tactic: packaging highly ideological messaging to the military & public w/ (superficially) reasonable & substantive policy proposals. Before I explain what he is up to and why it matters, here are three examples:

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Elena Wicker @elenawicker.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Going full mad scientist in my kitchen replicating how the U.S. Army printed orders and maps in the trenches of the Western Front… (Just a very normal research day.)

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I just looked this up and the first African American to graduate from West Point was Henry Ossian Flipper in 1877. Interestingly, that was Matthias Day's class, too. Flipper, however, was sent to the 10th Cavalry.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I love old books and especially the ones that are connected to identifiable people and their lives. An inscription on the book cover says "Fort Robinson, Neb., Nov. 19, 1895." He wrote "M. W. Day, 9th Cavalry" on the flyleaf.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Day had graduated near the bottom of his West Point class which is why he was assigned to a Buffalo Soldiers unit. He seems to have found the assignment quite agreeable, however. He also spent a year detached from the 9th Cavalry serving with the Apache Scouts during the campaign chasing Geronimo.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Matthias Day and a black sergeant named John Denny also got the Medal of Honor in 1890 and 1894, respectively, for getting wounded soldiers to safety while under heavy fire during an engagement with Indians in New Mexico in 1879. They did this contrary to orders which probably explains the delay.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Cool book find today. For a museum library I tend, I got a copy of the first US intelligence manual, the 1893 "Service of Security and Information" by Arthur Wagner. The copy turned out to have belonged to M. W. Day, a white officer who spent most of his career w/the 9th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers).

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MARC in a Cold Climate @marccold.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

nothing can go wrong if we tell the cataloger to teach a library instruction session for a comparative literature seminar on the Brothers Grimm, they said

A slide deck for a one-shot on the Brothers Grimm titled "My Mother, She Killed Me; My Father, He Ate Me; The Librarian Was Helpful, Though."

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University Press of Kansas @univpressofkansas.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Stay connected with UPK! Join our newsletter to get the latest book releases, author events, special offers, and behind-the-scenes news from the press delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up today and never miss a new story: kansaspress.ku.edu/newsletter #KansasBooks #UPKansas

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A great illustration of the way social media has essentially shredded society’s informational immune system: The USSR spent a fortune trying to spread conspiracy theories, without success because they couldn’t crack newsrooms. Today, you can reach the globe with a post that costs $20 to make.

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 28/09/2026

These are what the clouds on Jupiter look up close. The small patches of white are cloud tops, soaring above the main, colourful cloud layer. Image from NASA's Juno spacecraft during its 38th close approach to Jupiter on 29 November 2021, processed by Kevin Gill (@kevinmgill.bsky.social)

A complex, swirling pattern of lighter and darker clouds. One large system, angled to the upper left in this scene, is a tawny brown colour and is elongate. Another, more circular storm system is at lower centre, and is a grey–greenish colour. The background swirls are various shades of grey to blue; small, white features dot the scene.

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IntelArchive @intelarchive.io · 28/09/2026

New addition Journal article: SOVIET SURVEILLANCE APPARATUS ON GERMAN EXPEDITIONS IN TURKESTAN AND ITS EFFECT ON GREAT TERROR by Emre Tegin (published 26-09-2026) dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/gttad/artic…

dergipark.org.tr

SOVIET SURVEILLANCE APPARATUS ON GERMAN EXPEDITIONS IN TURKESTAN AND ITS EFFECT ON GREAT TERROR

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I grew up in the PNW and we had grapefruit spoons.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

...with modest help from the Americans made some solid progress against this cipher during the war, though ultimately only a few days of German traffic could be recovered. Lots of ADFGVX messages remained unsolved. Now there is one fewer. The topic is discussed in more detail here.

prinzai.com

GPT-6 Astra Solves a WWI German Radio Cipher

Scienceblogs.de, a German science blogging portal, includes a relatively famous list of 50 unsolved ciphers, which range from cryptograms published by serial killers to the famous Voynich manuscript.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There has been pretty widespread reporting that AI recently broke a previously unsolved Enigma message from WWII. Turns out that an AI system has also solved a WWI-era German message encrypted with the fiendishly difficult (for the time) ADFGVX cipher. French codebreaker Georges Painvin...

hackaday.com

World War I Coded Message Appears Cracked, Finally

When you think of wartime cryptography, you probably think of World War II and Enigma, although there were other famous codes used during that war. But in fact, there have been codes used through w…

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yeah, good point though the overall polling results presumably encapsulate Canadians’ feelings on that, too.

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Joseph Oldham @paranoidstylist.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Fans of Arthur Hopcraft might be interested to know that the University of Salford have put digitised versions of some of his papers online. Includes episodic breakdowns for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Perfect Spy, and a full Ep 1 script for TTSS. salford.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/co...

salford.primo.exlibrisgroup.com

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think it's telling that the companies buying up these books to throw into the maw of the AI machine feel obliged to do it on the down-low.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

What do you make of the refusal to take money? The idea that the money would go to an account that would be linked to a personal identity?

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Frode Weierud @frode-weierud.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

TechCrunch has just published an article about the AI-assisted breaking of the Enigma messages MVUEH and FMNGI. techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/a...

techcrunch.com

Astra and Opus just passed Turing's other test | TechCrunch

Frontier AI models are finishing Alan Turing's World War II codebreaking work.

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Brian Groom @groomb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Woman, child and pram, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Ireland, c.1967, photo by Evelyn Hofer, German-American photographer (1922-2009).

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Now I’m thinking about Autovon Bismarck. IYKYK

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Bits of Jupiter @jupiterbits.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A bit of #Jupiter (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Joaquin Camarena)

Photo of the planet Jupiter's southern high latitudes, featuring its polar hood and the cloud bands surrounding it.

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Angry @angrystaffer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is an absolute disaster from a national security perspective. Obviously, a lot on F-35s is classified, but a weapons-bay door and a canopy with radar-absorbing material are some of the most sensitive. Hard to describe how bad this is.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Now there, my friends, is a font. I don't know what's going on with this. There were probably issues with the scanning by NARA but still something is going on with that thing.

I don't even know how to describe this font. The text says "TELEGRAM Outgoing, Foreign Service of the United States of America, Embassy Djakarta." The "telegram" is in a bold all caps with white highlightings inside some of the thicker parts of the letters.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Also, the other guitarist in the band, Chris Holt, is seriously good.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Really enjoyed seeing Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs in DC two nights ago. Mike’s as good as he ever was and I hadn’t realized that his band now included former Heartbreaker Steve Ferrone. Mike is making great music and threw in a few Petty songs, as well. So much fun.

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Bryn Hammond @brynleyh.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Meanwhile, high on the Eiffel Tower … #SWW #WW2 #2GM #history 🗃️

A plaque on the upper level of la Tour Eiffel that reads « Ici, le 25 Août 1944 aux ordres du Capitaine SARNIGUET Les sergents Henri DURIAUX, Pierre NOËL. le caporal Charles ROUARD, les sapeurs Marcel CONVERSY, André TAILLEFER, du Regiment de Sapeurs-Pompiers de PARIS ont hissé le drapeau tricolore dans la capitale encore occupée. »

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Dr. Jonathan Schroden @jjschroden.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

As it pertains to warfare, the US is tactically brilliant, operationally questionable, strategically deficient, and politically inept Some may pass that off as “things get more complex as you go up”—which is true—but our leaders should rise commensurately too That they don’t is a *real* problem

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your friend oriana @schwindter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

hoodie season is heeeeere, support a documentary about america's indie movie theater renaissance (there are also hats, totes, tees, kid/baby apparel etc.)

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

Today is the 89th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Here's a thread on interesting glimpses the book gave us into the legendarium Tolkien had at that stage already been working on for over twenty years but which readers at the time would have had no sense of.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Might have been more nuclear weapons used in 1945 in that case, perhaps not just against the Japanese home islands.

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Jorge Liboreiro @jorgeliboreiro.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The Trump administration is preparing to sanction the ICC as a whole and cut it off from everyday financial transactions, insurance providers and IT services and products, which would leave the court unable to operate, Reuters reports.

reuters.com

Trump administration prepares sanctions against International Criminal Court, sources say

President ‌Donald Trump's administration has prepared sanctions against the entire International Criminal Court and plans to announce them soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, a move that ...

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Christopher Burlinson @cmburlinson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

There are building works on my staircase, and this ghostly list of previous inhabitants emerges. Trevor Jones was a German lexicographer and Bletchley code-breaker; Thurston Dart a musicologist; Harry Creswick was university librarian; Cameron Wilson taught French; Freddy Britain was a classicist.

An old list of inhabitants of C Staircaae in Jesus College Cambridge.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Ars Technica reports that it’s all three.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Would be interesting to know why Trump changed his mind. Article doesn’t say.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It was nerve-wracking having to fly two months after 9/11 but I knew that genuinely huge efforts were being put into keeping domestic aviation safe. I have no analogous confidence in this case.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

OK. I'm officially terrified. I'm flying out of DC in the very near future.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It doesn't seem a real great idea to be launching drones from an arch the top of which almost reaches the airspace designated for planes bound for Reagan National Airport.

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Mark Stout @markstout.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Noted geostrategist Eric Trump.

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