iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads:

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Trump is still the poster boy for Dunning-Kruger, but every once in a while, Elon decides to give him a run for his money.

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Senator Dr. John Brown stan account, Esq., PhD, MD, JD, LCSW @johnbrownstan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Remember how we forced German POWs to watch videos from the concentration camps?

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Something that is not disprovable is definitionally less an opinion and more an article of faith. There are certainly weirder religions out there than a hatred of Disney bloggers, but it does seem like an odd use of time.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“When bloggers don’t report about things I want them to, that confirms my priors that they’re all bought influencer shills. But when bloggers do report about things I want them to… somehow that *also* confirms my priors that they’re just shills.”

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Trump's entire life is Alfred Molina in the first Indiana Jones film saying, "You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip."

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Andrew (🎃) @athomashemlock.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If you ever wonder why all of these people are insane and have stopped making stuff that people use, it's because the first thing people do when they start to make Big Money in tech is use that money to remove anything in their life that normal people experience. They forgot they're people.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Imagine if we hadn’t wasted all of our interceptors in the Middle East and had a president who didn’t yearn to be in the cool dictators club and we could just tell Xi to get f-ked instead.

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Phillips OBrien @phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Lord, President Xi just insulted Trump and the USA, right to Trump's face-in the White House. Xi referred, yet again, to the "Thucydides trap". This is an reference to the US being in decline and China replacing it. And Trump sits their making moo eyes like a lovestruck teenager

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Genuinely cannot wait to read this. This is going to be such a beautiful, glorious, messy, ugly train wreck.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Well, we just kind of got that with Punisher and Spider-Man so I don’t think it’s necessarily out of the question!

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Not that Trump has ever made rational sense, but I cannot understand how he acts towards Mamdani in person vs. how he talks about democratic socialists as an existential threat to America. Just total, complete opposites between campaign rhetoric and personal behavior.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Also, hopefully the end of the series doesn't mean the end of Charlie Cox's Daredevil. It depends how things end with Born Again S3, but there's always the potential (as has already happened) for Murdoch and/or Fisk to show up again in NYC in other MCU projects from time to time.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I am sad about this, but also it's still pretty incredible that the revival series happened at all. Hopefully it goes out on a high note. We'll end up with 6 seasons total (7 if you count The Defenders!) of Daredevil which is more total time with Matt Murdock than probably any other MCU character.

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Reece @thiccreese.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Meta's new AI agent wanted my passport info. Not to help me. To train on me. Actually, it wanted everything: bank accounts, email inboxes, ID info. No surprise coming from Meta. But always worth reminding readers that AI automations come with major privacy risks. www.wired.com/story/metas-...

wired.com

Meta's Muse Is Better at Surveilling Than Helping Me

The Muse app continues Meta’s trend of opting users into data collection for AI training. It also nudges you to share your bank account, email, and passport information.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21/09/2026

LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

So your solution to luxury, convenience, safety, and prosperity that would’ve been unimaginable to 99% of humans to ever exist is… nazis? Not sure I follow.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Counterpoint: Neoliberalism delivered an unprecedented era of human peace and shared prosperity. Even those considered poor in developed democracies today are far better off than many of the richest in any other time or place. The problem is we got used to this and now take it for granted.

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Josh Zingher @zingherpolisci.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

These people thought they could get rid of democracy and keep the economic benefits of democracy. It's a choice folks. If autocracy was good for business, the pattern of global productivity would be much different. www.cnbc.com/2026/09/20/t...

cnbc.com

‘It's awful’: How tariffs, soaring fuel costs and higher interest rates are squeezing American companies

Tariffs, fuel prices and interest rates are squeezing American companies, particularly manufacturers, auto suppliers, retailers and transportation businesses.

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Robert Downen @robertdownen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Honestly think that the whole Bo French stuff may be a turning point for the far right. They have fundamentally misunderstood why they won in 2024, and are now poisoning the one break that people have from a horrible economy with the most noxious part of their platform.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

There have always been humans who thought: 1) The world will end soon 2) It will happen in a cool, exciting way 3) It’ll happen to me personally 4) I’ll be a martyred prophet, or a warlord, or otherwise special 5) People who don’t see this are lesser “Sexy apocalypse” is a great phrase for that

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It...uh...is not meant to be a competition

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So are we ineffective altruism or anti-altruistic? Honestly don’t think I want the answer to that one.

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Doctor Memory @blank.org · 17/09/2026

“Everyone says he is crazy – which maybe he is – but the scarier thing about him is that he is stupid. You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.” —Fran Leibowitz

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Robbie Whelan's book about the Iger succession drama has a release date and you can preorder it now, so I guess TWDC's litigation to prevent publishing was unsuccessful. www.amazon.com/dp/006337126X

amazon.com

Amazon.com: The House of Mouse: Bob Iger and the War of Succession at Disney: 9780063371262: Whelan, Robbie: Books

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I mean really, whomst among us has not promised to stay out of foreign entanglements and then blundered into the United States' most counterproductive and humiliating strategic defeat in its history?

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/09/2026

yeah, this stuff is far from my area of expertise, but i have yet to see anyone convincingly explain how the causal chain is supposed to operate here. it feels like the "AI will kill us all people" spent too much time watching Terminator 2 and the Animatrix.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I know the last 10 years are replete with examples of “parody is dead” but I submit there’s no possible way for a comedy writer to improve on this exchange.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I’ve never been a huge Snyder fan so I haven’t seen any version of Rebel Moon - I’ll take it on faith 😅

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don’t think it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen but almost certainly the most confusing to try to understand what kind of movie it is and what it’s trying to do - I would be shocked if the people who made the movie could coherently explain that.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I was expecting a cozy, charming, gently spooky New England fall classic; and it was that for about 20 mins… and also a sweet rom com, a feminist sister drama, and a shockingly dark horror about domestic violence. It switches among all 4 of those constantly, at random, w/ no effort to transition.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I had never seen Practical Magic before, so with the new sequel, my wife and I decided to watch it and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it was the most tonally confusing, chaotically edited movie I’ve ever seen in my life.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It arguably fits how it’s used in Forrest Gump

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Ben @bdhphotos.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

MacRumors boards are saying that if iOS 26.7 shows up as an option after upgrading to iOS 26.7, but is 20ish GB in size, then it’s actually iOS 27 but mislabeled. But a bit of a mess regardless.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Nope; at least not for me (and this seems to be widespread too). Even if you select iOS 27 after updating to iOS 26.7, it still just downloads iOS 26.7 again.

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yup. Same thing happening to me right now 🙃

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Ok, apparently there is a widespread issue where even if you select iOS 27 (which I *swore* I did) it will update you to iOS 26.7 instead. So I'm not going crazy. Fun times 😅

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My current inconsequential pet peeve is that the iOS UI hides major iOS version updates and I just wasted time updating to iOS 26.7 when I thought I was updating to iOS 27.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Again, when the leaders of Western democracies claim that Xi Jinping's China is a more credible alternative partner than America, I both understand why they feel the need to say this & yet also wonder if they are aware of actual China & actual Xi Jinping: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

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elias isquith @eliasisquith.blog · 13/09/2026

was she the queen or not? seems like the direction of the scandal here hinges on that Q

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Mark Willard @markwillard.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

On the bright side, I guess it’s good that they’re going 110% all in, masks off on the unhinged cult of personality thing right as Trump’s popularity is at an all time low? Also, I’m guessing they used an AI voice because no human speaker could get all the way through the script without losing it?

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Progress City @progresscityusa.com · 11/09/2026

You make a Muppet Show special that exactly follows a specific, 50-year-old formula that people have been begging for for decades and it's a huge hit and wins awards and now you don't know what to do? I'm going to become the Joker.

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

doing his stream of consciousness rally shtick and getting applauded for it is the only part he's ever actually enjoyed. this is the happiest and most energetic he's been in months and that's the only reason this dumb thing is happening.

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But Thou Mustelid @rewhan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Finally, we created the Pre-Crime Division from the award-winning Phillip K. Dick novel Don't Create A Pre-Crime Division

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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…

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