iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

There's a certain elegance to seeing Jim Bakker and Marjoe Gortner go on the same day. One showed us the scam, the other worked it til the end.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This record is a feast. 19 of Slim's best tracks. He's forgotten today, but he might be my favorite post-warR&B singer. About half the tracks are in a weird surreal hipster patois. You can still get these records for cheap, and you should.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

RIP Marjoe Gortner, subject of one of the best documentaries ever made.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Another in a long line of fantastic - ace, even - compilations from Bob Stanley and the crew at Ace in the UK. I particularly like these 70s cheese ones, but they've covered a wide variety in this series.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My neighborhood in Seattle is still at least 10% populated with dudes whose style / persona is basically 84 Westerberg. I am one, obvs.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Here's a winning issue for whichever party wants it: data privacy. I buy new records software, I get calls from ripoff billing companies every 15 mins for 2 weeks. I get a home loan, same. Nobody I know answers their phone anymore because 9 of 10 calls are scam. It wasnt like this 20 years ago.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

m.youtube.com/watch?v=RcJ9... RIP to a real great. Should be as big a name as Fela or Marley among the heads.

m.youtube.com

Mighty Sparrow - Sparrow Dead

YouTube video by Patrice Yursik

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The hard lesson of our time is that the bad guys often win. We have already lost the messaging over this recent history. We need to learn so it doesnt happen again. The Brownstone writers, of course, now control many of our government health services. I hope they don't see a crisis.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You saw this messaging every time you were on social media in 2020/2021. Crucially, these were people with no skin in the game. They werent there when nursing homes raged and hospital systems buckled. Their checks cashed just fine.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The messaging from the Brownstone set (this was a business lobby posing as public health minority opinion) was consistent, simple, and relentless. Restrictions didnt matter, kids had no risk from disease, masks don't work, "they" are going to keep control once they have it.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This was challenging- the George Floyd protests, armed militia marches on our governors, kids out of schools, businesses hurting. There were costs all around, and state and local authorities made hard choices. Imperfectly, and often based in ideology.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This was only 6 years ago, but the basic contours (as I saw them at my local health authority, at least) were this: we did contact tracing and provided community guidance to help keep cases down until late 2020 when state by state changes led to case numbers beyond mitigation.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Amy Acton is running for gov of Ohio, and she was in charge of state public health in early pandemic. The group participants express anger with her over the inconvenience ("I never bought into that pandemic stuff"), and express little acknowledgement of the consequences of no action.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Listening to @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social Focus Group podcast as they talk to Ohio voters about the pandemic. It is crystal clear that Jay Bhattacharya et al won the pandemic messaging battle. What I saw on front lines is not what people remember.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Does this one have any fans out there? Not my usual thing, and I'd have kicked you out of my car at highway speed over it in 86. I got a cheap copy on a whim, and am digging the sophisti-vibes.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If I encountered this album on initial re-release in 2008, it would have been among my faves of the year. Im a little jaded on non-US/Euro takes on the Beatles after hearing hundreds of them, but this one is top shelf. Found it for a dollar.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If I am president for a day, my first law will be to require CEOs to navigate their customer service phone tree for permission to use their bathroom. Press 5 for etc etc. This would improve customer service access in days.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I have received 14 texts trying to scam my business since 2AM. I miss having an FBI.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The problem- and I have seen this first hand- is that in many of these insular communities, things like state/ county health depts and the CDC are seen as enemies. Each group has a different dynamic, and trust building requires understanding the history.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ok, I get it but... the measles crisis we are seeing now has been building for two decades. Case surges started under this admin, and they havent exactly supported rapid response, but the people getting infected chose not to vaccinate years or even decades ago.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

We are currently only seeing sustained outbreaks of measles in these sorts of areas because the 80%+ in most areas of most diseases mean outbreaks dont go far. As numbers slip, this may change. This doesnt mean sporadic cases of preventable diseases aren't bad, of course.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is an important take - the 2019 WA outbreak was a good example. It was centered and a church with a congration where historic trust issues plus their own school (so no public school mandates) drove coverage under 50%.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The locals love Bruce Cockburn, but he's never gotten under my skin.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There has to be at least a 50% chance he is on the 28 ticket as P or VP.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

100 years old today. Gone for 59 of them.

Imperfect copies of Coltrane and JC w Johnny Hartman.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The move of insulting someone in public, then mocking their anger when they respond, is such a standard bad faith move

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

And also remember that was about the first moment it became clear that the new vaccine was working. If we could have been careful - or, um, needlessly terrified - for three more months of rollout, hundreds of thousands of premature deaths might have been avoided.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

You've heard it from me before, but I am over hearing draft dodgers tell us about all the wrong ways front line workers fought the covid battle.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Jonathan wrote a book that documented covid denialists showing their ass in real time. You should read it, it is well researched, and helps to show why US had such a high mortality rate compared to other countries. Our grandkids will be glad someone did.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

For some reason, Bluesky is putting The Free Press onto my timeline. I didn't know that still existed - i thought it was 60 Minutes now.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Dang, I just watched Phantom this week.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Wouldn't having some of those 50 days having a senate trial of a cabinet official be a good thing? Its not like impeachment is an immediate removal.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Hoss looking like he just learned that last sext didnt go to a high school sophomore but to the special crimes unit.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Wow am I glad I decommissioned the oil tank this spring

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Biodiesel is now cheaper than diesel in my hood.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

My blood pressure is currently between zoinks and nuclear explosion

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Before my clinic can bill insurances, I need an account with Availity. To get this, I need to upload 7 documents, with an SS4 letter. Thats the IRS one that says CP575 at the top. 40 min hold time for help. It must be hard for young people to understand how much better the world was 30 years ago.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A mousse rock legend! m.youtube.com/watch?v=8tg4...

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Those RFTT -> early Pere Ubu tracks are so ahead of their time, and predict some of the best of the next decade and a half.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

It ought to be such a given that if experts tend to coalesce, then it is probably right. There are areas this still holds - plumbing, movie/art criticism, cooking... but many where it completely broke. Note that a place conventional wisdom should break is military strategy, but it hasnt.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

There was a federal law in the early LBJ years that every jazz LP had to have at least one percussion player beyond the traps. It is wild how this trend was so pervasive, yet gone so quickly. Not his best, but fine nonetheless.

Grant Green, the Latin Bit, 1964ish, 1970 pressing.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Yep. I was working on a book about this trend in med prior to pandemic. When the dust settled, there was no point anymore. Would be like writing a book about the sun setting in the west.

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Matt Brignall @mattbrignall.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

His worldview, like so many in modern altmed, is entirely based on being contrary. The all-meat diets, the unscientific use of hormones and peptides, the rejection of stating and vaccines. All of it

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