iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 03/08/2025

This sauce is 3× hotter for English speakers.

130

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 03/08/2025

This sauce is 3× hotter for English speakers.

000

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 12/05/2025

This is the light switch by my front door. I've made it so the LEDs on the left show levels of COVID RNA detected in Boston wastewater. It's an arbitrary log2 scale, with the first 3 lights green, the next 2 yellow, and the top 2 red. This is the first time it has been down to green since 2023.

This is a decora-style paddle switch, with seven LEDs running vertically along the left side of the paddle. The bottom three LEDs are glowing green. The top four are off. (There is a little bit of green showing, but that's just spillover.)

0112

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 25/04/2025

Here is my dad (a retired joiner) explaining that the doors of Harvard's Memorial Hall are poorly made.

A man who looks basically like me but a little older, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He gestures at one of the panels of a large oak door.

3171

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 15/04/2025

With exclusive commemorative towels from our friends at Hello Tux www.hellotux.com/fedora

1143

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 30/03/2025

OMG look at these cute little bees my daughter made.

Two crocheted bumblebees — each a black-striped yellow cylinder about two inches long, with black bead eyes and silly silly wings in white. They're on a fabric craft supply bag, next to an also-crochet pink flower.

060

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/03/2025

My niece decided to self-certify.

A "certificate". There is a hand-drawn "seal" and a smiley face. The text says, sic:

I here by declare

(name) Ramona (last name) Miller a

Hot glueing

perofessionale.

030

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 11/02/2025

Whelp, Civ 7 seems in tune with the zeitgeist.

3260

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/01/2025

Uh, the answer is: no, you do not. You will be fine.

Headline: I Want to Give $50k to My Daughter for a Down Payment on a Home - Do I Need to Worry About Taxes?

140

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/01/2025

The boiling-pot thing turns out to be untrue for frogs, but seems to hold for humans. If a sci-fi book dropped this paragraph in the middle of a scene about shopping for groceries, you'd immediately think "Ah, so the setting is a post-climate-disaster dystopian hellscape. Got it."

CNN Business
----------------------

Egg prices, for example, have been driven higher as a result of a deadly bird flu that has constricted supply; meat prices have been on the rise because of ongoing drought; coffee prices are expected to jump because of severe weather in South America; and housing costs will continue to rise because of a long-running shortage of inventory.

1235

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/01/2025

I think it's worse than that. The market doesn't really care. The drop looks dramatic on an immediate scale, but in context it's negligible. And, Nasdaq is tech-heavy, so this week everyone is freaking out about DeepSeek more than anything in the real world.

Nasdaq 5 year chart. 111.36% overall growth at almost 20,000. There's a dip of about 16k to 11k in 2022, but then it's overall up since then.

110

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/01/2025

States most reliant on federal aid. Leopards, faces, etc, but this is going to kill people who really need support while taking more than a few years to impact the upper-middle-class white swing-state voters who apparently get to decide everything.

Montana 31.81%

New Mexico 30.70%

Kentucky 30.06%

Louisiana 29.82%

Alaska 29.02%

Wyoming 28.89%

Arizona 28.50%

West Virginia 27.03%

Alabama 26.72%

North Dakota 26.58%

Source and complete table: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-rely-the-most-on-federal-aid/

2273

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 28/01/2025

Oh, yes, _that's_ the news that is going to fuck up the US economy.

Headline: US stock markets tumble as investors worry about DeepSeek.

2130

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 04/01/2025

I should have tested this before posting.

ChatGPT 4o mini, responding to "Who is the NFL player with no vowels in his last name?"

"The NFL player with no vowels in his last name is Khyiris Tonga. The last name "Tonga" has no vowels (A, E, I, O, U), making it a unique name in the NFL. Tonga is a defensive tackle who has played for teams like the Chicago Bears."

140

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 04/01/2025

I hope all of the AIs get trained on pearls of human wisdom like this www.answers.com/athletes/Who...

answers.com "best answer"

Q: Who is the NFL player with no vowels in his last name?

A: doug beaudoin

180

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 22/12/2024

Someone does not like their friends very much.

This product has two ratings, one 4/5 and the other 1/5. This is followed by "100% would recommend this product to a friend". "100%" is extra-large.

010

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 30/11/2024

Also, if you are local, there is a ridiculously cute store dog.

A tiny dog, like a stuffed animal come to life. She's in a soft bed lounging with her favorite toy — Lambchop.

050

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 22/11/2024

I love my job, but I also love this button.

2300

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 20/11/2024

#Boston #MBTA PSA — do not take the #RedLine shuttle from Broadway to Harvard. This is the route it's taken through the city. 45 minutes so far. I knew it would be bad, but *come on*.

A map of Boston. A blue line meanders and loops across the map, approximating a random walk.

It goes on tiny streets, loops around, and seems to seek out busy intersections intentionally.

321

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 17/11/2024

A Gen Zer imagining how one might deposit cash into her bank account

382

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 19/04/2024

I grew up in Indiana hearing the geography argument — the Midwest is too sprawling, etc. Imagine my shock when I learned that we had this at the beginning of the 20th century. The Wikipedia article will tell you that it was "financially unsound" — but that's, as you say, really a matter of policy.

1908 map of the extensive interurban electric rail network connecting Indianpolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, Cleveland, and a bunch of smaller towns and cities. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Electric_Railway

0161

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 18/03/2024

Extremely cursed DST switch on this hotel alarm clock.

Back of a plastic digital alarm clock. A sliding switch labeled "dst" has three positions: - 1, +1, auto

010

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 06/01/2024

I found this, completely unlabeled, in my notes. Please explain.

Zorse
Mantis shrimp
Glyptodon
Giant sloth
Spiny echidna
The other kind of echinda
Fennec
Tapir
Tamarin
Snail

000

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 29/11/2023

Not enough space in the post limit... this is what I'm trying to save. (I had some of their larger ones as part of a living-room system which I regret giving away in 2006 after a move.) They never were expensive but I'd hate to junk them.

000

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 03/11/2023

"Possible problems" sure is one way to put it.

Screenshot from speedtest.net, which reads:

Having Internet Problems?
Popular services with reported issues

Rainbow Six Siege: Possible Problems
Hulu: Possible Problems
4chan: Possible Problems

I've drawn a red arrow pointing to that last one.

000

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 29/09/2023

This is a non-fantasy, actual, real history map of electrified intercity trains in the heart of the midwest — in 1908. We could have this again.

The Ohio Electric Railway was an interurban railroad formed in 1907 with the consolidation of 14 smaller interurban railways. It was Ohio's largest interurban, connecting Toledo, Lima, Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati. At its peak it operated 617 miles (993 km) of track.

100

Matthew Miller @mattdm.org · 10/09/2023

I switched from Spotify to Tidal because they give (slightly) more to artists. It's fine if you make your own playlists, but the automatic things are... uh...

Auto-generated "Songwriter Mix: Paul Simon"... including Simon & Garfunkel, Paul Simon, and... Skrillex.

031