iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 04/10/2026

The viola joke started out very promisingly…

Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 15/09/2026

I have a theory that playing an instrument and singing use different but complementary neural pathways benefit both playing and singing. Enjoy choir singing- it’s a joy!

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 12/09/2026

I had a bit of a look, found nothing but Margaret Thatcher and pictures of women in brown jackets, and now it’s my bedtime 🤷‍♂️

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 12/09/2026

It seems there’s been one significant woman in the history of um… thought.

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Xero now with 100% more 🎃 @artificer-ind.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Still patiently waiting to be "left behind" by AI rather than it chasing me across every damn space like a slasher in a low budget flick.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 09/09/2026

Also making all those weird repeated notes interesting was quite tricky.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 09/09/2026

I’m pretty sure getting competitive with AI is a bad idea.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 09/09/2026

JS Bach was adept at harmonizing all sorts of weird melodies, so I thought I would have a try at reharmonizing the “chorale” melody the AI produced, but improve it by being more interesting.

My own handwritten reharmonization of the weird “chorale” melody produced by AI.

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Governor Tim Walz @governorwalz.mn.gov · 05/09/2026

Good news: he lost.

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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

So funny watching the media try to write 2000's era Grand Theft Auto Outrage articles now that the whole country is a casino run by murderers.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 01/09/2026

If you’re going to do it, do it on speaker phone.

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Chris Franklin @errant-signal.com · 28/08/2026

"Milo got arrested!" "That's good!" "By an unaccountable secret police force" "That's bad" "He supported them, though, so there's delicious irony at play." "That's good!" "But they came for him because fascist power has reached a point where petty infighting can lead to arrests" "That's bad"

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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

This is the Hot Couch theory of the internet: We were better off when these ideas were coming to us from your friend's idiot brother who occasionally sold you weed while tending a menagerie of lizards and snakes, because you knew that guy was a dumbass, but now they've broken Hot Couch containment

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 27/08/2026

Respect for weary bureaucrats.

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Rob @robosullivan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Guys. Where are the posts reminding us not to speak ill of the dead? I'm not seeing them for some reason.

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Leah Broad @leahbroad.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I get so sick of being told that there has been no gender-based prejudice against women musicians. So here are some genuine reviews written about women, between 1893 & 2021, with a couple words/letters changed to make them about men.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 23/08/2026

When I have allergy meds I do my best to take them in the evening- why waste the potential for a good sleep?

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 23/08/2026

You will always be able to find a geek who can explain floating point arithmetic, but nobody can really explain an LLM hallucination with any precision.

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

we are getting a real time demonstration of why smart countries do not allow 15 year olds angry that girls don't talk to them to dictate economic policy

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 28/07/2026

I used to take salt tablets, and _they_ were hard to get for a while. It’s bizarre.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 23/07/2026

Cool, a tongue-nose comrade! We are a select few…

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 07/07/2026

I enjoyed that… and have something from yesterday’s choir chat:

Me posting a picture on WhatsApp of Robert and Clara’s grave with the comment “19th century power couple (in Bonn)”, and receiving the reply “Brahms’s name is incorrectly spelt … *wink emoji*”

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Lance Parkin @lanceparkin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I just realised what AI image generators remind me of: Pin Impression Toys. They're diverting for a minute, you go 'yeah, that's fun', then you've basically seen it. And sure, you can keep pushing different shapes to make yet another shape, but that's all they actually do, it's profoundly empty.

They're called 'pin impression toys' apparently. Makes sense. Push pins, make impression.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 10/06/2026

I would just call that your style, and if a lot of people like it it doesn’t matter one person thinks.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 08/06/2026

Musescore.com has been avoid at all costs for a while (not to be confused with the music notation program MuseScore which is very good). Of course there is arrangement slop to wade through now *sigh*.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 01/06/2026

When my fiancee and I were shopping around for wedding venues, the guy at one place said he used a 57-point checklist, so ever since, 57 hasbeen our slang for a very large number.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 24/05/2026

My family has only had the flu shot so far, and we have all been unusually symptom-free. Maybe this year’s formulation is mild for some reason.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 23/05/2026

So they believe most people actually sit on their nutty part of the political bell curve? I see.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

REMINDER: The Chris Rufo theory of academia, and today’s broader right-wing theory of politics and culture, is that most students—most people, really—crave far right ideas, but get more left-wing ones only because a small cadre of radical leftists captured all institutions and forced it on everyone.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 17/05/2026

A-ahhhhh, a-ahhhhh (augmented chord).

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Snitty 🎃 @clofsnitville.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

AI breaking common, everyday things that used to work is why people fucking hate it! AI cluttering up things by offering to summarize 3-sentence emails is why people fucking hate it! It's obvious! It's in fucking plain view! I like it less every goddamned fucking day!

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 13/05/2026

I played flute in it when I was young and fell in love with it (of course).

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The Onion @theonion.com · 12/05/2026

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

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ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 29/11/2025

we are *nowhere near close* to *anything like* lossless translation of "the world" into "digital records," huge portions of the information economy revolve around maintaining different *absurdly* lossy compressions of reality in digital dimensions

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Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

They dared to dream of undoing the 20th century. It’s inspiration in the most perverse way. badfaithtimes.com/the-american...

badfaithtimes.com

The American Right Dared To Imagine. Now It's Our Turn.

“It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope."

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ianVisits @ianvisits.co.uk · 08/05/2026

Commiserations to Sir David Attenborough on his 100th birthday, as he is now too old to be allowed to play with LEGO.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 08/05/2026

Most Christians _and_ most atheists would dislike it. The 13% would be an interesting demographic to analyse.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 07/05/2026

Overpaid sweet summer child…

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 06/05/2026

Tomorrow I’ll be defending my streak of 8.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 06/05/2026

You have to weigh the good and the bad. People being able to make videos of their dog dancing the cha cha cha makes it worth it.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 05/05/2026

If it was like this *old man voice* back in my day, we’d still have acid rain, lead in petrol, smallpox, and no ozone layer.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 04/05/2026

I wonder if this is what most patronage looked like back in the day, putting all one’s hard-gotten skills towards satisfying the patron’s whims? There have always been grit your teeth and think of the money gigs, but these might reach new levels of annoying.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 03/05/2026

I recently talked about and played the 1812 Overture to my kids and found myself getting unreasonably and embarrassingly emotional. I had to play the 1712 Overture to fix myself.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 01/05/2026

Palestrina, Gesualdo, Lassus.

Straight-laced woman, pretty boy and hot woman watching a game, not sure who they are.

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Vaughan McAlley @mcalley.net.au · 30/04/2026

I was doing a bit of research to whinge about 30 minute inter-peak on the Lilydale line and found 2004 timetables on the Connex website on archive.org At 9am on weekdays it switched directly to 30 minute frequency trains stopping all stations, so the morning express trains are an improvement.

archive.org

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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