iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Polly, Transfeminist Killjoy @crosspollytaupe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Barron Trump listening to “10 Crack Commandments,” getting really into it, bobbing his head, thinking about getting a tattoo.

010

Reposted by Mike Barthel

one of my favorite tumblr posts

coffee shop by my house hired a new barista who is extraordinarily hot and flirts with me incessantly but she also makes the worst - and i truly mean the worst - coffee i’ve ever paid for. atrociously bad. just another of god’s little jokes

just remembered the barista who worked there last year and treated me with an attitude generally reserved for children and the incompetent to the point where she would frequently adjust my drink order in front of me and every single time it was BANGIN’

#cloth barista wire barista

120830

Typed “what’s a qualia” into google and it felt like I was setting Chico Marx up for a real zinger.

021

Bryan Waterman @waterman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One must imagine Sisyphus rapping

000

Reposted by Mike Barthel

My only contribution to the song-about-Texas discourse is to note that I’ve thought of the ending of “Lecture on Nothing” a couple dozen times today.

Last lines of John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing. Apologies that this cut and paste will inevitably be unable to reproduce his spacing:

A lady
from Texas
said:
We have no music
I live in Texas
in Texas.
is because
The reason they've no they have recordings
music in Texas in Texas.
Remove the records from Texas and someone
will learn to sing
Everybody
has a song
which is
no
song at all :
it is a process
of singing
and when you sing you are
where you are
All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes
think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing.

0115

Reposted by Mike Barthel

Jeff Weiss @passionweiss.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

POW had somehow never run an interview with Doseone, one of the all-time underground rap greats. So @paulxt.bsky.social talked to the Anticon co-founder about Sumerian tablets, original sin, the Big Bang, Eraserhead and "Sighting," his latest brilliant set of poems. www.powmag.net/p/doseone-in...

powmag.net

You Can Scare the Moment Away: An Interview with doseone

The anticon. co-founder talks about his new album, David Lynch, Mark Rothko’s suicide, and much more.

0154

Craig Jenkins @craigsj.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So are we willing to forgive Justin Timberlake for that country album now or what

100

Reposted by Mike Barthel

got into a lot of this re what history was being made and what country artists are and aren't doing about the shifting political climate earlier in the run, as long as y'all talkin about it www.vulture.com/article/coun...

vulture.com

Country Music’s Middle Road

As MAGA grows more unpopular, the genre once perceived as redder than ever is moving to the center.

0122

Trampoline park scene report: they’re playing the Cranberries’ “Dreams”

160

If you haven’t heard the #1 song in the country, and you’re in the Bluesky demographic, the Occam’s Razor explanation for most people (though not my mutuals!) is that you’ve aged out of current pop music!

5191

Few things better illustrate the problems of collective action better than a bunch of kindergartners trying to make giant bubbles with rope wands and the kids who don’t currently have wands deciding it would be more fun to pop the bubbles before they can start.

020

Only one hit for “poptimism choosin texas” good job everyone

250

Kiddo is watching this terrible Willy Wonka reality show thing and uhhhhhh nope!!

Wikipedia screenshot. The series has no traditional host and the voice of Willy Wonka is an Al recreation of Gene Wilder's performance from the 1971 film, created with the consent of his estate.

050

Sending up a small prayer of gratitude that the second strip never came up during the Vampire Weekend wars

130

*holding back tears* GUYS YOU CANNOT PLAY THE ADVENTURE TIME EPISODE WITH “EVERYTHING STAYS” WITHIN EARSHOT OF ME RIGHT NOW

000

Great great Andrew WK interview, talking with him about the noise folks he came up with through the Providence scene. In some ways he’s an early version of PC Music, but harder to understand since he never winked in his pursuit of pure sound as a different version of extreme music.

130

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 25/09/2026

It’s been quite a few weeks, so I got a last minute ticket for Deafheaven / Mastodon. Let’s get hedonic!

160

I stanned too hard for the second Andrew WK album back in the day (partially because it was caught in the major-label-refuses-to-release-it vortex so common back in the 00s), but it’s still great. I should’ve just said it was his attempt at making a Queen album, which is true.

Cover of Andrew WK’s close calls with brick walls.

340

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 24/09/2026

I see the kids figured out how to rename the TV.

A TV icon with the text
55" Tąqqqqqwwąwąqq etc

040

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 24/09/2026

Realized I’d been putting off writing a climactic scene in my novel because I’d been thinking about it for a long time and was worried I’d mess it up, which is a ridiculous thing given that prose can be revised thousands of times before anyone sees it.

100

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 24/09/2026

I couldn’t help thinking that, if every pilot was a furry, they might be more willing to have difficult conversations.

Nathan fielder as captain sully in the rehearsal

031

Reposted by Mike Barthel

keegan @franziamom.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

At work on my magnum opus

Guided by Voices songs that sound like Magic the Gathering Cards:

Wings of Thorn
Dragons Awake!
Burns Carpenter, Man of Science
Vault of Moons
Dusty Bushworms
Tricyclic Looper
Bulldog Skin
Jane of the Waking Universe
Instrument Beetle
Surgical Focus
Sweeping Bones
Wondering Boy Poet
Trendspotter Acrobat
Mesh Gear Fox
Plate of Scales
Instinct Dwelling
Expecting Brainchild
Unstable Journey
Fly Into Ashes
Weeping Bogeyman

57415

georgia-lux @georgialux.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Daft Punk were not only so successful at changing music that future listeners find their innovative work to be generic sounding, but that they themselves made a deliberately un-innovative (and boring) album themselves.

151

Reposted by Mike Barthel

joining all your zoom calls unbidden in a zippered gimp mask, display name just "CONSULTANT" in all caps

312918

I suspect one of the biggest reasons people haven’t heard “Choosin’ Texas” is because speakers are becoming increasingly rare. Can’t hear a ubiquitous song if everyone’s wearing headphones!

1100

assbutt @nasboat.org · 23/09/2026

Oh my god why did no one sell me harder on Dostoyevsky? The level of drama here is off the charts! A quarter of the way in the main character drops a major revelation that he’s been trying to tell the other characters the whole time but no one will let him get a word in edgewise!

160

Reposted by Mike Barthel

(extreme Chris Cornell voice) asshole son

191466166

Opened the barhroom door like “whoof it smells like Ed Sheeran’s career in here”

100

This is very accurate but it’s hard to fully capture the vibe without being there. Here, for instance, is Mark Zuckerberg’s house.

Google Maps screenshot showing a pin in a suburban neighborhood a few blocks south of the 101 freeway and an ikea

Google Maps screenshot showing a pin dropped in an unremarkable suburban street

Google Maps screenshot showing a blurred out street view

010

What do you think the process is like when Shaq films commercials? Do you think he does extensive prep and requires the sides months in advance? Or does he just go about his day and they set up a shoot where he happens to be going and yell his lines at him one at a time?

020

John Waters is on the new season of AHS? That feels…strange.

131

The diagrams that appear early on in the 1998 SNL cartoon here are almost exactly the same ones Godspeed You! Black Emperor would include on the back of their 2002 album Yanqui UXO, which is why it’s hard to nail down exactly what it means for information to be repressed or hidden.

A black and white handwritten diagram showing the connections major record labels like Vivendi and BMG have to military contractors.

010