iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 3h

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 5h

Me at the job interview: “I guess I’d say my greatest weakness is my continued inability to transcend capitalism”

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Trying to learn some Japanese phrases so I can converse with the locals

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I think I’m going to start telling people in Japan that I’m a member of American indie rock band The Shins

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Fucking Up the Vibe in the Onsen: A Traveler's Memoir

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Japan has been a useful mid-life reminder that cantaloupe can be delicious, even if America has, for whatever reason, decided it's supposed to be a mealy, flavorless filler in hotel breakfast buffet fruit salads

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is the most upsetting graphic the New Yorker has published since those "Cat Person" lips

A woman in a red bikini and some sort of nightie is on her front lawn in a plastic chair holding a gun and tipping her cowboy hat at the viewer. Also she kind of looks like a claymation California Raisin?

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm about 40 pages from finishing the last of Updike's Rabbit books, and just realized there's a Toyota museum about an hour and a half away, by train, in Nagoya. Feels disrespectful not to go!

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Adding a sci-fi element to the novel by explaining to the reader, in Chapter One, that everything they're about to read takes place in a distant solar system, far in the future, on a planet that, through a weird bit of space-time happenstance, has aged into an exact simulacrum of Earth, circa 2026

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I know it’s ridiculous to visit American chains in a foreign country, but I feel like Japan might be my only chance to find a McDonald’s where the McFlurry machine isn’t broken

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Feel like we've all been missing the most obvious solution to the trolley problem, which is to get rid of trolleys. Outmoded technology, if you ask me.

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Oh look, they took all your posts and turned them into a store

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Today I thought, "I wonder what Kyoto shrine it was that Scarlett Johansen's character visits in Lost in Translation," so I took out my phone and looked it up and turns out I was already there, right that moment, standing in the very place I was looking up

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

When you're in another country, people kind of expect you to be clueless and bumbling because of the language barrier. But what they don't know is that I would be exactly this dumb even if I spoke fluent Japanese

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Nathan Edwards @grackle.space · 22/09/2025

dudes rock

Tumblr post from every-lemon
Sep 8

so my spouse is part of a weirdly intense but mostly benign men's workout group that meets at like, 5:30am outside every day, even in winter. they do a lot of burpees and lugging cinder blocks up hills and stuff.
they take turns leading the workouts and tomorrow is his turn. I asked what he was planning. he handed me a sheet of William Carlos William poems from a large stack he'd printed.
I said "what" and he explained, helpfully, "it's a William Carlos William themed workout." I asked what inspired it and he said "l've been planning this for months."

Follow up tumblr post
every-lemon
Sep 9
it was a smash hit.
a dozen guys showed up (more than usual). spouse brought a red wheelbarrow and they took turns bringing cinder blocks up the hill with it. then they broke up in teams and did a relay with an "icebox" (cooler filled with 40lbs of ice). at the end he opened the cooler to reveal it was full of beach plum lacroix and all the guys cheered. they drank sparkling water as he read 'approach of winter' out loud.
he was home by 6:30am.

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

When I was a kid, if you forgot to wear green on St Patrick's Day all the other kids could pinch you, maybe we could do a similar thing for 9/11

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’ve been (slowly) learning kanji, so now I know the options for flushing the toilet in my apartment are “river” and “big”

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

While waiting for documents at the ward office here in Kyoto, I spent a fair amount of energy trying to translate the text on the card they gave me with my number on it, thinking it was important government info, but turns out it was a fun little quiz for children

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Tag yourself, I’m the anxious crossing gate

Japanese sign at train station warning people not to cross under the gate arm, illustrated by little boy sneaking under and cartoonified versions of train, gate, crossing

Close up of anthropomorphized gate arm gritting its teeth and looking scared

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Bought some "consommé" flavored Pringles here in Japan because I figured it was a weird translation thing and was curious what they tasted like. But you know what? They tasted exactly like fucking consommé. Soup chips! What a country.

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

What I love about traveling is how I can sit and read quietly in a different place than usual

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

There's no Labor Day in Japan, but in a couple weeks I get off work for Respect for the Aged Day. They're assuring me everyone gets this holiday, that I'm not getting dunked on for being old.

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

So far my strategy for getting by in Japan with basically no language skills is to smile a lot, to demonstrate that I am a nice boy, and to hold my body in a way that suggests I am vaguely sorry for my existence

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

futuredadOfTwo🙋🏻‍♂️ @lacroixboi.dadguy.pro · 03/09/2026

taking candy from a baby is actually not easy at all. i hear the baby’s cry every night as i try to sleep. haunted by the look in their eyes every time i close mine

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I guess some concepts transcend nationality

Public service announcement on Kyoto subway about “manspreading”

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The time difference of living in Japan means that not much is happening on (American) social media during prime working hours, which, I have to say, might be an underrated perk of living in Japan?

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Student in my class said his perception of how online culture has changed in his lifetime is that you used to *choose* to be online, like the internet was its own little world, but now the internet is just <waves hands to indicate everything everywhere all at once>

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

At a sushi bar and the chefs keep giving very enthusiastic, personalized greetings to everyone coming in, is this what it felt like to be one of the random extras on Cheers

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Tom McAllister @tmcallister.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

arguably not the most important thing that has happened here over the last 198 years, but who remembers when @mikeingram.bsky.social and I put on tuxes and won a major award and posed with a T-rex

Me and Mike, looking pretty dapper let's be perfectly honest, drinking some beers in Book Fight koozies

big giant screen declaring us the winner of the 2015 Geek Award for Streaming Media Project

Me and Mike out at some cocktail place that night, still in tuxes, toasting our fabulous success and what is sure to be 10 ensuing years of podcasting stardom. We probably drank too much that night

standing normally w/ Mike in front of the T-Rex, this is unfortunately the one in which I look least weird

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Johnny Normality @probgobl.in · 30/08/2026

Teens are hiding in snow banks and devouring wandering travelers. They call it yetimaxxing and parents are up in arms over this dangerous new trend.

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Lisa Thornton @thorntonforreal.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Thank you, Wendell Berry

The text of The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

In my new Kyoto neighborhood, passed an open garage w/ wood scraps and power tools and a middle-aged man looking frustrated, how do I say in Japanese “Hello sir, I’m new here, would you perhaps like to watch a televised sport at some time in the near future?”

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One nice thing about Japan is that my instinct to constantly apologize seems to finally be appreciated

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

First day of class, realizing none of my students knows who Spuds McKenzie is Me: Ok, throw away your syllabus, we're changing plans Student: Sir, the syllabus is online Me: Throw away your computers

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Having gotten stuck recently in an elevator (back in Philly) this sign does not fill me with confidence

Elevator sign by call button: “In case of emergency keep pushing. You can contact the outside.”

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

When you visit a new city, it’s important to go to a hat shop in the tourist district and try on at least 10-12 increasingly ridiculous hats, then leave without buying anything. Nobody knows where this ritual originated, but it’s considered an insult to the gods not to do it

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Honestly it would be pretty on-brand if I learned to read Japanese via Yacht Rock

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

So far my only complaint about Kyoto--and I assume this has to do with the mix of locals and tourists--is there doesn't seem to be a consensus on whether we're supposed to walk on the right or the left. As someone who is often annoyed/judgmental on sidewalks, not knowing is hard for me!

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Having a real time warp experience at the Kyoto Tower Records

CD listening station at Tower Records in Kyoto

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Carrying my New Yorker tote around Japan so people know I’m the sophisticated kind of American

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I don’t want to criticize another culture but this seems like an inefficient way to get snacks

Claw machine in Tokyo arcade, prize is Pringles

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Continuing my lifelong habit of reading off-theme novels while traveling in foreign countries by diving into RABBIT AT REST in a Tokyo hotel

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Mike Ingram @mikeingram.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I’ve been in Tokyo for less than a day and already had the best cantaloupe of my life

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Libby Cudmore (SHE/HER) @libbycudmore.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

So I promised you some big news and here it is! I'm writing a book about swing revival for @barrelhouse.bsky.social; thanks to @mikeingram.bsky.social for making my dream of lecturing people about the Cherry Poppin' Daddies a reality.

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Reposted by Mike Ingram

Connor Ewing @cmewing.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

University leadership: We stand ready to support our faculty as they confront the disruptions & uncertainty caused by AI. Faculty: Great! We'll need smaller class sizes, especially for incoming students and— University leadership: Lol, no. We meant like subscriptions to Claude.

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