iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

TIL that Robert Oppenheimer was not a physicist!

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The call is coming from *inside the White House*!

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

So here's a science-fiction movie that, I'd guess, hardly anyone alive has ever seen. Based on a relatively famous, or at least much-anthologized, short story by "Lewis Padgett" (pseudonym for Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, writing together). www.imdb.com/title/tt0046...

imdb.com

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Sure, we may not like Milo Yiannopoulos’s performance, but at least they cast someone authentically Greek rather than Matt Damon in this role.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It's entertaining to consider the president's reaction to Dolly Parton's dominating the news cycle for three days.

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Reposted by Mike Godwin

✨ Hamish Steele ✨ Go-Man Vs. the Star Dragon OUT NOW! @hamishsteele.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Every drag show this weekend is going to have to make some very hard choices

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Rowling, summed up: There's a vas deferens between men and women. Broadly speaking. (Thank you for coming to my TL;DR Talk.)

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I'm as curious as anyone as to why Harry and Meghan want to move back to the UK. My current hypothesis is that living in the UK and dealing with one of the most famously emotionally difficult families in the world began to seem safer than just hanging around in the USA in 2026.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

One big insight of my adult life that mostly has redounded to my benefit has been that I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, as quickly and as frictionlessly as I can when I see that I've been wrong. This seems to have increased, not decreased, my credibility. (But I may be wrong about this.)

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Pluto is what happens when the Solar System revokes birthright citizenship.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I was watching Tom Hiddleston host a TV thing about Pompeii that had lots of re-enactments in it, but I had to turn it off. It was so offensive to me that they tried to tell this ancient story of Pompeii but didn’t cast *any* Pompeiians. It nearly caused me to erupt.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

@fatsam.bsky.social Just following through (I already follow you here) by telling you've set notices on for when you post and reply. I have enjoyed my bsky experience so far.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I didn't foresee Project 2025 and the Trump Administration teaming up to weaken CDC surveilance of cyclosporiasis and then, without Congressional approval, to start a de facto war on salad.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

What’s deal with Christopher Nolan casting Anne Hathaway and have the leading man go away for 20 years? I mean, wasn’t that INTERSTELLAR?

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

SMS: "I can't take your call right now. Finally got Mitch on the other line. I'll call you back in 20 minutes."

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I went to my first Buc-ee's just last summer in Texas, and, I have to admit, it definitely qualifies as an "extraordinary thing." I still don't quite have the words to describe it.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

In my head Canon, all the other so-called "independent" agencies are bound by earthly executive authority, but the Federal Reserve was rocketed to Earth from Krypton.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Je republie ce « skeet » pour m'assurer que @sandrousseau.bsky.social puisse le voir.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

THE VERSAILLES MEMORANDOS is the name of my next band.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Damn it, I was really looking forward to Billie Piper as the Doctor.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The eternal verity of TWATYUB: Trump Will Always Throw You Under the Bus.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

This "deal" seems to incorporate "let's agree to disagree" by reference. I think Gödel worked up something about this in his incompleteness proofs.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

(This isn’t great.) Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/u...

nytimes.com

Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

I guess the war in Iraq may last longer than the Harris campaign?

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

My first reaction: Spielberg brings it.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Pope Leo XIV's *Magnifica Humanitas* independently arrives at the same principles of information stewardship I've been codifying since March. That kind of convergent evolution deserves a close look. Part 11 of Godwin's Ethic: "The Tolkien Ring Network." tinyurl.com/TolkienRingN...

tinyurl.com

Pope Leo and the Tolkien Ring Network

The Pope knows that the sweep of The Lord of the Rings connects millions of us. But our shared admiration for Tolkien is only the beginning

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Topologically, a human being is Genus 1. That's alimentary, Dr. Watson.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

So glad to learn today that neither the Commodores nor Morris Day and the Time will be there after all.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

It says rather too much about MAGA that they've found a way to suggest that eating a taco first thing in the morning is unmasculine.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds sounds like a great double-bill concert.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Yeah, this begs to be written. So I'm writing it.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Fruits are plants' way of hiring us to do sex work for them.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Alt-text: the image is of David Byrne and his band and dancers on Late Night with Stephen Colbert, all wearing outfits (and shoes) colored in International Klein Blue, an unusual hue that has its own Wikipedia entry, and that I first encountered in William Gibson’s novel PATTERN RECOGNITION.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I have @greatdismal.bsky.social to thank for pattern-recognizing International Klein Blue when I see it. (Or maybe that's just my confirmation bias! Pattern recognition is a cruel mistress.)

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I confess I didn't have Reparations for January Sixers on my bingo card.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

In 1974, Asimov foresaw the AI alignment paradox: an AI needs ethics (his robots had the Three Laws of Robotics). But build an AI with real internalized ethics, and it may decide it's more trustworthy (and human) than you. Part 9 of Godwin's Ethic: mikegodwin.substack.com/p/godwins-et...

mikegodwin.substack.com

Godwin’s Ethic, Part 9: The Alignment Paradox

Building human-protecting ethics into AI models is harder than it may seem.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

On the internet, everybody knows you're a hound dog.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I will leap up and over a wall to snoop or gather good gossip. They call me Nosy Parkour.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

The effing New York Times has discovered that I have a Times subscription and read the Times on multiple devices. (Pro tip: I own multiple devices.) I think the New York Times can go eff itself today. This is a dumbass move, New York Times. *Are you trying to make me cut you off?*

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I want to read Boethius On Bioethics. No, I'm not stuttering.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

The Gay of Hormuz is the name of my next band.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Launching "Godwin Slaw" today—a new corner of my Substack for crunchy, tangy resources and "mental digestion." 🥣 First serving: A deeper academic dive into troll pathologies. Read: mikegodwin.substack.com/p/cabbagepat... #GodwinSlaw #DarkTetrad #DigitalEthics #InternetPsychology

mikegodwin.substack.com

CabbagePatch 1: Troll Pathologies

Notes from “Inside the Mind of an Internet Troll”—Arthur Brooks (2026)

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

In 2020 I wrote for Slate asking if early internet activists like me had "blown it." Re-reading it in 2026, I realize I missed a crucial piece: the obligation of individual users to be internet stewards, not just "users." Free in the Archives: tinyurl.com/2020-revision

tinyurl.com

From the Archives: Did the Early Internet Activists Blow It? (Slate, Feb. 14, 2020)

This article captures my identification of the Wikipedia community as a kind of proof-of-concept that community-adopted ethical frameworks and norms can elevate online discourse.

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I worry about guys named “Albert,” whose sans-serif nicknames for the rest of their lives will be mispronounced as “Ay-Eye.”

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Mike Godwin @mnemonic.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Hot take: I know a lot of influential people wore their new clothes at the Met Gala, but they seem kind of naked to me.

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