iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

@neolithicsheep.bsky.social Spent the last couple of days sharing a croft with a small heard of mixed Soays out in the Small Isles and thought of you, sir.

A croft worker stands at a barbed wire fence with cliffs in the background. A ewe and two lambs look on from the other side of the fence.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Durham's forecast for today and tomorrow.

A weather forecast for Monday 3/23 (high 80 low 39) and Tuesday 3/24 (high 55 low 36)

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

I've seen that photo before somewhere . . .

Still from Rocketman with the Elton John character in a car in a gigantic pink feather ensemble and yellow and red sunglasses, with a man in normal clothes looking on, somewhat subdued.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

@nytimes.com are you feeling okay? I'm sorry, but this is NOT your brand. I can't actually make fun of you or be mad at you for this. @nytpitchbot.bsky.social I need help.

Nancy Mace: What Democrats Understand That We Don’t

4 min read

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

This is the kind of stupid shit my friends and I would have come up with in a dorm room when we were staying up too late. . . and then laughed at ourselves for how fucking stupid it actually was when we said it out loud.

Using the lofty language that has typified Mr. Musk’s A.I. dreams for more than a decade, he told employees that he wanted to build systems that were “maximally truth-seeking” while previewing plans to build a Microsoft competitor called Macrohard.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I put this over on Mastodon but when you put these two quotes from two very different writers side by side, I feel like there's a lot going on here. (first image is from the @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social)

I think there has been a war of the imagination over the last several years. I was thinking a lot about what there might be to be optimistic about and I came to the conclusion that this feeling of hopelessness that everybody has is a manufactured product, and that’s what Neo-Liberalism is really about. Neo-Liberalism isn’t just an economic program, it’s a political program designed to produce hopelessness and kill any future alternatives."

David Graeber

Image of Bruno Latour. Text:

"Especially troubling to me is the feeling of helplessness that is associated with any discussion of economics and that I have so much trouble reconciling with
what I consider science’s and politics’ main effects, these being the opening
of new possibilities and the provision of margins to maneuver.

Why is it that when we are asked or summoned to combat capitalism, we feel, I feel so helpless? Faced with such a question, I will start with this idea—that one of the affects of capitalism, that is, of thinking in terms of capitalism, is to generate for most of people who don’t benefit from its wealth a feeling of helplessness and for a few people who benefits from it an immense enthusiasm together with a dumbness of the senses."

- Bruno Latour, On some of the affects of capitalism

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

This is kind of a funny one. Yes, we have an absolutely abhorrent record on road safety . . . . . . but all US states, last I checked, require a vision test for everyone when renewing a license. For everyone.

The death toll on American roads is over 40,000 a year. We had just over 1,600, in a population around one-fifth of that in the US, and with a road network that has far fewer wide, straight roads. Their road-death toll is around five times ours per head of population. We could do better, but we could do a whole lot worse.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Damn this is good. NY's LG Delgado going absolutely gloves off against his own governor in his own party. Brutal, constructive, and specific. 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...

Mr. Trump’s appeal isn’t rooted in policy; it’s rooted in style. He uses delusional bravado to cosplay as a rebel against a broken system that both parties helped to rig. The Democratic establishment’s timid, survivalist politics can’t compete with that. You can’t beat an immoral agent of chaos with risk aversion. You beat him with moral clarity — the kind that’s willing to sacrifice corporate donations, political comfort and maybe even your own career for the sake of the greater good. Mr. Trump doesn’t win because people love his ideas. He wins because people stop believing in what Democrats have to offer.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Reading @tressiemcphd.bsky.social's op-ed on Mamdani and the panic around him and good Lord, professor, that's a kicker that leaves a bruise! 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...

Their panic implies that the education credentials we trust for any other candidate are now suspicious for an ungrateful minority. We cannot trust that minority’s political prescriptions without peering into the core of that person’s racial identity. That’s where we think the “real” them is, in a set of murky loyalties that could turn on America at the drop of a dime. Divining Mamdani’s race is a way to see past his pretty-standard-for-a-politician upbringing and to point to the “something” in Mamdani that makes him untrustworthy.

When both sides of the political spectrum share an obsession with interrogating one’s racial purity, maybe it’s time to confront an uncomfortable truth: A lot of us are exactly who Donald Trump believes that we are.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Scripture passage from worship this morning is an entire damn Word

Hebrews 13

13Let mutual love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. 3Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.*

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

AI accounts getting … worse at impersonating real people.

I am a Democrat from California. Generation X! I like to express myself by creating images (also known as Memes’). I love animals and plants. I block 🚫 people that try private chats with me (mostly scammers anyways.) jerks and creeps!

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Yeah for the ones throwing insults . . .

Meme image: "ooh, self-burn! Those are rare!"

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

If you see this, quote with a robot that isn't from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, or Transformers.

The giant robot Gort, from the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, standing outside the flying saucer

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Goldman's full quote is here, which in my opinion is worth sharing in full not just for accuracy, but because it's a much more explicit rebuke of the joy-scolds that still haunt BlueSky to this day. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emma_Go...

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (p. 56)

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Nobody in the Democratic establishment is quite so delusional that they think the party is doing great. Everyone knows there is a need for change and yet they seem keen to sabotage anyone who might bring that change. Instead of rallying around fresh talent like Mamdani that can clearly mobilize young voters, the Democrats are mulling a $20m plan to try to manufacture a “Joe Rogan of the left” who can connect with young men, rather than support an authentic grassroots candidate who is already connecting with them.

Will centrist interests prevail in New York? We won’t know until, at the very earliest, late on primary night, 24 June. Whatever happens, though, you can bet that Democrats will continue to do their very best to kneecap anyone who wants to drag them way from their obsession with doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Chuck Shumer cannot continue as majority leader. He should have been dumped months ago, he doubly needs dumped now.

post from Eli Clifton (@EliClifton)

Picture of Chuck Shumer. Caption"My job," Chuck Schumer told Bret Stephens, "is to keep the left pro-Israel."

The job of a U.S. Senator is to maintain support for a foreign country with his left-wing constituents?

link to nyt article

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Without downloading any new pics, where you at mentally?

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

My sign skills are, to put it kindly, not great. But I wanted to make sure I had an anti-ICE sign at the overpass today.

A cardboard box top, fairly tattered, has “ICE HANDS OFF OUR NEIGHBORS” in red magic marker. A hand holds it up with a 4 lane highway running under it in the background.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?da...

Speech balloon from Girl Genius. Text reads "Oh. Oh, MY. Can... Can it be CHRISTMAS?"

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Don't you mean stinking up the Scottish Prem *and* the Conference?

Textless still from the Simpsons. Homer is smiling and explaining something to Bart.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

It's going to continue to be my bullshit that anti-reactionary movements are going to keep failing in rural areas until they get this deeply incorporated into core theory. It doesn't fit well with conventional 20th century modernist Leftism though so some can't do it. www.npr.org/2025/06/01/n...

"You're connected to thousands of years of wisdom, people learning how to live in cooperation with the land and hopefully improve it," he says. Looking out into the distance, Cooper says, "You are getting that wisdom from your local community. The people that farm or garden are very interesting, very resourceful, very astute."

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Yesterday was officially the day to decorate the front of the church for Pride. We had fairly new materials with because last year someone decided to come trash our decorations, so we had to go out and buy more. As fellow congregant Matthew said to me, ". . . and they can die mad." #church #pride

Oblique shot of granite steps and front arches of First Presbyterian Church in Durham, NC, festooned with rainbow banners, wraps, and bunting for Pride Month. Children and adults can be seen working to decorate the steps.

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MTBinDurham @mtbindurham.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

The opening of Habakkuk is a whole damn vibe these days.

Shot of a printed version of the NRSV translation of the Christian Bible, turned to the first page of the book if the Prophet Habakkuk. The focused text reads:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
And you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous —therefore judgement comes forth perverted.

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