iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Paul Nadeau @pauljnadeau.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Is this what "stronger and more respected" looks like?

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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I genuinely mean this. I cannot imagine a more bleak dystopian notion than the idea of all art being turned into slop designed to coddle my exact perceived intentions. The point of literature, film, music, and art is to be exposed to the interior lives of others. Who are these people.

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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Divide and concur — this radical plan from 1920, for "lasting peace" after WW1, proposed uniting central Europe into 24 wedge-shaped cantons which would radiate out from Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral: publicdomainreview.org/collection/u…

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Sasha's Retrobytes 🏳️‍⚧️ @sharkabytes.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"Universal Century 0079. Mankind lives in colonies called Sides. But Side 3 has a secret..." Airing on Toonami for the first time in July 2001: Mobile Suit Gundam. #VideoBytes

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

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B. A. Friedman @bafriedman.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

- Chief of the Naval General Staff Osami Nagano, leaving the meeting Pearl Harbor meeting, 19 October 1941

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The History Master @myhistorymaster.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Bit of a tangent, but this is one thing that always hits me about AI boosterism: There are just large numbers of people who see *thinking* as a really onerous activity. They're not dumb; they can *do it* if needed! But they *hate it.* (And hate the people (e.g. teachers) who force them to do it.)

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The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 06/10/2026

Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato, one of the most influential anime series ever, started 52 years ago today. "In the year 2199, the space battleship Yamato embarks on a voyage to the planet Iscandar, to retrieve a device that will rejuvenate a war-ravaged Earth."

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Asad Margins @catsashimi.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Simone Weil hit on something similar: "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 05/10/2026

Yang wen-li, a character from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, saying in two panels "I believe that being ruled by the worst democracy is preferable to being ruled by the best autocracy"

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Tom @tomel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Enrico Fermi on December 2nd, 1942:

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jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Something AI is responsible for that doesn't get enough talk: How, when it scrapes a website to illegally steal everything on it, it uses up a ton of its bandwidth allotment, crashing it or racking up massive fees for site owners.

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Sasha's Retrobytes 🏳️‍⚧️ @sharkabytes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

PC Gamer's Guide to Netiquette: Stay on topic! Don't be going to the Monster Truck Madness chatroom looking for cybersex. 📖: PC Gamer, April 1997

A snippet of a feature on internet gaming:

Netiquette
The Internet is a big and scary place, but if you behave your- self, you have little chance of being shunned and humiliated in front of elder gamers. Here are a few tips to keep you from being booted, dissed, or other- wise looked down upon by your gaming comrades.
1. If you're in a specified chat room, attempt to stay on topic. Very few people go into a Monster Truck Madness chat room in hopes of cybersex.

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The History Master @myhistorymaster.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"The Pope? How many models has he got?"

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Seriously, unless you're going to call me a "scientist" for helping my son with his class volcano project and call me a "physician" because I applied a band-aid successfully, please please PLEASE stop calling any random crank who shits out a book about the past a "historian"

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Xan López @xanlopez.net · 01/10/2026

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[Christopher M. Federico] @chrispps.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

good God, 90% of the enjoyment that comes from collecting vinyl records and/or other recorded media comes from what you experience and discover by associating with and talking to other subcultural weirdos

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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I give up. I’m moving into a cave.

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Having also read the book that Sam is reacting to here, I will just add that one of the really interesting arguments it makes is that the success of the Bismarkian realpolitik of the Genrō ends up being undone *because* of their failure to inculcate the public with any theory of civic participation.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this is the thing about automation, as every automation Knower will tell you: you automate the repetitive tasks; the more variability and idiosyncracy there is (aka the real world) the fewer zeroes you get after the decimal on reliability, pretty soon the results are unacceptable

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Oleg Benesch @olegb.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm thrilled that Michele Monserrati's excellent article on uses of samurai symbolism by the Italian far-right in the early twentieth century has been featured on JSTOR Daily: daily.jstor.org/why-italian-...

daily.jstor.org

Why Italian Fascists Loved Samurai - JSTOR Daily

Japan offered Italian Fascists a powerful example of how ancient traditions could serve modern nationalism.

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I get why gatekeeping in its negative sense is bad but also it feels an awful lot like gatekeeping in the positive sense was a load bearing pillar of society.

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The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 28/09/2026

This is all the more striking given that the post-Star Wars boom was still a long way off—a full quarter-century away. Kubrick's 2001 wouldn't be released for another 15 years, and Forbidden Planet hadn't even been filmed yet.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 27/09/2026

Weekend fun project: old tables. Extracted (using Opus 5.5) a few thousand statistical tables from a collection of English language year books related to East Asia. Link each table to (when possible) the relevant page of the scan of the original on Internet Archive. froginawell.net/reference/ol...

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Anime News Network @animenewsnetwork.com · 27/09/2026

Film director Toshio Masuda — known in anime for directing several films in the Space Battleship Yamato franchise and outside of anime for co-directing the Japanese sequences of Tora! Tora! Tora! — died last month at 98 years old.

animenewsnetwork.com

Space Battleship Yamato Film Director Toshio Masuda Dies at 98

Be Forever Yamato co-director, scriptwriter also co-directed Japanese side of Tora! Tora! Tora! war film

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Reminder that in Canada upon becoming an engineer you get an iron ring made of a collapsed bridge, purposely designed to be uncomfortable, to remind you that your ethics demand you give a fuck even about the boring grudgework of such as double-checking your math. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

en.wikipedia.org

Iron Ring - Wikipedia

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Tim Price @timprice.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

You joined "grand vizier chat (secret)" You: dark rumors from aboard You: abroad* fuck Sssnakecharmer: mf said aboard WhispersintheChapel: ahoy matey lol PonderMyOrb changed the group name to "rumors from aboard"

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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

England is a made up thing. It has no basis in the ineluctable laws of nature. Its extent is defined by Edward II getting his arse handed to him. Athelstan conquering York. The Welsh of Cumbria were incorporated, the Welsh of Gwynedd were not. It is a political idea, an aspiration - not taxonomy.

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Nick Kapur @nickkapur.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Japanese used bookstores are reporting a massive uptick in bulk purchases of used Japanese books by overseas buyers, seemingly without any regard to their contents. The only logical conclusion is that these books are being stripped, scanned, and discarded to train AI models.

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Tobias Harris @tobiasharris.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm not sure I've ever really appreciated how weird the Japanese political system was during the war. And Tojo not only had to sit there taking questions but was eventually removed through cabinet machinations, not a coup.

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The Japan Times @japantimes.co.jp · 23/09/2026

The Imperial Japanese Army secretly considered imposing martial law in Tokyo in January 1945, amid concerns that U.S. air raids would severely disrupt public order, according to a newly reviewed historical document. 👉 ebx.sh/Tadw2C

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 22/09/2026

Look goddamnit It's entirely possible To eat a plum And not make a poem about it The one I just ate Wasn't even in the Goddamn refrigerator Or anything Sometimes a plum Is just a plum You can just eat it And go on with your life WHAT Why are you looking at me What'd I do now (looks) oh GODDAMNIT

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100 years ago news @100yearsagonews.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Sept. 21, 1926: An attempt at the first nonstop New York-to-Paris flight ends in disaster when the huge Sikorsky S-35 airplane crashes on takeoff, killing two crew. French aviator René Fonck and his navigator, Lawrence Curtin of the U.S., escape the fireball and survive with minor injuries.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Today's architecture column. The building was designed by David Haid "whose most recognized work is the auto pavilion where Cameron Frye’s dad kept that ill-fated red Ferrari in the 1986 movie 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.' The architect supervised the repair of the pavilion’s glass after the scene."

chicago.suntimes.com

Chase bank shouldn't demolish its modernist Evanston branch

The bank wants to demolish the 47-year-old building designed by an architect whose work appears in a pivotal scene in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

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Shirley Tillotson @stillots1.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In 1900, it seemed to this Canadian expert in the cotton trade that the US Civil War war far from ancient history He refers to the Civil war years as a time when "our Southern neighbors were trying to settle a trouble that is yet unsettled." Always ask "What past shaped the past present?"

The foundation of his fortune was laid during the prosperous times that prevailed in Canada 1862-66, when our Southern neighibors were trying to settle a trouble that is yet unsettled.

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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

a lot freaks me out about AI but 0% of my anxiety is about AGI. i think this is the part that freaks me out the most right now -- the many many indications that no one is at the wheel and no adults are present

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Following Hadrian @followinghadrian.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

#PortraitThursday — Colossal marble head of Hadrian from Sagalassos, c. AD 120–125. Found in the Roman baths in 2007, it belonged to an acrolithic statue nearly 5m tall. Remarkably, traces of red pigment survived on Hadrian’s carefully arranged curls when the head was excavated.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/09/2026

Isaac Newton famously wrote “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Academic progress is always iterative and builds on the work of others, and a key component of academic culture is proper citation & attribution. It would be a travesty to let LLMs destroy that.

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James D.J. Brown @jamesdjbrown.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

As Japan’s govt contemplates introducing a Foreign Interference Prevention Act, the Tokyo Shimbun asks if it will apply to the US since “hasn't the primary ‘interference’ by a ‘foreign power’ experienced by Japan actually come from the United States?”https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/513801

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Alan Owlport 🦉 🎃 @alanallport.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Old fashioned flammable film reels were fucking lethal (see the fictional treatment of this in Cinema Paradiso).

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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Broke: Refusing to give the Greeks back their treasure. Woke: Giving the French back a corpse they don't want.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This is one of those skills that we expect graduate students to pick up but rarely teach explicitly. But basically, most (all?) academics learn to read in a way that lets you extract what you need from a text as quickly as possible, because we have to process a lot of text as part of our jobs.

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100 years ago news @100yearsagonews.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Sept. 3, 1926: Army aviator James Doolittle is the first American to fly across the Andes, going 880 miles from Santiago, Chile, to Buenos Aires in 7½ hours. He achieves his feat despite having broken both ankles earlier in a nonflying accident; his plaster casts were strapped to the plane's pedals.

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