iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 3h

Join the celebration of #BannedBooksWeek! Google "hot BBW videos" for more; be sure to turn safe search off to unban your search results!

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 8h

Future writers of biographies are gonna have real fun times going through a later famous person's tweets and skeets. "They especially enjoyed strawberry ice cream sandwiches (Twitter, 10/11/2026)".

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 9h

Either Terminator 2 (the robot foot smashing on the skull in the intro) or Beetlejuice (ALL OF IT).

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 15h

We experience things through fiction we most often don't experience in real life. Sometimes I worry over how the realities of #publishing skew all that. The Hollywood way of obvious villains and happy endings has to have influenced the way Americans (and others) see politics.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 17h

Oh. There's a @libraryofamerica.bsky.social edition of complete Earthsea. I hunger, because their books are such magnificent, careful objects; and I groan, for that shows in the price. I must get it, even so, because I read Earthsea last when I was a teenager, and stupid.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 20h

On one hand, "darkened perineum" is a tag on my favorite image repository of smutty drawings. On the other hand, "The Darkened Perineum" so sounds like a space opera, followed by "The Perineum Imperiled" and "The Perineum On Knife's Edge".

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 23h

Ate a McDonald's Maple BBQ and Bacon Double Quarter Pounder. It tasted and felt like having your face smooshed in a Canadian lumberjack's sweaty armpit. Not entirely unpleasant, tho.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"how did you get into ttrpgs" I found the three first Mentzer/BECMI D&D books at a flea market, and the nerds in my class all agreed we should be into this. A week later: "I put his hamster in the catapult." "What?" "I activate the catapult."

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A robotics/AI company needs to decommission their old test models somehow, and I guess they contain proprietary parts. But this is a level of irony poisoning / mixed messaging I don't have the tools to dissect. (They say it's a real video; no reason to doubt that.) m.youtube.com/watch?v=pfAh...

m.youtube.com

F.02 Decomission

YouTube video by Figure

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A majority of the people watching #vtubers are guys, and I think this is good for them. Most vtubers are women, you see. It is super helpful for a lot of guys to be stuck listening to a woman. Because that doesn't happen in real life! A lot of guys don't get to see woman as human beings.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I could get worried over oversexualization in the media. But since we're in a culture war and the other side is violent, joyless chastity belt (derogative) Puritanism, I usually don't. The former is a second-order problem, available only as far as the latter, much worse, problem has been solved.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Just heard a #physicist say "and you linearize on the gradients" in the tones of "and that's who murdered Roger Ackroyd!"

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Existing defensively" is a thing. Politicians live so that there's no easy way to attack them: that's why they are often such anodyne people; any color is a potential red flag. Online people often do the same: if you know you're saying things that get people riled up, don't give them free ammo.

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Reposted by penguin-starborn.bsky.social

asan @braket.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

it is insane how many people on here who were definitely around for napster and torrented everything from mp3s and textbooks to movies and cartoons and tv shows from across the world, and should absolutely know better, turned into lars fucking ulrich because of the computer over the past 4 years

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

One Finnish university of technology has made a radio spot. It's rapping. The lyrics are just a list of their degrees. Nothing more, plus their own name. Pro tip, if you ever consider doing this: Just don't.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I try to be open to new things. When #Youtube offers up some new channel, I try to peek in. Here's a list of things that make me bounce from, say, a true crime video: - Two minutes and you haven't gotten to any point. - "In this video" and other trailer bullshit.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Apparently "Fans react to baseball game" is trending on #Bluesky. Very good on choosing the maximum level of detail I understand or care for!

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There has never been so much art so widely available in the whole history of the world as now. It has never been so easy to find the niche that fits you and commune with people who also like that very cool thing you love. This is only accelerating.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I have a theory of #porn. Hence this long thread; strap in/on. 1) Porn is fiction, of course. Each piece of fiction has a set of assumptions of what the reader/viewer believes for it to work. Left Behind, Turner Diaries and Twilight aren't regularly fun unless you are in their "target audience".

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Gotta be exact in your dislikes. For example, "Russia sucks"? "Russia under Putin is an enemy of humanity" is clearer: the problem is the state, not the (passivised) people. And the state is not just a menace to its people and neighbors: any tyranny hurts us all, and thus must be opposed by all.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A technical question for me to find out about later: if I follow three persons, and they all re-skeet someone's skeet (or whatever the Bluesky words are), will Bluesky show that post to me three times (three distinct re-skeets), or just once (one and the same post)? Both have their sides.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Signs of the times: People complaining they found a song they liked, then found out it was AI, and now they're angry and can't/won't listen to it. This is not compatible with then going on saying all AI stuff is worthless slop. It wasn't, when you didn't know. (Other arguments can still work.)

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Am reading @scalzi.com's When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and... "astronomer and author Bill Fait"? Since astronomer and author Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social exists, I am tickled I noticed this. I shall resist an urge to go all roman à clef on this book, because that way lies madness.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sometimes I just... think. Like, my mind said: I bet you couldn't poison someone who takes all his meals in a group. And answered: duh, that's easy. Choose two meals so he's the only common participant... and a two-part poison. I swear I'm channeling all of this into #writing.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"I am more afraid of people seeing my calculator history than my browser history." (an old mathematicians' saying)

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

All these artists on Bluesky make me want to draw something. I did! I wrote and drew a daily gag webcomic for a year or two, because graduate school. But I never drew anything pretty. The one time I got close to beautiful on a canvas I stopped because I was scared. Man, I will try again, sometime.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Hanging around here on #Bluesky, you catch different memes going around than hanging in (say) vtuber streams. Apparently some magazine opined not knowing a song called Choosin' Texas is a sign of *deliberate* snobbish ignorance. I gather the answer has been, at best, "choose a better example".

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Reposted by penguin-starborn.bsky.social

BaddelZie 🔞 (comms open) @baddelz.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

🍑

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There's way too much culture, even culture you'd like, to consume it all. So you have to be selective, and rapacious, and unashamed, and wasteful, and untidy like Denethor at dinner. Let it dribble down your chin; you won't have time to give everything the attention it deserves.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Used to be people believe in fairies kidnapping their infants and leaving a fairy child in its place. At which point you tortured the child to death trying to get yours back. (In reality? Any mental or physical disability or sickness served as proof of the switch.)

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Finished The Great Hunt in my #WOT re/read. Jordan really wrote (at least) the first two books so the reader could be somewhat satisfied if they didn't sell and there were never any more. Appreciate that.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So nice to sit in a garden swing as the night falls. Except it started to rain and... I guess I'll enjoy this a little longer and see if that stops.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I dislike despair, because most often it is not realistic. Almost all problems can be solved; almost all hardships can be endured until a solution is found. Very few trends actually go down, and less go down forever. Despair is like masturbation: makes you feel accomplished, but creates nothing.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In a democratic society, you have to educate idiots out of being idiots, because they too get to vote. This is why you can't just smile and be polite at Creationists, transphobes and ultracapitalists: their idiocies will ruin lives more than their own if one lets them be comfortable being idiots.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Saw something called "Skingain Plus". Some medicinal thing. Why did they name it like something from a body horror episode of #DoctorWho?

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I wonder how much of politicians coming out with bullshit positions (like US Democrats throwing trans people under the bus licking up transphobe votes, UK Labor thinking racist votes matter, etc.) is based on actual data, and how much just edging towards the enemy, angling for the voters in between.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

One hour into the new @lindsayellis.bsky.social video and I am googling "zootopia abortion comic" for context. Damn but she speaks to my soul. Also, boy are the Finnish cruise lines better than these specimens. I think. I hope. Oh no.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

One side effect of being on #Bluesky is I get second-hand smoke from others' fires. Most often, "this person died and it hurts". Which makes me feel kind of cold and callous, and makes me shut up, when I didn't very much know who they were and start to find the tributes annoying after the tenth.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

#my9games Some were good games, some just influenced me a lot.

A "My 8 Games" grid of my formative games: Super Mario Bros (1), Duck Hunt, Solstice, Faxanadu (NES, as all those before), Duke Nukem 3D (PC, as all after this), Bloodstone, Doom, Commander Keen (6, but any would do), and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"Very cool" is a very generic compliment. You can say it without engaging with the target at all, without saying what is the cool part, the cool approach, the cool surprise or end result. It *is* a compliment; but if you can, if you want to praise, be more specific.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Big companies are amoral, not immoral. They don't want or intend to be evil. They don't care, unless not caring costs them. This is how regulation and public pressure can make them better: by making sure dumping toxic waste on the kindergarten lawn costs them. This probably is the only way.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yesterday evening I thought "Gotta get these three things from the shops tomorrow." Now I only remember two. Aw man.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It is so nice Robert Jordan put a reference to Sean, his anime superfan friend, into #WOT. What, you don't know about Sean-chan?

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Listened to a video at 1.5x speed for a minute, and now I swear the 1x speed is slower than before.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Things that amuse me so much they will definitely end up in something I write: Cowboys. As in, someone sneers at "cowboys", and then a pair of adolescent minotaurs walks in.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Things I find too worn to casually put into any fantasy I write: Wolves as good, noble animals. I'm gonna look up the nastiest habits wolves have and write them entirely about that. Enough with wolf glazing.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Hey Amazon: when you sell Kindle books that have gone through many printing and covers, how about you let us choose the cover we want? My ebook of the Great Hunt has the famously red-headed main character as a skinhead from the TV adaptation. Also hi intern searching for "Amazon Kindle feedback".

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"Didn't get to university? Here's your Plan B." A hideous Finnish ad, where they didn't know "Plan B" has meanings beyond "second choice". They even had "Plan B" capitalized and in English. (I know translating the rest made it worse.) I guess the implication is uni students use protection.

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penguin-starborn.bsky.social @penguin-starborn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A lot of regulatory bills (in the US anyway) have a human name. Because it takes more than worry: it takes a concrete incident, a person, a death, to move people. I think the only way to get new, custom-made #AI regulations with a bite is to wait for something awful, and for someone to die.

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