iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

a man with gray hair and a scarf around his neck

Someday in this life I hope to equal the exquisite vengeance I wrought against Comcast when we cancelled all that garbage service a couple years ago. As I put it to one of their reps on the phone, "No, I've hurt you ... and I'm going to keep on ... hurting you"

media.tenor.com

ALT: a man with gray hair and a scarf around his neck

oh man I used to love Killer Drone Recon when my mom would give me a quarter to play it

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Is the potential threat real? Ten million times yes. Are precautious and countermeasures needed? Twenty million times yes. Is your United States Square Force and are the other services doing some stuff on this? We all sure as hell hope so! But, like, c'mooooon, maaaaaaaan

... the idea that there are Quds Force bois or GRU gorillas or similar bumping around the United States with sophisticated equipment that can hurt Americans or cause damage and they're, like, "testing it out," or "doing recon" -- when each time they operate, they get detected! -- makes no sense

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Even the irresponsible scaremongers don't even take a second to think about their irresponsible scaremongering: if bad men were outside the wire with little bomb drones that could zip over and blow up a B-52 parked on the ramp why ... wouldn't they? You can see the base and the jets on Google Maps

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

💯👇barring additional reporting which so far isn't in evidence. The problem today is that getting control of this hysteria is like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

A spring style suggestion: dress like Peter Rabbit. I wrote something for Mr. Porter about why I think gardening clothes look great. The clothes look better with age and reference a lifestyle that's been considered romantic for centuries. www.mrporter.com/en-us/journa...

Alfie Nickerson in a bright yellow zip-up jacket and blue shorts, along with beaten brown Blundstones. They are carrying flowers and a dog.

Monty Don wearing a weathered French chore coat, blue shirt, and weathered French work pants. He's holding a tool in the garden.

Ashley Edwards wearing a blue sweater, gray neck warmer, and gray beanie. He's sitting in the garden.

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We're mad they're there but we're not mad at *them*

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All the dangerous, violent Georgetown college kids, and GW hospital nurses, and State Department FSOs, and Euro diplomats and other neighborhood corner bois who get off the Metro went back to nodding at our troopers like, "oh hey, still here, huh? Poor guys"

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We didn't have our Natty Guard troopers for a couple of days and I thought to myself, huh, they must have turned all that off when ppl were distracted (not unlike the ICE crackdown in the Twin Cities) but, nope, then we had 'em back again after all. The forgotten montage!

Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

They're there to be in TV quick-cut montages and create the appearance of :: waves arms :: whatever this is ... just like the poor bored Natty Guardsmen who are still in the Metro here in DC or patrolling around yawning their heads off. Government by montage

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Only those of us Understanders of Tactical Matters appreciate that if a bunch of guys are shooting at you, and you are on a special black USASOC motorcycle, the right course of action is to pop a wheelie because then they cannot hit you www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rP4...

youtube.com

The Delta Force (1986) - One Man, One Motorcycle Scene (8/12) | Movieclips

YouTube video by Movieclips

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Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

For those of us who lived thru the “a movie violated OPSEC” wars back in the day, this “maybe a MEU … maybe a brigade of the 82nd?” trial ballooning today is an unusually cray lowlight of a cray cray time

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Cool Bike Art @coolbikeart1.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

The Schoolboy's Dream (riding a bicycle to get genuine meat extract) ca. 1900

Illustration of a schoolboy at a desk with a map of Europe behind him. On the right, a bit murkier, is the same boy riding a bicycle. On the bottom right is a space with a jar and the text: Veritable Extrait de viande Liebig.

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

derek van vliet @derek.bike · 18/03/2026

riding bikes every day until i can’t for some reason, day 2032 #Cycling #Photography

photo of a black Jamis road bike standing next to a wall that is panted turquoise with white trim. towards the left of the photo the wall changes to deep blue. towards the right of the photo the wall changes to pink. there is a blue lamppost on the sidewalk next to the bike

photo of a black Jamis road bike standing at the entrance of a rusty red stone arch with a metal gate on it. at the top of the arch are the words “the castle”. there is a lamp on either side of the arch

photo of a black Jamis road bike standing up against a retaining wall. beyond the retaining wall is a body of bright blue water. on the other side of the body of water are some hotels under a cloudy sky

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Cool Bike Art @coolbikeart1.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

As a photographer for the New York Times Fashion page, Bill Cunningham spent his days riding his bicycle around Manhattan, looking for the next eye-catching trend. Happy #BicycleBirthday, Bill! March 13 (1929-2016)

Photo of Bill Cunningham riding his bicycle on a Manhattan street in 2010.

Photo by Mark Lennihan.

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Andy Clark of the living dead @andycruns.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

I think I may have cracked it

An oil tanker approaches the strait of Hormuz, collects a gold star and passes through while safely invulnerable

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Deathiel Skelly @saffroncomic.com · 12/03/2026

One of the smaller but still important civ-mil crises we face is that a lot of people are told "The US military is the strongest in the world" and hear "The US military is literally invincible"

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

children you must beat the uncanny valley false elmo to death with sticks so that you may gorge yourselves upon his innards

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Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

My daughter was ambivalent about the on-field action but she LOVED the shouting -- seeing the grown-ups model it, doing it, participating in it with others. From the positive, e.g. "GIVE IT A RIIIIIDE" to the standard "COME AAWWWWN" and of course the eternal "YER MISSIN A GREAT BALLGAME, BLUE!"

Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Validated 👇Kid-won library ticket baseball game attender here.

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Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

It sure would 👇And the double tragedy is that even though hindsight may show that the navies of those eras might have wanted the "wrong" ships given how events played out, they might at least have actually built them and have them to put to use today. Instead y'got almost nothing

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"Ooooh," I hear you saying -- what if they put little mines to mine our mine mine mine mines? The only answer is we've got to cut ahead of them with mine mine mine mine mines

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I, for one, am concerned about a gap between our mine mines and the mine mine mines that they'll deploy as a countermeasure. We need mine mine mine mine YESTERDAY

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This is important because *no one* including your United States Navy, can say what its mine countermeasures capabilities truly are right now. The ships and equipment in the region that would have to try to clear any Q Channel and do the other things are untested operationally. Risks & stress = high

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... even as reports about the mine peril appeared to cool somewhat on Tuesday p.m. ET, the question is: could the US and Israel keep up the punishment to such a degree that Tehran pushes the Mine Button? Or is the right answer for the US + Israel to walk this down to try to avoid that?

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Sam LaGrone @samlagrone.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Excellent takeout on the splashy sitch by @samlagrone.bsky.social and colleagues. As this explains, mines qua mines would be a desperation move for the Iranians because it would obstruct the strait for *everyone* including them. But, but, a thousand times but: they've done it before

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Here’s a table setter for what an escort mission would look like. With lots of stuff on mine warfare.

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Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

This woodpecker lives across from my daughter's school. All day, every day, it removes a tiny crumb of bark with its beak. It has hollowed out this knothole so much that the whole bird now can climb inside. I think it's trying to teach us something.

A red-bellied woodpecker prepares to enter the bird cave it has excavated in the bark of a tree

A red-bellied woodpecker climbs into the bird cave it excavated in the truck of a tree

A red-bellied woodpecker emerges from the bird cave it's excavating in the side of a tree with a crumb-sized bite of wood in its beak. Crumb by crumb the bird has widened and deepened a hole big enough for itself

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Reposted by Phil Ewing

Henry @henrythedog.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

oh just a thought if your plan for overthrowing the Iranian government depends on the Iranian public rising up, you likely shouldn't have defunded the American government run news agency that speaks in Farsi.

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What are the downside security risks of a Mega Libya on the Persian Gulf that devolves into civil war/anarchy like a Super Lebanon where people nurse an implacable hatred for their neighbors, Israel and the US for another generation or more? It may be another curse of our times to find out

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... that's what's so baffling -- it would appear that the right time for all this, if these decisions had been taken, was earlier this year when so many protestors and activists were still alive or out of regime dungeons. Can you bomb them loose and bomb them into power somehow? Another test

Does anyone believe that airpower alone can degrade the institutions of power in Iran sufficiently that a Mehdi Mandela could step up and somehow take power and form a new government more palatable to the GCC, Israel and the US? The regime already prolly killed that Mehdi weeks ago in the crackdown

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In our whirlpool of cynicism there is a savage logic that clearly appeals to the WH and supporters about doing a Libya II and not, repeat not, an Iraq or an A'stan -- because what Americans opposed, ultimately, was the messy reconstruction and COIN, not the exciting boomy-shooty. But Iran ≠ Libya

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Since we're being brutally honest let's not stop: The United States (and to a lesser degree, its allies) have had a hand in ruining so many countries in our era, from A'stan to Iraq to Libya to Syria and now Iran, with no real domestic political blowback. Another test now is: maybe that'll change?

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Neither the US nor Israel appear really to be trying to do anything but beat the mullahs about the head and shoulders -- it's not "regime change" but it is regime diminishment ... and if we wind up with a Mega Libya in Iran with no nuclear or regional weapons, they'll prolly call it Iran Good Enough

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The old busted Iran nuke deal was Dems saying to the Israelis, no you can't -- you can't play whack-a-mole at the level of the head shed and do this every couple of years. We need a lasting and durable deal. Israel & Rs opposed it and now they're taking their turn.

The whole thing is a test of whether Israel's time-tested approach of "mowing the lawn," as they used to call it, scales from onesey-twosie local raids in Lebanon or Syria all the way up to the Corporate HQ: take away hostile pers & equipment to buy medium term stability.

Phil Ewing @philewing.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

He was right! I want nothing to do with it. BUT I think this horse is out of the barn for today's edu-Chromebook kids and Cupertino is paddling upstream if it thinks it can bring them back to the good side with this laptop

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These aspects of the way people use tech are fascinating. My number of active browser tabs, for example, is exactly the number that I am using at any given moment. If I finish a thing, I close it. But I sat next to a guy on a flight recently with more Chrome tabs open than I could count & I was all

media.tenor.com

a woman in a plaid shirt is standing in a kitchen with the words " how can you live like this " written above her

ALT: a woman in a plaid shirt is standing in a kitchen with the words " how can you live like this " written above her