iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

When and how did it become a marker of common social capital, in rural areas especially, to claim fealty to Republicans generally and Trump specifically? If we view the MAGA movement not as a shift of motivations and arguments but as a sociological construction, well, I'm not sure how to address it.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Truly, we live in a golden age of sketchy energy drinks. Yet, sadly if predictably, my body does tolerate them well anymore in my middle age. I'm not happy about that, but I would do well to accept it.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The more I hear about AGI, the more I think that I have long been overestimating the magic of human cognition.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

At DragonCon this year, it feels like there's a changing of the guard. A lot of panels that are normally pretty packed are less than half full, where other things almost crash the convention. Time marches on, indeed.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I have this feeling that, from this point in time forward, politics and weather are going to parallel each other: Continually getting more heated, more difficult to predict, and more frequently violent.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I get confused as to how sad I should be when someone past the age of 80 passes. It's great to remember their legacies and celebrate them, and normal to be a bit sad they're not around. But living past 80 is mostly luck, partially genetic and partially circumstantial.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Is Angine de Poitrine just microtonal White Stripes?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

In light of criticisms of Ground News, I'm left wondering what really has happened to the Overton window over my lifetime. I'm guessing that the feeling it has widened equally in both directions or mostly rightward correlates strongly with how you feel about woke 1.0

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Listening to video gaming forums about console price increases is just sad. GTA6 might be be the high water mark before, for all but the richest enthusiasts, the hobby is stunted for years as the world re-sorts itself.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Quiet Tragedy: pulled a gallon of peeled figs out of the freezer to start making chutney, and while simmering I accidentally left a piece of plastic (the closer-zipper to the ziplock bag) in the liquid. I think I'm supposed to throw it the whole batch, even if it didn't necessarily get to boiling.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

It's not *precisely* accurate, but there's a argument that both major American political parties are conservative, they're just aiming to conserve to different points in time. Democrats at this point want to conserve back to the Obama era, and Republicans want to conserve back to before the new deal

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

After the US Supreme Court decisions of the last month, I'm trying to imagine what kind of extremely specific collection of constitutional amendments would have to pass to get the current crop of Justices to grudgingly allow the previous state of affairs to revert without packing the court. Ugh.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

More (very slightly more realistic) for Microsoft's XBox division, similar to my dumb idea a month ago: 1) declare that they're pretty much just going to stick with to the Xbox series X/S machines for the next five years or more, and just announce a series X without the drive. XSXD or something.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Thinking about how over the last year the dollar-for-dollar value for gaming has obviously dropped due to the AI goldrush, I'm wonder how many times that's happened before. The 2020 crypto -mining boom? Did it ever happen before that, or had it really been 40 years of steady technological progress?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I consistently underestimate the number of people who just want everyone who is not substantially like themselves to either hide in the shadows and accept their political and cultural second class status for fear of reprisal, or be removed from discussion one way or another.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Got the perfect idea for Microsoft to get back in the console game: Make a new console that is designed for a $299 price point. The people's console! In an age of AI austerity just forget the high end of the market. The power is whatever that price will afford. Done.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

I'm losing track of all the things in the polycrisis: Cost Disease, aging population, falling birth rates, uncontrolled US national debt, various enshittifications, several surrounding AI, de-dollarification, nuclear proliferation. It's hard to keep track of.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Watching stuff about the theoretical birthrate crisis, and wondering: Has any country tried "Direct income for full-time stay-at-home parents"? I don't mean tax breaks, though you could stack that on top to encourage two family households.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Today I'm fascinated watching psuedo-libertarians high fiving each other over the Trump DOJ's indictment of the SPLC. Has the flavor of "turns out they approve when the government attacks the people they don't happen to like".

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Thinking about a friend's post, I'll admit 've thought sometimes about writing a psuedo-sequel to *Atlas Shrugged*, very roughly inspired by an old LJ post web.archive.org/web/20210419... .

web.archive.org

Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder

I don't know how many of you realize that Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's science fiction classic, is actually only book 1 of a trilogy? Hardly anybody knows this, because she never got around to writing t...

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Just realized the Raspberry Pi 500+ I bought before christmas has doubled in cost since. 100% in five months!

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I kind of want to write a short story of a dude with a gambling addiction who loses way more money than he has through some online gambling app, and through some cross-promotion with a prediction market it auto-creates a betting market for whether he will self-terminate within a month.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

A lot of the mainline Democratic party leadership are convinced that taking uniformly strong positions in favor of trans rights and justice for Gaza would result in permanent electoral suicide in federal elections. Are they out of touch or is there a grain of truth there?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" is just four episodes of Black Mirror in a trenchcoat. Not a complaint.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Visiting Dallas over the weekend, and I must say that the yeehaw is very real indeed.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

The LLM version of AI isn't smart or dumb in any traditional way we think of intelligence. It's more alien than that. It just occurred to me that this means Asimov's laws of robotics won't apply to it. It doesn't consider potential causality or unintended consequences, only the best next word.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

Fun facts from actuarial tables: a person is approximately ten times more likely to die before their first birthday than the year thereafter. A person living to their first birthday increases their life expectancy by half a year; the next half a year of life expectancy only occurs in one's twenties.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

I wish I wasn't overwhelmed by the sense that the next era of mankind will be defined by cynicism, disinformation, corruption, and the collapse of trust. Or, I suppose, the endless Sisyphean fight against those things pervading all.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

I feel inordinately proud that I didn't buy a new guitar this week. I have no place to put it. But heavens it looked cool and affordable

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

I finally successfully made Fig Jelly without solids. Protip: Add more lemon juice than you think you should. I made it with a normal amount of lemon juice (1/4 cup lemon to 3 cups of fig juice and 5 cups sugar) and it didn't set, but adding another 1/4 cup of lemon juice and recooking fixed it.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Cryptocurrency is just pump-and-dump-as-a-service. I get that it's backed by a cryptographic distributed ledger, but the actual value is just the hope you're not the last sucker left holding the bag.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Why is there golf on the screens at the airport?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Ever make a plan several months in the future and think to yourself, "man, I have to survive HOW long? I'm SO tired already"

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Recently acquainted through ACX with the terms "Hellbanning" and the weirder "Heavenbanning". Thinking about it, I doubt if I'm ever "Hellbanned", I just truly don't have thoughts that reasonable people consider worth hearing. And I figure they're probably right.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

I keep spreadsheets on a lot of things, one of which is Steam purchases. Over the last 14 years, I've spent almost exactly $2000 on games on that platform, totaling up 375 games (and a bunch of soundtracks, I always pay a little extra for those when available). I don't know how to feel about that.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I don't think I can play Balatro. It has just enough fun poker math, friendly gambling vibes, loot boxes, card collecting, roguelike challenge, on and on. It's a nesting doll of things designed to addict. Even for a one-time-price I don't think I can play it responsibly.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

I just got a replacement credit card that did not require any action whatsoever to activate, and suddenly I trust the entirety of the banking world less than I did a few minutes ago.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Bluesky follow management rule: any user that follows me that 1) I don't obviously know in real life 2) Doesn't have any posts that aren't reposts 3) Has 3-5 numbers after the initial text part of their name Gets immediately blocked. Honestly, I'm not even sure the second part is necessary.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Related to my last post, I've been a FB user since 2009. About 80% of everyone I know is on there, more if you exclude people old enough to not care. Assuming for a moment that we're not happy with their service, how the heck do we unwind that?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Top features I would love in Bluesky that I don't think are there yet (I think). 1) Private Lists (for personal sorting) 2) Exclusive lists (only visible to people in the lists) 3) The ability to limit posts to lists or just following 4) Calendar/Event integration Any other ideas?

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Steak lunch at home today. Experimental pan sauce consisted of capers, port wine, and caramelized onion reduction. No complaints, would do again if I had the onion reduction on hand.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

I'm annoyed, in multiple ways, by the simple fact that I feel better, think better, and have more energy when I'm slightly hungry. It chafes at my Epicurean nature.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Should be a word for the guilt you feel for giving your close friends a cold.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Lost Whamageddeon hard this year at a weimachtsmarkt in Berlin. Both original and cover versions just to be certain. Merciless.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

It's telling that after a few years of trying different Amaros and Kraüterliquor, I am absolutely unfazed by prescription German mouthwash. Honestly, if you put it in a fancy bottle with a quirky name & retro label Id probably pay 6€ for a shot.

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Don't know about y'all, but between Windows 10 EOL next year and incoming tariffs, new computer buying season is go for me

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Paulie T @pht.bsky.social · 25/11/2023

Welp, bluesky is uncool now since I'm here, you can shut it down when you're ready

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