iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Between Schmitt confusing the Hawks for the Hawkeyes and Denny Hoskins messing up redistricting because of paperwork, we are in a genuine Golden Era of Missouri Republicans looking like absolute morons on the national stage.

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Individual Choices Won’t Fix America’s Public Schools

I don't always agree with JCK, but this is a thoughtful engagement with Nikole Hannah-Jones' recent essay — its feelings and its arguments, what it seems ready to give up and what it shouldn't. www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

newyorker.com

Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to a struggling local school and has come to regret it. But personalizing the problem is the wrong approach.

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Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think.

I think humanities classes that relied on writing as a diagnostic tool can and should pivot to other modes or hybrids. But I don't think that means writing matters less — I think it just means we've been misunderstanding where writing instruction takes place. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...

nytimes.com

If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 29/09/2026

As a reaction against Breaking Bad being named #1 show by the NYT, MAD MEN partisans on twitter are going full-on Bad Fan and posting clips of Roger and Don and Pete being BADASSES! It's a trending topic.

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Norway has solution to this actually, stay at home parents can get their share of the public daycare subsidy as cash, that way parents are not pushed one way or the other. the problem of course is virtually no one on the center or right actually gives a shit about parents

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The way I imagine this working is that it's like when Chris Kattan played Antonio Banderas on SNL, and he'd say he was thinking about taking his shirt off, and Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz would scream, "NO! NO! PLEASE! NO! TOO SEXY! TOO SEXY!"

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Would you love to become a vinyl record collector, but everything from the culture to the community to the physical experience to the very concept of record collecting disgusts you? Claude has a solution!

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Liz Meriwether erasure on a grand scale.

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I like Andre Drummond a lot, but my advice to you is this: believe in yourself the way that national NBA media believe in Andre Drummond's ability to capably replace Mitchell Robinson on the Knicks.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

the cornell case has me thinking about christine blasey ford and how she so bravely testified in 2018 about how future supreme court justice brett kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. i'm thinking about what i wrote at the time and how nothing has changed:

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I cannot overestimate how auspicious an omen it is for Philadelphia that LeBron has chosen this year to go fully bald for the first time.

lebron in a press conference in a sixers jersey, holding a microphone, FULLY BALD

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Whenever you see a pollster or consultant give a take like this, it’s always worth following the money. In this case, Emanuel has paid Anzalone’s firm nearly $300k (maybe more but that’s what I found so far). A consultant class is devouring the Dem Party www.elections.il.gov/CampaignDisc...

John Anzalone &
@JohnAnzo
X.com
Underestimate @RahmEmanuel at your own risk.
He knows how to win. He knows how to fight.
And he knows how to message.
And no one will out work him. Regardless of whether he wins the Democratic nomination in 2028 he will make an impact on the race. You can be sure of that. Don't take your eyes off of him. At the minimum, learn from him.
Rahm Emanuel Makes His 2026 Play
Rahm Emanuel Makes His 2026 Play
From nytimes.com
6:47 AM • 9/26/26 • 274K Views

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Like LeBron James, I am in my early forties, I'm from the Ohio Valley, I am balding, I am rooting for the Sixers, and I am coming to the end of my career as a professional basketball player.

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Tricia Lockwood @tricialockwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

all literature is stink lines coming off the alphabet

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Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 27/09/2026

"Obama tried to freeze Fox out" is a complete lie and it's incredible that Jake Tapper feels the need to both-sides this

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Return of the Cmonmacques @cmonmaque.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My patience has paid off

Return of the Cmonma... @cmon...
• 4mo
I'm waiting for the next news scoop that shows John Fetterman once again being a big dumb asshole

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What Some Folks Really Mean When They Claim to Have Never Seen AMC's 2010 One-Season Throwback Conspiracy Thriller RUBICON Starring James Badge Dale

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Of the top of my head, there are at least a dozen WNBA players who would be average or better SNL hosts. I'm just waiting to see that "Studbudz / Zara Larsson" index card announcement tweet.

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Justin Carter @gigawattconduit.blacksky.app · 27/09/2026

I will avenge you, Andor... I will save you, Star Wars Rebels...I will kill you, Skywalker Saga!

kid from the Northman rowing while uttering his mantra

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Adzes @adzes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This reads like sponsored content

So, maybe “I’ve never heard of ‘Choosin’ Texas’” is not quite the flex that some think it is. Instead of claiming ignorance of the song on social media, why not try a swift Google search instead. It just might open your algorithm — and also your mind.

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Whenever I accidentally pop over into Threads, my feed is just a bunch of psychics freaking each other out. "I just woke up — something feels off, anybody else picking this up?" "omg me too!"

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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

a lot of discourse on here about what politicians should to to win fails to grapple with the fact that the median swing voter is floridly insane

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BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL AKA PRESIDENT FOOTBALL @edsbs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

you know who ended Mad Men absolutely on top?

Roger Sterling in Paris with Marie Calvet in the Mad Men finale

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Quick note to say that the other site is just about getting ready to do another "is TV art?" fight, so if you wanna party like it's 2011 again, log back in and catch the wave!

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

whoa whoa whoa whoa — I completely missed this!

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Reposted by Phillip Maciak

(me, next in line to be interviewed after you, spaghetti bolognese spilling out of every pocket of my cargo pants) he's right you look like an asshole

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Gabriel Roth @gabrielroth.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Hats off to the NYT list for excluding BOARDWALK EMPIRE, a show that is bad.

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It’s understandable that the TV list doesn’t include LONG STORY SHORT, the animated novelistic family comedy now streaming on Netflix, because most people haven’t seen it and as a result have no idea how perfect and wonderful it is www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/a...

nytimes.com

Review: ‘Long Story Short’ Does Time Travel, Family Style (Published 2025)

The makers of “Bojack Horseman” return with a human and humane comedy about the power of memory.

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Judy Berman @judyberman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The other list ain't so bad, but I do love my weird lil baby

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This is a terrific short thread.

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I do think this is basically right, even among viewers who are not full-on, "love the smell of napalm" Bad Fans™️. Breaking Bad is so beloved, not despite but because of the space it allows for the whooping and hollering. The Wire and The Americans both suffer in the rankings for that reason.

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James Poniewozik @poniewozik.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ok, I'll further add: - The Americans actually does what everyone *says* Breaking Bad does - The Crown is the only thing that feels truly out of place - FNL is underrated because it feels too good to watch; people take it less seriously because of FEELS - US and UK Office swap places

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Reposted by Phillip Maciak

My rule is, if you say something should be on a best-of list, you have to take something off. So what I’d add, just for starters: Adventure Time, Transparent, Les Revenants, The Good Fight What I’d take off, just for starters: House of Cards, Dexter, The Crown (I said it), The Queen’s Gambit

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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 24/09/2026

pretty much every conversation here is about mitigating the devastation from losing international students It’s not just students who can’t get visas—international applications are way down across the board It’s a generational self own—deliberately killing a (literally) world-renowned industry

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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it."

Patti Harrison from I think you should leave

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elias isquith @eliasisquith.blog · 25/09/2026

this is someone totally winging it, let's be real lol

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My daughters' school loves to send out elliptical emails in the middle of the day that say things like, "As you may know, an incident has occurred. It has been resolved."

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The Danes character should write a profile of RFK Jr in season 2.

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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Working on a review of a show whose screeners I binged through two weeks ago and realizing I remember essentially nothing about it. Is that good or bad?

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Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.

And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.

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Emily Nussbaum @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's nuts. I think both SLOW HORSES and THE DIPLOMAT are excellent shows, but the special sauce that makes them pop is that they're on at the same time every year. Imagine if we were all eagerly awaiting s3 of BLACK DOVES instead of surprised it wasn't a limited series rn.

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Reposted by Phillip Maciak

I have my usual cranky opinions about that TV list — and ALL LISTS — but several shows shouldn't be on it at all (Queens Gambit, Baby Reindeer) & it feels like it's going to be missing a bunch of key series, especially The Good Fight, Evil and High Maintenance... plus Bojack should be higher up

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