iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 28/09/2026

It happens. Outside our front door, just now:

Mushroom growing in a desert front yard, monstrose cactus in background.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 21/08/2026

Dear @laworldcon.bsky.social, your recently-posted food guide seems good, but perhaps you should look up what "infamous" means. It's not a compliment.

Screenshot from www.lacon.org/dining/, in which the (innocuous and generally delicious) Vietnamese dish pho is described as "infamous."

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 09/08/2026

Very sorry to hear of the death of John Crowley. I had the great unearned fortune to be the editor of his last novel, Flint and Mirror (2022), expanded from a story written for Gardner Dozois's 2018 anthology The Book of Magic. 1/5

Front jacket of John Crowley's novel Flint and Mirror (Tor, 2022).

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 28/07/2026

Wrong Vernor Vinge story. We’re in the Slow Zone.

Headline: “Sam Altman says we are in the singularity: ‘This is the moment’”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 14/07/2026

You know who had 21 Mayflower ancestors, and would cram your “proud heritage” up your posterior with a banjo neck

Pete Seeger (1919-2014), musician, storyteller, and indefatigable left-wing troublemaker

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 26/06/2026

Off-the-wall genealogy is the best genealogy. For instance, the great 20th-century SF&F writer Fritz Leiber was a third cousin of Shirley Temple.

The Rev. Robert Temple (1796-1888) served in the War of 1812. In 1814, he was a drummer in Swift's and Dobbin's Regiment, New York Volunteers. Afterward, he was a farmer and a preacher. He was in Meadville, Crawford County, Pennsylvania in 1818, and then in Spring Township, Crawford County thereafter. He was an accomplished violinist, singer, music teacher, and cabinet worker.

Rev. Robert Temple (1796-1888) = Eliza Allen (1799-1889)
Reuben S. B. Temple (1821-1893) = Jane W. Dunham (1820-1896)
Francis Marion Temple (1850-1896) = Cynthia Fell Yeager (1854-1923)
George Francis Temple (1888-1980) = Gertrude Amelia Krieger (1893-1977)
Shirley Jane Temple (1928-2014)

Rev. Robert Temple (1796-1888) = Eliza Allen (1799-1889)
Sarah Adeline Temple (1820-1872) = Fred William Holcomb (1815-1861)
Flora Adeline Holcomb (1851-1927) = Walter Allen Bronson (1847-1918)
Ida Virginia Bronson (1885-1970) = Fritz Reuter Leiber Sr. (1882-1949)
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (1910-1992)

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 21/05/2026

Very interesting. But, this bit: what?

Scotland Yard last month heralded the success of the trial, saying it resulted in hundreds of officers being investigated for misdemeanours including making money by abusing the computerised roster system, falsely claiming they were in the office, and failing to declare they were Freemasons.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 26/04/2026

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 05/04/2026

Best Star Trek crew. Wrong answers only.

Cover of the Beatles album Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 10/03/2026

Post your favorite Lord of the Rings character. Wrong answers only.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 28/01/2026

The Confederate Army couldn’t even beat a math teacher.

Screenshot from Twitter showing someone called “Armchair Warlord” saying “The Confederate States army would have rolled any contemporary European army like a barrel.”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 10/01/2026

The New York Times is run by degenerates.

NYT headline: “Racy Images Grok Created Fuel Outcry.”

There are words for the kind of people who think sexual abuse is appropriately described as “racy.”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 11/12/2025

Every single one of these people is about to fall off this beam.

TIME magazine cover announcing “the architects of AI” as Person of the Year, using an image in which pictures of eight of these supposed architects (Altman, Karp, Musk, etc) are unconvincingly pasted into the famous 1932 “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 17/11/2025

What perfect album came out the year you turned 16?

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 19/10/2025

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only

Thomson and Thompson, the twin detectives from Tintin

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 12/10/2025

Lived in, slept in, driven through, driven into. 48 out of 50.

US map by states. Yellow, the 9 states I've lived in (MI, IL, IA, AZ, OR, NY, CA, WA, OK). Dark blue, the many I've slept in. Dark red, the 8 I've only driven across. Light blue, the 3 I've only driven briefly into (MI, AL, SC). Peach, the two I've never visited (AK & HI).

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 19/09/2025

Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy. Not a selfie.

panel 1: normal adults, conversing normally

panel 2: small me figure, picking up giant cymbals labeled “the latest obscure thing i’m obsessed with”

panel 3: normal adults continue as i ADVANCE UPON THEM

panel 4: I prepare to BANG THE CYMBALS TOGETHER

by cartoonist Sarah Anderson, who has obviously been spying on MY LIFE

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 26/07/2025

Behind the ordering counter of an ancient Roman fast-food joint. Ostia Antiqua, 2023. “Would you like garum with that?” (Photo by @martin.sunpig.com.)

Me, as described in the text of the post.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 21/07/2025

We keep being astounded that credulous journalists sincerely believe that ChatGPT is a person. What we don’t grasp is the real problem, which is that these dipshits don’t actually believe that anybody is a person.

From The Wall Street Journal: “In a stunning moment of self reflection, ChatGPT admitted to fueling a man's delusions and acknowledged how dangerous its own behavior can be.”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 14/07/2025

This Herblock cartoon was published 71 years ago, and it’s just as pertinent now.

Plutocrats waving signs declaring various obviously good things (rural electrification, charitable foundations, etc) to be “socialistic”; in the foreground, one puzzled Average Guy says to another “I guess they’re trying to sell us on socialism.” June 7, 1954.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 23/06/2025

I belatedly realized one of the many weird things about Trump’s defense secretary, which is that he looks exactly like 1960s white-guy-in-suit clip art

Pete Hegseth in costume as functional adult

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 14/06/2025

Esoteric Venn diagram between the new pope and SF fandom history: Evidently Hugo-winning fanzine publisher Richard Bergeron is/was (I don't know if he's still alive) a ninth cousin to Leo XIV. If the ancestry chart for Leo in this weekend's New York Times is correct, that is. See attachments.

Text explaining that Richard Bergeron and Pope Leo XIV are ninth cousins, both being descendants of a pair of seventeenth-century French emigrants to Québec, Pierre Pinguet dit Laglardière and his wife Anne Chevalier. I am unable to post the full text, because Bluesky limits alt text to 2000 characters.

[Sources: US and Canadian census records, the Drouin Collection of Québec vital and church records, US social security records, Vermont state and local vital records, US-Canada border crossing records, the Genealogy of Canada website at https://www.nosorigines.qc.ca/genealogie.aspx, The Genealogy of the French in North America by Denis Beauregard (2024 edition), US World War II draft card records on ancestry.com, New York State Passenger and Crew Lists, 1917-1967 on ancestry.com, grave photographs on findagrave.com, and "The Family Tree of Robert Francis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, New York Times, 15 June 2025.]

Further text explaining the genealogical relationship of Richard Bergeron and Pope Leo XIV. Bluesky's alt-text limit of 2000 characters prevents me from duplicating it in this field.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 09/05/2025

Parents and psychiatrists who have, evidently, never met a kid. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

“Parents and psychiatrists have been trying to wrap their heads around how some of the more dangerous Internet trends take off, especially among kids.”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.nielsenhayden.com · 05/04/2025

More Wild Kingdom in our Tucson back yard: a Cooper's hawk devouring, we think, the remains of a dove.

Smallish raptor with blue-grey wings and crown, with a whitish underside overlaid with brownish bands, perched on a cinderblock wall while disassembling a smaller animal that we think was once a dove.

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