iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 3h

Also it makes cocoa powder a lot darker, via different chemistry entirely

Samples of cocoa powder: high-pH stuff looks very nearly black, there are two intermediate colors of dark brown, and a medium red-brown of the familiar cocoa color is at the low-pH end of the scale

This effect is also familiar from Hydrox/Oreo type cookies, which use alkalized cocoa and are darker than most baked goods

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 14h

This kind of smart, sustainable, mixed-use trogloditism is illegal to build in most cities

Orange tree growing up from a meter-wide built-in plant pot at the junction of several tunnels toward a skylight, vaulted arches built of light brown hard pan and walls of tan earth, looking out on a courtyard with a stairway up to ground level

Forestiere underground gardens, an architectural marvel in Fresno whose example the city would have been wise to replicate en masse but alas it takes too long to build such a thing

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 16h

Just above you on the timeline was a review of a show where two of the characters do a karate by singing a tune I agree it’s a good movie

Catbus shares his letterboxd 5 star review of Kung Fu Hustle, calling it the greatest Looney Tunes homage of all time

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Ten thousand of them, shipped Not the easiest type to use, but people are motivated and can make do with mediocre design and build quality

A Temu paper cutter costing $9.73

Sized for A4 paper, with a reasonably sturdy steel blade

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

You’ve been doing alright As a privileged white But I’ll have a blue Blue blue blue Texas

Elvis Presley on stage during his ’68 comeback special, copyright NBC
He’s wearing leathers and rapt fans are visible behind him

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Union shown in this statue (more formally known as Columbia) stomped the Confederacy, talks a lot, and has made us strong in the past, although she currently has some health problems

Statue of Columbia, personifying the US in a statue titled The Call to Arms memorializing the non-traitor dead of the US Civil War, in Troy, NY

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(personification)

020

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

There’s also a lot of nerve tissue and neurotransmitter activity in the gut Fuck everything, we’re doing five brains

Article from The Onion: “Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades” from back before razor companies actually sold five-bladed razors

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

They also do heavy equipment which might stick in one’s memory despite everything

Excavator boom painted orange and labeled via white stenciled paint with its manufacturer’s name, Hitachi

In place of a digging bucket, a cobalt blue and mars black earth shaking attachment, driven by pulsing hydraulic fluid that would otherwise have actuated the thumb, has been installed

This attachment is used to really pound whatever spot the operator chooses, as part of the overall operation of filling holes

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Will history know precisely, or will we have to guess based on statistics?

A peanut butter and marshmallow-spread sandwich

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Fuel rods have been a thing for a while, that glowing thing is represents a Zr tube full of pellets, not Pu metal The Simpsons writing staff have trended way more scholarly than a typical show, there was a theorem published in conjunction with the Globetrotters Futurama episode

Diagram of a commercial reactor’s fuel assembly with 16 rods in a square array, held by fixtures top and center
They’re colored Cherenkov teal instead of the Simpsons artists’ choice of fluorescent yellow, in practice they cause other substances to glow rather than doing so themselves , unless something has gone horribly wrong
Inset: rods are composed of tubes full of uranium fuel pellets, each only a little longer than the diameter of the tube

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We already have a Death Star in Livermore, it’s just built for introspection rather than conquest, so it looks inside-out

National Ignition Facility implosion test chamber, where 196 beamlines of MOPA laser converge to deliver megajoules of energy onto a small central target over the course of a few tens of nanoseconds

Some of the beamlines have been retrofit for chirped pulse operation, which consumes some of the total energy budget but allows delivery of a significant portion within a femtosecond time frame

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I would absolutely have precisely the same job as now (way-up-stack microchip enabler) if this were a cyberpunk dystopia, but then again…

Still of Geoffrey Rush from Pirates of the Caribbean but his outfit has been edited to give more Tron and he’s been pasted in front of more of a Blade Runner background

“YOU BEST START BELIEVING IN CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIAS,”
he says,
“YOU'RE IN ONE”

090

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It’s a playable but very simple first-person shooter

Screenshot of the video game Descent showing cockpit displays in the bottom quarter of the screen, showing a level 1 laser and 5 concussion missiles. The craft is traveling through a torn steel bulkhead toward a stone-walled room, with diffused light panels in the walls and ceiling. A green reticle shows where the player is aiming; non-combatants in blue space suits have their hands up, waiting for rescue.

020

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Quine said so regarding the honestly basically homologous project of the Library of Babel, yup

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Quine's reduction

W. V. O. Quine notes that the Library of Babel is finite, and that any text that does not fit in a single book can be reconstructed by finding a second book with the continuation. The size of
the alphabet can be reduced by using Morse code even though it makes the books more verbose; the size of the books can also be reduced by splitting each into multiple volumes and discarding the duplicates. Writes Quine,
"The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash.
Persistent repetition and alternation of the two are sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Sneaky hands though, I see why one might miss them

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The really good stuff for chelation is like LA’s Totally Awesome and Barkeeper’s Friend There’s an all-natural herbal equivalent to that latter, though: oxalis Might even improve your math skills: eat enough and you’ll practically piss calculus

Yellow flowers with three-lobed leaves, commonly called “sour grass” on account of the tart flavor of oxalic acid

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Moda Center rent-a-cops when they see her sign

Guy in a pink button-up shirt and glasses saying “I have decided that I want to die.”

I don’t mean to threaten anyone; rather, the choice laid out by David Lynch was either to fix one’s heart regarding bigotry towards trans people, or to die, and Moda security goons were definitely not choosing the former

050

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Could we just run this type of process in reverse please?

Classic Alex Norris Webcomicname: Different

Panel 1 shows a pink low-detail human figure in a room with a vase full of flowers on a table and some shelves full of crockery, saying “I want things to be different”

Panel 2 shows the same person swinging a bat: fragments of car and coffee mug, a broken table leg and flowers are flying through the air

Panel 3 shows the room full of broken furniture and crockery and other debris; the pink figure says “oh no”

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Really satisfying how the legs go on One of the most useful things I have made

Rex Krueger cricket stool plans showing how the legs slot into dadoes in the aprons

He also has an easy video on it, I built mine off of that so its dimensions are different than shown, really only important to keep the feet a little wider than the top if possible

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

If they have access to a dictionary and happen to see the first definition listed they’ll probably think a minute and then be like “I wouldn’t have used that word exactly but yeah, it fits”

Dictionary entry:

cartel /kär-těl'/
noun
1. A combination of independent business organizations formed to regulate production, pricing, and marketing of goods by the members.

020

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Privet drinking? Dude could have just bought some pepto bismol

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article about privet:

Chinese privet is used in traditional herbal medicine. The decoction of privet leaves or bark helps to treat diarrhea, stomach ulcers, chronic bowel problems, chapped lips, sore mouths and throats, and a wash for skin problems. Privet leaves and bark have bitter properties that make a useful tea for improving appetite and digestion in chemotherapy patients.Kuding is a Chinese tea made from either a Ligustrum or Ilex species.
Some species produce a fruit, which is mildly toxic to humans. Symptoms from eating privet fruit include nausea, headache, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, low blood pressure, and low body temperature. At least some privet species are known to be toxic to horses.

020

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Shades in the D&D sense maybe?

From the 5e System Resource Document:

Shade
Medium undead, chaotic evil
Armor Class 12
Hit Points 16 (3d8 + 3)
Speed 40 ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
6 (-2) 14 (+2) 13 (+1) 6 (-2) 10 (+0) 8 (-1)
Damage Vulnerabilities: radiant
Damage Resistances: acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities: necrotic, poison
Condition Immunities exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
Challenge ½ (100 XP)

SRD entry continues (actions omitted):
ABOUT
Some dark magics, such as powerful necromantic rituals, expel the animating spirit from a creature's body. When the body of such a creature dies without its spirit, the spirit is unable to rest and becomes a shade. Shades are made of an ephemeral blackness and resemble a strange shadow of the body they were torn from, with exaggerated and disproportionate features.
Unable to comprehend their loss, shades will wander the planes looking for a new body to be laid to rest with.
Hungry Guests. Shades are unaware of their state of being, but have an instinctive drive to seek out a physical body to anchor to. Unable to possess or inhabit new bodies, shades will attempt to meld with willing hosts, turning their host's body into the same shadow material that constitutes the shade's form.
Shades that have existed for extended periods of time may be seen shifting between the forms of different creatures they have melded with, each new bond further distorting the shade's image.

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

So many potentially accurate readings of this

Except from the Merriam-Webster entry for “game”:
“3 b : an illegal or shady scheme or maneuver: RACKET
4 a (1) : animals under pursuit or taken in
hunting
especially: wild animals hunted for sport or tood
(2) : the flesh of game animals
b : a target or object especially of ridicule or attack → often used in the phrase fair game”

000

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Indiana Jones’s feeling:

Screenshot from Last Crusade:
Exit wound and bullet hole in the back of a German uniform with a swastika arm bands attached
Desert ground and a stony cliff wall in the background; a similarly-uniformed soldier stands in line with this one

The bullet the hero fired has passed through both of these soldiers and into their comrade off screen to the right, illustrating mid-century German engineering practice’s excessive focus on improving numbers at the expense of functionality

000

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Kinda funny how the quiz frame conflates ML and LLMs Fucking suspicious how it leaves no room for “people are being deceptive about this, and the deception will have horrific negative effects” bambamramfan.github.io

2-axis test result showing my estimated opinion on AI; somewhat more than neutral regarding the technology’s importance, mid-low valence regarding whether it is for the better or harmful:

“YOU ARE...
The Skeptic
patron saint: Ed Zitron
It's oversold, it's losing staggering amounts of money, and the harms are arriving faster than the value. You've done the math on the unit economics and it doesn't close. You are loud about this, prolific about this, and you suspect history will vindicate you.”

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Viva la Piece of Resistance

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

You didn’t hear this from me, ok?

Ice T in some Dick Wolf copaganda:

“Kids are calling it ‘proplifting’”

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

[Hanna-Barbera marketing team, with the head of character design struggling to listen to them politely] Shut up and Dripple, you say?

Dripple Dog, son of Droopy

White dog with black nose and ears and a tan muzzle, and big jowls

He has a yellow and green T-shirt and a ginger bushy surfer hairdo, and his dad’s slack look of faux sorrow has been slightly tweaked to look impish

a character designed to update and extend the Droopy property as part of the Tom & Jerry Kids revamp effort during the same general trend that spawned Muppet Babies and suchlike

000

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Looks like they’ve turned over the helm of the ship of state to Punxutawney Phil

Still from Groundhog Day

Main character is attempting to escape a time loop via vehicular self-harm

He has placed a groundhog at the wheel, letting the creature “drive” during a crash he intends to be lethal to them both

010

Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

You are unlike a little baby

iOS bar showing that I have 752 texts, 124 telephone calls, 708 Outlook items, and 38 Teams notifications

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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

This, except one might replace “fungal” with “rhizomatic”, “name of God” with “schwerpunkt”, “mushroom” with “organizer”, and “decay” with “liberation”