iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Remember: no paint job is complete until the mini is based and the rim of the base is painted. #paintingwarhammer #lvo #miniaturepainting

A middle aged man making a fool out of himself in front of a full-size storm cast eternal figure.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The last time I ran regularly was 2018-2019. The high point was an early morning (~5 am) run on a vacation in Paris. I'd dropped my weight to about 220 (30 heavier than I am now) and had been doing functional training long enough to have good endurance.

A sweaty, somewhat chunky bald white guy with pale arms stands in front of notre Dame cathedral in paris.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

AKK - obvs the book above is not the one - the photo didn't go through for some reason. Weird.

Photo of semi-legible autograph on book showing that it's for reference and may have been lifted from the Montifiore Medical Library but statute of limitations is probably up so I think Dad's fine.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

And that, folks, is why we have a copy of Head Injury From Antiquity to the Present with Special Reference to Penetrating Head Wounds that has been autographed by Rush Limbaugh.

Small photo of autographed copy of The Way Things Ought to Be, by Rush Limbaugh.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This is relevant because she was faced one day with the a USO event that featured someone she disliked. Quite a bit, in fact, because she viewed this person as being, in part, responsible for our presence in Iraq. And her eyes hit one of the books.

Old book open to title page, which reads: "Head Injury From Antiquity to the Present with Special Reference to Penetrating Head Wounds"

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Occasionally, the Pacific Ocean lives up to its name. 19 Sept 2026 Fujifilm Xt5, 23mm (35 mm equiv.) at f/2

The Pacific Ocean, living up to its name. Calm, flat blue water under a deep blue sky, with a line of clouds near the horizon.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

OK. So I asked Gemini Pro if what it does is "reasoning." Then I asked it for its chain of thought. Then I asked it this. (Claude Opus produces something generally similar.)

Did you just show me your actual chain of thought, or something you recreated from scratch that may or may not duplicate it?

You caught the illusion perfectly. I recreated it from scratch.

I do not have a retrievable "log" or a literal internal monologue that I can pull up and show you. When you asked for my chain of thought, I did not look backward to analyze the steps I took, because there were no steps to look at—just a massive, instantaneous matrix multiplication that resulted in the previous text.

Instead, I took your new prompt ("Can I see your chain-of-thought..."), looked at the text I had just generated, and computed a post-hoc rationalization. I generated a narrative that reverse-engineered the output into a logical, human-readable blueprint.

It was an entirely new text generation predicting what a structural breakdown of that argument should look like.

This is actually a perfect real-time example of the exact phenomenon we were just discussing:

You saw an analytical breakdown and naturally assumed it was a transparent look at a sequential reasoning process.

I was simply doing what I always do: predicting the most statistically likely words to satisfy the prompt. In this case, predicting the syntax of "introspection."

This is why dealing with LLMs can be so disorienting. I can generate a flawless description of a reasoning process without ever having engaged in it. I don't know why I generated the previous response; I only know how to convincingly explain why a human might have.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I'm going to skip over most of the statement of facts. It's a recitation of various varieties of nut, and I have work tomorrow. But I will say that Footnote 9 is a very bad thing to do to an unsuspecting federal judge. Akiva, that was a bad thing to do, and you should feel bad. Literally LOL.

9 Because Neptunerise was referenced in the Complaint, the Court can and should view the 7-minute film for itself; the
description in the Cohen Declaration is submitted for the Court’s convenience.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The problem that WOTC faces is that a lot of what makes the complaint frivolous - specifically, all the times that WOTC published wereshark stuff, some of before this dude was out of diapers, is really hard to get in on a motion to dismiss. Because 12(b)(6) motions are decided on the complaint.

First, linear time. Dungeons & Dragons (“D&D”) first published its own wereshark concept
in 1983, more than 30 years before Plaintiff even conceived of the Chan Wereshark.4 Though the
Court cannot consider facts beyond the pleadings on this motion, and therefore the specific details of
that timeline are addressed only in Wizards’ Rule 11 motion, Plaintiff’s Complaint includes facts
making D&D’s prior incorporation of weresharks clear: the Tribality website page Plaintiff complains
of was published in 2015, the year before Chan claims to have come up with the Chan Wereshark.
Additionally, Plaintiff’s allegations suffer from an equally fundamental problem: none of the
allegedly infringing publications identified by Plaintiff were made by Wizards: 5esrd.com and
tribality.com are third-party websites that contain homebrew5 and third-party creations for D&D
alongside official Wizards content. Similarly, both The Pirate Campaign Compendium and Pathfinder are
published by entirely different companies in the tabletop role-playing game space, Legendary Games
and Paizo. Finally, as to substance, Plaintiff has not plausibly alleged either access or the requisite
similarity to render a copyright claim plausible.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

And, honestly, there's another reason to put that paragraph where it was. It's a good paragraph. It's a great paragraph. It's a paragraph you want the judge to read. And there is a slight chance that the judge stops reading at this next paragraph because OH MY FREAKING GOD.

Plaintiff alleges that Wizards infringed his copyright in the Chan Wereshark in four
publications: (1) in the Fifth Edition of The Pirate Campaign Compendium, a “pirate manual”; (2) on the
Tribality website, describing a wereshark with “electrosensitivity”; (3) in a Pathfinder manual
describing weresharks as dealing bludgeoning damage; and (4) on the 5esrd.com website, describing
weresharks as resistant to necrotic damage. Complaint at 3-4. According to Plaintiff, Wizards must
have been able to copy his Chan Wereshark by virtue of someone hearing him shout details of the
Chan Wereshark out his open window in 2016. Complaint at 4. Plaintiff contends it is “highly
Case 1:26-cv-04680-AT-RFT Document 15 Filed 08/25/26 Page 5 of 20
3
unlikely” that anyone but him could have created the idea. Id. As detailed below, there are obvious,
extensive, and insuperable problems with Plaintiff’s claims.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

OK. I mentioned this before, won't belabor it, but this paragraph is art. I would wager a not-inconsiderable sum that Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Augustine, and Lon Chaney have never been cited in a single paragraph before. (And hopefully never will again.)

Plaintiff has sued Wizards for $10M because he believes he created and exclusively owns the
idea for a “wereshark” and that Wizards has infringed upon his creation. By way of relevant
background, lycanthropic monsters – werewolves and the like – have been found in folklore and
fiction since antiquity. Hundreds of years before the Common Era, Herodotus wrote of the Neuri, a
tribe northeast of Scythia that would reportedly transform into wolves for several days once a year.
Herodotus, The Histories, 4.105 (circa 440 BCE). Werewolves continued to appear in folklore from
antiquity through modern times, and across a wide range of cultures. See, e.g., Pausanias, Description of
Greece, 8.2 (circa 160-180 CE); Ovid, The Metamorphoses, I 219-239 (circa 8 CE); Pliny the Elder,
Natural History, VIII.34 (circa 77 CE); Augustine, The City of God, XVIII.17 (circa 426 CE); King
Canute, Ecclesiastical Ordinances, c. 26 (circa 1020 CE); Anonymous, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign (circa
late 1100s) (Slavic folklore); Marie de France, Bisclavret (circa 1200); Völsungasaga, ch. 8 (circa 1250
CE) (Nordic folklore). Bram Stoker depicted Dracula as a werewolf in Dracula’s Guest. Werewolves
1 Plaintiff Lap-Sun Chan named “Dungeons and Dragons Wizards of the Coast LLC” as the Defendant, but Dungeons
and Dragons is a game published and owned by Wizards of the Coast, LLC, not a distinct entity.
2 See Chan v. Ramdhaney, Case No. 1:22-cv-03708 (S.D.N.Y 2022) 3 See Eng v. Podolnick, No. 1:14-cv-04675 (S.D.N.Y 2014) (dismissed for failure to comply with order requiring Plaintiff to
“file an amended complaint not containing the stricken portions or any other racist, anti-Semitic, or insulting language”).

came to the silver screen first in Werewolf of London (1935) and then Lon Chaney’s definitive
performance in The Wolf Man (1941), and have essentially never left it since. And animal
shapeshifting has not been limited to wolves. Greek mythology is replete with humans (or humanshaped gods) who transform into animals or monsters. In Tlingit folklore, Kóoshdaa are wereotters. Celtic mythology includes selkies (were-seals) and kelpies (shape-shifting water-horses that
live in lochs). DC Comics has featured numerous shark-human hybrids since its Silver Age,
including Guppy (a small-time criminal in Nightwing’s rogues’ gallery, first appearance in 2018),
King Shark (the son of a shark god and a human mother, first appearance in 1994), and Karshon (a
mutated shark, first appearance in Green Lantern 24, October 1963). Other examples abound.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Preliminary statement is good - starts with "yeah, judge, there's this and there's the Rule 11 because this guy is fifty pounds of batshit in a five-pound, spring-loaded can." And - fun procedural note here for civpro geeks: Fed R Civ P 11(c)(2) specifies that a R11 motion MUST be filed separately.

As discussed in Defendant’s separate motion for Rule 11 sanctions, Plaintiff, who also goes
by the name Kenneth Eng, is a serial frivolous litigant who has had more than two dozen cases
dismissed under both names, including, for example, for suing a doctor for $1,000,000 because he
thought the staff was rude,
2 and larding a complaint with vile racist slurs and antisemitic language.
3
Plaintiff’s Complaint against Wizards is par for the course.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The table of contents is interesting. And short. One of the risks here is that you will draw a judge who will push awful cases past motions to dismiss. Shouldn't happen here, but always a risk. My eyebrows raised a bit at the 17 exhibits to the MTD, but gotta - GOTTA - take the shot.

Table of Contents
Contents
I. PRELIMINARY STATEMENT...........................................................................................................1
II. STATEMENT OF FACTS ....................................................................................................................3
III. ARGUMENT ...........................................................................................................................................8
A. The Applicable Standard Does Not Require the Court to Accept as True Plaintiff’s
Implausible Allegations, and the Complaint Should be Dismissed for Failure to State a Claim.......8
B. Plaintiff Fails to Plausibly Allege Copyright Infringement ............................................................8
IV. CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................................16

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

OK, I will go for one brief bit of the complaint. But literally ONLY because several people unrelated to the case, including my old high school classmate (and the DM of the first AD&D campaign I ever played in) @johnannese.bsky.social assure me I must watch the video.

In January 2019, I registered a more complete document, which outlined the entire world of the wereshark. Exhibit E shows the copyright registration. If the court were to request the document from the Copyright Office, they will see that it describes the wereshark in detail once more. In 2021, I finally managed to acquire steady employment, and I was able to film a short film. In October 2021, I filmed Wereshark: Neptunerise, a short film about my wereshark monster. I published it on January 12, 2022, where it remains today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJJreoPuSx4).

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

OK - Coming attractions time. I found this wonderful paragraph in a federal court filing (specifically, in a motion to dismiss). It's one of the most amazing string cites (kinda) I've seen. The full case is amazing; I'll do a litigation disaster tourism thread tomorrow.

Hundreds of years before the Common Era, Herodotus wrote of the Neuri, a
tribe northeast of Scythia that would reportedly transform into wolves for several days once a year.
Herodotus, The Histories, 4.105 (circa 440 BCE). Werewolves continued to appear in folklore from
antiquity through modern times, and across a wide range of cultures. See, e.g., Pausanias, Description of
Greece, 8.2 (circa 160-180 CE); Ovid, The Metamorphoses, I 219-239 (circa 8 CE); Pliny the Elder,
Natural History, VIII.34 (circa 77 CE); Augustine, The City of God, XVIII.17 (circa 426 CE); King
Canute, Ecclesiastical Ordinances, c. 26 (circa 1020 CE); Anonymous, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign (circa
late 1100s) (Slavic folklore); Marie de France, Bisclavret (circa 1200); Völsungasaga, ch. 8 (circa 1250
CE) (Nordic folklore). Bram Stoker depicted Dracula as a werewolf in Dracula’s Guest. Werewolves

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is going in my teaching file for when I talk about AI and law, because it's perfect. Claude figured out (from prior context) who I meant and (in material beyond the screenshot) did a decent job giving an extended search summary, with source links provided. But look at the screenshot.

Me: "What did Landell have to say about science of law."

Claude: Langdell (two Ls, two Ds) said remarkably little about it. The whole reputation rests on a handful of sentences across three sources, which is part of why the meaning is still contested.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The QT had everything to do with it; here's how it showed up:

Michael Paulauski♨️
@mike10010100.com
· 4h

Made over 50 replies yesterday

Replies over 20 times per day on average

Bluesky Elder
In rebuttal to that rebuttal:

You don't know how many have successfully passed muster without issue.

As AI use becomes more common, it's only natural that lazy/bad uses would also explode.

survivorship bias plane
ALT

Kathryn Tewson
@kathryntewson.bsky.social
· 5h

Replies over 20 times per day on average

Bluesky Elder
In rebuttal to “legal? ai is getting there” I offer www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinatio...
AI Hallucination Cases Database – Damien Charlotin
The most comprehensive database of AI hallucination cases in law: legal decisions from courts worldwide, searchable by country, party, AI tool, and outcome. Updated daily.
www.damiencharlotin.com

View full thread

Liz
@ilisabat.bsky.social
· 2h
Replied to
Meredith Rose

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Not what Claude says based on the summary I found for it:

It isn't generative AI. This is the same category error from my original answer, and it's the whole ballgame. SwagBot is navigation and sensing. The Digital FarmHand is a modular tool carrier. Ripper does supervised computer-vision classification to tell broccoli from weeds — the page quotes the workflow as clicking some data and training it up, which is a description of labeled-example supervised learning, the opposite of a generative model. There is not one generative model in the entire piece.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Going to give myself a lazy Saturday. Just need to make sure I remember which mug is which. #40k #paintingwarhammer #nerdlings

A tabletop miniature painting station featuring an organized paint rack with 80+ bottles, ceramic mugs, painted Warhammer figurines, painting tools, and work supplies on a kitchen table.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Hanging at the FLGS, working on my final unit for LGO doubles.

Miniature painting workspace: a hand holds a wooden painting handle with a small blue-and-grey armored miniature mounted on its magnetic top, in front of a wall-mounted paint rack holding dozens of small paint pots, with a coffee cup, a collapsible blue water bowl, a wet palette, and a fine paintbrush visible on the desk.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Just went to buy @gilduran.com's "The Nerd Reich" on Google Books, and discovered that the enshittification is so thorough that it's not safe to do so - I was very close to buying one that's actually AI slop with an identical title and author name. This is utterly insane.

A screenshot of deceptively marketed books on Google books.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Some of my first shots, playing around with the Fujifilm. Cropped them, but haven't messed with them otherwise:

Southwest 737 on approach to Runway 8L at HNL. Wetlands at Hickam AFB in the foreground, Waianae range in the background, beautiful blue sky with small scattered white clouds.

Surfboards of various sizes and colors, some in bags, lined up and chained in place. Duke's Lane, Waikiki

Swimmers emerge from the ocean and run toward the finish line of the Duke's 1-Mile Ocean Swim, Saturday 22 Aug 2026, Waikiki Beach

Cat, with nose in sharp focus and rest blurred by shallow (f1.4) depth of field.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

And it gave me questions - but not the ones I think are the most important. So let's give it another shot: OK. To be fair, law is at least as much art as science, and different practitioners would produce different lists. But if I was grading this in a class with a B+ curve, it's a B-, tops.

What information do you need to provide an answer, and/or what questions do you want answered? Present me with the five most important, ranked 1-5, with 1 the most important.

Thought for 25s
Thought for 25s
Ranked by how much each answer moves the outcome, not by how likely you are to have a helpful answer:

1. What did the defendant actually do that touches Washington?
Not "what harm did my client suffer in Washington" — what conduct did the defendant direct at the state. Sales or shipments into Washington, a website with Washington-specific features or terms, contracts with Washington counterparties, employees or contractors there, servers, marketing, travel, negotiations. I need the raw conduct, including conduct you think is too thin to count, because Briskin and Freeman have made some formerly weak facts (forum-specific privacy disclosures, contracting with a forum-based vendor under forum choice-of-law terms) carry real weight. Also tell me what the defendant did not do, since a clean record of no forum-directed conduct is the fastest route to a Walden answer.

2. What is the cause of action?
Two branches turn on this. Federal versus state determines whether Rule 4(k)(2) is available as a fallback — and if the Washington contacts are thin but the nationwide U.S. contacts are not, 4(k)(2) may be the real theory rather than the backup. Tort versus contract determines whether the first prong runs through purposeful direction (Calder/express aiming) or purposeful availment. IP claims in particular sit on the more plaintiff-favorable side of that line in the Ninth Circuit.

3. Is there a contract, forum-selection clause, arbitration clause, or Washington business registration?
Any of these can moot the entire minimum-contacts analysis. Cheap to check, dispositive if present. Registration is the softer one — Mallory revived consent-by-registration, but whether Washington's registration statute effects consent to general jurisdiction is not settled, so a registration answer opens an argument rather than closing the question.

4. Entity or natural person — and is there an intermediary whose contacts you'd want attributed?
For an entity: form, place of incorporation, principal place of business, any U.S. subsidiary, affiliate, distributor, or agent. Attribution theories (agency, alter ego, ratification) are often the only path when the Quebec entity itself has no direct contacts, and they're pleaded badly when raised late. For a natural person: whether he or she is ever physically in Washington, which puts Burnham tag jurisdiction on the table — unglamorous but effective.

5. Where are the assets, and what relief are you after?
Money judgment against a defendant with no U.S. assets means Quebec recognition under CCQ art. 3168 is the whole ballgame, and that argues for building the record around jurisdictional bases Quebec's mirror principle will accept rather than the most expansive theory W.D. Wash. would tolerate. Injunctive relief, or a defendant with U.S. assets, points the other direction — take the broadest theory available.

One I left off but would want next: your posture. Are you filing and anticipating a 12(b)(2), or responding to one already filed? If the latter, the existing record and whether jurisdictional discovery is still available constrain the analysis more than any doctrinal point above.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

OK. This is what we get with Opus 5 (high effort), using @kathryntewson.bsky.social's question, and with Claude somewhat tailored. It's a better answer, at least superficially. I haven't checked the cases yet, but based on recent experience they probably exist and touch on the question.

Does a Federal court in the Western District of Washington have jurisdiction over a specific named defendant in Quebec?

Searched the web · 1 note
Searched the web · 1 note
Short answer: nothing about Quebec domicile as such answers the question. A Quebec defendant is treated as a nonresident like any other, and W.D. Wash. has personal jurisdiction only if the standard minimum-contacts analysis is satisfied — with a few wrinkles that matter more for foreign defendants than domestic ones.

The chain of analysis

Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(A) borrows Washington's long-arm reach. RCW 4.28.185 has been construed to extend to the full limits of federal due process (Shute v. Carnival Cruise Lines, 113 Wn.2d 763 (1989)), so the statutory step collapses into the constitutional one.

General jurisdiction is effectively off the table. Post-Daimler, a corporation is "at home" where incorporated and where its principal place of business sits; an individual, at domicile (Goodyear). A Quebec-domiciled defendant will not be at home in Washington absent the Perkins exceptional case. Don't burn briefing on this.

Specific jurisdiction runs through the Ninth Circuit's three-part test: purposeful availment (contract) or purposeful direction (tort), claim arising out of or relating to those contacts, and reasonableness — with the burden shifting to the defendant on the third prong once the first two are met.

The pressure points for a foreign defendant:

Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014), forecloses jurisdiction built on the plaintiff's Washington residence plus the defendant's knowledge of it. The contacts must be with Washington itself.
Ford, 592 U.S. 351 (2021), loosens the causation requirement in the second prong — "relate to" is not "arise from" — but the Ninth Circuit has emphasized it isn't unlimited.
For internet-based conduct, Herbal Brands v. Photoplaza, 72 F.4th 1085 (9th Cir. 2023), and the en banc decision in Briskin v. Shopify, 135 F.4th 739 (9th Cir. 2025), have moved the express-aiming inquiry meaningfully toward plaintiffs — Briskin rejected a requirement that the defendant differentially target the forum. And the panel decision in Freeman v. 3Commas Technologies OÜ (9th Cir., Mar. 2, 2026), reversed a dismissal of a data-breach class action against an Estonian company for lack of personal jurisdiction, crediting factors like contracting with a forum-based service provider under forum choice-of-law terms, forum-specific privacy disclosures on the website, and demonstrated knowledge of forum users. If your Quebec defendant operates online, that line of cases is where the fight will be.
Privacy Matters
Changeflow
Pure stream of commerce still fails. Yamashita v. LG Chem, 62 F.4th 496 (9th Cir. 2023) — out of D. Haw. — declined to find jurisdiction where the component maker's product reached the forum through third parties.

Rule 4(k)(2) is the fallback worth remembering. If the claim arises under federal law and the defendant is not subject to jurisdiction in any state's courts of general jurisdiction, contacts with the United States as a whole suffice, and …

Two downstream problems that should shape strategy now

Service. Canada is a Hague Service Convention party; Quebec's central authority requires French documents. Canada has not objected to Article 10, so postal service may be available (Water Splash v. Menon, 581 U.S. 271 (2017)) — but using it can create recognition problems later.

Enforcement. This is the one most U.S. practitioners underweight. Quebec applies a mirror principle: under CCQ arts. 3155 and 3164–3168, a Quebec court asked to recognize a U.S. judgment independently assesses whether the foreign court had jurisdiction under Quebec's own rules. Article 3168 enumerates a narrow set of bases for personal actions of a patrimonial nature, and Quebec courts read it restrictively. A judgment resting on aggressive express-aiming or 4(k)(2) contacts-with-the-nation reasoning can be jurisdictionally sound in W.D. Wash. and worthless in Montreal. If the defendant has no U.S. assets, that's dispositive of the practical value of the suit.

Also: Canada is not a party to the Hague Evidence Convention, so discovery runs through letters rogatory to the Quebec Superior Court — slow, and Quebec courts trim broad U.S.-style requests.

What are the defendant's actual Washington contacts, and is the claim federal or state-law? Those two facts determine which of the above frameworks is even in play.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Sign of our times. Erie County Fair, NY, 2017. Samsung Galaxy S8.

A photograph of two novelty signs hanging side-by-side in clear plastic packaging on a white retail slat wall.

Left sign: A light-colored sign featuring a retro 1950s-style illustration of a man and woman laughing hysterically, with the man holding a black handgun. Large red text beside them reads, "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS".

Right sign: A rustic-style sign depicting a distressed American flag shaped like the contiguous United States. A bald eagle in mid-flight is featured in the foreground. White text on the sign reads "AMERICA" across the center and "THE LAND OF THE FREE" along the bottom edge.

Both signs have small white price tags in their upper right corners.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

From that page - see the bit I highlighted. And, for your convenience, here's the list, from page 19 of Pub 501, of the relatives who don't have to live with you. Note that the first entry on that list is "child."

A qualifying relative must meet general rules for dependents and pass these tests:

Not a qualifying child: Isn't your qualifying child or the qualifying child of any other taxpayer
Member of household or relationship: Lives with you all year as a member of your household or is a specific type of relative
Gross income: Has gross income under $5,050
Support: Gets more than half their financial support from you
See the full rules for a qualifying relative

Relatives who don’t have to live with you. A
person related to you in any of the following
ways doesn’t have to live with you all year as a
member of your household to meet this test.
• Your child, stepchild, or foster child, or a
descendant of any of them (for example,
your grandchild). (A legally adopted child is
considered your child.)
• Your brother, sister, half brother, half sister,
stepbrother, or stepsister.
• Your father, mother, grandparent, or other
direct ancestor, but not foster parent.
• Your stepfather or stepmother.
• A son or daughter of your brother or sister.
• A son or daughter of your half brother or
half sister.
• A brother or sister of your father or mother.
• Your son-in-law, daughter-in-law, father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law,
or sister-in-law.
Any of these relationships that were established
by marriage aren’t ended by death or divorce

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Some weeb apparently out on a Sunday still being angry about a sex pest losing a lawsuit seven years ago. Meanwhile, I've finished a PhD, got a job out of the deal so cool the NY Times wrote an article about it, settled down in Honolulu, and am literally chilling here rn.

An airplane on a taxiway beside a turquoise lagoon, framed by hanging tree branches. Rocky breakwater and metal fencing line the left shore. Green beach vegetation fills the foreground, with gentle waves visible in the lagoon and sandy beach. Clear blue sky above, with a distant horizon. The scene appears to be taken from beneath overhanging trees.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Chilling here for the next several hours while my wife does a little swim down to Pipeline and back.

Waimea Bay beach park, with a tree and bench in the foreground, and the east side of the bay, including the church tower, in sight

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

These two pictures were generated using the same model, same seed. The only difference was that one was prompted with "give me a cat" and the other was prompted with "give me a cat" - and "a cat give me" gives an even more obviously different result.

Two almost, but not quite, identical pictures of a cat.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Where it really gets fun is this one - because I prompted the AI with "starting from the original photo, reimagine it as you see fit, disregarding all intervening iterations and instructions" - but it pretty clearly did not actually disregard the intermediate steps.

AI remix of an original picture, with a photorealistic result.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

And how about this version? Which by this point has involved, I can assure you, much more creative thought, choice, and time than I invested in the original. (One run to add a watercolor pencil effect, one to pop the ocean colors and mute the sand, one to smooth out the sand, one adding foam.)

AI-edited photo, with a watercolor appearance, and a number of effects.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

So there's a principled reason why I should have copyright in the photo here, but not the watercolor-appearing version?

A photo of a lifeguard surfboard on a beach, looking out over the ocean.

A photo of a lifeguard surfboard on a beach, looking out over the ocean that has been converted to a watercolor-type appearance using the nano banana AI model.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

There are tasteful ways to geek your wardrobe, Kel. I wore this to work last Thursday.

Reyn Spooner Hawaii shirt with Gundam theme.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Gotta love the bullies here who deactivate quotes. Actually, maybe "love" isn't the word I'm looking for.

Screenshot of a Bluesky post from account "Electrichead (The Agony)" (@electricheadpt2.cryptoan...). The post bears labels "Al Hater" and "Rude." The post text reads: "Same question but for you, bigot. Why does your face look like that? Did you get in some kind of industrial accident?" Posted at 5:43 AM on July 5, 2026.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Current status: I still don't believe I can do this on my lunch break.

A massive monkeypod tree with an expansive umbrella-shaped canopy shades hundreds of people seated on folding chairs beneath and around it during an outdoor gathering. Historic Hawaiian government buildings with classical stone architecture are visible in the background, flanked by royal palms. A truck branded "Royal Hawaiian Band" is parked to the left. The scene is set on manicured green lawn at what appears to be Iolani Palace grounds in Honolulu, with clear blue sky overhead.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

There was a time in my life when I was sharp enough to not do this to myself while moving furniture.

Photo looking down jeans-clad legs to the floor. A person is standing in the corner behind furniture blocking his exit

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I'm pretty happy with this guy - and 9 more should be done tomorrow. I'm going to have to put the orks down once the new rules (and points) drop, though - these guys won't be what I bring to Doubles at LVO in a few months. #paintingwarhammer #warhammercommunity #minipainting #40k #Warhammer40k

A painted Warhammer 40,000 Ork Boy miniature held between two paint-stained fingers above a hobby desk. The Ork is posed aggressively, raising a slugga (pistol) in its right hand while holding a choppa in its left. The figure has green skin, glowing red eyes, prominent tusks, and wears dark grey spiked shoulder armor, a brown leather belt with an orange buckle, and dark trousers. The base is an unpainted cork or MDF square. Paint pots are blurred in the background.

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

It's not hard to spot the tips of the old tattoo near the bottom. And hard to understand how leaving them could have been anything other than a deliberate choice - covering them would not have substantially changed the new art.

New tattoo, with bone from former nazi tattoo visible

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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Horus Heresy Weekender, February, 2017. First night, there was an opportunity to playtest what ultimately became the Adeptus Titanicus ruleset. Only they didn't have any 8mm scale miniatures - so the playtest ran using 28mm titans instead. #horusheresy #warhammercommunity

A large-scale Warhammer tabletop gaming event set up in a hotel conference room or function suite, with blue ambient lighting in the ceiling. A man wearing a dark red polo shirt, glasses, and a lanyard gestures across a large burlap gaming mat that serves as the battlefield. Arranged across the mat are several large Titan war engine miniatures — likely Warhammer 40,000 or Horus Heresy Titans, including what appear to be Warhounds and at least one larger Titan class — interspersed with blocky gothic-styled terrain pieces representing city buildings. A group of around a dozen participants and spectators, most wearing black shirts, mill about in the background of the hotel space. Red upholstered seating is visible to the right.

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