iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 28/09/2026

A common refrain in Colorado is how all the transplants are “turning the place into California”. I give you the list of nutty ballot initiatives the right wing has placed on the ballot this cycle:

List of a dozen ballot initiatives, all but two of which are opposed by the Democratic Party.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/09/2026

Apparently I got crushed by my interlocutor’s overpowering logic.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 18/09/2026

The only effect of the appeal was reducing the tax bill. The board had already voted to hand him the money no matter what.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

There have been plenty of studies trying to draw boundaries on what triggers this psychoanalysis. A rock: no. A rock with googly eyes: getting there. A rock with googly eyes that jiggles towards other rocks with googly eyes: totally.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/09/2026

Ground beef prices:

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 15/09/2026

That paper's entire definition of "consciousness". There's nothing there to rebut. The whole paper is hand-waving.

We, the authors of this paper, do not precisely know what consciousness is. We, humans, do not know it precisely. However, we know that some animals, at least humans, can be characterised as "conscious", and we know some of the conditions that can clearly distinguish nonconscious objects (e.g., a stone) from conscious objects. These conditions include, for example, the feeling of separation from space (which extends beyond the ability to avoid obstacles and walls), sensory perception, intentionality, thinking in mental images, self-referentiality, and
having a self-concept (Farthing, 1992, pp. 24-44; Tyler, 2020).

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 09/09/2026

I really like Wikipedia's choice to illustrate (large) countries using orthographic projections of the globe, with the highlighted area centered to minimize distortion. (So much so that I actually wrote an absurdly complex tool to create impractically-detailed versions of these. Long story.)

Orthographic projection of the globe highlighting China.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 09/09/2026

The strangest building is Manhattan is 33 Thomas Street. It’s a data center. The only complaints locals have about it are that Brutalism is ugly architecture. (Like AI data centers, there are very legitimate concerns about what it’s used for; longtime conspiracy theories are that NSA hosts there.)

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 07/09/2026

It’s great that the UN has officially endorsed a canonical map projection, but please spare me your “we were stuck with Mercator because colonialism”. It’s the new projection that was tweaked to death to reflect politics, not the Mercator. Coming up with good parameters is hard!

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 03/09/2026

Wry high minded to admit you were wrong. A more thoughtful person might reflect on your choice to lash out instead of listen, but you are who you are.

Baltch @baltch.bsky.social • 2d
→ Replied to you
Rob, so taking about ignorance since you don't even understand that no company in the US HAS to name #LakeOntario anything other than what they want to name it.
If Apple etc does the same, you're right and I'll definitely not buy an iPhone. If I'm right, this change will not happen.
2

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 02/09/2026

My public service of trying to educate loud morons can only go so far.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 02/09/2026

Am I going to go back to every thread where I pointed out that Google just automatically picked up GNIS changes (for US users) and Apple would shortly do the same, and a crowd of morons assured me I didn’t know what I was talking about? Probably not. Okay…maybe.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 01/09/2026

Tonight’s entertainment, in honor of the late great Tim Curry.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 31/08/2026

Yep. A company that normally gets 15,000 installs a week is desperate to make a splash against competitors with hundreds of millions of users.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 31/08/2026

The "debate me, you coward!" vibes are very funny on a site with a nuclear block.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/08/2026

It seems like you read neither the article nor the pull quote at the top of the thread, nor anything I’ve written.

about Al: The industry keeps telling us how transformative the technology will be, but we haven't gotten anything positive from it yet. It's

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/08/2026

Not a strawman. A real perspective, endorsed by people who don't see anything wrong with "minutes" becoming a ridiculous weapon available only to bureaucrats with nothing better to do. Recording decisions matters. Editorializing discussion is a toxic behavior that should be stamped out.

thegeekgene *)
Jan 4, 2025
Follow Someone at an old job asked why I wanted to write
up the meeting minutes for our team and I said
'i wanna control the narrative' and they were like 'what' and I pointed out that no one was gonna
remember what we said in six months and so my interpretation of the meeting would dictate the
assumed reality of what happened "none of you ever send corrections when I offer the
draft so y'all have consented to my version"
"we don't read that shit" "you must trust me implicitly to create our shared
reality that's so sweet" That's how several coworkers decided I was a supervillain and how | learned several coworkers
didn't understand record keeping as like a
CONCEPT
...

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 27/08/2026

"Meeting minutes" are widely misunderstood. Official meeting minutes are *not* supposed to summarize discussion; they're just supposed to list motions, votes, etc. See Robert's Rules (12th) 48:2 For more "casual" meetings, minutes are mainly about recording the agenda, decisions, and action items.

48:2 Content of the Minutes. In an ordinary society, the minutes should contain mainly a record of what was done at the meeting, not what was said by the members. The minutes must never reflect the secretary's opinion, favorable or otherwise, on
anything said or done.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 25/08/2026

Although, going back to the post that started the thread…”historic cities”? Embarrassing.

พง
R Jack
2 hours ago
Don't go to Europe. It's crowded, expensive and overrated. Give me a beach in America any day, and great seafood.
Reply 185 Share
IntrepidJasper!
2 hours ago
We have it all. waes Tropical, tundra, beaches, mountains, desert, historic cities, the Grand Canyon. Yellowstone.
Reply 140 Share
...
•••

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 24/08/2026

Some time soon the way you'll know you're talking to a human instead of an AI is that they don't humor you.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 21/08/2026

The sad, uncultured Americans don't even realize there's a new season of Ludwig...

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 21/08/2026

I guess I need to change my starting word now.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 21/08/2026

So...maybe time to get off Facebook for a while. My BlueSky arguments don't make me quite so angry.

Funny how you're not able to cite your sources. That's neither the text of the proposition nor the proposed statute amendment, the former of which defines "participant's sex as determined by certain aspects of their biological reproductive system" and the latter of which explicitly defines the terms "Female" means a person whose biological reproductive system is organized around the production of ova. Female includes a woman and a girl." and ""Male" means a person whose biological reproductive system is organized around the production of
sperm. Male includes a man and a boy." This is a proposition about checking kids' genitals, a practice that was deemed both scientifically invalid and personally demeaning by *real* women's sports organizations decades ago. You know nothing about
biology, nor do you care. We all see you, bro, cosplaying in your silly hat. We know you didn't
suddenly take an interest in the competitive integrity of tween girls' sports. What you want is to make trans kids as isolate and excluded as possible because you truly believe, in your sad unreflective lizard brain, that making
these kids as miserable as possible will someone stop them from existing.
It won't, although perhaps it will drive a few more of them to suicide. I sincerely hope you never have trans kids of your own, because you will be the number one reason they hate themselves and their lives. Abusive
parents are a problem and you're one of them.
"Protecting kids" my ass.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/08/2026

“Independent verification”. There is a difference between the Sokal affair and simply falsifying the data in a published paper.

In a statement posted to the organization's website, Median Strategies said the fabricated results were intended to examine
"how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification."

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 18/08/2026

On Bluesky I tend to argue with (sports-hating) lefties about trans athletes in elite women’s sport. So I just want to put on the record that on my local Facebook political pages I’m consistent in my contempt for transphobes trying to make vulnerable kids’ lives miserable.

Rob Shearer • 3d
Voting "yes" means asking strangers to inspect your daughters' genitals. To "fix" a problem that doesn't actually exist. It's pure hate-mongering and bullying of our most vulnerable kids.
Reply
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20
⑦
Jeremy Garst. 6h. & Author
Rob Shearer are you that dense? You really think that is how this would be done? by inspecting genitals. the fact your mind goes there is scary. Biology is on the birth certificate and medical documentation.
Reply
⑦
Rob Shearer • 5h
Jeremy Garst You haven't even read the proposition you support.
Eligibility will not be based on birth certificates or modern understanding of "biology". It will be based on examination of "reproductive anatomy".
Reply
仁

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/08/2026

I’m not saying this guy was head of the CDC…but “random people” he was/is not. The backlash against academia (and liberal-arts “experts” in general) didn’t come from nowhere.

I am a Research Associate at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at
Penn, a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute, and a member of UNESCO's Ethics Task Force. Before coming to Penn I was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice at the Harvard School of Public Health, and for seven years served as Assistant Director of the U.K.'s Nuffield Council on Bioethics in London.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/08/2026

I really enjoyed this puzzle, via Veritassium (which doesn't appear to be on BlueSky):

THE PHILOSOPHER'S COUP
Five philosophers sit on a ruling council, ranked 1 to 5. Rank 1 is the
philosopher king (the most powerful). Rank 5 is the least.
It's time to pick a new council. Here's how it works:
• Philosopher 5 (the lowest-ranked) proposes a new council.
Any size, any people, any order. • The current council votes. Majority wins. If it passes, that's
the new council. If it fails, Philosopher 5 is removed and Philosopher 4
proposes instead. This continues until something passes.
The philosophers are ruthless, and their priorities are fixed: Being on the new council above everything else. They'll never
vote for a proposal that excludes them.
• Given they're on it, they want the highest rank possible.
• Given equal rank, they prefer a smaller council. What should Philosopher 5 propose to guarantee becoming the new
philosopher king?

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 16/08/2026

There is something I find very alien in Trump's glee at depictions of himself with hypermasculine bodies. The lack of shame in his fantasy world is deeply disconcerting.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 15/08/2026

This misses the entire point and lets the WNBA off the hook: *real* women’s sports leagues/federations are clear and transparent about their rules. The WNBA is instead acting like a political project, and can’t bear to admit that they need to draw a line—*somewhere*—on trans athletes.

Of course, Freedom and White didn't consider the possibility that the WNBA could require them to do what every other NCAA, olympic, or professional transgender athletes had gone through to play prior to the bans: namely, chemical castration or undergoing gender reassignment surgery (i.e. physical castration plus vaginoplasty). They seemed to assume that transgender athletes could just declare themselves one day and play the next.
Somehow, it's doubtful either would be willing to socially transition and emasculate themselves for a WNBA rookie contract — but that was never the point.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 11/08/2026

A week of Iran in the headlines of Semafor, which is the platonic ideal of news media claiming to be centrist while shamelessly fawning over power. Ben Smith & co are not idiots. They're pretending to be this credulous for fear Trumpists will get mad if they call bullshit. "Journalism."

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 30/07/2026

The thing is, I *didn’t* actually love Sinners—I had it third on my (theoretical) ballot. But anyone who says the writing was *bad* (as opposed to “not for them”) objectively doesn’t know anything about screenwriting. v.cx/2026/03/oscars

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/07/2026

Everybody has digital scales, tubes of home-mixed preworkout powders, and a vortexer in their kitchen, right? (But seriously: a vortexer is a *great* way to take powders that suspend instead of dissolve, like creatine.)

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 19/07/2026

Clearly I need to touch up the Sharpie on the vials explaining what they are. Because that will assure any cop that they’re innocuous.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/07/2026

Imagine the outrage from lefties if five percent of any popular movie were sexist or copaganda or just generally dismissive of everything other than making white middle-aged people feel validated…

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 05/07/2026

I have seen the Red Arrows performing shows, not just flybys, at multiple village festivals (and the Dartmouth Regatta is considers a village festival, despite Dartmouth being a town of 5000). Your expert claim that they only do air shows is bullshit. Take the L.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 01/07/2026

When given no other choice, 75% of Dem primary voters proclaim “I guess whoever this Rob guy is?”

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 24/06/2026

They tend to think they can make everyone as afraid of Mamdani as they did of Ilhan Omar, and Pelosi before her. Which is…a little. But Mamdani is more like AOC, meaning a LOT more charismatic and media-savvy than anyone on their side of the aisle.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 17/06/2026

@altwatcher.bsky.social It’s bouncing the rubble at this point, but the National Parks Service handles the reflecting pool, right? And yet our huge network of department insiders seem to get all their knowledge of what’s going on from tourist pics on Instagram.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 15/06/2026

Finally reading @quinnslobodian.com’s Muskism. Interesting so far, but major penalty points for one of my longstanding gripes: “waterfall” was not a real methodology. It was *always* a straw man. An author who accepts the “agile” marketing pitch as fact is an author who doesn’t do their homework.

dated from the dot-com years. In the 1990s, the growth of the internet had helped foster a new approach to writing code. In the conventional model of software development, sometimes known as "Waterfall," management dictated a plan that progressed through a series of stages, from design to execution. The 1990s saw the rise of a different style, which came to be known as "Agile." Programmers took the power back from managers

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 12/06/2026

That’s right, Park County Democratic primary voters. I’m your only option.

Primary ballot reading “County Coroner (Vote for One)” with the only choice “Rob Shearer”

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 10/06/2026

I climbed a mountain yesterday. I hurt my finger doing it. Your congratulations and concerns will now be accepted via social media.

Mt Sherman peak; 14,043' above sea level.

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Rob Shearer @r.v.cx · 04/06/2026

SO CLOSE to getting this from the library...

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