iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

60 days, which I'm not sure if it's a rolling window or a "since last use" flag. In case it might be the latter, I somewhat actively try to double-tap the more impressive ones so as to not, uh, waste potential time in the future. (It's somewhat academic since I've only done this for a week.)

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

One of the more surreal things I read on LinkedIn was people reporting that it's very hard to keep agents from trying to check stuff in. When the instructions say "don't push", they'll sometimes write a shell script that does the push so that they're "not doing" the thing they're doing.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

The somewhat goofy thing about this story is that Wikipedia is actually just collateral damage here. The agents are trying to use it as a proxy to load stuff that they either couldn't or (maybe) had been told not to access. Or maybe Wikipedia citing lots of things trained in accessing through it.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

I would not be surprised to learn they get (mis?)used to track vehicles they're trying to track for other reasons. The highway ones (which I'm guessing are for speeding?) definitely can be. If it were up to me, they would only be recording when the light they're guarding is red.

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 15h

While I was struggling with protecting my mom's site from the bot swarm I kept asking everyone who is still in the industry how small sites who don't have a kid with a computer science degree survive and the answer was pretty much "they don't" and that's so grim

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A.Ghost Pasquella 👻🎃 @agpasquella.bsky.social · 18h

Privatization = You Pay More

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

A funny thing I've noticed is that, at this point, there are probably more low-point (well, "rare") pioneer words out there than high-point ones. I wish it categorized my playstyle is suffix hunter, since that's what I do, and not "deep diver" rarely-found words, because that's just playing to win.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

Interestingly, according to a car insurance think tank, which is in favor of them, there are only about 2/3 as many red light cameras as there were in 2012, often because they work well enough that the fines can't pay for the lights. (near the bottom of www.iihs.org/research-are... )

iihs.org

Red light running

Information from IIHS-HLDI on red light running and red light cameras

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

Some of that could be improved by lengthening yellow times, which has a smaller safety improvement on its own, and many cars now have an automatic emergency braking system, which could prevent some of the rear-end collisions, too.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 13h

It looks like they work, and they have been known to work for 20 years. Back in 2005, the FHA estimated that it reduced side crashes by 25%, although rear-ending increased by 15%. However, rear-end collisions are safer and less damaging, so it's a win. www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications...

fhwa.dot.gov

Safety Evaluation of Red-Light Cameras–Executive Summary - FHWA-HRT-05-049

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 14h

I assume I'm not going to top this for awhile, given that I mostly rode inflections of the same word to glory. (and one nonstandard spelling) OUTLIER · Day 139 · 893 · 🦅 EAGLE EYES 🟪🟪🟪🟪🟨🟨🟨🟪🟪🟨 🎯 5 words nobody else found · 🦄 3 found by under 1% of players Can you find rarer? playoutlier.com/s/XNSY9M

playoutlier.com

OUTLIER · Day 139

ranamar scored 893 on Day 139. Can you beat them?

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 16h

Also, there *is* that evidence, because the first people to liberate a concentration camp quickly recognized that the waiting horrors needed to be documented with photographic evidence.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

dictatorships are inefficient except if the dictator has perfect information and no mistakes under uncertainty, which never happens of course. except if I were dictator. perhaps even a better dictator than the gods

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 16h

I remember being suspicious of them simply because I read a book about Turkish history that baldly described the Armenian Genocide as "marched them into a desert," but then I just sort of forgot about them and am always surprised the group is still around.

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Sam Bergman @violanorth.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I def don't have all the answers as to why there is such a persistent crisis/lull cycle in US orchestras, but one thing I do know from my 25 years at the high end of that business is that WAY too many execs and board leaders are convinced there is a magic sustainability formula hiding somewhere.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 16h

My one objection here is that I think stoplight cameras are good, actually. Too many people where I am end up running red lights because they tried to catch the end of the yellow when they should have been stopping.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 16h

I only had this picture shared with me, rather than seeing it, but I was impressed.

A black-painted metal pole sticking up has been cut off with a saw around four feet off the ground. The rest of the pole is lying on the ground next to the standing part, with a flock camera on the end of it.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 18h

I knew it was big (because I used to live there), but I had forgotten it was the second biggest and guessed wrong about what the biggest one was. There's also a marine air base which was impossible to forget about because of the daily F/A-18 patrols.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

San Diego is an interesting choice of places he'd be willing to sacrifice, too, given that it's got quite the naval base. (It's not Pearl Harbor, but there's still quite a bit of stuff there.)

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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I think the problem is that for whatever reason, society/the media/whoever have correctly determined we need a way to reintegrate millions of people into society and from that incorrectly determined the way to do so is for the people who were wronged to apologize to the people who wronged them.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

But seriously, while I remember the Iraq war protests, I don't remember any previous president (or even Trump's first term) getting this kind of constant background discontent.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's an unfortunate sign of the times that I find it heartening that there are multiple people who are dedicated to holding signs protesting the Trump administration on arbitrary street corners in the 68th largest city in the US.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

TBH, having grown up with Perquackey, the boggle grid style drives me a little nuts. I *really* want to be able to grab these things and rearrange them. (but also, Perquackey rewards finding a word and riding all of its inflections as far as you can somewhat more than Outlier does)

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's also not like he was really against the idea, and the US was broadly sympathetic to decolonization. Just an incredible missed opportunity.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

personal best so far, at least: OUTLIER · Day 138 · 865 · 🦅 EAGLE EYES 🟪🟦🟦🟪🟪🟨🟦🟪🟨🟪 🎯 6 words nobody else found · 🦄 4 found by under 1% of players Can you find rarer? playoutlier.com/s/Z9RX6A I'm a little surprised by my pioneer word here.

playoutlier.com

OUTLIER · Day 138

ranamar scored 865 on Day 138. Can you beat them?

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I have occasionally suspected that elected positions that last for a fixed term might be worse than elected positions which have a maximum time between elections because some people will draw up the timeline for the next election campaign as soon as the previous one ends.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I feel like "undecided" mostly ends up being undecided whether to vote at all, these days. It can produce some swings that sure *look* like people were persuaded from the other side, though.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Adam Serwer is on here, if you want a sample. (I'd tag him to make him easier to find, but it feels too much like snitch tagging.) I occasionally see posts of his cross my follow feed.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Every fucking time. (Along with the other "every fucking time" about "I didn't think he'd do it the way he said he would.")

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Vituperative Erb @vituperativeerb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If I go to someone’s home and find out they have a mannequin set up that they hit and yell racial slurs at I would probably leave that home, even though neither of us thinks the mannequin is person

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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 05/10/2026

Begging news media to stop making themselves unwitting NPCs in a weird cult's alternate reality game You do not need to breathlessly repeat claims that LLMs will end the world or create utopia with handwavy details or abstract philosophical arguments Ask follow-up questions or hire people who can

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Incidentally, I finally learned about the repeat tax yesterday (fortunately before I had repeated anything more than twice) but now I have to admit that for my higher-scoring finds, I try to hit them twice in quick succession and then figure that they're burned.

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Sort of insane fact about how broken US urban planning is—America now spends more building *just the lights for roads and highways* than on all subways & ground mass transit combined Spending on roadway *pavement* is 18x transit spending

a graph of roadway and mass transit lights

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Secretary of Defense Rock @sodrock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Every single one of these stories is like this and it pisses me off to no end

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Also, it got Quiver Dance, which mostly only appears on bad mons, which I thought was fun.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's possible to turn off (at least for now) by going to about:config and setting "browser.nova.enabled" to false.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm not sure there's anything Roald Dahl wrote that that couldn't be said about.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm also no great shakes at this, given that my infrequently-found words are generally not super rare: OUTLIER · Day 137 · 845 · 🦅 EAGLE EYES 🟪🟦🟪🟦🟪🟪🟪🟪🟦🟦 🎯 2 words nobody else found · 🦄 7 found by under 1% of players Can you find rarer? playoutlier.com/s/HG6CFX

playoutlier.com

OUTLIER · Day 137

ranamar scored 845 on Day 137. Can you beat them?

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Sorry that's why I kept pointing out it's not just material conditions. The richest man on earth is busy vomiting up fascist talking points. It's not because he lacks wealth! There is a psychic wage he was not being paid and it broke him.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I also think it's interesting that the competitions along these days these days are cybernetic chess: A program predicts how various lines of play might go, and then a human decides which one to follow.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Every time I learn about that time period, I'm left with a thought that we should have just made a deal with Ho Chi Minh. It was possible! But the window when it might have been done was small, and US views of foreign policy made it hard to justify at the time.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Which 1970 book are you referencing here?

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 05/10/2026

feels like at least part of what is happening is that a lot of people want politics to solve the "my life feels empty" problem and the populist right is directly appealing to them

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I do think this should put some of the hand-wringing over the uniquely sinful American electorate, uniquely feckless institutions, etc in perspective. The truth is that there is a large trans-national constituency of people who actively want this. They aren’t deceived. They want this.

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Meanwhile, yesterday I filled half my board with variants on boron: "borane", "borides", etc. (but they're all only "epic")

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'm coming around on this idea, but there's that crippling fear that it'll just make something up, especially when there's no answer where I'd expect it to be, so I don't know if there's a result at all. (This is especially bad with computer games, even when it's sometimes right.)

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Ranamar @ranamar.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

That's good to hear! I've clearly gotten too cynical on this topic, and I appreciate the correction.

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