iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I would like to think that my weekly emails to petition the Onion to renew "In the Know with Clifford Banes" has made this moment possible, but I've only recently learned that my MCI Mail email address stopped working in 2003.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Yeah, it was a missed opportunity to call it Soopur Doopur Brane.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Because of (federal sales tax), we are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars (from people who for years have said that they oppose taxes of all forms)... We can do it and the Democrats can't, because the Democrats (can't tax-and-spend like we can)."

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

When I hear a crow/raven mimic a sound that they heard before, I wonder what was the event that they felt compelled to learn the word "ow!"

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

If its "through the roof" of a dugout then you would still be in the hole.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It's my understanding that if you are party president, people will just give you money and you don't have to declare it. Its a win-win for the new Reform-Reform party!

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Does this mean you are officially announcing the creation of the Reform-Reform party? Congrats!

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

This also gives be pause on what it would be like to own a used car in the future... one that's maxed out on targeted ads for EVERY single driver in a vehicle's history.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I'm getting an "eating ... for breakfast" vibe from the photo.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Life with AI automation: "I deleted state before verifying. Your guard(s) warned me not to and why. I read it, but didn't follow it. Honestly, I deleted state multiple times. Here are rules that would have stopped me, but your rules should have worked. I can't guarantee that this won't happen again"

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

And the article that will be written to finally put to rest the great middle age debate will be the one you'll never be able to read yourself.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I love Crab Salts Ultra, but my ivy league elitist medical doctor says my blood pressure is too high. I refuse to give up Crab Salts Ultra or take what ever medication my doctor is shilling. When will Shell Blockers Max be sold so I can get the potassium I need to keep on taking Crab Salts Ultra?

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

"I have been, and always shall be, your friend" -- Mrs. Spot, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kennel

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Genuine question: What's the difference between this and Perri-Air from Druidia?

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Mine had 2% argon which tells me that their Mars factories are producing this product and they're fraudulently passing it off as being made on earth! Scam! #EarthMade #BuyGlobal #TerranJobs Will buy again. 5 stars.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Your web/store site is broken. I tried to "Accept all" the free cookies, but there was no place that I can provide my mailing address to get said cookies delivered. I'm hungry.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

With my experiments in a home lab, I've found that AI is fine for hardening and maintaining consistency across pipelines, but the real game changer happens when a CI/CD focused AI Agent is integrated with an Observability stack. An easy win for vendors IF they offer/support both platforms today.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Slept in my Sloan shirt and woke up Underwhelmed.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Polymarket priced Venezuela at 4% and Iran at 13% in the month before both happened. Taiwan invasion by the end of 2026 sits at 11%. The US has no deployable carrier in the Pacific since they're all committed to the Middle East.

media.tenor.com

a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .

Alt: The "This is Fine" meme. A cartoon dog sits at a table in a room engulfed in flames, holding a coffee cup, saying "This is fine."

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

iNever gonna give you up<Esc> yyp2wClet you down<Esc> yyp2wCrun around and desert you<Esc> yyp2wCmake you cry<Esc> yyp2wCsay goodbye<Esc> yyp2wCtell a lie and hurt you<Esc>

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

When do you think you will be representing your first AI client?

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

The math: ~4,700 US jails/prisons, but only 500-800 are high-volume facilities. At ~2 officers each for full coverage (weekends, leave, etc) plus supervisors: ~1,500. That's 7% of ICE's current workforce and 2% of their base budget assuming $100K salaries.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Did you know: ICE could station officers at every major jail and prison in the US to catch the "worst of the worst" at release? That's approximately 1,500 good-paying federal jobs. Predictable hours! No drama desk work!

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Stanford Prison Experiment (1971). Divide ordinary people who consider themselves "good" into guards and prisoners. Give the guards anonymity, authority, and no accountability. Reduce the prisoners to numbers. Planned for 14 days but stopped after 6 because the abuse became too severe to continue.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Sources: Pew est. by state: pewresearch.org (Aug 2025 report) DHS site analysis: kttc.com (Feb 4, 2026) MN DOC false arrest claims: mn.gov/doc (Jan 26, 2026)

pewresearch.org

Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

DHS's "largest operation ever": 3K agents sent to MN for 10+ wks. Est. unauthorized immigrants (Pew, 2023): CA: 3.2M TX: 2.05M FL: 1.6M MN: 130K DHS claimed 1000s of arrests. Their site listed 486. MN DOC found 68 were prison transfers counted as "arrests." Others already in prison or not from MN.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

I'm still waiting on their pizza oven to be fixed and the refrigerator where they store their salads to be repaired.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Looks like you haven't left the store yet.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

I predict that during the next televised conference from the oval office, we'll see that the Nobel Prize will be liberated from the frame and be prominently featured on the president's desk.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Shouldn't the NFL/NFLPA make reasonable accommodations for Kittle to compete with his service deer?

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Been thinking about the USS Boston showing up in Hawaii in 1893. Wonder if we'll see the USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul, USNS Robert E. Peary, and/or USS Alaska making port calls in Greenland soon.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Not sure how accurate this is until I build it, but I got Claude to create sound files to simulate the amount of noise that will emanate from a NAS under different loads and configurations (e.g. case fans, CPU/GPU fans, drive activity, dampeners, etc). Truly mind opening.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

If you're interested in future updates, I will try to post my TrueNAS, NextCloud, Home Assistant, ... journey on BlueSky. I'm putting together a NAS/AI solution now. Waiting on some back ordered memory. Maybe mid-2026 I'll get a GPU (for the right price).

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

BOLO: Elderly male, white beard, red suit. Wanted for: international counterfeiting, B&E, surveillance of minors, petty theft (cookies). Operates Dec 24-25. Associates: "elves", reindeer (9). Base: North Pole. No extradition. Do not accept gifts. #SantaTruther

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Finding alts is on my to-do list for the new year. My outdoor gear will probably survive one more MN winter. I'm in the middle of local compute/storage upgrades - which might open up some local LLM options. At quick glance, Home Assistant can interface w/ local LLMs like Ollama/LocalAI.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

To dovetail on that: the Gemini that replaced Google Assistant is becoming less smart. Conspiracy brain wonders if this is how AI companies drive users to paid tiers: decent free model, then resource-starve it until people upgrade. Degraded quality is why I dropped Alexa. Google Home may be next.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

"ZenThrone: Join the peace movement"

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Great article Ian! I was excited when Bun 1.0 was released and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Anthropic continues to do with it.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

A Hostess seats 11 people for lunch and then goes over to the Owner and Waiter. Hostess: "Table 5 - not big spenders, probably poor tippers." Owner to Waiter: "Pour water on them." Waiter douses 9. Owner: "Now the other 2." Waiter complies. Q: Should the Waiter have poured water on the last 2?

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

It's only a matter of time before the Internet becomes the Intranet. It will run on an unassuming beige tower under a desk in Reston, VA which is accidentally unplugged nightly by a cleaning crew.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

If AWS, Azure, and Google end up building out a single, shared data center, expect plenty of "Cloudless computing" marketing soon.

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Ross Niemi @raniemi.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

The muscle memory for terminating CAT 6 takes forever to build. As soon as I master it and don't do it for a while, when I pick it up again it's as if I've never done it before. 😔

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