iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 03/10/2026

Sorkin doing the entire Social Reckoning junket in brownface is crazy work.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 06/09/2026

Are Star Trek’s holodecks and replicators technically AI slop? (“Tea, Earl Grey, slop.”)

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 05/08/2026

I have a very specific form of aphantasia: I can’t envision anyone reading a book. Whenever I try, I just picture them aimlessly scrolling on their phone while ignoring my texts.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 12/07/2026

This is beginning to feel like the “tying up loose ends” sequence from Casino, but I don’t want to surrender to that much optimism quite yet.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 08/06/2026

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

Tim Cook stands centered beneath Apple Park’s large rainbow arch installation on a sunny lawn, with trees and a blue sky in the background.

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Reposted by Raza Syed

Mike.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ @dumbmike.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Gosford Park (2001) Gosford World (2015) Gosford World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 03/03/2026

The kitchens in the Scream movies are almost as aspirational as the kitchens in a Nancy Meyers movie.

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Reposted by Raza Syed

Elise Schuenke @troubledminnesotan.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

In his acceptance speech for award for best screenplay, Ryan Coogler said “when you look at a blank page, think of who you love” and I dunno, that really moved me so I wrote it down and sat it on my desk to look at while I work

A whiteboard leaned against a shelf with many trinkets. On the whiteboard, it says “When you look at a blank page, think of who you love”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 25/01/2026

I’ve said this before, but the wrong side of history is a helluva thing to be on.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 19/01/2026

I’m periodically reminded how horny Shakespeare’s writing is. He was absolutely the Joe Eszterhas of the Elizabethan era.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 12/12/2025

It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a show as much as I’m enjoying Pluribus. It speaks to me. It’s nice to be spoken to.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 11/11/2025

In a distant future, they hoard light. Nearly all the photons are decayed, spent. They build perfect mirrors to cage what little light is left.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 05/11/2025

“To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates…”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 24/10/2025

I just realized Angela Bower and Tony Micelli were the original Miranda Hobbes and Steve Brady.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 04/10/2025

The most romantic thing a person can do is make time for you.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 11/09/2025

Some days I feel like there’s a smaller me sitting in the cockpit of my cranium, piloting the spaceship of my body through the solar system of my relationships.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 24/08/2025

As much as I enjoy someone matching my freak, I am even more delighted when someone matches my framerate.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 20/08/2025

This new Gap spot is as crisply edited, tightly choreographed and sinuously shot as anything they put out during their 1999-2005 advertising heyday.

youtu.be

Better in Denim.

YouTube video by Gap

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 20/08/2025

The fundamental tension that informs Alien: Earth is the collision of two elemental forces: cynicism and Darwinism.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/08/2025

That explains their paranoia and tendency to hoard their wealth. If you intend to live forever, material considerations and actuarial calculations begin to compound interest like a predatory loan.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/08/2025

…and institutions that would bear their names and serve as their legends. The broligarchs we happen to be saddled with are convinced that actual immortality—what they coyly refer to as longevity—is just a few scientific breakthroughs from feasibility.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/08/2025

My pet theory as to why our current crop of robber barons is categorically less charitable than their counterparts of yore: while the old-timers were just as obsessed with immortality, they harbored no illusions about its practicality—so they poured their largesse into endowments…

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 15/07/2025

What if Joyce only wrote like that because his autocorrect sucked?

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 08/07/2025

We’re gradually outsourcing all our fever dreams to server farms.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 08/07/2025

Always a good feeling.

Three sailboats glide across a calm ocean under a vivid golden sunset. The largest sailboat is in the foreground, slightly right of center, with its tall mast and American flag clearly visible. Several silhouetted passengers are aboard, standing or sitting as the boat moves gently through the water. Two smaller sailboats are farther back, sailing toward the horizon in a line with the setting sun. The sun is bright and nearly centered in the sky, casting a wide, glowing reflection across the rippling water. The sky fades from deep orange near the horizon to a darker amber above, and the entire scene is bathed in warm, golden light.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 05/07/2025

Anytime I’m in the Pacific Northwest, I’m struck by how girthy the volcanoes are up here. The calderas are so wide. Y’all must get some really chonky plumes.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 21/06/2025

Between Carrie’s rodent-infested townhouse and Miranda’s red-headed son working at a restaurant, I feel like And Just Like That is about to bless us with a Ratatouille subplot.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 15/06/2025

Stochastic humanism. Hopeful entropy.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 14/06/2025

Find kindness where you can. Be kindness when you can. That’s the only thesis I have for everything that’s going on.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 19/04/2025

There’s a match cut halfway through Ryan Coogler’s Sinners that merges two wildly disparate impulses of movement into a seamless, visceral motion that made my amygdala glitch with delight. The movie is like that throughout: a giddy amalgam of genres speaking to each other in unexpected ways.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 29/03/2025

What if gamma-ray bursts are just galactic cries for help?

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 29/03/2025

The earth hurtles through the universe at approximately a million miles per hour. Human connection makes the vast scale of that itineration the littlest bit bearable. Every intimacy, every consilience, is a signpost, a dropped pin, a trail of crumbs through the thicket of time.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 29/03/2025

If we’ve ever watched a movie together, it’s because I enjoy splitting beams of light with you. I enjoy inhabiting darkened spaces with you. Looking at the same stuff together is almost as powerful as seeing each other.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 29/03/2025

My main takeaway when someone sends me a link or a meme: “I was just thinking of you.” “This made me think of you.”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 23/03/2025

A not inconsiderable aspect of modern friendship is nudging each other’s algorithms in the right direction.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 19/03/2025

An Android acquaintance is trying to explain the concept of an “Emoji Kitchen” to me, and we’ve determined that it’s vaguely analogous to whatever the hell Genmoji are supposed to be on iOS—only, the latter appear to be an order of magnitude more abominable thanks to the marvels of machine learning.

A screenshot of an RCS chat conversation between two people. The first person, using an Android device, sends an Emoji Kitchen sticker labeled “Poodle House.” The sticker depicts a pink doghouse adorned with sparkling blue gemstones and a blue bone decoration above the entrance. The second person, using an iPhone, responds with a Genmoji result for the same prompt, which is a surreal, unsettling fusion of a poodle and a doghouse. The Genmoji features a small, stone-textured doghouse with a wooden door, but instead of a normal roof, the upper part is morphing into a cartoonish poodle’s face, complete with big eyes, floppy ears, and fluffy fur. The dog’s paws and tail protrude from the sides of the house, making it look like a cursed chimera of architecture and canine. Below the Genmoji, the iPhone user sends a message in a green chat bubble that reads, “Okay, this is body-horror.”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 08/03/2025

I worry sometimes that there’s a particle horizon for friendships; that as we age, and the time we have left to discover one another diminishes, some parts of ourselves become fundamentally unknowable—perhaps even to ourselves. Human memory is a fever dream, and so is the heat death of the universe.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/03/2025

Without even having to think about it, our one friend responded: “Because we’re always looking for each other.” This was well before smartphones, but somehow we managed. Somehow we always found each other.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/03/2025

I remember one time in college, some friends and I were, ahem, “rolling,” as it were—and in a pique of serotonergic solipsism, I earnestly inquired: “How do we know that we’re friends?”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 28/02/2025

I think more than ever, it’s important to nourish our skepticism so that it doesn’t wither into cynicism.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 24/02/2025

The person you look up to the most is only as good as the most mediocre person they’re infatuated with.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 22/02/2025

Furst’s succinct description of his vision for Gotham has stayed with me over the years: “[as if] hell had burst through the pavement and kept on growing.”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 22/02/2025

Something I’m trying to do more of to counterprogram the götterdämmerung of it all is reach out to the people I love. My innate inclination is to compartmentalize, but division is how we become a conquered people. So, to quote E.M. Forster: “Only connect.”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 13/02/2025

I was reminded today of a passage from The Once and Future King that feels pertinent to these troubled times.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 06/02/2025

I discovered this by accident the other day when I was searching for a clip of the legendary Concorde shot from the notorious 1990 misfire The Bonfire of the Vanities, and came across the film in its entirety under the official WB imprimatur.

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Raza Syed @raza.wtf · 01/02/2025

Can you grieve the future? That’s what I’ve been experiencing.

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