iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Original post: social.bau-ha.us/@raganwald/1... Crossposted with @openvibe.social

Cory Doctorow put my central discomfort with the tech industry into words: “Worker-driven automation improves quality, while capital-driven automation improves throughput.”

Making “Wheels for the mind” is the pursuit of deep and transformative quality, using technology that is expertise-centric. Improving throughput is the pursuit of industrialization, using technology that deprecates human discernment and constrains human decision-making.

Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

This one consented to being an indoor cat for almost three years. Never really cared for our other cats (in spite of two of them almost certainly being her offspring), she bolted out the door into the October night in 2024. Turned up on camera a few times since, but never regularly, and not recently

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

We brought a senior cat in last year, after he surprisingly became very friendly two years after we’d TNR’ed him. For the first few weeks, he showed no interest whatsoever in toys, but he’s since adopted a couple as favorites. Here he is trying to catch one of them:

A gray cat with a very fuzzy belly rears up on his back legs and stretches his front paws up in the air, trying to catch an unseen toy.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

A gray cat with white markings and no tail sleeps while hugging his upside-down head with one of his legs.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Mr Grizzly, an older gentleman we took in last September. He’d been around our neighborhood, off and on, for a few years (we TNR’ed him in ‘23), but we always had 6-8 indoors and he was never at all friendly. This time, we were down to 5 and he became surprisingly sweet. Such a fun cat.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

It's hard to imagine a more concise description of the complete moral vacancy of the people we are up against in this moment.

Imagine that you are a first-rate grifter: the president of the United States, say. Your grift is that you pretend to be a successful businessman, and use that supposed expertise to make your case for the presidency, which office you then use to make money. Or imagine instead that you are the vice-president. Your grift is that you claim to understand poor people, whose problems, you say, are the fault of gays, immigrants, and billionaires; and then you rise to power thanks to the money and support of a gay immigrant billionaire.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Great turnout for #NoKings event in Milford, Connecticut today.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Here’s a weird one: this Apple Sports live activity includes a lot of useful info, but because they needed a place to put the series status, we can see neither the current ball/strike count, nor what inning it is. #mlb #apple

A live activity from an iPhone lock screen showing the score and other information from a baseball game.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

The Atlantic piece mentioned here is paywalled, but this is a good reaction to it. John Roberts and the other Republican-appointed justices on this awful court are bought-and-paid-for instruments of a decades-long, oligarch-funded project to dismantle the New Deal. www.techdirt.com/2025/07/23/o...

The genius of this project lies not in its intellectual rigor—Shane shows there is none—but in its systematic audacity. Every opinion Roberts reserves for himself (Shane notes the senior justice assigns opinions, and Roberts kept the transformative ones), every piece of precedent he casually discards, every historical “fact” he cheerfully invents serves the same ultimate purpose: ensuring that democratic institutions can never again meaningfully constrain concentrated wealth.

The beauty of the scheme is that it sounds so respectably academic. “Unitary Executive Theory” rolls off the tongue with such scholarly authority that one almost forgets to ask why this crucial constitutional principle remained hidden from legal scholars for two centuries, only to be discovered by the same people who needed it to eliminate the regulatory agencies that threatened their inherited fortunes.

The funders and promulgators of this theory? American intergenerational wealth, channeled through think tanks, law schools, and the Federalist Society itself. The same oligarchs who needed a legal framework to dismantle New Deal constraints funded decades of constitutional scholarship to provide that framework, then acted surprised when their handpicked judges discovered that the Constitution had always forbidden democratic accountability.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

I totally get it, but it's worth it.

A poster for "Andor" with two screenshots from "Bob's Burgers" in which Bob says,"I mean, I don't to oversell it, but it changes you forever."

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Brilliant. Original post: mstdn.social/@Remittanceg...

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Genius. Original post: mastodon.social/@ancientjame...

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Here's a shot close to the end of the sequence, after everybody escaped from the riverbank. The female, with the weight of three males on her back, has already disappeared under the surface; the first male is about to follow. The Canada Goose is sizing things up.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Thanks! It looks like the two platforms on the east side of Golf Pond and north of Buckingham Ave are not currently claimed for 2025. There is still time for last year’s monitor to claim them - they have until 4/6 - but if they don’t, they’ll be open for anybody to claim.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

I loved it so much, I got Wang Chung to sign the LP!

The cover of Wang Chung's soundtrack album for "To Live and Die in L.A.", signed by the band (Jack Hues and Nick Feldman). It's a photo of lines of palm trees and utility poles at sunset, everything bathed in orange, with the band name and movie title in green block letters.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Saw Tori in a tiny venue on the Little Earthquakes tour. Also met her at a signing - I think it was on a later leg of the tour. So, I have this:

Tori Amos's "Little Earthquakes" CD, signed "Rick with Love Tori Amos".

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Hope this helps: with the parchment pulled a couple inches out of the box, push the panel inside the box, so that the parchment comes out between the panel and the side of the box with the cutting blade.

Starting to insert the Decurling Panel into the box of Reynold’s parchment paper.

The Decurling Panel inserted most of the way into the box

The Decurling Panel fully inserted into the parchment paper box.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Our Tino, Lily's mirror-twin, says hello. Based on experience, when Tino gets the look on his face that Lily has, he's confused by something and is about to run around the house vocalizing about it (Tino is confused by many things).

A black and white cat lounges on the top of a cat tree. One front leg is draped over the side of the top level of the tree, while the other leg dangles through the hole in the base of the level.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

You inspired me to go dig this out - signed on the Mosaic tour in 1987, before a Detroit-area show that, for unknown reasons, is not in their pretty comprehensive tour history on their website.

Wang Chung's soundtrack album for "To Live and Die in L.A.", signed "Have fun!" by Jack Hues and Nick Feldman.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 25/09/2024

Must be going around - Earl tried this one tonight, as well.

A gray and white cat sits with its back legs on the arm of a couch while standing with its front legs on an end table.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

I took these shots yesterday with the above setup at 1/250, f11 - they're nothing special, but the first was taken while holding the camera + flash and diffuser in one hand and the plastic cup in the other. The rim of the cup is about 2mm wide, to give an idea just how tiny this spider was.

A very tiny (2-3mm) jumping spider on the rim of a small plastic cup.

A very tiny (2-3mm) jumping spider after being released on the door of my shed.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 17/09/2024

Bluesky now has 10M users! Let’s post #birds in the blue sky to celebrate!

An osprey against a blue sky, carrying a fish it caught near sundown in early September 2024; West Haven, Connecticut, USA. The osprey has a white body, with the underside of the wings mottled white and dark brown, and a white head with a dark brown mask across the eyes.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 11/09/2024

Tell Steve that Steve (Connecticut's Version) says "hi".

A large orange and white cat sits on an orange wool blanket on a bed, looking at the camera. His front paws are crossed in a distinguished fashion.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Congratulations (and condolences on the loss of Carla). Her facial markings are almost the mirror image of our Tino’s.

A black and white tuxedo cat lying on top of a cat tree. His markings are asymmetrical, with white only on the right side of his nose and muzzle.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 20/08/2024

I'm monitoring three Osprey nests for Connecticut Audubon and the Dept of Energy & Environmental Protection, so a lot of my recent photos are of Osprey. They're mostly for documentation of nesting, but sometimes I get lucky in the process.

A male osprey - a large bird of prey, brown above and white below, with a dark stripe through its eye - calls out to the female on the nest while holding a large fish in a tree.

A female osprey in flight, carrying a fish. The setting sun shines through the wing and tail feathers.

An osprey holds a fish on a large bank of lights above a football field. The moon, a bit orange due to high altitude smoke from Canadian wildfires, is in the background, out of focus.

An osprey holds a fish on a large bank of lights above a football field near sunset. It is silhouetted against the out-of-focus moon.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 19/08/2024

This Grant Brisbee quote is specifically about the ongoing insanity around the A's, but it can be applied to so many areas of American life these days. Rich person wants more, cares not for the cost or consequences to others.

This is going to be the last series the Giants play in Oakland because some rich people are chasing that line going up like a kitten chasing a laser pointer. The passion isn't a consideration. The history isn't a factor. It's just sad as heck, and everyone responsible should feel everlasting shame.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 19/08/2024

Ginger has resting grumpy face, but she's actually very sweet (as long as you're not most other cats).

An orange cat sitting in a cardboard scratcher, with her face disappearing into her neck and looking very grumpy.

The same orange cat, but this time looking much friendlier.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 12/08/2024

When my wife and I decided to get married after 10 years together, we eloped and had the tiny ceremony - literally us, the officiant, the photographer, and his wife/2nd camera - on the beach in La Jolla. Absolutely no regrets about an absolutely perfect day. Need to get back there...

A man and woman standing on the rocks on the beach in La Jolla, California, as waves crash against the rocks. The woman is in a wedding dress and holding a boquet.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 04/08/2024

The kitten was tolerant of us, but didn't want to be touched. We eventually managed to catch him and bring him inside, and he immediately became a lovebug, crawling into my wife's lap. After a rough patch when he got fixed and smelled funny, he and the orange cat went back to being in love.

An orange and white cat lays on its back and licks the ear of a gray and white cat that is laying next to him.

A gray and white cat and orange and white cat lay sleeping on their sides, facing each other on a colorful striped bedspread and orange blanket. Together, the cats make a shape like a cats head or, if you squint, a heart.

A gray and white cat lays on the back of an orange and white cat that is licking the top of its head.

A gray and white cat lays in front of an orange and white cat on a dark background. Both are looking at the camera. While the photo looks like it was posed in a studio, it was actually taken spur-of-the-moment on a dark chair where they were laying together.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 04/08/2024

It's amazing when cats fall in love. The kitten that we (intentionally) got for our kitten wasn't great with her - she wanted to be Top Cat, but he got much bigger - but a stray kitten showed up on our deck one day and fell in love with him, and would visit every evening for a couple months.

Two cats - one gray and white, the other orange and white - look out through a glass door at a gray and white kitten laying on a wooden deck.

A gray and white kitten sits in front of a glass door, with an orange and white cat sitting on the other side of the door.

A gray and white kitten plays on a wooden deck, while an orange and white cat watches from the other side of a glass door.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 04/08/2024

A sobering confluence on my timeline today: two people discussing the current fascist riots in the UK, along with a memorial for a 6-month-old murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1944. Fascism must be stamped out wherever it rears its ugly head, as quickly as possible. #antifascism #history

A screenshot of three consecutive BlueSky posts, the first two discussing fascist riots in northwest England in August 2024, the third memorializing Marguerite Sznajderman, a 6-month-old Jewish girl murdered in the gas chambers in 1944.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 14/07/2024

This is Earl. He's the most amazing cat I've ever known, and his little nubbin of a tail is the reason we have him. His tail was injured in early April 2020, and his owner - our neighbor - didn't have a vet. We offered to take him to ours, since Covid made finding a vet impossible.

A gray and white cat curled up and sleeping partly on its back in an adorable fashion.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 14/07/2024

I have better pictures of each individually, but I'll start with a group shot that they somehow all sat still for last night. Our neighbor is a bad pet owner (no vet/spay/neuter), and taking in the results (five of these six) became our Covid Hobby. A couple more are still outdoor cats, now fixed.

Six cats arrayed around our kitchen and dining room. Left to right: Tino, Pippin, Earl, Ginger, Penny, Steve.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

Along those lines, I found the wording of the text I got this morning interesting:

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 06/06/2024

The perils of automatic image moderation.

A “King of the Hill” screenshot with Dale Gribble sitting at the foot of Hank Hill’s bed in the glow of a television in his underwear. Hank looks agitated, and Peggy is asleep.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 21/04/2024

I'm not sure if this is the greatest number we had at one time, but it's at least close. So much green!

Approximately 30 green, blue, and gray parrots on an elaborate set of bird feeders. Taken in the New Haven, Connecticut area on December 30th, 2020.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 04/04/2024

This is Earl. We gradually hit on this as the best way for him to be close to me when I'm at my desk. Fortunately, I've already trained myself to use a trackpad with my left hand. His back feet are cradled in my fingers - it's not exactly comfortable, but it works.

A bearded man with long hair holds a gray and white cat in his right arm while sitting at a desk.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 31/03/2024

A friend of my at-the-time girlfriend was in a mid-90s touring production that featured Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson, and we were invited to the post-show cast party. Ted saw me - another long-haired guy with a beard and glasses - and put his hat on me for a photo; I got a photo with Carl, as well.

A photo of Ted Neeley and me (Rick Baumhauer) in Detroit, probably late 1995. Ted has put his floppy blue hat on me.

A photo of Carl Anderson with me (Rick Baumhauer) in Detroit, probably late 1995.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 22/03/2024

See a tort, share a tort (a calico in this case) - Miss Monkey, aka Pandora, gone almost eight years now.

A black, orange, and white cat standing, staring directly into the camera.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 14/03/2024

Tell me you were unconscious in 2016 (and possibly most of the last decade) without telling me you were unconscious in 2016...

When Jill Stein says that "we're an unstoppable majority" she isn't wrong. We are if we want to be. It is time to go after what we want in earnest and stop allowing ourselves to be fooled and distracted by a manipulative and oppressive establishment.

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Rick Baumhauer @rickbaumhauer.bsky.social · 10/03/2024

I’ve thankfully never had a pet go missing, but I’m sitting here listening to a deluge outside while keeping a sweet but slowly-dying cat company. I will miss her terribly when her time comes, and I’m happy and relieved to hear that your boy made it home.