iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Mascot Texorcism 🐯 @texsaber.bsky.social · 10h

I've had this stupid joke in my head for the past 3 weeks, I had to put it into drawing

Theatrical poster for "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me," except the portrait of Laura Palmer is replaced with a Walkling from the game Big Walk, and the film name is replaced with "Big Walk with Me"

August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 4h

We found ourselves the largest gourd That we, together, could afford I hope this pumpkin stays aboard And gets to where the rest are stored Ideas need to be explored And this year we'll win that award

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Aura/Moom @moomanibe.bsky.social · 8h

I frequently see "AI" boosters implying that LLMs are simply an innate and superior part of coding now, inescapable, and that literally all programmers agree with them. And, well. That, too, is a form of propaganda

Looking at my software peers in 2026 I see fatigued faces, I see frustration, and I see a lot of people looking for a way out of an industry that seems poised on the brink of collapse. LLMs are being pushed on us at every turn, most people seem at best frustrated by them, and ultimately they seem to appeal most to people who see the production of software as a purely mechanical means to an end. They are antithetical, however, to the idea of software as a craft, or something requiring both initial and ongoing care. As an expression of the soul.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 14h

Yeah, check out the ISOs linked there — an absolute ton of film-production stuff.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 15h

I feel like I'm stepping into spaces occupied by hundreds or thousands of people who deserve the attention more, and if anyone does notice me I'm afraid I'll be too weird or not skilled enough (or both). I'm just out here doing my thing. This is the essence of that hurdle.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 15h

What's especially bad is the maladaptive treadmill of deciding if I deserve attention. Clearly, people who are better than me at things I do deserve attention, because I can learn from them. No matter how much I improve, though, I'll never be better than myself, so logically I never deserve it.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 15h

I have a serious mental hurdle to get over if I'm ever going to make Bitkin succeed, and that's the fear of being seen. This goes deep and has been there since childhood, and now that I'm poking my head into various possibly-helpful indie gaming and puzzle-crafting communities, it's reappearing.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Marty @martincrownover.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The perfect way to put it. They found a way to worm a subscription between you and your normal work.

A screenshot of a post on Threads by Joe Hill. The post reads: "Here’s a thought about the purveyors of AI. They aren’t selling assistance—they’re selling dependency. You give up on acquiring one skill after another, give up on the knotty, meaningful struggle to acquire those skills and AI takes over. It isn’t freeing up time so you can make more of yourself. It’s encouraging cognitive surrender so you can be less."

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 15h

Thanks for the pointer. Bitkin is definitely inspired by puzzle hunts (I was on the staff for several in my work history and even produced one completely on my own in 2019), so that looks like a good community to be part of.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

This is some impressive use of PETSCII. Those box-drawing characters are being put to good use to draw the shallow diagonals (and check the date on this example; character-cell graphics hadn't even been a thing for that long yet).

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

I've read this book and I recommend it too. It's very entertaining.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

I'm open to suggestions here! If there are any conventions any of you know about that I should attend or other ways I could be getting the word out (once it's time) that Bitkin exists and I'm looking for Patreon subscribers (once I get that all set up), my ears are open.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

As much as I enjoy working on Bitkin full-time, there's an entire flip side to this whole process that I have no good idea how I'm going to handle, and that's promotion. Act 1's full release is coming up, and I've been promising myself I'd make some noise when it did, but make noise where? And how?

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

It was going to be the "next big thing" until the LLM boom happened. Remember Microsoft Mesh and HoloLens?

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 01/10/2026

Got all my notes here in one place This week's and last week's, just in case The test's on soon, so I'm on pace To fill my mental database

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

Moon Mice live in a vast high-tech complex beneath the lunar surface. They eat cultured cheese which they grow in nutrient tanks; it's an unnatural green color and causes them to mutate in a wide variety of ways. They're well aware of the "moon made of cheese" meme and decided to lean into it.

A few black and white sketches of a four-armed anthro female mouse in various poses.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

I don't write puzzles to prove how smart I am. I write puzzles to prove how smart you are. It's more fun that way.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

ka92 @ka92.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

ｵｰｶﾐ

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

I've buried treasure through the field Locations yet to be revealed Where are they now? My lips are sealed (One acorn for each hint I yield)

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

Needing extra sleeves or pants legs is an obvious need for the Ringtailor machines in Elseways to fill, but what's less obvious is how many people use them to get unneeded parts removed. Even snakes can be briefcase-toting professionals with suits to match.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

(To be clear, he's in full control and knows exactly what he's doing, this is just how this style of cooking works)

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

Have you seen this cover of it? Technically a sponsored thing for a Thai spice blend, but it's fun in its own right. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBPp...

youtube.com

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit [cover by Delicious Rock]

YouTube video by Delicious Rock

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 30/09/2026

I don’t know who this will be helpful for, but drawing a Greek lowercase xi (ξ) is easy if you think of it as “ks” rearranged a bit.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Rob McCallum @robmccallum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 29/09/2026

Meta's "Muse" launched with a nasty zero day flaw that gave hackers the ability to spy on Mac users, openly gives root access to people pretending to be Muse agents, and invited strangers over to another guy's house without telling him

karlbode.com

Meta's Latest AI Product Is A Terrifying And Hilarious Mess

Authoritarian-friendly mass surveillance has never been more adorable

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

uosdɯᴉS ɐuɐꓷ 🦄 @danacorn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

All bigots make the same arguments, and insist that no, these are totally new arguments and this is a totally different situation, but they aren’t and it isn’t. The bigot side never turns out to have been the right one, folks.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 29/09/2026

Cyanna, then, is calm and even-tempered even when people are being nuisances in the library, but they do take careful notes and hand them to their assistants for who to watch out for. Cyanna's far too chill to fight back but knows they can depend on the Moderators for help.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 29/09/2026

Cyanna's name is inspired by the bluejay genus "Cyanocitta", but wondered if there was an appropriate snake species to mix that name with and yes: Boiga cyanea, the "green cat snake". Wikipedia says it's arboreal, sluggish, and "difficult to provoke into striking". That works just fine.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 29/09/2026

We'll paddle through the waterways While your guitar song gently plays And maybe then I'll find the phrase To keep you with me all our days

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 29/09/2026

Full-body view of Cyanna at work, retrieving a book from one of the shelves of the Elseways Central Library. They're versed in many languages and know a little bit about a whole lot of subjects, which makes them a very good librarian (on top of the fact that they live in the library's upstairs).

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Brossentia/Digby @ Home @brossentia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Since someone is saying activated charcoal will mess with your meds They may be right, but this ranch uses cocoa and caramel color. No activated charcoal.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

surli @surli.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

is your bird sona boschian or rubenesque

A diagram from Wiersma and Piersma 1995 Scoring abdominal profiles to characterize migratory cohorts of shorebirds: an example with red knots. It shows 5 shorebirds on a spectrum from lean to fat. The lean side of the spectrum is labeled "boschian" and the fat side "rubenesque".

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Catsuka @catsuka.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Syd Mead Ultimo", a new massive 320-page artbook dedicated to the late, legendary designer (Star Trek, Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Star Wars, Gundam...) Pre-orders >> www.catsuka.com/shopping/ind...

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

I'll be less vague once the puzzle is actually live, because I don't want to spoil the answer, but this is my favorite puzzle in all of act 1 and I want to do it justice.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

Tech notes: I need to use a CSS transform() matrix, and that meant working out all the coefficients to go inside it. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...

developer.mozilla.org

transform - SVG | MDN

The transform attribute defines a list of transform definitions that are applied to an element and the element's children.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

I never expected my Matlab skills would be useful, but I'm thankful I could use GNU Octave (its open-source replacement) to work out some expressions that'll help me implement a graphically complicated puzzle. Complicated to me, that is; it should feel very intuitive on the player end.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

rooshoes @roo.shoes · 28/09/2026

very pleased that multiple people get this

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

They satisfy their music needs In ways they can't with network feeds; They play the songs at higher speeds (Pretending bunnies sing the leads)

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

My friend and I, when we're both free Go fishing dockside by the sea Today, though, it's not meant to be It's bunnies zero, seagulls three

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

Their name is Cianna (or Cyanna?) and I think there’s a good place for them running Elseways’ central library. I’m actually a little surprised I haven’t explicitly added one yet — a big municipal one on the same scale as other major cities have.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 28/09/2026

I'm not sure who or what this is just yet, but this half-anthro-blue-jay half-feathery-serpent creature has been poking around my imagination looking for a place to live. I think they're a keeper if I can just figure out more about them.

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 27/09/2026

I thought I'd give that "9 games" thing a try, and here's how that turned out.

1. Final Fantasy II
2. Megaman 2
3. The Fool’s Errand
4. Undertale
5. La Mulana
6. Minecraft
7. Ultima IV
8. Sim City 2000
9. Secret of Mana

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August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs @ringoidlabs.com · 27/09/2026

Derusting some pixel art skills with a monochrome Cheq López (drawn in Procreate after re-importing a very useful set of pixel brushes that I'll link in a reply). It's a little rough, but as a test to see if I still remember my workflow for this, it works fine.

A black-and-white pixel drawing of an anthro rabbit who takes the "harlequin" pattern to an extreme, checkerboarding not just his face but his ears and suit-jacket.

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Reposted by August the Dodecalope @ Ringoid Labs

Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I don't mean what I'm about to say in a sappy way, but a fairly hard-nosed one: natural ecosystems are often remarkably good at recovering from serious local natural disasters *if they are given the chance.*

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Bitkin by Ringoid Labs @bitkin.org · 26/09/2026

New update - now you can click my head on any page to see what I'm thinking! This is how the hint system works, so if you're stuck somewhere, maybe I can help unstick you. The same mechanism will be used later to add chat logs you can read to see what else is going on while I'm out fixing stuff.

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