iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Didn’t realize the menu for this cafe was on the wall behind me and thought I was just having moment after moment of strangely intimate eye contact with everyone who walked through the front door. Alas, I have not uncovered some heretofore unknown personal magnetism after all.

000

"Training” sure has a different ring to it in our new age of LLMs, eh?

Got home after midnight from work trip #1. Leaving for work trip #2 at 5 AM the following morning. 😩

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Presentation tips from the sticky that hangs off my wife’s monitor (shared with permission):

Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

somehow hilarious that the Sbarro at Union Station in DC is being replaced by a nicer pizza place

000

I do think I’d prefer to be vaporized than oozing blood through every orifice after my internal organs liquify, which I have to imagine is the nature of this plague because why not.

Russia is exactly who I want investigating a potentially catastrophic incident with worldwide ramifications! *laughs in Chernobyl*

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@blake-knee.bsky.social My man — why did you put me in your Tottenham starter pack? I’ve never once posted about soccer! I even call it soccer! Is it because “spur“ is in my last name? 😂

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Plus, bonus ferry this morning to get me over to Metro North and down into the city. Public transportation hates to see me coming.

NYC to DC, DC to NYC, NYC to BOS, BOS to NYC this week. All on trains. They call this Northeastmaxxing. #amtrak

I'm practically Gordon Gekko to these folks. I'm kind of loving having my perspective shifted. Hearing folks talk about a topic that I've been obsessed about for ages, but using completely different lenses than I normally do has been so refreshing.

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But for the past few weeks I've been taking a night class on the philosophy of attention, distraction, and the good. I think I'm the only "business" guy in the class. Everyone else is a therapist, artist, religious studies professor, pastor, etc. I've never felt more corporate in my life.

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It's funny how your surroundings can change your whole perspective. In most work settings I'm by far the most humanist, progressive, non-corporate person in the room. It's kind of my thing after 10+ years of consulting in the self-management, complexity awareness, school of thought.

Happy new hockey season to all who celebrate.

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Yes! I want the psychological experience of shifting seasons every time a quarter changes.

000

This makes sense in my head and much less as I type it out haha

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Ah gotcha. Except what I’m craving is a “start” in January and the “end” in December. So: Jan-Feb-March April-May-June July-August-September October-November-December Each one is just slightly off from being an obvious season (I.e March shouldn’t be in the “winter”)

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It’s a damn shame that the seasons of the year don’t match up to the quarters of the year. Such a missed opportunity. (Spring = March, April, May; summer = June, July, August; autumn = September, October, November; winter = December, January, February).

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An End of Summer Update from Deliberate Works

Been doing this solo consulting thing for about 6 months now. Not destitute! Doing good work! Still battling insecurities. Etc. Etc. substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Building a solo practice, navigating insecurities, and attracting the type of work I want

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We mostly have no need to ever interact with each other because our printers just work and we never really need to think about it. That and the secret tattoo I'm sure someone will tell you about soon.

Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Meaningless yet neat stat for today: I've logged 1,000 books as read in Goodreads since 2007. Books are good.

000

It's a goddamn shame that "whelm" basically has the same meaning as "overwhelm."

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Going into the work week with my Cinnamon Toast Crunch press-on tattoo that says “Must Cinnadust” prominently displayed on the inside of my forearm. I am a serious Business Man.

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

@fionatribe.bsky.social Idly browsing Reddit this afternoon and suddenly… hey I know her!

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Hell of a career, JV. Started my senior year of high school and finished when I’m 39.

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Not even THAT big of a baseball guy, but always emotional to watch a legend finish their career. Hope Verlander gets through a couple good innings here.

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It had immediate returns because I had completely forgotten that Struan Loy (IYKYK) was in the first season.

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Simultaneously watching the new season of Slow Horses solo while rewatching S1 with a first-timer. A true scholar of the material.

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Sam Spurlin @samspurlin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

thankful I have a strong immune response to vaccinations, but also, come on man

000

*looks around the home office barely left since March 2020.* ✅

Our Sodastream (technically an "Aarke", but same thing) claims a place of honor on our counter in the kitchen.

There's gotta be interesting marketing case studies out there about how seltzer/carbonated water became so big so quickly.

Something has totally shifted in the last 10-15 years in the U.S. with regard to carbonated water. I remember not even being exposed to it until I went to Budapest in 2010 and people kept asking me if I wanted water with or without "gas."

It’s just carbonated water, no alcohol.

I don’t know if it’ll end up being useful but I just think it’s neat that my AI use is getting me to go re-read something with a critical eye. I could get behind a world where more AI usage means more quietly reading a book from the 70’s and thinking hard for a bit.

000

I’ve been asking Claude to push back on a writing project and it just told me to go re-read Part 3 of Fromm’s “To Have or To Be” and get crystal clear how what I’m trying to do isn’t what Fromm already did in this section.

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While entropy only flows in one direction and can’t be stopped, I think it can be sped up or slowed down. Is that a fruitful lens to analyze the behavior of individuals and organizations? I have a hunch that a lot of “weird” behavior can be traced back to an unconscious horror of entropy’s march…

Entropy is the increase of disorder over time. Energy spreads out and it becomes less useful. On a long enough time scale we’re talking about the heat death of the universe and on a more human scale we’re talking about our own inevitable deaths.