iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

tie: a complete 19th century edition of Humboldt's Cosmos (in my office) and this cool Wedgwood jasperware dish I found at Vinnie's Treasure Shoppe in Wihkwentowin

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I'm sorry whose water supply now

Tank on a truck that says "Saddam Husain Water Supply" in painted letters

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

totally agree with the general thrust, but this seems to be selling short what LLMs do. as I see it, one of the more miraculous things about them is that they can sort of interpolate between existing texts and recombine information to answer questions that haven't been asked before!

"The reason an LLM can answer a factual question is because someone has posted text on that specific question."

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in many American cities

A photo of the interior of HUB Mall at University of Alberta

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

A favorite example, from Penelope Fitzgerald's THE BOOKSHOP

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

I'd like to think that the 2025 version of these Heems lines would find some way to work in Mamdani (who, I'm told, was first turned on to politics by Heems!)

Kalidasa, but across the Kalapani
Probably with a Khalistani mommy high as I'll be
Das Racist on a roll like wasabi
I don't know what these two are, I'm Punjabi
More cash mommy than Mukesh Ambani
And Anil Ambani, yeah, that's real Armani

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Cate Blanchett has a chance to do the funniest thing of all time

Headline reporting that an amateur conductor is paying the Toronto Symphony to lead a Mahler performance

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

a couple weeks late to this, but happy first birthday to what might be the best album of my adult lifetime

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

I'm on a hunt for the most purely, blandly beige building in all of Edmonton. Here are just a few of the many, many contenders.

These are all non-descript beige apartment buildings

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

shout-out to the students who wrote Judge Holden and the Underground Man

a whiteboard with a question up top, "which book character would you like as a BFF?"

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

look at this ancient Egyptian nepo baby

In the lower left-hand corner of the inscription, Weni stands in the position of respect with one hand placed on the opposite shoulder, looking back on his career and honoring the names of the kings that occur throughout his biography. He does not mention any of his family members by name, including his father, the Vizier Iuu. He also claims that he achieved his high position entirely on his own merit. Archaeologists believed this was true until the 1999 Michigan work confirmed his father was the Vizier Iuu.

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

to be fair... Atrium avait apparemment annoncé la décision en septembre

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

confession: the only reason I stayed active on Twitter so long is that Mitski follows me there (proof below)

Mitski's Twitter account with a "follows you" symbol

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 20/12/2023

5: from Enrique Granados, Goyescas, Los requiebros (almost wrote Enrique Iglesias 😬)

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 20/12/2023

4: from Maurice Ravel, Menuet antique

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

3: from Maurice Ravel, Concerto pour la main gauche

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

2: from Olivier Messiaen, Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, Première communion de la Vierge

another musical excerpt, this time from a piano piece by Messiaen

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

an entirely frivolous thread of snippets of music that look very satisfying first off: from Alban Berg, Lyric Suite, mvmt 3

an excerpt from Alban Berg's Lyric Suite

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

I'm determined to post like in the early days of Twitter—just writing things absolutely nobody cares about. Things like this Mariah Carey tweet:

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 10/12/2023

grateful to be in a city where the main orchestra is adventurous enough to put on an all-Messiaen concert ❤️

View from the choir section of the Maison symphonique

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 10/12/2023

this copy of Marcel Dubé's Zone I checked out from the BAnQ may be autographed?! (known signature in first image)

signed copy of book by Marcel Dubé and coauthor

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

thank you to the previous reader of this copy of Comment faire l'amour avec un n— sans se fatiguer who took the time to write in a correction whenever Dany Laferrière screwed up the gender of a word

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Shan Kothari @shankothari.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

« le peuple gazouilli » is my new favorite typo, although surely it was sort of inevitable

an anti-Mélenchon tweet (sorry, gazouilli!) that mistakenly refers to "le peuple gazouilli" instead of "gazaoui"

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