iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 02/10/2026

I missed this Pew study in August, but was just pondering what this number is up to. This is what an extinction event for the information ecosystem looks like. www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...

Timeline chart since 2023, showing new pages climbing to 35% and all pages climbing to 9.6%.

Paragraph reads: In the July 2026 snapshot, signs of AI authorship can be found in over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released. This is in line with other studies that have shown that large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 11/09/2026

Why are they selling a disposable mop fluid refill as if it were a beverage?

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/08/2026

Even with an *extremely* conservative estimate, I was pretty surprised by how big some of the numbers get. This is all *per year* by the way, because we're talking about 200,000 satellites dying annually.

Bar chart for each element, and for both chondrites and iron-rich asteroids, titled "Diameter of asteroid (in meters) required to match the amount of each element lost.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/07/2026

Ozone depletion has started to get some research attention in the context of Starlink, OneWeb, etc. The data center constellation would be much, much bigger. Makes ya think!

$Screenshot from the article: A 2024 paper can help us relate this back to the AI data center satellites. That team modeled the process of a Starlink-sized satellite burning up on reentry. They estimated that a 250 kg satellite would release about 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles ready to deplete ozone. Given that, they estimate that satellites would have released about 2 metric tons of aluminum oxide in 2016, increasing to almost 17 tons in 2022. When megaconstellations like Starlink reach steady-state operation in the future, that number could be around 360 tons. For comparison, the total amount of aluminum in small meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere each year is about 140 tons—the amount oxidized into similar nanoparticles would be some fraction of that. If we use these numbers as a rough estimate—30 kg of aluminum oxide particles from a 250 kg satellite—we can scale it up to the proposed AI data center satellites. Each of SpaceX’s “AI1” satellites are expected to come in around 6 tons. (See Eric Berger at Ars Technica for the working on that. Although Elon Musk also helpfully noted that they are “very, very tiny compared to Earth.”) That would mean 720 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles released per satellite. With 40,000 to 200,000 of these satellites reentering Earth’s atmosphere each year, we’re talking 29,000 to 144,000 tons per year.$

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 29/06/2026

I've seen papery bits of ash from fires many times, but this morning I'm sweeping full-on charcoal flakes that carried 10 miles... #PocketFire

Photo of four black flakes next to a quarter, which is only slightly bigger than they are.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 22/06/2026

A 1-of-1 substances table in the remediation site report apps.dnr.wi.gov/rrbotw/botw-...

Reported substances table: Anhydrous Ammonia - Not for Agricultural Use, UNK AMT, EST <1,000 LBS. Dairy Products, BUTTER & CHEESE, >25,000,000 LBS. Food Product HAM, HOT DOG, CRANBERRIES & BAKERY, >10,000,000 LBS.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 01/05/2026

Public attention vastly overindexes gas prices.

Norman Rockwell guy standing up to speak meme.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 20/04/2026

If you're waiting for the dead internet to arrive, you missed it. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/d...

Screenshot from story: Most streamers don’t go out of their way to label AI music, but Deezer has worked to develop technology to identify that content. In a recent update, the company says AI music is approaching half of all new uploads, and most of the supposed listeners of those streams are AI themselves.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 21/03/2026

European sports league uniforms beat everyone to the final phase of enshittification. What can the value of the 17th color-clashing logo possibly be? Does it not drive down the sponsorship price of the other 16? I refuse to believe this works out for anyone. 📸 eishockey-magazin.de/fischtown-pi...

Two hockey players from the Fischtown Pinguins of Bremerhaven.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 28/02/2026

If any sea level lubbers don't know, most bags of chips look like birthday balloons when you live at 7,000 feet.

photo of a bag of Doritos that looks like it was inflated to capacity

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/02/2026

In what world would a language model ever be applicable to something like this? You might as well be saying that we're all at risk unless the military gets a Furby in every cockpit. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

A defense official said the Pentagon's technology chief whittled the debate down to a life-and-death scenario at a meeting last month: If an intercontinental ballistic missile was launched at the United States, could the military use Anthropic's Claude AI system help shoot it down?

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 31/01/2026

Building those power plants and launching them into space isn't challenging?

Global electricity demand for data centers is projected to more than double by 2035 driven by growth in AI ― reaching approximately 1,200-1,700 terawatt hours and accounting for up to 4% of total worldwide electricity consumption. Building power plants and other terrestrial energy infrastructure at scale to maintain this additional power continuously on Earth will be extremely challenging.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 31/01/2026

Low operating costs because it's solar? You could do solar on Earth. Low maintenance costs because... it's impossible to ever touch it once you launch it.

By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs...

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 31/01/2026

The document (linked in the story) has a lot of silly in it.

Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization―one that can harness the Sun's full power―while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity's multi-planetary future amongst the stars.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/01/2026

Grammarly gets honest when it's advertising to students instead of education executives.

Screenshot of Grammarly ad, text below photo of a girl read "Don't want to lose points for plagiarism? Get Grammarly."

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 10/06/2025

Honest to Murgatroyd while writing this I got a new Chrome AI popup "Help me write" button I'd never seen before. Here's how to turn off the latest trash in settings!

Screenshot of Google Chrome settings page showing "AI Innovations" section where "Help me write" can be disabled.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 08/06/2025

Steller's Jay can take this peanut the easy way or the hard way, capisce?

Blue and black Steller's Jay sits on a deck railing with a whole peanut in its mouth.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 31/05/2025

Baltimore oriole (verbose)

Orange and black bird sits on a thin branch in an elm tree.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 29/05/2025

For some nominative non-determinism, a nighthawk roused for a mid-day snack.

Nighthawk in flight in front of clouds, with fine stripes across the body, and upward pointing wings

A flying nighthawk with horizontal wings, making its back and stubby head visible to the camera.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 28/05/2025

Caught a young bald eagle flying low enough for a good look.

Close photo of a speckled brown-and-light eagle in flight overhead against a backdrop of thin cloud cover.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 27/05/2025

Y'all are gettin some birb content, strap in. (today: scarlet tanager)

Photo of a bright red bird with black wings sitting on a thin branch in a maple tree.

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Scott K. Johnson @sjon.earth · 09/02/2025

for no (some) reason in particular: it's not possible to have a life-saving tsunami warning system without close international collaboration and data sharing