iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 4h

Wish I could say I hadn't seen this one before.

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I support Somali-Americans @adamrothman.bsky.social · 9h

"About half of voters say they want "substantial change," and roughly 3 in 10 want "complete and total upheaval" in the way the country is run." COMPLETE AND TOTAL UPHEAVAL

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Barbara Waxer 🌈 @barbara-waxer.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

When Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens begins playing “Old Corn Liquor,” a traditional Black American folk tune, acclaimed Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man recognizes similarities to Chinese pentatonic music and spontaneously joins in. The joy on their faces says it all.

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Danielle Froom 🏳️‍🌈 @danifroom.bsky.social · 14h

Thousands of comments on this, a third of which are trans people saying "Democrats shouldn't win by building a ladder from our bodies" and two-thirds are liberals saying "enjoy the camps you ungrateful subhumans". Kinda lays bare the entire "purity politics" dogwhistle, huh.

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 14/10/2026

Simba Kundizeza's statement on his Caine Prize-winning story "The Blue Fighter" is also worth reading—keep in mind, the evidence-free article slandering him was published in The Atlantic to a mass readership and his defense is a tweet to his eight hundred followers

Simba Kundizeza
@S_S_Kundizeza
Statement on The Atlantic article concerning “The Blue Fighter”

I would like to say at the outset that this statement is not in any way a proffer of an explanation or a defense against the allegations levelled against me in the article published by The Atlantic, because I don’t believe the article warrants either. I am however writing because of the level of public interest generated in its aftermath, and out of respect for the people who have supported and championed my writing, as well as my fellow shortlisted writers for the Caine Prize. I want to set the record straight.

For the avoidance of doubt, I wrote "The Blue Fighter." I did not use generative AI to write it. It is entirely my own work.

This story did not appear out of nowhere; it has a concrete, documented history. Its genesis was during my LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency in Ghana. While there‚ I read a poem by vangile gantsho titled “my father's hands․” I was inspired by this poem to write a story about my family's experiences in Zimbabwe‚ including my father leaving his accounting profession and the hardships my family faced as a result․ Other aspects of the story‚ including characters and the setting‚ are drawn from events in my own life․

There is also a clear chronology to the story's development. I sent the completed first draft of the story to vangile for feedback on May 15‚ 2025․ I then submitted the story to The Shallow Tales Review on May 27‚ 2025․ Fiction editor Nzube Nlebedim accepted the story on June 10‚ 2025‚ and it went through the standard editorial process. vangile then provided her feedback to me on June 25‚ 2025․ On the same day Nzube also provided editorial feedback to me․ In an email dated June 27‚ 2025‚ I sent the final draft and requested that the editor preserve the formatting of an epigraph in the story as originally submitted by vangile as a courtesy to her․ The story was published on June 30‚ 2025․

The Atlantic article seems to question the story's authorship by comparing its style to my other writing. As writers we develop recurring interests, but we don’t produce work from a single fixed template. My debut novel, “Freelance”, and the story titled "The Whistleblower" published in Transition Magazine in 2021 which is referenced by Ms. Vara, are thrillers dealing with political intrigue. "The Blue Fighter," however, is a deeply personal story about economic collapse and familial relationships. The voice shifts because the subject matter demands it. To suggest that a writer cannot write in different styles or genres, or improve his writing substantially after five or more years fundamentally misunderstands the craft of writing.

The motive for my supposedly using AI to generate the story is equally difficult to understand. I was under no obligation to write “The Blue Fighter”. I was not commissioned to produce it, nor was I paid a fee for its publication. The decision to submit the piece for consideration for the Caine Prize was made by the editor of The Shallow Tales Review months after its publication. I therefore didn’t write the story with any guarantee that it would be submitted, let alone win anything. The idea that I would have somehow written the story with the express intention of entering and winning the Caine Prize, despite the inherently competitive and uncertain nature of the prize, conjures up a motive that simply did not exist.

"The Blue Fighter" is my work, and I stand by it completely. I'm grateful to vangile for her inspiration, to The Shallow Tales Review for giving the story a home, and to the Caine Prize judges for recognizing the work on its merits. I’m also heartened by the numerous messages of solidarity from fellow writers and readers, and to Adrienne Ingrum and Regina Brooks at Serendipity Literary Agency for their support throughout.
I look forward to continuing to work with the Caine Prize team, and to celebrating this recognition with the people who helped bring this story into the world.

Most importantly, I will continue to write.

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 19h

OAFISH RETCON: Artoo secretly had rocket boosters PLAUSIBLE & FEASIBLE: Threepio cracks trooper armor like peanut shells

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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 20h

WaPo got the list of the donors to Trump’s ballroom and it’s every bit as shady and corrupt as you would expect. It’s got everything: pardons, Adelsons, Winklevoss twins and universe of corporations and oligarchs with business before the government. (gift link wapo.st/4yiUDPx)

Photo: President Donald Trump greeted attendees at a White House dinner held in October 2025 to highlight the ballroom construction project.
1 Jose "Pepe" Fanjul
5 Shyam Sankar
Florida Crystals
Palantir
$1M
$10M
2 Isaac Perlmutter
© Jeff Yass
Family Foundation
$5M
$20.3M
7 Cameron & Tyler
3 Fred Humphries
Winklevoss
Microsoft
$5.1M
$10M
* Lance West
4 Nick Ammann
Comcast
Apple
$7.5M
$25M
9
Brandon Lutnick
$2.5M
10 Jeff Miller
$1M
11 Horacio Rozanski
Booz Allen
Hamilton
$2.5MR
Note: Executives are shown with donation amounts from their companies. Donations are rounded to the nearest $100,000.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22h

will try to answer these in a piece next week but for now i will say that part of the *point* of court expansion, in my mind, is to create a disequilibrium — a potential race to the bottom — that will force a truce.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 20h

AI is conscious AND it is my girlfriend AND it is my slave. A perfect scenario for me, a normal person. Not gonna think too deeply about this. Now do all other living human people deserve the level of investment devoted to my Tamogotchi slave girlfriend? Not so fast.

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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 20h

No amount of support for Russia can end the war, because Russia is the criminal aggressor. A modicum of support for Ukraine could, however, end the war, by making it impossible for Russia to continue. This should not be a hard choice.

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

SNL banned Elvis Costello for 12 years for singing a song about corporate media consolidation, so

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

It took massive interventions into the market for this to be the case, part of Trump's scheme to turn American consumers into customers of last resort for otherwise stranded Saudi oil reserves

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gwen howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

New: As gay bars across the country say that Meta is flagging and deactivating their accounts without warning, I spoke to an Austin queer bar that says Meta nearly destroyed their ability to advertise events: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

chron.com

How Meta's new content moderation upended a Texas gay bar

At least one LGBTQ establishment in Texas says the social media giant has incorrectly disabled its social media account, potentially hurting business.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 05/10/2026

hey it’s a gay bar story about who to actually be mad at

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a birb @rhiolit.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

worth also noting that both the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti happened in her district, and on top of the obviously racist targeting of her personally this is also an attempt to deny the people of Minneapolis their democratically elected representative

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

In the end I found Silver Pines very unsatisfying, a game that makes itself so ambiguous and mysterious it ends up meaning nothing. It's an interesting structural experiment but otherwise NOT RECOMMENDED.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Of course there is also a massive amount of backtracking. Of course the inventory is overly constricting. I would also say there are too many weapons; this game did not need three shotguns and I'm not sure I found all the shotguns.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Compounding this is that the game feels like it was constructed with a mandate to be as tedious as possible, from forcing you to dial a number every time you want to save to qtes for reloading or using healing and repair items.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

It all amounts to just atmosphere, but even this is lacking. Monster designs are generic or jumbled, the town and its major locations don't feel distinct in any way, and numerous encounters just feel like they're there for no reason other than to be a boss in a place.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Walker is essentially an uncharacter, with no story of his own and honestly no real personality. Everyone he meets is an enigma, and so are the key characters he doesn't meet. There's no anchor to ground the physical or emotional reality of events.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

It's an interesting structural idea, and for what it's worth the game sort of works out as a 2D exploration-based combat and puzzle game. But it just doesn't cohere as a narrative or aesthetic experience.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Finally for this batch, SILVER PINES, a sort of 2D Silent Hill. Walker, a private eye, wakes up alone in a diner and gets tasked to find a musician named "Eddie Velvet" who is somewhere in the titular town, which is being hit by a massive storm. bsky.app/profile/spar...

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The story is still the same kind of dumb and with the exception of the magician's room I didn't think the puzzles were particularly interesting. If you are hard up for nostalgia of course go ahead, it's fine, but not really worth seeking out. CAUTIOUSLY RECOMMENDED

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

After an inauspicious beginning, the puzzles seem to have much less of the "fuck you" character that was typical of 90s puzzlers although I still think a number of them are Bad in the old way.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The Remake preserves key aesthetic elements of the original, including live-action bits. The acting is improved, let's say, and arguably the costuming is too, but the script was not adjusted for the fact that the magician character is not wearing an absurd little turban.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Next I finished THE 7TH GUEST REMAKE, another blast from the early 90s era of puzzle games. This version is more forgiving (and feels shorter than I remember the original being). bsky.app/profile/spar...

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Anyway, Forbidden Solitaire has some neat riffs on the traditional card game and a fun little metastory wrapping its retro adventure. RECOMMENDED.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

There's also a fun making-of deck that comes with the game, including a bit about how the engine they develop in doesn't have video streaming capabilities so they turned everything into gifs rather than switch to a new engine.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I liked the metastory around it. There's a mostly very funny appearance by Xalavier Nelson as Game Developer With Too Many Ideas (evil version) and an amusing riff on "Fact or Fiction?" It moves a little too briskly, though, and the player character is too passive.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The game uses solitaire configurations as a metaphor for basically everything, including traversal, searching, combat and so on. They're all decent but I thought the stealth type was inspired, just a really clever implementation.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The trouble with solitaire as the basis for an adventure game is that the modal outcome of that game, by a spectacular margin, is failure. Forbidden Solitaire tosses in a bunch of newfangled configurations and puts its finger on the scale (sometimes unsubtly) to tilt the odds back to the player.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

It's October so naturally I have been playing some SPOOKY games. First up is FORBIDDEN SOLITAIRE, a game about solitairing your way through a cursed dungeon wrapped in a metanarrative about demonically possessed software and asshole auteurs in way over their heads. bsky.app/profile/spar...

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

exactly the type of headline their "investigation" sought to generate. the same media that cast Bill Clinton having a chat with Loretta Lynch in 2016 as an egregious scandal of DOJ independence instead plays along with one of the most serious abuses of power in Presidential history. Why?

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Gio :⁾ @im.giovanh.com · 14/10/2026

Every job that exists to facilitate fixing things has been replaced by a series of buffer-humans who are intentionally given all the exposure and no power in roles that exist to prevent any corporation from ever having to spend money

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Happy(?) Steve Bartman Day to those who celebrate/mourn. A moment of pre-social media virality and abuse that truly presaged the stupidity and cruelty of today.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 14/10/2026

boy Trump fucked the American auto industry. first he yanks their EV subsidies, leading them to slash production and write off tens of billions in investment, then he jacks up the price of oil by 50%, leading to skyrocketing EV demand going almost entirely to China bc GM et al left the market

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Steve Rattner @steverattner.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Real wages are shrinking year-over-year for the sixth month in a row. The Iran War brought an end to three years of real wage growth.

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Billions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed about 15 minutes before Trump announced a U-turn on Iran in a post on Truth Social. CFTC staff began to investigate...then were told to lay off. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

bloomberg.com

CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades

Chairman’s adviser intervened to take over examination of lucrative bets that were made around Trump reversal on Iran power plant attack.

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Lane Stellmaker @hipcrimevocab.net · 14/10/2026

In saner times, we would consider an American who graduated from a US law school and then spent the only practical part of her career practicing for an undisclosed employer in Beijing as "having been developed as a Chinese asset and should in no circumstances be permitted in the White House." But...

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Hard not to notice that Democrats who are doing the best are the ones who are leaving this whole civility-and-norms, we-go-high, we-need-a-strong-Republican-Party bullshit behind and are simply giving Republicans exactly what they all ought to get at all times, which is undisguised contempt.

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BlakeT @blaketresca.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Colleagues and I have established that dirty NMR tubes are autocatalytic. A single dirty tube will convert any amount of clean tubes to their dirty form, when not observed by the lab manager or PI. We also found the process is irreversible until the supply of clean tubes has been fully exhausted.

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

can’t believe OpenAI had someone on staff who thought it was appropriate to record everything that people around him said

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@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) @newsjennifer.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Elon Musk is one of the most dangerous people in the world. Twitter is a right wing propaganda tool. There are far too many folks out there pretending otherwise.

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Sparky Clarkson @sparkyclarkson.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

the important thing is to fortify and have like 50 units defending new stuttgart including at least one phalanx

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Sarah Posner @sarahposner.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Trump dispatched liars and sadists to disparage and ruin the careers of dedicated public servants. That is a core of his legacy, and of the GOP, which for decades denigrated federal civil servants, laying the groundwork for hate, and then stood by as all of these outrages unfolded before our eyes.

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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 13/10/2026

Remembering that time when some big name accounts were arguing that X is all good now and the algorithm has been de-Elon'd. Wait, that was yesterday. The same time this was happening.

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

3/ The new one seemed wobbly and awkward. Hard to watch. Not even sure she’ll last a mooch.

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Christopher Julian @chrisajulian.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Among 9th graders, bisexual identification fell from 11.0% to 6.9% between 2023 and 2025. That is where it was in 2019 (7.0%). No other grade had a significant change.

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