iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 15h

tried a new Palestinian-Mexican fusion food truck in St. Elmo and it's so good they make their own zatar tortillas, and the barbacoa melted in your mouth 🤤 www.austinchronicle.com/food/first-l...

Bowl of loaded fries topped with pickled red onions, crumbled white cheese, chopped cilantro, and a creamy sauce.

Takeout box printed "Tacos Arabi" holding three flatbread tacos (one with chicken and pico de gallo, two with lamb and pickled onions) and a cup of red salsa.

Two flatbread tacos with barbacoa, pickled red onions, crumbled cheese, and cilantro on SOMOS-branded paper, with a salsa cup at the edge.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 03/10/2026

my post #monktoberfest pro-tip is to get the soft serve to-go from the Honey Paw and eat it in your hotel bed

Soft serve covered in chocolate that has hardened, with a sprinkle of salt and honeycomb pieces on top of it

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 02/10/2026

louder for the people in the back: "when the cost of writing code goes to zero, the things that matter are ideas, taste, & distribution (a.k.a. judgement, connection, and trust)" from a talk by Emily Lovell and Moon Davé at #monktoberfest

Slide that says:

when the cost of writing code goes to zero, the things that matter are ideas, taste, & distribution (a.k.a. judgement, connection, and trust)
- Lola Egherman, CodeDay

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 02/10/2026

our laziness is what allows us as humans to say no, and this helps us push back against complexity @bcantrill.bsky.social #monktoberfest

A slide that says:

The virtue of laziness
• Our need to comprehend and compose systems drives us towards developing simple, powerful abstractions
• This is our drive to cognitive efficiency in a system - what Larry Wall famously called the programmer virtue of laziness
• LLMs lack the virtue of laziness - they are biased to the complex
• Moreover, their limited context makes them tautologically emergent..

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 02/10/2026

literally me last week trying to define "simplier" in the context of complexity last week for a specific project @bcantrill.bsky.social in his talk today at #monktoberfest

Photo of a speaker presenting to a seated audience in a bright room. The projected slide, titled "Abstraction and complexity," shows a two-axis chart. The vertical axis runs from "Engineered" (top) to "Emergent" (bottom), and the horizontal axis from "Complex" (left) to "Simple" (right). The quadrants are labeled Constructed, Revolutionary, Accreted, and Rebellious, with "Revolutionary" highlighted in bold. A citation beneath reads "The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)." The speaker, a man in a black t-shirt holding a microphone, gestures toward the slide. A live-captions screen is visible at right.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 27/09/2026

lol this detail from Lucas Spence's wiki page, new Astros hero baseball is romantic in the sense of a dude whose minor season just ended gets called up to the majors. then gets 4 homeruns, a double, and a triple with 9 RBIs, and the last game isn't even over.

After catching an 11-pound, 30 1/2-ounce (5.85-kilogram) walleye during the All-Star break, Spence had his contract selected by the Astros from the Triple–A Sugar Land Space Cowboys on July 17, 2026. He made his MLB debut in a 3–2 home loss to the Baltimore Orioles later that night, drawing a walk in his first plate appearance and hitting a leadoff single off Grant Wolfram in the seventh inning.[6]

On September 24, 2026, despite previously having had only six hits in 40 at-bats in his MLB career, none of which were for extra bases, Spence hit three home runs in a game against the Athletics, in Sacramento, California.[7][8] This made him only the third player in MLB history to hit his first three career home runs in the same game.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 27/09/2026

a good friend is moving away 😢 and had one of those late nights in Austin where you had no idea you were going to hear great live music and have Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter (she plays here too!) as your bartender, but it happened. old Austin still exists.

a band playing in a dark venue with a sign that says “Sam’s Town Point”

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 23/09/2026

threw some pottery for the first time in almost two months. seems like I didn’t totally forget how to.

Three damp clay cups and a bowl, sitting on a piece of plastic on a shelf

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 20/09/2026

this would be the week that I find my first gray hair 😅 had to go look at plants at the nursery to feel better about it (say hi to Biscuit)

Beds of plants planted out that are large and thriving with granite paths between them

A goat looking at the camera while laying inside a house

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 19/09/2026

I just want to fall garden but.... 😭 my garden looks really sad right now. maybe in October. I'll start some seeds until then.

This week temperatures in the high 90s to low 100s F followed by mid 90s F. Lows don't even get below 70F.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 19/09/2026

I've basically been not home for almost three weeks. I look forward to not seeing the inside of an airplane for 12 days. today I met Olive at DEN though.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 12/09/2026

how I feel about leaving a place with good transit after two weeks? not good! 😩 I’ve only been in a car (buses don’t count) once and it was for a minor emergency that we couldn’t handle with transit

melancholy self on a train with a train window behind

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 10/09/2026

I had to do a day trip to Belgium to prepare for @monktoberfest.com in three weeks

Close-up of a tulip-shaped glass reading "200 Years Rodenbach," filled with a dark reddish-brown beer topped with a thick off-white foam head, sitting on a wooden table.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 06/09/2026

back at my favorite brewery in Amsterdam, Oedipus Brewery 🥭🍺

a light yellow beer in a fun beer glass with a colorful beer garden in the background

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 02/09/2026

finally got a Mikkeller in Copenhagen RIP the US locations

A orange-ish color beer on a table near a street lined with cars, some graffiti in the background

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 30/08/2026

the matcha bowl is probably the most functional thing I’ve created. I want to do more of this! here’s a bit more… looking forward to more of this in the next few months.

Overhead view of a shallow bowl on a marble surface, glazed in warm cream and tan with rust-brown speckles and a pale blue-grey rim.

A hand holds a straight-sided bowl in front of glaze buckets in a studio; the exterior is buttery yellow-tan with brown speckles fading to a dusky grey band above the bare clay foot.

A hand holds a low, wide bowl in a pottery studio; the outside is glazed in mottled sea green and deep purple-blue with a rust-red rim and unglazed clay foot.

A short cylindrical stoneware cup on a studio shelf, glazed in deep cobalt blue with pale, frosty white streaks running down the sides.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 30/08/2026

KLM left our bags in Amsterdam that we were forced to check because the flight was “full” (not really), so take pity on me while we wait for them and say nice things about some of my recent glaze experiments. I’ve been way more into glazing than throwing pottery lately.

A hand holds a small flared stoneware cup with a glossy glaze that runs in streaks of cream, coral red, and dark brown; the interior is pale white.

A ceramic matcha bowl with a spouted lip, glazed in mottled blue and deep red, sits on a granite counter filled with frothy bright green matcha.

Overhead view of a shallow bowl on light wood, glazed dark brown-black with clusters of pale blue crystalline blooms that have tan centers.

Overhead view of a bowl glazed in soft blue-grey with pinkish-brown crystal spots scattered across the interior.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 26/08/2026

time for etsy witches for the Astros?

AL standings with Hou 66-66 and Tex 66-66

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 22/08/2026

it’s not even today’s high yet 🥵

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 20/08/2026

it has come to my attention that my 20+ year old Astros gear is cool again (based on observations from the kids are wearing at the stadium), and I'm calling these "vintage" now maybe I should have cleaned the sweat off them before I stored them away for a couple of decades 😂

Astros baseball cap with the old red star

Astros baseball vidor with the old red star and says Houston Astros

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 17/08/2026

after spending another weekend eating amazing food in Houston for the second time this baseball season, I am glad we remembered you can just drive to Houston for food and baseball for a single night. will be doing this again in 2027. most underrated major US city.

Overhead view of a bowl of chilaqueles topped with a fried egg, sliced avocado, pickled red onions, microgreens, cotija cheese, and crema, served on a light gray plate.

View from the stands at a packed baseball stadium with a retractable roof, showing players at home plate and an umpire during a game.

Close-up mural on a brick building wall depicting two tattooed arms clasped in a fist bump of people who might be of different of races, painted in front of a pink triangle outline.

Large mural on the side of a high-rise building depicting an owl surrounded by white roses, perched on a branch with a blue jay, chickadee, cardinals, and other songbirds below.

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 11/08/2026

San Francisco having to do better giveaways like Hello Kitty Funko Pops just to get people to show up to a game against the Rockies ⚾️

Hello Kitty Funko Pop! - August 16 vs Rockies on a sign

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Taylor Barnett-Torabi @taylorbar.net · 27/05/2026

I think it’s a good day for this shirt in Texas after yesterday to remind folks that our politicians do not represent all Texans ❤️ (shirt from www.instagram.com/emsbrynart who takes second hand shirts and screen prints on top of them with their designs)

A selfie wearing a shirt that says TEXAS is for people with disabilities. trans people, kids, queers, immigrants, everyone!!!

With a cute little cowperson drawing.

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