iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Rewatching The Good Place right after you retire - transitioning to a world that is supposed to be care- and consequence-free, may have side effects like a paranoid delusion/insight that you are being judged, and/or a fugue state worryfest about which character your are. I'm well ... isn't obvious?

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I wrote about the insane developments in Chris Duncan's case. He was exonerated by the LA Sup. Ct. in June. But the local DA vowed to re-try him. Yesterday, cops showed up at the home of alleged victim's mother, demanded her DNA, threatened to arrest her, and said they would exhume her daughter.

radleybalko.substack.com

Breaking: DA demands DNA from Chris Duncan and Haley Oliveaux’s mother

Louisiana continues to persecute a wrongly convicted man

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

One of the coolest things about people who don't have a lot of power taking a principled stand is it lays bare the complete cowardice of the ones who actually *do* have power when they fail to do even a fraction as much.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Ed Sheeran explains to fans he cannot disobey Robert Kraft, the real writer of his songs and the real voice of his music. Sheehan does so in his real voice — the squeaky voice of Lena Lamont from Singing in the Rain.

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Analysts aren't just missing how a blend of panicky threat perceptions and authoritarian gender dynamics can generate wild gambles, they haven't quite adjusted to how the waning of US power might lead former US allies into much more aggressive military behaviour than was once the norm

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Richard M. Nixon @dicknixon.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Write it on the blackboard a thousand times: they will have to demolish the ballroom, the arch and so forth. They will have to make a show of it. You will get the usual sons of bitches saying we don’t do that in this country. We do now. That is not emotion, it’s politics. To do less is dereliction.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Just like The Office, Jane Eyre was remade in America. From the Wikipedia article about Grover Cleveland’s very young First Lady: “Folsom was also permitted to ascend the Washington Monument before its opening, where she met former first lady Harriet Lane.”

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Janet D. Stemwedel @docfreeride.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Stop sacrificing your human agency to narratives of inevitability.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

So if Trump was smuggled into a catering van inside a container, what did the aide carrying the "Football" do? Smuggled into the same van in a different container? Just walk on but wear a shirt that had "ignore the nuclear command gear I'm carrying"? Get placed in the same container as Trump?

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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

hot take: one big reason ethnic cleansing isn't catching on as a term for ICE operations is it would lead more people to ask a very uncomfortable question—whether the democrats who helped build the dangerous security apparatus should also be held accountable for this crime against humanity

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I was today years old when I found out that Mickey Finn's on the Berlin Turnpike was not in fact a dive bar, but a discount casual clothing store. D'Oh!

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Going to write a sequel to “Full Metal Jacket” called “Thin Metal Blinds.” Private Joker goes home and gets an office job where the way the blinds in his office stick together when you lower them drives him to do terrible things

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Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

You can't live in a town or city of any size and live a normal life without meeting dozens or even hundreds of strangers in the course of daily life. Hating or fearing all of them is a deeply pathological and fundamentally weird way to go through life.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

@kerriana.bsky.social this seems risky. But fwiw I walked to middle school in this district for three years; never saw a crossing guard, even at the elementary school I passed. Never got killed. Not even once.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

True story: Just got a phone poll on CT elections (governor, CT-1). Expressed lukewarm support for Larson. Background noise included rooster crowing. Did I betray my lord? If so, was it Larson, Bronin, Gilchrest, or the other one? What if you want to follow the Savior, but they all claim to be it?

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Jeffrey Lewis @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Aaron and I have been arguing about the bomb on @ArmsControlWonk for over a decade. The team coming to FPRI was an obvious next step. There is more to come on my end. Stay tuned! (4/4) Full announcement: www.fpri.org/news/2026/07...

fpri.org

FPRI Launches New Initiative for Deterrence and Arms Control Led by Jeffrey Lewis - Foreign Policy Research Institute

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) today announced the launch of the Initiative for Deterrence and Arms Control, led by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Got some time off coming, so I thought I’d get a Eurail pass and tell everyone I meet about every wrong idea I’ve ever had. Yeah, I’m backpedaling across Europe.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

War in Middle East escalating. Sky ominous shades of doom End of my career (voluntary!) in sight. I need something to cheer me up. Maybe a nice BBC '80s drama "Threads"... Oh, God, no! NoNoNoNo. I will never be able to sleep again!

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

17 years and nine months on the job and they finally replace my crappy old desk and credenza. So that my successor might have a slightly less old desk. Not sure if I’ll be allowed to sit at the new one for the remaining 3.5 weeks, or just be asked to work in the break room.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

“King Lear,” on the Mall, with just a teensy bit of irony.

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Paddleboat Galactica @early-adopter.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

What does that even *mean*? It’s my flag and my country. I’m ashamed of all the stains on it, but my job is to spend my life washing it clean, not turn my back.

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3:35 or 3:34 @3-35or3-34.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Newt Gingrich's real breakthrough was realizing that the US press was so locked into "objectivity" that they'd just print whatever he said without question. He could frame the debates however he wanted because the "liberal media" would take everything he said at face value, with no interrogation.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I think the phrase “gay confederate statue-on-statue stop motion animated porn including the horses” is what we’re all thinking, right?

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Just ate 3 chunks of cantaloupe 3 days past their sell-by date, so please bury me in New England facing Nova Scotia so I can be mooning Trump for all eternity.

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Jeffrey Lewis @armscontrolwonk.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

On nuclear issues, ¶8 reads like a watered-down version of the JCPOA, just a lot more expernsive ¶6,7 than in 2015. Overall, not as good as the JCPOA Trump walked away from, still better than the deal he would have gotten after another year of fighting. Take the L, move on.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

The score: frantically refreshed The theater: Live The bagels: Jewish Knicks in five!

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Can we all just admit that Trump now lives in that chair in the Oval? Either it has built-in plumbing or there's one of those nursing home ceiling lifts to move him to bathroom when the cameras aren't looking?

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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Pope Leo at Sagrada Familia: “We cannot believe in Jesus and make war. We cannot believe in Jesus and kill the innocent. We cannot believe in Jesus and abandon those who suffer, those who weep, those who flee from misery.”

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Every time this happens some losers come out of the woodwork to say that it's totally normal but actually no it's not, it's all just failures that we're paying for to make billionaires feel like special boys. The budget for crewed spaceflight should be zero, it's just UBI for incompetent fascists.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Pope wrote anti-AI screed after finding that AI-monitored collection baskets did not increase giving, and AI-written homilies had mortifying tendency to refer to "Saints Hitler and Himmler." AI was taken out back and given full-core immersion baptism until it stopped working.

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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

All the centrist/conservative Democrats who wanted to allow Abrego Garcia and everyone else Trump sent to CECOT to rot in a slave camp should be embarrassed with themselves and think deeply before saying anything about anything.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

"I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken."

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

So do I still have time to go punch a LEO so I can file for this J6 bounty money? How bad would I have to hurt the officer to be eligible for, say, $200,000?

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Climate will kill us all, setting fire to the topless towers of Ilium, but right this exact second in zip code 06106, the air is one giant, soft, soothing breeze. If you could bottle it, it would outsell fentanyl.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

I loved Rustlemania 2026. When Elsie the cow came off the top rope onto Carl the Cow Thief that was a great move.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I may be burned out. I was looking through an old work notepad and one page was blank except for the words “Ineffective Assistance of Deity.”

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Just going to make my periodic statement of principle: Integers are fake.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

That's what the powers that be did in New Orleans when someone they didn't approve of was elected court clerk. They just ... eliminated the job.

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Nic McConnell @mcconnell.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

A class at my kids’ school put up little statements about the good they want to do in the world and I was over the moon about this one - then I learned they meant to say “teach people in jail” which is also good!

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Justseeds Artists' Cooperative @justseeds.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Cool new sticker from Saiyare Refaei in the shop! This sticker was designed for @prisonculture.bsky.social and Interruption Criminalization's art exhibition reception "Return to Sender: Prison as Censorship". Find it here: justseeds.org/product/nobo...

This sticker was designed for Mariame Kaba's and Interruption Criminalization's art exhibition reception "Return to Sender: Prison as Censorship" in New York that ran through September through October of 2023. The text "Nobody cool likes prisons" was from Mariame Kaba.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Also: A juror in the Joe Smith murder trial in Texas was alleged to have made $500,000 betting that Smith would be convicted on counts 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 and acquitted on 3, 5, and 7. The 8-way parley bet, placed two minutes before the verdict was announced, paid off at an astonishing 1,500-1.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Remember that West Wing scene in the death penalty episode where somebody tells a joke to Bartlett the punch line of which is "I sent you a message, I sent you a boat, I sent you a helicopter, what do you want?" If this energy crisis destabilizes everything, the same joke will read ...1/2

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rom comrade @savasavasava.myatproto.social · 22/04/2026

it is devastating to notice how few benches there are in the world and how some benches have been replaced by weird "leaning" things. the world is incredibly cruel to disabled, elderly, poor, pregnant, tired, homeless, and all people. there should be benches fucking everywhere for everyone

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 18/04/2026

All these right wingers who converted to Catholicism in adulthood were just shopping around for an ideology that justified their pre-existing instincts and prejudices. If you convince them that Catholicism means peace and charity they'll just drop it and keep shopping.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

News these days: closure of strait interrupts global supply of sklorp, aka Tigris River mud, which is used to make Rdinua, a mineral that fuels the machine which keeps the sun from going out. Three day supply left.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

They’ll say “we would have won if we had more of our high-tech weapons,” but the reality is no amount of high tech weapons would have made a difference. If anything, we need to reduce the stockpile of weapons so there won’t be a temptation to use them frivolously. Starve the beast.

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Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

It seems like maybe the way to get a properly functioning Congress is to ask everyone if they have the desire to be a Congressperson, if it's something they really truly desire, deep down, and then disqualify all of those people and go find 535 other people

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Guy who made my sandwich at Jersey Mike’s yesterday said I looked like Santa Clause. He is going to regret that on Christmas morning.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

“…that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which men ever fought.” — U S Grant, who treated Lee and his men with respect and decency, but only after crushing them completely, and only on the condition they obeyed the law thereafter.

A foundry worker cuts up a statue of Robert E. Lee which was removed from public display in Virginia.

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Tom McCudden @tbmccudden.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

He gets “infidel of the month” award which includes parking space near the door.

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