iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Arthur Baron-Clément @arthur.baron-clement.com · 16/06/2026

better a (paint)pig than a fascist

Rough landscape digital painting. In the foreground some rusty and destroyed server racks. A red plane fly trough a blue cloudy sky.

I have an MA in International Relations with a specialty in political violence in the Middle East. I have been an aviation journalist for two decades. I've been used as a J-school case study for what we'd now call flight tracking OSINT journalism. I've done talking-head aviation documentary work.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 6h

I haven't been to Shanghai in far too long — anyone got any good recommendations for Chris for beer and food?

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 20h

my professional thoughts on this: 😬

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Often, airlines make bad livery choices and then go on to make bad seat, product and other choices. I'm not saying correlation equals causation. But I am saying that taking Chester off the Alaska tail is a bad choice.

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Seth Miller @wandrme.paxex.aero · 29/09/2026

Alaska Airlines is ready for a true premium play. The carrier will introduce a MAX 10 sub-fleet with lie-flat beds and premium economy, add premium economy to its widebody fleet, and more. paxex.aero/alaska-airli... #AvGeek #PaxEx $ALK

paxex.aero

Alaska Airlines Brings Aurora Premium Upgrades to MAX 10, 787 Fleets | PaxEx.Aero

Alaska Airlines is ready for a true premium play. The carrier will introduce a MAX 10 sub-fleet with lie-flat beds and premium economy, add premium economy to its widebody fleet, and more.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I actually recommend Nagoya above Osaka for visitors to Japan doing a Tokyo-Kyoto-plus-one route when talking #JohnDoesJapan — you get a really different vibe, a different region of Japan, and a great springboard to beautiful rural areas. I'm heading back this autumn.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hate the terrible YouTube-click-psychology thumb with AI slop seats SO MUCH… but #JohnDoesJapan cosign on the travel advice: • head for lunch at destination restaurants • do big name temples in Kyoto super early • Japan's most important word, "sumimasen" • the best (free!) Shinkansen seat

youtube.com

What Japan Travel Mistake Videos Don’t Tell You

YouTube video by Japan with Nao

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Delighted* the French have discovered what is simply the least practical way to enbreaden a burger: the croissant bun. Not only does it not absorb anything — not that it gets a chance with the lettuce underneath — when you press down on it the middle part of the spiral pops up as it disintegrates.

A burger “contained” within a croissant bun — essentially, a spiral-shaped croissant — that is too small for it even to start with

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I am once again begging sports fan friends to select and use a consistent hashtag — the league acronym, perhaps? — that the rest of us can mute.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In case you need it: one of my favourite balms for overwhelm is sitting down in a darkened room to watch a non-narrated Japanese travel video, with just subtitles and the original audio from whatever means of transport is being enjoyed. Like this ferry.

youtube.com

Chasing Rough Seas on Japan's 21-Hour Ferry, BUT... (Tokyo Kyushu Ferry)

YouTube video by Solo Travel Japan

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

delighted to inform all le bourgetistes-teurs that it seems you will have one more year of the armpit bus from the RER félicitations remember there are a *lot* of hotels between LBG and CDG that are far better than the armpit bus and the RER

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

look i am not bang bang pew pew aviation at ALL but i do know air routes and so where exactly are these incredibly secret bits of f-35 being made that HKG is a diversion airport en route to the united states

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

@rahaeli.bsky.social reminds me of when we Happened to that waffle house in the middle of the night

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The Up Front @theupfront.media · 23/09/2026

We have a million questions, and a 5000-word article, for Etihad’s new seats, lounges and overall brand redesign. Is “sand” too generic? Does “superstructure” say “Abu Dhabi”? Is deep jade too Cathay? Is Vantage First enough of a first class? Is Opera’s row 1 seat? Is Beyond Borders even new?

theupfront.media

What Etihad’s new seats, new lounge concepts and an evolving design language tell us about first and business class

Is “sand” too generic? Does “superstructure” say “Abu Dhabi”? Is deep jade too Cathay? Is Vantage First enough of a first class? Is Opera’s row 1 seat? Is Beyond Borders even new? Etihad’s latest desi...

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

good luck to my fellow not-a-hobbit height people in the new etihad lounge in heathrow, by the way strongly recommend not reenacting the council of elrond in these deeply weird seats, they'll have your eye out with that light fixture

Text: Business is almost entirely in neutrals and monochrome black textures, including the “feature space” of seven low chairs in a ring awkwardly facing each other under a perilously dangling light fixture in a sort of Star Wars Jedi Council, The Lord of the Rings Rivendell meeting of the Fellowship of the Ring sort of situation.

Image: Interior, lounge. Seven low white-covered chairs, each with only one arm, surround a tiny low white table in a circle. Above them, a circular white feature light has many dangling mobile-like elements that catch the light. Any person more than the height of a Hobbit would bump into this light feature.

Caption: This space looks pretty but, functionally, what a nightmare — good luck to any of the Council of Elrond taller than the Hobbits not having their eyes taken out by that dangling mobile. Image: Etihad

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

look i am one million percent never letting ClaudiniGPT steal the joy of writing from me but also if i am stolen by the pod people and replaced with billy sixfingers there will be Signs and those Signs will be the meme-loving large purple homosexual aviation journalist version of a warrant canary

Text, screenshot: (It’s a testament to the impressive work of the thermoplastics segment that we’re unlikely to be able to entirely figure out what’s real stone and what’s not until we get on board one of the aircraft and have some time to spend doing the airliner equivalent of that ASMR TikTok of fingernails tapping on a Bentley.)

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Japan travel pals: what do you budget, per day, for a 2-week trip to Japan? Think 4d Tokyo, 4d Kyoto, 3d each in two other cities. Hotel, food, activities local travel, not including JR Pass or intercity trains.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

wow, celine sure does get around

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Oh, this is going to be a drama, I can tell. Booked a United miles redemption three weeks ago, UK-Japan on Turkish via IST. United site shows it as fully confirmed, have picked seats. Turkish site cannot find either the United or Turkish PNR, and United's "support team" says it isn't confirmed.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

so with Transport Fever 3 coming out, i have against my better judgment started playing Transport Fever 2 despite my love of citybuilders and also trains, it is a game many people whose opinions about games i'd enjoy i trust deeply advised me not to play NOW I SEE WHY

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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026

Read the words of disabled experts— journalists, tech and disability scholars, technology policy experts— on why Meta's "crip washing" of their surveillance tech pervert glasses is, in fact, bad for us all.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

a) hurray for multilingualism, for language learning, and for people willing to have a go in languages they are learning! 2) for those mocking, his french is about the same level as the UK's last ambassador to france

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

So my parents (in their 80s now) are visiting, and was shocked by how awful Google or even Duckduckgo are for search now. @garius.bsky.social turned me on to @kagi.com a while back (hardest rec!), so I hadn't seen the decline, but holy shit, you just… can't find basic information online any more?

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

come for the pronunciation of "Heated Rivalry", stay for a genuinely fairly comprehensive history of BL, yaoi, doujinshi and bara in context, the french *love* graphic novels — « bandes dessinées » — which hold a wider place in culture than comics in the anglosphere

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Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

(setting out to defeat mlm scammers) let's get down to business to defeat the huns

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Share one of the most obscure TV shows you can think of! 🖤

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Seth Miller @wandrme.paxex.aero · 10/09/2026

Tell me you don't understand airline cabin product tiers without telling me... Just an absurd way to describe the two airlines' moves. (and is the stock photo a Delta plane??) #PaxEx

AA, JetBlue diverge on 1st class cabin plans
American Airlines has officially eliminated first-class seating from its Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, with the last first-class flights ending in November. This decision follows an earlier statement by the airline's chief commercial officer, who cited low demand for first class. Instead, American is reallocating the space to expand and upgrade its business-class offering. JetBlue, meanwhile, is rolling out its BlueFirst cabin.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

So apparently the latest trend is to feed your photo to gen AI and get it to show you what you'd have looked like as an adult in the 80s. Quite the dark trend for gay men of my generation, because one in ten of us would have been names on the fucking quilt.

Eight panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt's display at Dulles, including one specific to American Airlines people.

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The Up Front @theupfront.media · 10/09/2026

See that blue line on the chart? That means retrofits, retrofits, retrofits — and massive implications for seats, interiors and MRO. It’ll change what you, the passenger see on board, whether you’re up front or down the back. Our relaunched podcast, free to listen, out now:

theupfront.media

Podcast episode #17: Boeing’s Darren Hulst talks future cabins and airframe shortages

This time on our new-look pod: Boeing’s Commercial Market Outlook with the US airframer’s vice president for commercial marketing, analysing the shape of commercial aviation’s next two decades

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Abra / Jessica Conwell, Carmella Creeper's Gender Doula🏳️‍⚧️ 🇲🇽🌼 @pairofclaws.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"The Transformers do not endorse the views of the President" okay, great, yeah, it's very normal that you had to say that. This is an ordinary world where things make sense. It's normal that I'd wake up to an official statement from cartoon robots denouncing the man who has the nuclear codes.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

give tilly sixfingers the oscar for "worse acting than gal gadot", congratulations to the fifteen lakes it boiled in an unprecedented drought to realise this incredible achievement

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Christina Saull @themiddleseatview.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Darren is awesome. So is @thatjohn.bsky.social You should listen to this

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 10/09/2026

Speaking as someone who was there in the early 2000s, blogs weren't slop. Some of them were CRAP, but it was all HUMAN-MADE. The equivalent of "A.i." slop back then was the SPAM in blog COMMENTS. That was industrialized, automated, scammy bullshit -- just like generative "A.i." now.

static.klipy.com

Elrond: I Was There, Gandalf

Alt: Elrond: I Was There, Gandalf

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Hi, it's me in the nineteen-fucking-eighties.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

please vote candidate B, purple rabbitlobsterbear thing, thank u

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

okay so this is just a very stupid take, but also… that very much wasn't just one era? blogs took off early to mid 90s. (wanna feel old? brad started livejournal in '99.) the pod in podcast nominatively dates it to the iPod, released in 2001. wikipedia wasn't big until the mid to late 2000s.

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The Kimono Gallery @roger1952.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Enkoji Temple, Ichijoji Temple, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto North garden

Framed within the deep, cooling shadows of a traditional shoin interior at Enkō-ji temple, a tranquil portal opens onto the luminous, moss-carpeted northern courtyard. The foreground is anchored by the muted texture of woven tatami mats and dark timber thresholds, establishing a dramatic contrast against the brilliant green of the sunlit garden beyond. To the right, a translucent shōji screen with delicate wooden lattice (kumiko) partitions the foliage into geometric fragments, while the open doorway presents an unobstructed view of stepping stones (tobi-ishi) winding past a rustic, thatched bell shelter (shōrō) nestled beneath vibrant Japanese maples.

Founded in 1601 by Tokugawa Ieyasu in the foothills of Ichijōji in Kyoto’s Sakyō Ward, Enkō-ji originally served as a Rinzai Zen seminary and a pioneering center of early modern print culture, renowned for its early wooden movable-type printing press. The temple’s famed Jūgyū-no-niwa ("Ten Bulls Garden") incorporates the allegorical Zen parable of the ten stages of enlightenment, using moss, flowing water, and seasonal foliage to evoke a journey toward self-realization. Viewed from the interior halls, the garden functions not merely as an exterior landscape, but as an active partner to meditative practice, designed to engage monks and visitors in silent contemplation.

Aesthetically, the composition is a masterclass in gakubuchi teien—the art of using architectural openings as living, changing picture frames. The deep interior gloom directly illustrates Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s observations in In Praise of Shadows (In'ei Raizan), where shadow (kage) is deployed deliberately to absorb harsh glare and accentuate the glowing intensity of filtered outdoor light. The timber doorway acts as a physical and symbolic kekkai (boundary threshold), isolating the interior sanctuary of quietude (seijaku) from the external world.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

the sheer number of people this has to have gone through at United, none of whom appear to have the perspective or insight to understand the awfulness in every way of this, absolutely blows my mind

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

well at least it wasn’t “the Venice of northeast Japan” or whatever

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Absolute core memory unlocked of my evil grandmother's bungalow, which had a version of this that was magnetic: she wedged half of the magnet part of the apparatus into a block of (horrid pink) soap, which then magneted onto the sort of tap-shaped bit that stuck out from the (horrid pink) tiles.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Yeah, I had to: full receipts for why Emirates' claim is false, but even more importantly, why electrically operated premium economy seats aren't the norm… …and why the electric movement might not be a good thing, for passengers, their bags, their scarves, and even their hair.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

burying the lede here with "organisers" rather than "The Supreme Organising Committee" an entity that is apparently both sentient *and* capable of direct speech brb stealing this one for my next science fiction worldbuilding exercise

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

this isn't mexican week. it's nobody knows what matcha is.

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John Walton @thatjohn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Pals, if you have an AO3 account — let alone any kind of interesting or unusual personal life situation — the second Clogs File is also important.

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