iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 12/10/2026

There were Smurfs that turned black (later changed to purple) after being bitten. They were angry and irritable. It’s possibly an early version of zombie horror.

The cover to a Smurfs book in which a peaceful blue Smurf is holding a red flower and an angry black Smurf is coming up behind him from out of the brush. The title in black on a yellow sky says “Les Schtroumpfs Noirs.”

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 11/09/2026

Man, fuck unrealistic beauty standards

A mannequin kind of. It’s the legs of a mannequin wearing black tights. Instead of a torso, it goes straight to the head, which is wearing an athletic hijab. Also, this is the Atlantic City boardwalk.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 24/08/2026

This year it’s a Japanese version of the VHS. Pretty good, brother. Pretty good.

VHS of the film Powder. It features the white face of a man in the background, wearing sunglasses. The lenses of the sunglasses are blue with white lightning reflected. The foreground has a bucolic meadow scene and maybe a house. The sun is setting behind it and a silhouette of a man has his arms raised triumphantly. It says “POWDER” in silver sans serif and presumably has it translated in Japanese underneath.

Here’s the back cover of the vhs. There are thumbnails from the film that don’t look very uneventful. The details of the film are all in Japanese.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 21/08/2026

Cool looking sky after some storms

View of South Philly looking west after some storms. The sun is setting. The clouds overhead are a dark mauve-gray. In the distance, light blue skies with different cloud formations that look dark blue. The sun is making other clouds look orange. The lighting is making the houses and rooftops look dark and colorless.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 01/08/2026

Ice cream is a job, graphic design is a passion.

The front half of the side of an ice cream truck. The background is blue skies and clouds and there are pictures of various sweet treats. Notably, though, the door has (clockwise from top left) the face of a smiling infant, a bald middle aged man with a sinister smile, a very young girl resting her head on her chin, and another young girl resting her head on her chin but with a much sterner look.

Back half of the truck, again with a bunch of sweet treats. This time the heads of the four people are just floating in a vertical line.

Rear of the truck. At a glance, it looks like any other ice cream truck and has large images of frozen treats. Small in the upper left and upper right are the disembodied heads of the sinister smiling bald man and the smiling infant.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 30/07/2026

LeBron signing for the Sixers made me want to dig up this @pantspants.bsky.social comic.

An illustration mostly just in black pen with splashes of color. It’s kind of crudely drawn, but that’s not to imply that it’s not skillful. It’s suppose to resemble the NBA Jam screen where you select the two players you’d like to play with. On the left is LeBron James and his stats are all very high. On the right is a balding middle aged man with a mustache and glasses named “Geoff.” All of his basketball stats are diminished down to zero.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/07/2026

Scrolling through the photo library on my phone, I apparently saved this from 2020 for posterity. Lol. Lmao, even.

A tweet from January of 2020 from pundit Michael Brendan Dougherty linking to an article called “Brexit is Discrediting the EU.” His tweet says:

As Brexit day approaches we should recall that the Remain campaign was bullying, demagogic and profoundly dishonest.
Every day proves Remainer predictions of recession, punishment budgets, disunion, war, and civilizational dissolution wrong.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 10/07/2026

This Belgian away shirt from 2016 nails it. It's based on a famous Belgian cycling jersey.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 06/07/2026

Folks might not know that Mexico’s current shirt is inspired by their 1998 shirt. It’s weirder and commits harder to the Aztec calendar aesthetic. The new one feels like a half measure.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 04/07/2026

Here’s France against Hungary in the 1978 World Cup, forced to wear the home shirt of Argentinian club Atlético Kimberley because both clubs showed up with white shirts.

Two French players wearing green and white striped long sleeved jerseys with blue shorts and red socks. A Hungarian player has his back to the camera and is wearing all white.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 24/06/2026

This was DR Congo’s jersey like a decade ago. 10/10. It’s a grail.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

This Austria shirt was initially intended for use in the 2020 Euros, but the tournament was postponed until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Puma released a truly terrible away shirt instead, meaning this banger only got used in a handful of games.

A predominantly black Austria away shirt from 2020. It has a little bit of turquoise trim at the cuffs and gold Puma logos (which are just silhouettes of a leaping big cat) on the upper sleeves and on the right chest. The body and sleeves include a very thin turpose pattern that is meant (I think) to look like art deco feathers. The left breast of the shirt includes the Austrian football association's crest, which is a shield shape that is filled by a highly stylized black eagle. The chest of the eagle has the red-white-red stripe pattern of the Austrian flag and is sitting on a soccer ball. It says "OFB" above it.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

This Spain shirt is from the 2013 Confederations Cup. The Confederations Cup is a defunct tournament that featured the most recent winners of the 6 confederations + the previous World Cup winner + the next World Cup hosts, played the summer before the next World Cup. It was silly but fun.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

I like to wear the shirts I buy, and that means I don't have a ton of orange jerseys. As such, the only Dutch shirts I have are both blue. Unlike most Dutch shirts, it incorporates the flag of The Netherlands. And today I learned that the Dutch flag is the oldest tri-color flag in continuous use.

A light blue away soccer jersey for The Netherlands. I think it's from 2008. There's minimal blue trim around part of the v-neck collar, and the red-white-blue of the Dutch flag creates a thin stripe across the chest. Above those stripes you'll find a royal blue Nike swoosh and the crest of the Dutch national team. It's an inverted blue pentagram outlined in white and red. There's a stylized lion's head wearing a crown. The letters "KNVB" appear beneath the lion's head.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

Colombia sticks pretty closely to their flag colors for both home and away shirts, and this one's no exception. It's nice enough but doesn't draw on any history or lore. Their badge is pretty boring. They're called "Los Cafeteros," owing to the country's coffee production. That's kind of neat.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

This is Portugal's away shirt from World Cup 2014 that doubles as a celebration of 100 years of Portuguese football. I'm a sucker for centenary shirts, third shirts, one-offs, never-even-worn-for-a-match shirts. A red Portugal home shirt? Ho-hum.

Portugal's away shirt from 2014. It's pretty much all white. There is blue trimming at the cuffs and partially around the neck. The trimming kind of stands up there and stops before joining, then the placard plunges all the way down the sternum with two buttons. The blue nike swoosh is on the shirt's right breast, and the Portuguese coat of arms is on the shirt's left breast. That's a red and gold cross with a shield in the middle. in that shield, you'll find 5 blue shields in the shape of a cross, each shield with five blue dots. There's a story about that if you want to know. One side of the crest says "1914" and the other says "2014."

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 17/06/2026

I like this Algeria shirt, but I don’t know much about their footballing lore. I will instead focus on the fact that they’re called the Fennec Foxes. Have you ever seen a fennec fox?! COME ON

A fennec fox pup looking at the camera. It has the biggest ears you’ve ever seen, pretty light fur, beady black eyes, a tiny black nose and a lil mouth.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 16/06/2026

Argentina's away shirt is usually somewhere between royal blue and navy. This yearner wearing black. In the 1958 World Cup, they even wore yellow. They didn’t bring any change kits to Sweden for the tournament, so they had to borrow from a local club.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 16/06/2026

This Qatar jersey and the Qatar crest draw a lot from the national flag. Says Wikipedia: The white signifies peace, while the maroon reflects the nation’s rich heritage in purple dye production. Around 1200 BCE, they used shellfish to create various purple dyes. Not for this jersey, though.

Qatar's home shirt from the 2022 World Cup, which they hosted. It's solidly maroon, probably not as deep as their flag. The sleeve cuffs have a triangle/zigzag pattern akin to the Qatari flag. The Qatar Football Association crest (a roundel with the top quarter white and the rest maroon with "QFA" at the bottom and a football in the middle) is centered beneath the neckline. Beneath the crest is the white Nike swoosh.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 16/06/2026

The silver fern is a ubiquitous symbol in New Zealand. It's been a symbol of the rugby team, the All Blacks, since 1880. It's said to have come from the ocean and guided the Māori people home. The shiny underside of the leaf catches the moonlight at night and illuminates a path through the forest.

A blue away shirt for the New Zealand National Team (known as the All Whites) from 2004. It's blue with subtle white piping at the sleeves, the base of the neck and sort of outlining the chest, finally coming to a point near the bottom hem. There are red patches on the back of the shirt, which are sort of visible through the neck hole, and a little red slash on the shirt's left sleeve. The white nike swoosh is up toward the shirt's right shoulder, and the silver fern with the words "New Zealand Soccer" are centered just beneath the neckline.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 16/06/2026

Unlike most national (or club teams) Turkey has frequently just used the depiction of the Turkish flag on their shirts. They currently use the crescent and star from the flag without any kind of rectangular border. It was the Ottoman Empire's flag and now it's Turkey's.

A Turkish soccer jersey from 2006. It's two distinct shades of red. The shirt's right sleeve is a bright red. The left half of the body is a darker red (and contains the white Nike swoosh). The right half of the body is lighter red and the left sleeve is dark red. The Turkish flag (red field with a white crescent and star) is on the left breast. It's a nice enough shirt, there's just not that much to say about it.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 15/06/2026

This World Cup is missing the smoldering presence of former Saudi Arabia head coach Hervé Renard.

Hervé Renard, a white middle-aged French man. His features are quite etched. Classically handsome. His hair is neither too long nor too short. His white dress shirt is unbuttoned until out of the frame of the picture.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 15/06/2026

Japan's crest itself features a Yatagarasu, which is a mythological three-footed raven. Count 'em! In Japanese culture, the Yatagarasu is representative of many things, among them heaven, divine intervention in human affairs, guidance, andthe renaissance that comes after a tragic battle.

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 15/06/2026

Here's the modern version of the crest. You can't even really see the Swiss cross anymore. RETVRN.

The current version of Switzerland's footballing crest. It has an outline version of the old letters that still spell ASF and SFV. Since those are outlines, you can't really see the cross created by the two sets of abbreviations. They've added a line drawing of a featureless asshole kicking a soccer ball. How else would someone know what football is?

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Leif Malone @thetroops.fightins.online · 15/06/2026

The Swiss have moved to a modernized version of this crest that has some dumbass kicking a ball. It's unnecessary. This version is perfect. It has two abbreviations because one is the German abbreviation and the other is French/Italian (they use the same set of letters).

The Swiss crest of that era is on the left breast. It's a retro font in which the letters look like geometric shapes. The top says "ASF" and the bottom says "SFV," and the area where they come together forms the white cross of the Swiss flag.

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