iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

why are these figure skaters allowed to wear costumes that are not variations on their nation's flag? this is absurd (I am willing to countenance RARE exceptions for costumes based on widely-understood and reductive caricatures, e.g. bear costumes for Russia)

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I knew bluesky would find a use of AI it likes eventually

alexis simpson @amutepiggy.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Reposted by Tom Lee

it's not just that Mamdani is charming af (he is), it's that he is normalizing the idea that children are full members of society that we all share a collective responsibility for

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Reposted by Tom Lee

Keezy Young🌼 @keezyyoung.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

welp, this destroyed me first thing upon waking up

But Liam was scared and frequently asked what they had done wrong, where they were and what happened to the little blue knit hat he wore the day he was detained, Conejo said.

There wasn’t much he could say to his son, “except hug him and tell him everything would be OK,” Conejo said.

Worried about further upsetting his son, Conejo said, he was forced to bite back his own tears.

Liam has since been reunited with his hat and continues to wear it, even inside the house, his dad said Thursday. Asked how he might one day explain to Liam everything that has happened, Conejo said he would tell his son that he had become the face of hope and change.

"He was the global figure who did all this so that the voices of the people demanding freedom would be heard, especially those of the children who are still locked up," Conejo said. “I would tell him he was very brave and that I am very proud of him.”

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they're so close, conceptually and numerically

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James Jongeneel - Wikipedia

TIL my grandfather has a wikipedia page! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J... I knew he was an olympian but it's kind of a funny story. He immigrated from Holland and played field hockey intensely w/ some of his emigre buddies. When the US decided to field a men's field hockey team, they were the

en.wikipedia.org

So Long to Cheap Books You Could Fit in Your Pocket

I have very fond memories of paperbacks. My dad did construction work for Olsson's Books & Records and hung out in the break room, where remaindered books with the covers torn off (you only shipped the covers back for a refund) were in bins for staff to take home www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/b...

nytimes.com

Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

running to framebridge brb

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

A great post from @mike.teczno.com medium.com/@michalmigur... But I’d add that this is only part of the compliance picture. Labels are too. So are what we might call “virtual” boundaries—often-abstract lines that national authorities insist must be present (sometimes w specific styling)

medium.com

Weeknotes, 2026W04: Boundary Issues

I recently nerd-sniped myself into thinking about political points of view on maps, and wondering whether it’d be possible to create…

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

an excellent post from @peterodrigue.bsky.social and @ggwash.org, worth a read for anyone who has an opinion about speed cameras. I'm grateful to him for advancing the conversation (and the generous shout-out) ggwash.org/view/102070/...

ggwash.org

If you don’t like traffic cameras, you’ll hate the police

Congressional Republicans are floating axing DC’s traffic camera program. Everyone, including MPD, would hate this.

Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

I can’t get over how weird this Starfleet Academy show is. Just so obviously the same people and ideas as Discovery, from the timeline to the endless JJ-style flares to the returning non-beloved characters (feat Admiral, You Know, The Tall One). Angry outsider/matriarch mentor. New kind of Klingon!

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

did not expect the first great and empathetic piece of criticism I read in 2026 to be about Dilbert www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-dilber...

astralcodexten.com

The Dilbert Afterlife

Sixty-eight years of highly defective people

Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 @joshuaeakle.com · 14/01/2026

Reposted by Tom Lee

This video shows ICE holding children hostage to bait parents out of their homes. Just unspeakable levels of cruelty and inhumanity.

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

we are nearing the end of the #treelemetry xmasalytics season. some valuable insights gleaned, and a major evolution in our software architecture. more to do, particularly with respect to automated segmentation of events. but we're emerging with a great dataset to iterate on

a jagged, declining graph showing the rate of water consumption by my christmas tree this season

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Reposted by Tom Lee

◥◤Kriston Capps 250 @kristoncapps.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

As a reminder, the reason that the Federal Reserve renovation cost so much is because they followed the law: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

we put on the Paw Patrol Christmas special for our youngest yesterday (the season's not over until we get around to taking down the tree!) they attempt a "true meaning of Christmas" plot but it's tricky.

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Reposted by Tom Lee

Greater Greater Washington @ggwash.org · 09/01/2026

USDOT and a major outlet are framing DC's traffic cameras as a cash grab. They're essential for keeping people safe on our streets. But the revenues should go to Vision Zero as the Council planned, not DC's general budget.

ggwash.org

What the Politico story got wrong about automated traffic enforcement, and what it got right

View this post on ggwash.org

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Reposted by Tom Lee

Elizabeth Lopatto @lopatto.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

I sat in a fucking court room and heard Apple imply that a naked cartoon banana was somehow inappropriate but somehow Grok non consensually undressing women and children is ok?? www.theverge.com/policy/85990...

theverge.com

Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards

Once you’ve traded your principles for proximity to power, do you even run your own company?

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Eldest said “I hate the Muppets” today. Where did I fail her

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Reposted by Tom Lee

David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

“Car bloat”—increasingly oversized automobiles—worsens road safety, affordability and the environment. Here are some of the stories I wrote in 2025 examining the trend and proposing solutions. 🧵 In @vox.com, I likened car bloat to secondhand smoke (which helped bring down the US tobacco industry).

vox.com

Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one?

The anti-tobacco playbook could help turn the US public against their beloved oversized cars.

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Confabulation - Wikipedia

absolutely true, but... now do humans en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabu... it seems plausible, maybe even likely, that thinking systems do less hallucination as their scope & power improves

en.wikipedia.org

it's totally normal for a politician--elected or aspiring--to be seen in the community doing Good Works. we have council members show up and give little speeches at monthly family bike rides, it's very nice. Abughazaleh's campaign running mutual aid seems firmly in this tradition. The interesting

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Everyone is so backward on this! - eventually we will decide AI is conscious bc the Problem is Hard and humans feel empathy - that will carry numerous ethical consequences - if you’re an AI hater you should welcome this, it will crush the field - if you’re an AI booster you should deny it

◥◤Kriston Capps 250 @kristoncapps.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Reposted by Tom Lee

I don't really get the left's romantic views about mutual aid when the whole point of progressive politics is that the state should provide the safety net — not charity

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The fun thing about AI is that some people think it’s a big speculative bubble while other people think that’s hysterical catastrophizing and what’s actually going to happen is just unprecedented economic dislocation

Bruno Dias @brunodias.dev · 27/12/2025

you should read Jamelle for the full details but my assumption is that “heritage Americans” are somewhat more expensive and flavorful than the fatter Americans you would typically find at the supermarket

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Reposted by Tom Lee

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

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Eastern Gate succeeds at depicting the Polish Intelligence Service as sophisticated and cosmopolitan, steely eyed and cold hearted in the face of an implacable foe of immense international scale. Then it turns out the bomb is disguised as an accordion.

Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

profuse apologies to all of our users: a mishandled cleanup routine resulted in #treelemetry systems consuming over 1.8TB of disk space on the host system, blocking writes and stalling updates. the issue has been resolved, and we hope to recover much of the missing data treelemetry.tomlee.space

treelemetry.tomlee.space

Treelemetry 🎄💧 - Christmas Tree Water Level Monitor

Katie Tightpussy, Editor-In-Chief @katie.bzky.team · 24/12/2025

Reposted by Tom Lee

book is absolutely lovely so far, but this little section stood out to me. "Drivers and pedestrians said they typically broke laws to save time. Cyclists, however, said they typically broke laws to stay safe." ridiculously true. at no point on my bike do i think about The Law. i think about safety

After surveying nearly eighteen thousand people in seventy-three countries, they found that 100 percent of respondents admitted to breaking the law while driving, walking, or cycling. Where things differed was in the reasons various road users gave for flouting the rules. Drivers and pedestrians said they typically broke laws to save time. Cyclists, however, said they typically broke laws to stay safe, doing things like riding on the sidewalk to avoid mixing it up on a dangerous road with cars and trucks. Cyclists also said they broke laws to save energy-rolling through a stop sign, for instance, to avoid having to start pedaling again from a dead standstill. The re-searchers said that while such behavior was technically illegal, "most bicyclists can generally be described as rational individuals trying to function safely and efficiently given the context and norms of where they live and the transportation system put in front of them."

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

sadly this has been the dominant editorial mode of all tech journalism since we left the initial era of gee-whiz naivete. obviously there are many talented writers who are exceptions but in general our popular treatment of it is reductive and hysterical

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Reposted by Tom Lee

bergmayer @bergmayer.net · 24/12/2025

I started thinking about this around this date--that fact that the most productive use of AI "agents" is "using an interface initially designed for a teletype" is just one of those weird things. but of course, it's all text bergmayer.net/ai-and-telet...

bergmayer.net

AI and teletype

AI Comes to the Teletype There have been a lot of genuinely interesting developments in the terminal and command-line space recently. Typing fans,

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Tom Lee @tjl.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

my understanding is that the New Yorker does well for itself--network effects favoring superstar brands & all--so perhaps they have adequate incentive for gross banner ad chum? if so, is that good? like watching a lost & lamented species return to its ecological niche