iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Didn't he say exactly this three months ago?

Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Actually, the agent just stared had me as if I had just exited a Neanderthal cave and smiled sympathetically. Back to the beer.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Have a beer, walk 15 minutes to the gate only to be told the fight is sold out. I say but the app says there are 30 empty seats. Agent says it's sold out. I say but the app. Agent says that's why I never use the app. I say but Delta told me to use the app. Agent says are you stupid.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

On the app it showed a fight leaving mid-afternoon, wouldn't let me choose a seat but showed plenty available. So go to JFK five hours ahead of my booked flight, go to the Delta counter, told I have to wait til boarding to get a seat assigned.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Do any travel apps work? I booked a flight online on Delta last night for this evening. Internet is great! Was informed this morning in would be two hours late. The whole reason I chose the flight was the time! Went online to re-book, was directed to the Delta app.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

JFC UCLA. The US constitution, at least pre-Roberts, guarantees adequate defense for even the most heinous crimes. The defense attorneys at Guantanamo are not defending the crime; they're defending their clients. It's not an easy thing to do. They should be applauded.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I helped the crew who made this moving film about the costs of 9/11, both personal and political. Premieres on CBS tonight.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

We built them into an enemy we could not defeat and almost everything we did against them we ended up doing more effectively to ourselves.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I've reported two and a half books on the perpetrators of 9/11 and the main think I've learned is that the attackers were a bunch of not especially talented guys who got extremely lucky. But we decided al Qaeda and its adherents were supermen capable of global conquest. They were not.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

These Trump tweets are obviously bonkers, but I must admit they contain a kind of mad genius language. I picture Gene Wilder with a crown and scepter delivering the lines while standing on his throne.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

"You spread your anger on sharp-edged knives Cut my skin and make it bleed Like pilate in his self righteousness You're a traitor and a thief." The entire album is brilliant. As was the one preceding it, Car Wheels, and the two that followed, World Without Tears and West

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I'm periodically reminded what a great songwriter Lucinda Williams is. This popped up this afternoon. Has anyone - including Sir Bob - ever written a better putdown song? www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e0R...

youtube.com

Broken Butterflies (Album Version)

YouTube video by Lucinda Williams - Topic

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Funny, but probably not unique. When Amgen, the huge biotech, hired its lead scientist back in the 80s, he was given his choice of projects to pursue. He chose to search for EPO. The other candidate was to make a better indigo dye for denim.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

We're 65 years into manned space flight. Is it still a matter of luck to get something into orbit? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/s...

nytimes.com

For SpaceX, Will the 13th Test Flight of Starship Be Lucky?

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Brilliant Blade Runner reference; not so brilliant political analysis. Sheesh.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Exactly. And against a deserter.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

This, from Adam Sewer, seems like absurd exaggeration, but it's the logical conclusion of Alito's opinion. "In fact, slavery itself could conceivably be race-neutral—after all, one does not need to be a racist to seek cheap labor for a profitable business!" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

The Court That Will Believe Absolutely Anything Is ‘Race-Neutral’

The majority gives Trump yet more license to discriminate.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Richard Sennett's Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities. Also, from the other end of the spectrum, David Macaulay's The Way Things Work

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

When available. Big difference. Both elite. Both turnover machines. Both high skilled.

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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

All you do is take all the sex out, and use little short words, and little dumb ideas, and don't be too scary, and be sure there's a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it. Write down. Right on.

If you do all that, you might even write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and make twenty billion dollars and have every adult in America reading your book.

But you won't have every kid in America reading your book. They will look at it, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away. Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic.

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Jeffrey Shallit 🇺🇦 @shallit.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

James Joyce supposedly said to a friend that in a day's work he had written only 7 words. And he was still not sure what order they should go in.

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

The matter-of-fact way she asks what investors should do if Trump destroys Iran. Absolutely wild. "Let's talk about tonight, this deadline that President Trump has set 8 p.m., has threatened to destroy a civilization. How does an investor process that? Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk?"

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DiveIntoIt🫘💙💙 @anandatoday.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Let’s support his efforts.

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 19/02/2026

On this day in 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court *unanimously* decided that people of South Asian descent could not be American citizens, and retroactively stripped citizenship from many who had already been naturalized. Years of organized persecution followed. www.saada.org/explore/publ...

saada.org

United States of America vs. Vaishno Das Bagai | SAADA | TIDES Magazine

The Thind decision dealt a devastating blow to all South Asians in the United States, especially those who had become naturalized citizens. It disrupted dreams. It put already vulnerable people at fur...

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Japanese American National Museum @jamuseum.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

In 1942, over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were unjustly incarcerated in America's concentration camps and deprived of their civil rights and due process. Sadly, there is an absolute parallel between what happened then and what’s happening today to immigrant communities throughout the nation.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs.

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Maybe it's time for Gov. Walz to call out the national guard to protect Minnesotans from ICE

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

"Society as a whole? A population that doesn’t read us … that, in a given year, peruses the papers and two trendy books."

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

From Camus's notebooks. Could have been written yesterday. "I’ve always believed creation is a dialogue. But, with whom? Our literary society whose driving precept is second-rate spite, where offense takes the place of a critical method? . . . literaryreview.co.uk/inside-the-o...

literaryreview.co.uk

Joanna Kavenna - Inside the Outsider

Joanna Kavenna: Inside the Outsider - The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus (Translated from French by Ryan Bloom)

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The play that caused this injury should be classified as reckless. Defender knocks a ball-handler down, then dives across his exposed legs and gets called for a foul. Should be flagrant. Happened twice for Clippers vs Celtics. Easily more dangerous than closeouts. www.hoopsrumors.com/2026/01/derr...

hoopsrumors.com

Derrick Jones Jr. To Be Re-Evaluated In Six Weeks With MCL Sprain

Derrick Jones Jr. has been diagnosed with a Grade II MCL sprain in his right knee, Shams Charania reports for …

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Alka Pradhan @alkapradhan.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I am just here to say that in order to commit WAR CRIMES, a WAR has to exist. THERE IS NO WAR. Therefore, the proper term for killing random people on boats is MURDER.

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Here's the deeper problem with this. "our warriors," no matter what you call them, are NOT putting their lives on the line. They are murdering people at a distance with no danger to themselves or to any American interest.

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Institute for the Study of War @thestudyofwar.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

The reported peace plan cedes all Western and Ukrainian leverage to Russia. More: isw.pub/UkrWar112025

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Wow. Can this woman write. "green leaves fell to the ground like a mockery of hope" sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/the-empty-...

sarahkendzior.substack.com

The Empty Stage

Johnny Cash, loss, and redemption

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Terry McDermott @tmcdermott.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Beat everybody: Pet Sounds AND Blonde on Blonde:

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