iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 5h

Hey @alexandriavagov.bsky.social why are you placing new utility poles in the middle of sidewalks that were previously perfectly open and usable? How is this not a blatant violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

A new utility pole in the sidewalk of Leslie Avenue, around the corner from Swing's Coffee.

A new utility pole in the space where the sidewalk goes at the intersection of Leslie Avenue and East Monroe Avenue.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 20h

Dear God these are awful! 😂 (Also, sorry to dudes named Vincent I guess?)

Dear unsighted person:

I have elected to spare you the pain of knowing what these attempted spookifications were, because they were all bad. This space intentionally left blank.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 27/09/2026

This skeet is the first I'm hearing about whatever this is, and I can best express my feelings with this classic banger:

"I'm 50. All celebrity news looks like this: 'Curtains for Zoosha? K-smog and Batboy caught flipping a grunt."

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 23/09/2026

Did you know that "close {{PR_number}}" in a pull request's description text will close the named issue in GitHub? Because Claude apparently doesn't!

"this PR doesn't close #73"

*hovers over the link #73*

"This pull request closes issue #73." appears in tooltip.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 20/09/2026

My mobile browser literally gave up trying to count them.

Infinity browser tabs. Like, the actual infinity sign where the tab count should be.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 19/09/2026

McGuire made it sound like Flock was responsible for catching the stabber, but it was just an ordinary business security cam. Seems the APD is fudging the numbers on how useful those ALPRs actually are.

Police said the arrest followed multiple tips from the community after the department released an image of the suspect captured by a security camera at a nearby business.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 18/09/2026

The first thing people say to me when I tell them about the existence of Flock is, "But don't we want to catch people speeding?" Then I have to explain that these aren't traffic cameras and they aren't used to catch speeders. This is a better explanation of the difference than I've ever managed.

These things are automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, a technology that works quite differently from traffic cameras (which only take photos of vehicles that commit moving violations) or CCTV security cameras (which don’t generate searchable data)—ALPRs indiscriminately record every vehicle that passes them and use AI to create a database of their movements over time. In other words, if traffic camera data tells us “a Honda ran this red light,” an ALPR says “oh, that Honda? I know her. She lives in Carlyle but her boyfriend lives in Van Dorn, she stays at his place every Friday. Also he’s cheating on her.”

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 15/09/2026

I love that I'm somehow on multiple pro- and anti-AI blocklists. 🤷‍♂️

List of lists I've been added to, including "AI Shills and Tech Grifters" and "Anti-AI".

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 06/09/2026

I visited Amsterdam for the first time two weeks ago, and the transit/cycling infrastructure was incredible. We still have so, so far to go...

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 28/08/2026

Wow, only one out of four correct. (I'm INTJ.)

Analysis of posts showing I'm ESFJ. Got a 95% extraversion score, which is basically the exact opposite of my actual personality. Posting on a microblog is not the same as real socializing!

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 26/08/2026

Doing solar revolution number thirty-nine right so far.

Sitting at a bar, drinking beer flights, watching people swim in an Amsterdam marina.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 25/08/2026

Just found one of these in the wild in Amsterdam. I think the burger might be a flying saucer in disguise.

AI food images of fish and chips, schnitzel, a hamburger, and spaghetti Bolognese. They all have that weird bumpy symmetry, like an alien tried to body-snatch your meal by mistake.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 23/08/2026

Barbequeverbod? More like barbeque bod, am I right?! 🫄

A sign in a park that says in Dutch "barbequing is forbidden".

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 21/08/2026

Well, you didn't take over the factory, but at least you got a top chicken out of it!

Dame is blue and inflated, with their shirt emblazoned with a "spreadsheet people" skeet. Oompa Loompas will begin rolling shortly.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 21/08/2026

Adding this bus stop in particular to my list of transit goals.

A covered bus stop. The roof is fancy looking shingles standing on wood posts. It's very spacious, maybe three meters wide. There's a nice wood bench without any of that anti-homeless nonsense. At the rear of the stop they've even planted lots of flowers. It's all very cozy. The coziest bus stop I've ever seen!

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 21/08/2026

I'm at the library. I'm at the gym. I'm at the cafe. I'm at the combination library/gym/cafe.

View from second floor of building. On the left is a library, stacks visible through windows. On the right is visible gym equipment and a cafe.

Outdoor area with cafe seating and exercise equipment.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 19/08/2026

Valiant effort by Gemini to integrate parts of my public persona that I probably would never integrate in a single post. A bit gibberishy though.

"tweet like bsky user tomvanantwerp.com"

The perfect urbanism / web dev crossover split-screen doesn't exi—

Just spent 45 minutes refactoring an interactive data visualization to make it more accessible, only to step outside and get nearly flattened by an SUV while walking Oreo.

If we spent half as much time designing smart, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods as we do arguing over JavaScript frameworks, American cities wouldn't require a 4,000-pound tank just to go buy groceries.

Anyway, my bitwise operations are still rusty, my CSS iframes are finally behaving, and I'm currently trying to calculate exactly how many tater tots it takes to reach daily potassium goals.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 18/08/2026

In a rural village in the southeast corner, where the borders with Poland and Slovakia met Czechia. There's maybe 3,500 people in this village and they still manage to have lots of sidewalks and transit!

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 14/08/2026

Riding the bus in Edinburgh, and I still can't escape America's looming debt crisis

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 12/08/2026

Welp, I saw where an eclipse quite possibly happened!

Dim sunlight peeking from behind clouds.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 11/08/2026

When's the last time Twitch chat got you a statue? How long since the Patreon members erected you a monument? What have your Substack readers done for you lately?

Statue of Alexander and Bucephalus

"Presented to the city by the subscribers."

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 10/08/2026

Credit where credit is due: I don't think the Alexandria City Council ever had an SUP hearing to install a window. Could be wrong, though.

"This window was made in the old city wall with the sanction of the town council 1876" seen on a wall in Edinburgh. Also, the window has been sealed up again. 🤷‍♂️

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 07/08/2026

95 — Cyborg. The Switchboard. cadence 100 · vigil 35 · lexicon 66 · polish 100 · drift 86 · chorus 25 Six lines read off all 5,394 of my posts. A percentile among 77 accounts, not an AI detector. b.mino.mobi/palm/?u=tomvanantwerp.c…

A six-spoke radar chart of stylometric readings for @tomvanantwerp.com. Cadence (how metronomic you are) 100th percentile; Vigil (how little you sleep) 35th percentile; Lexicon (how narrow your words) 66th percentile; Polish (how immaculate you are) 100th percentile; Drift (how unchanging you are) 86th percentile; Chorus (how much you broadcast) 25th percentile. Composite 95 of 100, "Cyborg", archetype "The Switchboard" — You keep perfect time because someone is always calling. (Cadence 100 over Chorus 25). The scale runs from Pan (least machine-like) to the Loom (most). These are percentiles among 77 real accounts, not a probability that anything was machine-written.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 01/08/2026

I believe in the importance of compromise.

Sexy face on the nightmare demon centaur robot.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 31/07/2026

Snippet from a real conversation just yesterday.

Opus 5: Does this look right? In particular I want a yes on the header-value deviation before I write it — it's the one place I'm not doing what the issue says.

Me: I'm going to be honest, I have very little idea what's going on here.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 29/07/2026

Weird that I skeet and write code in roughly equal measure. bisks.net/skeetgrid/s/...

Skeet grid showing 1880 skeets in the past year.

GitHub contributions grid showing 1820 contributions in the last year.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 25/07/2026

I'm happy things are going well with this web hosting migration I'm working on, but maybe it's time for a fresh Claude session...

Verified latest test upload in prod bucket

🍩 Verified — the donuts landed in S3. Dark validation is truly complete.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 25/07/2026

Person at The Garden: "Your dog is so well behaved! How did you train her?" Me: "I give her treats when she's good and I don't when she isn't. That's about it. 🤷‍♂️"

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 24/07/2026

couchfucker actually probably (coined here)

A card reading "couchfucker actually probably" — a three-word phrase unique to this account on Bluesky.

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Tom VanAntwerp 🧙‍♂️ @tomvanantwerp.com · 24/07/2026

It's not even hard! Look, first try, something that doesn't look like it was badly scrawled on piss-soaked paper!

A human-sized rabbit DJing a rave. The rabbit appears to have thunder magic like Zeus, with glowing blue-white eyes and crackling lighting running along its body.

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