iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 28/10/2026

It's more of a rictus than a smile at this point but . . .

XKCD comics: A Venn diagram with
Things on the front page of a university website circle:
Campus photo slideshow
Alumni in the news
Promotion for campus events
Press releases
Statement of ths school's philosophy
Letter from the president
Virtual tour

Things people go to the site looking for circle:
List of faculty phone numbers and emails
Campus address
Application forms
Academic calendar
Campus police phone number
Department/course lists
Parking information
Usable campus map

Common to both circles:
Full name of school

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 27/10/2026

This was by far the best I've seen a take age in less than 24 hours.

Simón Levy on X:
As I reported hours ago, Flávio Bolsonaro has arrived safely in United States.

The mastermind behind this operation si U.S. Secretary of State @SecRubio.

From the United States, free and safe, Flávio will lead the opposition against Lula.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 19/10/2026

I remember I had a design for Elon's banking effort some while back, let's see . . . ah yes

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 16/10/2026

Guillermo Montesinos as the driver of Mambo Taxi in "Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown"

A staged photo of Guillermo Montesinos in costume leaning casually on his taxi. He has hair dyed shining white and is wearing a yellow jacket. The doors are ajar, showing the most dementedly decorated inside of a taxi you could possibly imagine.

Seats are fake leopard skin, the steering weel cover is a matching fake snow leopard skin. Everywhere there are glossy magazines hanging by laundry clips. It has every piece of internal car decoration frippery you can possibly imagine everywhere.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 03/10/2026

I wouldn't tempt the Fates by going with a slogan so close to this one

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

So, let this guerilla gardenist support you with a lovely little Quercus Robur that survives for now, in a field that the City of Helsinki appeares to have deemed up for grabs.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

Stylish, but a bit small to make out what it is without zooming in, unfortunately.

A screenshot of the sidebar of the witchsky web app, where the Notifications tab sports a spiffy horse emoji instead of a numerical counter.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

Allright, who's guilty of offloading their vital cognitive processes to communicating with images?!? Let's see a show of hands!

Image of a rock wall in Cueva de las Manos, Cave of the Hands, Argentina.

A rock wall is covered in lots of lots of overlapping outlines of hands in black, white and ochre colours, created by putting a hand onto the wall and then spraying the paint onto it to create a silhoette. According to Wikipedia, they were created during the period 7300 BCE to 700 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cueva_de_las_Manos

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 21/09/2026

Mapo tofu is high on the list of things I wish I had learned to cook far earlier.

A wokful of tofu pieces covered in brownish red sauce, garnished with chopped scallions

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026

Reread Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism recently, and was struck by how easy it was to map all his 14 points to current things in the US. Except the first one, on the cult of tradition, where it wasn't quite so . . . clean. Until I realized that, shit, it's constitutional originalism, isn't it?

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 07/09/2026

Känns att det här har varit huvudproblemet i svensk politik ett tag nu. Alla tänker på SD:s framgångar som framgångar för vidrig rasism, och ingen vågar tänka på dem som det enda partiet som kampanjar all-in på sin ideologi (som råkar vara vidrig rasism).

SD skiljer sig från mängden och valturnerar med en oförblommerad statsdirigerad rasism som sin vision. De andra partierna är häpnadsväckande tysta inför detta. Statsminister Kristersson lovar bort ministerposter till Åkesson, och skolminister Mohamsson tycker ”SD

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 04/09/2026

This is how these things usually turns out for me, taught RP English in school and learned a ton of words from movies: Every pronounciation a point in the North-East, every word a point in the South-West.

A US map which is dark red in New England and pretty red in California. In between it fades to very blue in the South.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 02/09/2026

Already quote posted another one, but I just remembered this other guy... A genius portrayal of a terminally deluded man, of course, but *damn* he was annoying!

Matthew Mcfadyen as Charles Guiteau in Death by Lightning.

He's looking up, standing in a throng of people, and looking like he's witnessed the second coming of some deity or other.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 02/09/2026

I have never heard of him, and man, the snort laugh I let out seeing the name of his lab on Wikipedia after reading the DataColada post . . .

Screengrab of text from Wikipedia:

"His laboratory at Duke, the Center for Advanced Hindsight,"

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 02/09/2026

"Go ahead, boat up to it, get near it, take your own pictures, get your drone out, whatever you'd like to do to image it," he said. "But we really warn people about trying to climb on it, as tempting as it may be."

Screenshot from LIFE OF PI

Pi finds a human tooth in a lotus flower in on an carnivorous floating island.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 27/08/2026

Welcome to Bluesky. Please familiarize yourself with the following accounts to understand the range of opinions it is acceptable to express

9 pictures of Tim Curry looking alternately ludicrous, gorgeous, terrifying an/or all of these combined.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 27/08/2026

I reread Umberto Eco's brilliant article Ur-Fascism today, and while it seems reasonable to think you could pair each of his 14 points with a headline about the US governmen on any given day, this one has worked particularly hard lately.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 27/08/2026

Welcome to Bluesky, please familiarize yourself with the range of opinions it is permissible to express

Cover of comic book album "JLA/Avengers" by Kurt Busiek/George Pérez

It features a lot of superheroes from Justis League and Marvel all fighting and firing a variety of fire, lightning, plasma, magic etc. at each other across the DC/Marvel divide.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 25/08/2026

No cheating. Share the last photo of the sky from your camera roll

Panorama of a very clearly defined rainbow with a rather clear second order rainbow outside of it. It is in a residential area, a multi storey house in the background and a bunch of cars parked along the road.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 20/08/2026

I watched "From Dusk Till Dawn" cold in a theatre. I expected, based on the poster, names and billing and such, a Tarantino style gangster movie. It was a ride.

Movie poster for "From Dusk Till Dawn"

George Clooney aims a smoking gun at you, Quentin Tarantino somewhere in the background brandishing another gun.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 18/08/2026

Not understanding a single thing of this I went to Wikipedia for help and comfort, but this just leaves me with further questions

Screenshot from Wikipedia:

Candidates
Republican Party
Declared

Dustin Darden, perennial candidate
Fred C. Grauberger, retired motor vehicle operator
Gerald L. Heikes, bassist and perennial candidate
Richard Benedict Mayers, white supremacist and perennial candidate
Heather McElwain, editor
Dan S. Sullivan, incumbent U.S. senator
Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. (listed with no party affiliation), former U.S. Forest Service employee (no relation to the incumbent)

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 11/08/2026

How to make the sissiest game in the history of mankind look and sound like

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 06/08/2026

OK, so I'm a coward for reaching for Austen the first thing I do, but really there can be . . .

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 26/07/2026

Watched DUNKIRK, and realized that my review of this movie was pithily summarized by a different movie

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 25/07/2026

Max von Sydow Not sure for what. Just pick one from off the pile.

Max von Sydow playing chess with Death in "The Seventh Seal", 1957.

Max von Sydow with Thomas Horn (born 1997) in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close", 2011.

Max von Sydow with Victor Sjöström (born 1879) in Wild Strawberries [Smultronstället], 1957.

Max von Sydow, sitting in a corner in somewhat tattered clothes, his hat in a firm grip in his left hand, looking like he's about to deliver Words, 1987.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 24/07/2026

Not sure about that. I'll admit I last read Swedish translations, but at least the Beren and Luthien story read very much like a classical fairy tale. That one's a little special though, and I get if "the estate" (i.e. his grandchildren etc) has Views on that one. His gravestone:

The grave of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife.

Inscription:

EDITH MARY TOLKIEN
LUTHIEN
1889 - 1971

JOHN RONALD
REUEL TOLKIEN
BEREN
1892 - 1973

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 19/07/2026

I thought the 1957 versi . . . wait. It was SEAL wasn't it?

Death from The Seventh Seal, holding out his arm, welcoming you, and all and any of us, I suppose. A dark apparition pictured against stormy seas, tempestousy heavens etc and so forth.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 29/06/2026

I'll leave this impoverished wiktionary entry, from a language far far away, to stand for itself

Wiktionary lookup:

Rakousko

Language: Tšekki
Erisnimi (Name), n
1. Itävalta (Austria)

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 28/06/2026

The inspector pushed hard at the breaks (as they do), and the break hydraulics instantly broke catastrophically. Right after I had driven that car along this very nice and flat road across Norway . . . 😱😱😱

A Norwegian road in pleasant autumn yellow colours. This screenshot from Google maps doesn't do it justice, but those roads are STEEP.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 23/06/2026

To hint at the full range of possibilities in one picture: We both agree that the one on the left here is the best we got. We also both agree that NONE of the others are any good, there's just way more green in the original. 5/

The book page photographed by an IPhone 15 next to an IPhone SE in LED lighting. The "original" is on the left, looking a bluish green and the picture on the IPhone SE screen (which has been digitally filtered 4 times by the time it gets to you) is just straight up blue, barely any green to be seen, at least on my screens.

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Torbjörn Björkman @torbjornbjorkman.eurosky.social · 23/06/2026

Here's our main object of experimentation: a picture of a sheet of copper treated with acetate fumes. Pictures taken with an IPhone SE and an IPhone 15, in two different lightings. I don't know about you, but I don't see two that are the same, and only 2 and 4 could be said to be very close. 4/

A sheet of corroded copper or brass. It is decidedly bluish.

IPhone SE (2022), lit by natural light from a clear sky coming in through a window.

A sheet of corroded copper or brass. It is something in between green and blue, still leaning blue to my eyes.

IPhone SE (2022), lit by LEDs in a typical kitchen lighting setting.

A sheet of corroded copper or brass. It is decidedly bluish, but less so than the first picture.

IPhone 15, lit by natural light from a clear sky coming in through a window.

A sheet of corroded copper or brass. It is something in between green and blue, still leaning blue to my eyes.

IPhone 15, lit by LEDs in a typical kitchen lighting setting.

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