iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 04/10/2026

It’s here! It’s so good! You should read it!

Cover of @josie.zone’s “The Last Temptation of Beck”

251

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 30/09/2026

Right up there with this classic

@LPNational (the national Libertarian Party) asks, “In your words, what do Libertarians believe?”

@WAForeskins quotes with “My girlfriend shouldn’t have to sit in a car seat”

223835

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 03/09/2026

You can use Passwords for notes; there is a Notes field and you can leave the url/username/password blank. It’s not a great experience but if it’s an edge case and you’re already Apple-committed, it would get the job done without adding an app.

Screenshot of entering a “notes”-only password in the iOS Passwords app

The result when you search for it; shows the searchable title and the notes text

120

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 02/07/2026

We saw you across the cantina and really liked your vibe

Bib Fortuna and Salacious Crumb looking your way expectantly

0163

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 07/05/2026

Just checked my email, and 🤔🤔🤔

Screenshot of an email from AOC, subject line “I’ve never campaigned like the establishment says you’re supposed to”. I think it’s probably about vlogging a trip to see some Girl Scouts tonight and not polishing Tom Massie’s automatic rifle but I already deleted it so who’s to say.

110

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 04/05/2026

Happy Star Wars Day! Enjoy, in one picture, pretty much the whole (written) EU up to the point I was born in 1984. (My silly book collecting binge this year has been “Star Wars in order”.)

Nineteen Star Wars books laid out on a table. The top row has the novels, mostly as paperbacks: the Star Wars novelization, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Han Solo at Stars’ End, Han Solo’s Revenge, the ESB novelization, Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, the ROTJ novelization, Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, and Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka. The middle row has five late-nineties Dark Horse collections of the Star Wars daily comic strip, and the final row is four later Dark Horse Omnibi of the monthly Marvel Star Wars comic. The “Wild Space” volume collects several UK-only items among other gems.

000

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 13/02/2026

“Succeeded” feels like a stretch. The flames are huge because what you’re seeing is whatever fuel she used burning up. A reporter doing a live shot a few minutes later narrates, “there might be some scorch marks there you might be able to see if you zoom in”. www.kmbc.com/article/sout...

Screenshot of a video of the fire a few minutes later, showing scorch marks around the base of two windows.

0170

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 13/02/2026

this is a cry for help

New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle, with L in the middle plus NVDOUE

120

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 01/02/2026

Beginning of January / End of January

Fresh lemon pig with cloves for eyes, a penny in its mouth, and toothpick legs. A chipper lad, ready to face the year.

A Lovecraftian horror of a moldy, collapsed lemon pig. Mostly blackened and one third its original size, its right flank rests on the window sill. It has seen some shit.

060

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 28/01/2026

This one, maybe (looks like the same edge pattern): www.ebay.com/itm/40647423...

Giant fucking dictionary with a cool swirly pattern on the page edges

160

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 26/01/2026

60 Minutes celebrating the movies

Natalie Portman from “Black Swan”, a movie about the ballet “Swan Lake”, which Soviet TV stations would famously play when they couldn’t report the news

010

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 22/01/2026

Update: MaineCare emailed their list tonight to clarify that anyone offering to help you with MaineCare is a fed

Important Reminder About Accessing Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
Jan 21, 2026
Office of Family Independence (OFI) and MaineCare staff do not make unannounced home visits or offer in-home help with benefits, including MaineCare, SNAP, and TANF.

032

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 20/01/2026

This one? (It's just down thread a bit; no archive link for the comment itself, I think.)

Reply from @jtlevy (display name Jacob T. Levy):

Theorists: "We will go and view the city of tyranny, and once more take a look into the tyrant's soul."

Reply from @williamadler78 (display name William D. Adler):

Economists: "Did someone say tax cut?"

060

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 01/12/2025

I have a 1944 printing of the 1934 New International Dictionary ("Webster's 2nd") on my desk, and for the words I've checked it contains the same gems ("diversion of the field", this discussion of synonyms to "flash", etc.). IIRC, a decade or so ago it wasn't too hard to find copies online.

A picture of a page from Webster's 2nd. Excerpt from the "flash" entry:

SYN.— FLASH, SPARKLE, GLITTER, GLEAM, GLANCE, GLINT GLIMMER, SHIMMER, GLISTEN. FLASH implies a sudden and transient outburst of light; SPARKLE suggests quick, bright flashes or scintillation; GLITTER connotes greater brilliancy or showiness than sparkle, sometimes with the implication of something sinister; as, "Flashed all their sabers bare" (Tennyson); "his flashing eyes, his floating hair" (Coleridge); "The fireflies...sparkled most vividly in the darkest places" (Irving); "the sparkling waves" (Wordsworth); "He holds him with his glittering eye" (Coleridge); "little black eyes which glittered like jet" (Scott); "glittering rings" (Irving); GLEAM commonly applies to light which shines through an intervening medium, or against a background of relative darkness, as, "I see the lights of the village gleam through the rain and mist" (Longfellow). GLANCE implies darting, or obliquely reflected, GLINT, quickly glancing or gleaming, light as "Many a little hand glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks" (Tennyson); "An insane light glanced in her heavy black eyes" (Mrs. Stowe); "when the first sunshine through their dewdrops glints" (Lowell). GLIMMER suggests faint and wavering, SHIMMER, soft, tremulous, and lustrous, GLISTEN, faintly scintillating, light; as "Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight" (Gray); "Whiles all the night, through fog smoke white, glimmered the white moonshine" (Coleridge); "The young leafage shimmered like a veil of golden gauze" (M. Hewlett); the landscape shimmered through the heat;
"snowy mountains glistening through a summer atmosphere" (Irving); "eyes glistening with heavenly tears" (Carlyle). Cf. FLAME, SCINTILLATE, BRIGHT.

220

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 24/11/2025

Post a movie where you are from

Movie poster for the 1995 Chevy Chase/Jonathan Taylor Thomas vehicle “Man of the House”. JTT is seated in a fancy chair and manipulates a distraught half-sized Chevy Chase like a marionette.

010

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 31/10/2025

May Giant Halloween Pikachu bless your timeline

Stuffed Pikachu from Costco the size of a large ottoman sitting on a porch, behind a few decorative gourds and a Boo Bucket containing one (1) potato. He is wearing a felt wizard hat and is staring into the middle distance, contemplating the shit he has seen.

030

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 31/10/2025

The Cor Blok paperbacks are great, too!

Cover of “De reisgenoten”, the Dutch translation of “The Fellowship of the Ring”. 13 potato-ass companions around a table look aghast at what looks like a ghost of Dobby the Elf. (Presumably Bilbo disappearing when he puts on the Ring?)

Cover of “De twee torens”, the Dutch translation of “The Two Towers”, looks like a scene out of “Where the Wild Things Are”.

Cover of “De terugkeer van de koning”, the Dutch translation of “The Return of the King”. An Eowyn bean stabs the Witch King of Angmar with some kind of thin pole. He appears to be frowning, and a hobbit seems to have blown over.

110

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 19/10/2025

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.

Omar Sy as the modern incarnation of famous fictional French thief Arsène Lupin

0110

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 04/10/2025

Went apple picking today. You never know where you’ll find unpatched OpenSSL in the wild.

213324

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 15/09/2025

Get your jollies in now, folks, any minute Stephen Miller is going to make it illegal to point out that Charlie Kirk looked like the autopilot from Airplane! (1980).

Otto the inflatable autopilot from the classic film Airplane!, looking calmly pleased with the knowledge that unlike Charlie Kirk he has sexually satisfied a woman.

160

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 12/09/2025

I don't know who needs to hear this, but it's the 20th anniversary of Robyn's self-titled album, her third but first on her own label, and it's okay to turn off the internet, put it on repeat, and get back to work healing this broken fucking world in the morning.

Cover image from the 20th anniversary reissue of Robyn's "Robyn", one of the greatest albums of all time.

052

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 02/09/2025

Ok, this is fun. Here are Some Guys, arranged as an alignment chart of early-2000's baseball.

3x3 grid of baseball faces: Edgar Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Trot Nixon, Randy Johnson (with a Diamondbacks cap), Ichiro Suzuki, Curt Schilling (Phillies), Mariano Rivera, David Wells (Blue Jays)

010

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 10/08/2025

Not sure which first-century heresy this entry for “Christ” is committing

Under “Index of Persons” the entry for “Christ” says “see Index of Subjects”

120

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 10/08/2025

I’ve been reading @adapalmer.bsky.social’s Inventing the Renaissance for months now because I keep getting distracted and chasing down references. Using an ILL request to enjoy a funny index entry might be a new frontier in indulging my inner grad student.

Beatific Vision. See God

Index entry in Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

4352

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 09/08/2025

Happy International Cat Day to absolutely no cats other than Mariners closer Andres Muñoz’s cat Matilda

Grumpy-looking white cat on a couch. The look of a butler who has just caught an underlying in an act of tomfoolery.

Same cat, standing on a window ledge, indifferent to the panoramic Seattle skyline.

Same cat, now in a pink travel bag next to a smiling bearded man, presumably on a private jet but still looking like you pissed in her cornflakes.

A custom baseball glove featuring a drawing of the cat, the name “Matilda”, and the Mexican flag.

1153

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 01/08/2025

get in losers, we’re making Web 2000

cow in space, reminiscent of Gateway 2000’s cow branding

041

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 19/07/2025

OED has one prewar citation, from 1918, although it’s quoted in something later:

1918: The elephant is very hungry and hangry from having had no dinner.
A. Ransome, Letter 28 May in R. Chambers, Last Englishman (2009)

171

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 16/07/2025

One of my favorite moments of joy in our fallen world is the arrival of a pre-order I’d forgotten about. A free gift from past Chris!

@kashana.bsky.social’s “The Payback”, in real life

160

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 14/07/2025

Ah, digging into the first “blowjob” result, it’s quoting a booklet of Bloomberg-isms. And the author can’t resist using “blow-job” in the next sentence just to make clear that the quoted usage is Not How We Would Do It.

An actual piece of internal Bloomberg literature has been in the news recently: a thirty-two-page compilation of various off-color things that Bloomberg said in his early years at the company, which was presented to Bloomberg as a gag gift, in 1990. A former Bloomberg executive who helped compile the booklet told New York magazine that Bloomberg was proud of the book when he received it.

“He loves things that are about himself,” the former executive said. “He saw this as a tribute, a testimonial—which it was.” The booklet can be read online in full. It quotes one of Bloomberg’s descriptions of the Bloomberg terminal: it “will do everything,” he said, “including give you a blowjob. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.” (There are a lot of blow-job comments in the booklet.)

040

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 14/07/2025

Hmm, it’s not entirely conclusive, but a search for “blowjob” yields only 11 hits, and the most recent is 2020. Meanwhile, it’s 2025 and you can’t search a multi-word phrase properly on their website, so here is the first result for “blow job” (from today):

A search for “BLOW JOB” on The New Yorker’s web site. (The UI forces ALL CAPS.) The first result is a story titled “Sick Children Will Be Among the Victims of Trump’s Big Bill”.

120

Chris Vermilion @verm.me · 10/07/2025

That’s more of a Favorite than a Best list, I’m not a music critic. Honorable mentions:

Gnarls Barkley - St Elsewhere
The Fame (Monster) - Lady Gaga
Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob
The Killers - Hot Fuss
Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Broken Bells - Broken Bells
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Maggie Rogers - Heard it in a Past Life
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia
Passenger - All the Little Lights
Taylor Swift - Midnights
Sia - This is Acting

110