iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I was five when this came out. I distinctly remember a half dozen girls from my kindergarten class putting on a little number with headbands and leg warmers and dancing to this song, all of them - and me - oblivious. Took me until my twenties to remember and understand why the parents choked.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

What did Daniel Dennett do?

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

So the Repub candidate for US Representative for western NC had to drop out due to a scandal with interns. That's a leg up for Dem candidate Jamie Ager. Breitbart just discovered Warren Wilson College, a work-study college in NC, that both Ager (and I) attended, and they're having a normal one.

Breitbart page showing an article about Western NC candidate for US Representatives Jamie Ager, and how he went to a work-study college near Asheville. Title is "North Carolina Democrat House Candidate Attended 'Communist-Friendly' College with a Labor Camp"

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Right now I'm seeing a lot of people use AI to write the questions they're sending to the archivists. Trying to explain that AI has hallucinated an entire record series that doesn't exist is ... vexing.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

As someone who has to redact documents and keep track of all the bits and piece of privacy regulations, I'm feeling sympathy for the DoJ administrative workers who got told to redact everything of substance.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

The first person that brought the news of Alexander's death was Asclepiades the son of Hipparchus. Demades desired the people to give no credit to it: " For," said he, " if Alexander were dead, the whole world would smell the carcass." - Plutarch's Lives; Phocion 22

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I loved the movie w/ Tim Curry and Carol Burnett when I was 6. Looking back ... Although the fact that Warbucks and Annie visit FDR, whom Harold Gray hated with a passion, now makes me smile. It feels like the playwrights were trying to redeem the material just a smidge.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

You see his name is Daddy Warbucks and you have to ask "How is this not a parody?"

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Saw this a lot during the 90s environmentalism. "There's no evidence of a environmental crisis, just some localized issues. Shouldn't we study..." As long as your opponents sets the agenda, they can keep the discussion at whatever level they want and still appear reasonable.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

It's amazing. I was a mainline Episcopalian, went to Catholic high school then took religion classes at a hippy college. At every step I got the "judiasm = legalism" line. It's astonishing how deeply the idea has sunk into our culture.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

I'm sorry, but if you don't see the problem of using the name of a rival religious movement as a slur, I don't know how to explain it to you.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

The gospels to modern Christians are what the Declaration of Independence is to most Americans. We remember a good line or two and try to turn that into an entire philosophy while ignoring all the boring or troubling bits.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

There's a type of atheist that read all the popular apologists works - the Hobby Lobby remainder bin kind - and decided that they wanted to argue like that from the opposite side. It's understandable when they're still young little atheists, but it still gets tiresome.

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Reposted by VorJack

Embrace the Void @etvpod.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

“It’s disheartening to see those who hold themselves out as voices of reason pretend this is merely an academic debate while falling for the junk ‘science’ and fabrications of a movement hell-bent on enforcing so-called ‘traditional’ gender roles and norms.” solid case from @nickfish.me et al.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Templeton has been doing this - and exactly this - for a couple of decades now. If I was more cynical, I'd gin up a "science points to the modern Christian upper-class idea of God" essay and try for some of their sweet, sweet lucre.

scientificamerican.com

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

In conversation, the 2019 Templeton Prize winner does not pull punches on the limits of science, the value of humility and the irrationality of nonbelief

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

That would explain some of the behavior at the conventions.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Apparently, the Eastern Orthodox reverse the last two, which explains about 1000+ years of antagonism.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

The website is still there and the forums are still alive. But I haven't heard it used unironically in a decade. Even then it was frequently being used as a sneer word because it was so cringe.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

I try to be a skeptic in the broad sense. That's a feeling that humans may not have access to certainty. If knowing something means being 100% certain, I'm not sure we're warranted in saying we know anything, which makes language tricky. I'm agnostic about everything, so what does the word mean?

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Oh...dear... The memories. For some reason, they had videos that played during Saturday Morning Cartoons when I was growing up. Their spanglish was something to behold.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

True. I myself am a dick for secular, plebeian reasons.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Shoot, I said no to that even when I was a Christian. A great big monarch up in the sky with a chariot, a sword and a staff of courtiers? There's a reason so many church fathers went so hard of Platonic philosophy and added a sprinkle of Jesus.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Watching the arguments in the online atheist sphere. It reminds me of how second-wave feminists split with the anti-war movement due to the objectification of women. I suspect this is common in a lot of movements. All we agree on is a lack of God.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

I think its just a reprise of the earlier controversy. Most of the people are still on the same sides. Dawkins, Coyne, Pinker over here, Myers and Watson on the other. It's just never really ended.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Grew up in the 80s listening to the Moral Majority and similar rant about American moral decadence while Trump was attending coke-fueled parties in NYC with Marla Maples on his arm. Watching the heirs to Falwell rally around Trump is a very painful confirmation that is was all a sham.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Pass. Nearly lost a finger to the "Where the Red Fern Grows" pack.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

And yet here you are. I really hope you don't have a peanut allergy.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

On one hand, it's a little sad that we still haven't forgiven Morissette for this song after 30 years time. On the other, how many throw-away pop songs are we still talking about 30 years after they charted?

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Reposted by VorJack

Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

100 years ago today, #OTD in 1925, Edwin Hubble announced that Andromeda and other spiral nebulae were definitely separate galaxies outside the Milky Way, in a paper read to an AAS meeting by H.N. Russell. There was no doubt that the Universe was more than just our little island of stars. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

A black and white photo of M31, the Andromeda galaxy. It is characterized by spiral arms and dark lanes of dust and gas, with a bright center.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

If God existed, He would send more subtle signs than this.

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VorJack @vorjack.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Has anyone in the history of creation ever been moved by an argument over burden of proof or arguments over the definition of religion? But two-thirds of the discourse seem to be "prove that God exists/doesn't exist" or "atheism is just another faith." Worse than unhelpful, it's boring.

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