iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

going to be embarrassing when the ai boyfriend publishes his own piece in the globe breaking up with her

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

you tellin me there's a new mizone?

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

in america you must warn fellow drivers that you're going to drive the speed limit

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

legendary job opening available

overnight security officer listing at the gardner museum

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

this magazine cover goes hard

"Outing" magazine cover featuring a couple on bikes

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

kids discovering the nixon aesthetic

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

doing archival research well means uncovering fresh perspectives

a man aiming a gun at a fish, apparently

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

thinking for no reason of Vincent Sheean's description of Abd el-Krim firing guns at French/Spanish bombers in the Rif War

'A squadron of aeroplanes, he said cheerfully, 'seems to be coming directly over this house. We shall carry on our conversation in the cave.'
We entered the cave, and the raid was on. The planes flew very low indeed, rained bombs and used their machine guns.
The
bombs made a particularly thunderous noise in this cave, which was not very deep. I squatted inside the door. The figures of a number of Abd el-Krim's spruce young officers could be seen farther in. The Sultan himself stood in the entrance. As the aëro-planes swooped just over the slope in front of us he reached for a rifle and stood half in, half out of the cave, aiming carefully. He continued a sentence he had already begun (something about the irreducible minimum of his conditions for peace) and punctuated it thus:
la independencia [BANG!] . .. absoluta [BANGI] . .. del
Rif (BANG!]'
In spite of the discomfort that always came over me during these raids, I was thrilled at the spectacle. He was in plain view of the bombers, and why they did not get him with their machine guns was a mystery. The sight of such intrepidity against such odds might have served as a figure for the whole war: one man (and lame at that) firing with a rifle at a squadron of aëro-planes.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

love this 1917 passage from John Huston Finley discussing the democracy of walking public roads -- and the growing threat of "flying automobiles, whose occupants so often make the pedestrian feel that even these strips have ceased to be democratic."

ration on Cratests readil See rosin at an another ent
within one across centuries and invite to the open spaces. Many to whom this ery comes are impelled to seek the mountain paths, the forest trails, the solitudes or wildernesses coursed only by the feet of wild animals. But to me the black or dun roads, the people's highways, are the more appealing, those strips or ribbons of land which is still held in common, the paths wide enough for the carriages of the rich and the carts of the poor to pass each other, the roads over which they all bear their creaking burdens or run on errands of merey or need, but preferably roads that do not also invite the flying automobiles, whose occupants so often make the pedestrian feel that even these strips have ceased to be democratic.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

not sure this is as compelling a tease as espn thinks it is

The story of Christian Pulisic, US stars, a trip for pizza and a golf cart

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

In advertising them, Thomas claimed the British had rushed him to the front to film the capture of Jerusalem in 1917

Lowell Thomas was the only civilian correspondent who witnessed the reclaiming of the Holy Land, who saw the assembling of the 60,000 camels, the gathering of troops from many climes, and the final campaign in the desert wastes.
Thomas not
only saw all this but recorded it for future generations through the lens of his motion picture camera.
So amazed were the British by his motion pictures of the early campaign in Palestine that when Allenby began his final advance the British staff at Cairo rushed Thomas to the front in a racing battleplane with orders to film the taking of Jerusalem. When the Cross again blazed throughout the Holy Land, the British government, to insure the safety of the precious films, hurried a warship to Malta to take Thomas back to Europe.
It is these films, copies of which are preserved in the British museum, that Thomas shows in his lecture, "Freeing Palestine" or "With Allenby in Palestine."

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

if you attended an educational travelogue lecture from American "journalist" Lowell Thomas (the guy who made TE Lawrence a celebrity) in the 1920s, you would learn this about Egyptians who worked for Britain's Egyptian Expeditionary Force during WWI:

the end of that time, at a shillings day, they had more money then they bad ever seen before in their lives (pause for a second) go they would insist on resigning (pause) and would return to their little farms along the Nile to spend the rest of their lives smoking their hubbly-bubbly pipes and beating their wives. (Pause).

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

also relevant...this from a Richard Scarry book my son has been having me read him over and over and over again

Pig Won't: "He won't learn to read, so he can't read a book."

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Was rereading Vonnegut's "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and came across this lil' Kilgore Trout story about language ("The Pan-Galactic Three Day Pass") which seems even more relevant than when KV wrote it in 1965.

Sergeant Boyle was an Earthling. He was the only Earthling on the expedition. In fact, he was the only creature from the Milky Way. The other members were from all over the place. The expedition was a joint effort supported by about two hundred galaxies. The thing was that Earth was the only place in the whole known Universe where language was used. It was a unique Earthling invention. Everybody else used mental telepathy, so Earthlings could get pretty good jobs as language teachers just about anywhere they went.

The reason creatures wanted to use language instead of mental telepathy was that they found out they could get so much more done with language. Language made them so much more active. Mental telepathy, with everybody constantly telling everybody everything, produced a sort of generalized indifference to all information. But language, with its slow, narrow meanings, made it possible to think about one thing at a time--to start thinking in terms of projects.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Anticipating today's divide between Christian Zionists and Christian Nationalists, when Christian Zionist forerunner Frank Norris reached out to Jewish organizations seeking access to David Ben-Gurion in the 1940s, he was rebuffed because of his associations with the antisemite Smith.

While Norris had been an outspoken supporter of Zionism for decades and had built relationships with local Jews in Fort Worth, it was not until the late 1940s that he began interacting with pro-Zionist organizations and became active in calling for the US government to support the Zion-ists. As usual, travel provided the occasion for this turn. As the United Nations took control of the Palestine question in I947 (and as the United States was increasingly involved in the issue), Norris planned another trip to the region. Ahead of this trip, he contacted Jewish organizations, Zionist or otherwise, to ask to be introduced to Zionist leaders in Palestine. A vain and boastful man, Norris gloried in rubbing elbows with influential people--then reporting on it in the Fundamentalist.31 He was therefore disturbed when his efforts to gain contacts in the Yishuv were initially re-buffed. In reply to Norris's queries, Ben Goldman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) noted that the organization did not have contact with Zionist leadership, however Norris's associations with renowned anti-Semite Gerald Smith would have made the organization "most troubled about furnishing you with a letter of introduction" had contacts existed.32 While Goldman's letter did not discourage Norris from further attempts to gain access to the Zionist leadership, it did affect his strategy: from that point forward the pastor was keen to make American Jewish organizations like the ADL and the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) aware of his own anti-anti-Semitic activities and active support of Zionism.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

In 1950, he visited Israel while on a world tour with SBC Executive Secretary Duke McCall. They published a book about their experiences the next year. The birth of Israel, they wrote, had been an "immoral miracle." (They were referring primarily to the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians.)

Chapter heading ("Israel--An Immoral Miracle") from Criswell's book.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

But there were also many prominent Southern Baptists that questioned Zionism, including J. McKee Adams and WO Carver of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Title page from J. McKee Adams's book, "The Heart of the Levant."

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

For sure, there were people within the SBC making that case. Jacob Gartenhaus, the SBC's *sole* missionary to American Jews, was one. Myrtle Creasman, the editor of the Woman's Missionary Union's Royal Service magazine, was another.

Screenshot of program materials from Royal Service about Palestine.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Why did they do it? Part of the reason was that the man behind the resolution--fundamentalist rabblerouser J. Frank Norris.

Portrait of Norris. Source: https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p9020coll2/id/9925/

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

The next week, "messengers" (i.e., delegates) from Southern Baptist churches throughout the country gathered in Memphis for the SBC's annual meeting. There, they repeatedly voted *down* resolutions offering congratulations to Truman for his role in Israel's establishment.

E. D. Solomon, Florida, moved that the secretary of the Convention send a telegram to President Truman congratulating him on recognizing the State of Israel. The motion was lost after discussion by Dr. Solomon and L. E. Barton, Alabama.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

It was on May 14, 1948, that David Ben-Gurion announced the State of Israel would come into existence at the midnight expiration of British rule in Palestine. Only minutes after midnight, President Harry Truman--a Southern Baptist--became the first foreign leader to recognize the new state.

Truman's statement recognizing Israel. Source: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/200612

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Think she might have mixed that up! Or was the first person ever to identify baldness as the distinguishing physical characteristic of Moshe Dayan.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

"Falls of the Potomac, from Maryland Shore"

Alfred Waud sketch of Potomac falls, with water crashing on rocks and soldiers looking on in the foreground.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Waud himself, getting a sketch in:

Photograph of Alfred Waud, sketching while seated on a rock.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

McClellan reviewing his troops:

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Am teaching a dedicated course on the Civil War & Reconstruction this semester and so have been getting acquainted with Alfred Waud's arresting drawings of war scenes in the @librarycongress.bsky.social 's online collections. This is the burning of the Shenandoah Valley:

Alfred Waud's September 1864 drawing of the burning of the Shenandoah Valley.

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Some telling quotes from 19th and early 20th century Southern Baptist travelers to Palestine:

When Jenkens spoke of the return of Christ, he had a Protestant Christ in mind. Baptists did not view Levantine Christians as their coreligionists.
Or, at the very least, Baptists viewed them as followers of a degraded or
"effeminate" form of Christianity (to borrow A. J. Holt's phrasing). Paired with long-standing Protestant critiques of the dominant Catholicism and Orthodoxy of Palestine, Baptists tended to view the Eastern churches as tainted by Islam. "The Greek Church has existed for a long time in the Turkish empire side by side with Mohammedanism," noted Wharton, "and has sunk so low in piety and zeal that there is no religious principle set forth by its light." Hamlett likewise viewed local Christianity as similar to Islam "in spirit, though differing in creed." Joseph Marstain Fort described Jerusalem's Christians as being "as far from ... Christ-like...as the Mohammedan or the heathen; yea, farther." Many focused their criticisms on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (jointly maintained by the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and other Eastern churches). Broadus was especially disgusted by the Orthodox Pascha events there, which included the annual Miracle of the Holy Fire: "No devoutness, no seriousness frolic for the crowd, ridiculous to the persons officiating. It is ceremony run in the ground, utterly defeating its own object. I have never in my life beheld a spectacle so humiliating. This is Oriental Christianity."

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Walker Robins @walktalks.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The sound Godzilla makes when Chuck throws a bow:

Rob Gronkowski in an American-flag bowtie.

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