iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 22/10/2026

@futurebird I use turnips in slow-cooker stews, where they're great [i.e. Indistinguishable from the other root vegetables after a few hours in the pot]. I have never knowingly eaten a turnip under any other circumstances.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2026

@masnick.com Mike, you may not see this because it's only bridged to bluesky, but do you think that functional -- not theoretica l-- control over social outlets could be a factor here?

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2026

Having young cats in our household again reminds me of the meaning of "crepuscular" -- i.e. a cat wakes you up at 5AM, basically saying "I don't know whether or not there's food in my bowl right now, but you should come with me to check."

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Managing Barista and Janitor @proprietor.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

ANNOUNCEMENT will be placed on our timeline in a moment, but I'm also sharing as a post. Due to the still-high levels of malicious spam coming from compromised accounts, wandering.shop will lock unused accounts as of 6 PM PDT this evening, October 18. We are not aware that we are (yet) hosting […]

wandering.shop

Original post on wandering.shop

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

I feel like I'm seeing an increasing number of Fedi posts that are exploring areas in interested in, but the links are to (1) a YouTube video, and then (2) to an audio podcast, with no text-first link offered. I can personally work with/around the options offered, so just an observation.

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

[object Object] @zzt.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

as someone who’s been doing LLM critique since ChatGPT’s first public release and AI critique much longer than that: do you know how allergic AI boosters are to shame, to being made fun of, to resistance? they need you to take them seriously on their terms and they’ll do everything they can to […]

mas.to

Original post on mas.to

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Glyph @glyph.im · 12/10/2026

*In general* I love Banned Books Week because in general the books that are banned are banned for bad reasons. But I would very much like to make sure that The Turner Diaries is not available in my child's library. Nobody actually has a content-neutral opinion on book banning and I wish we could […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

I was quite seriously just thinking this: no human copyeditor would have let that get through, Microsoft just assumed the AI review would be fine.

wandering.shop

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

@futurebird They're late to the game, and need to make justifiable marketing spends of investor money in hopes of making back some money, somehow, before it all falls apart.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

Younger me would never have predicted that "why does the hair in my right ear seem to grow so much faster than the hair on my left ear" would take up so much brain space for 50s me, but here we are.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

OH, waiting for the G train: "To me, losing my phone would be worse than losing my wallet. Everything in my wallet is on my phone, anyway. "

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

I had a big thread on Sunday about how people feel about "AI" and the attempt to make older people feel like if they aren't into AI they are falling behind the times. Some responses seemed to think I meant that AI hype is all the fault of boomers. I don't really think that. (and didn't say it […]

sauropods.win

Original post on sauropods.win

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”

APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

neville park @nev.flipping.rocks.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Comrades. IT'S TIME. #FatBearWeek 2026 is upon us. explore.org/fat-bear-week 🐻 For the first time, the bracket includes bear families (mother and cubs), "in recognition of the record high number of bear families (19) and cubs (37) at Brooks River in summer 2026"! Find out about all the […]

flipping.rocks

Original post on flipping.rocks

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

Just drinking coffee, scrolling through my mastodon feed, and learning that the World Tram Driver Championship is a thing that happens. It seems somehow appropriate that Google can't generate an AI summary for the event.

A screenshot of an android phone displaying the Google search results for "world tram driver championship."

Of particular note: the AI overview section of the results says "can't generate an AI overview right now. Try again later."

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

"He was a cop, and good at his job, but he committed the ultimate sin..." I think the best TV is way better than it was decades ago, but I do still miss TV shows that assumed you'd never seen an episode before and used the intro voiceover/ theme song to give you some context. Yes, I'm looking […]

mastodon.xyz

Original post on mastodon.xyz

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

A follow-up here, noting some other things that are firmly embedded in my brain and refuse to be dislodged to free up space: - Phone numbers from the 1980s. I could list off a dozen right now without breaking a sweat. - The intro voiceover to the '90s TV show "Renegade."

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Theodora Ward @theodoraward.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

if i rig up a random number generator to a bomb, program it to generate a number between 1 and 20 every five minutes, set the bomb to go off if i roll a 20, begin the random number generator, then leave the room, i am liable for when the bomb goes off. the fact that a deeply stupid […]

wandering.shop

Original post on wandering.shop

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

@glyph Late 2020s (I hope): "it turns out that no one actually wanted to know all that much about the people they went to school or worked with a number of years ago, so let's just not, yeah?"

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

My plants are a shitshow right now, so I try not to judge others' urban gardening decisions, but if the sidewalk looks like this after you've watered the six pots on your front stoop, you fucked up.

The sidewalk in front of a Brooklyn brownstone, soaked in water.

Not visible in the image is that there are six potted plants on the associated front stoop.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

@feijoa You've probably come across it already, but "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" is a neat foundational cookbook, focused on those broad categories interact in cooking, more than specific recipes.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Quite seriously: if I *could* forget that piece of information, to make room for pretty much ANYTHING else in my brain, I would do that.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Every once in a while I think about the fact that it's *normal* for me for basically everyone I know to know off the top of their head that there are 86,400 seconds in a day.

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Matt Blaze @mattblaze.federate.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

The first batches of mail-in ballots from North Carolina were apparently accepted by the USPS on Friday (sent only to voters who had requested them), despite Trump's contested executive order and new USPS regulations. Is anyone here a mail-in voter from NC? Have you received your ballot yet? […]

federate.social

Original post on federate.social

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

I enjoy that "weekend beige" is a phrase, concept, and/or lifestyle that I just absorbed through some kind of Mastodon osmosis over the past few years.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

It's totally fine to leave your house, have an interaction with people, and walk away thinking "FUCK, now I'm weird, and those people know it." It's anxiety, and it's manageable.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 27/08/2026

@davep Well, sure, OF COURSE he renamed it to "Lake I'm a Dipshit," what else would he have named it?

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

History/law people: If you had to imagine how Stephen Miller might use Grant's suspension of habeas in SC as a model now, what source would you point to to explain how and why? Logic being that DOJ is manufacturing conspiracies. What would it look like to mimic the 1871 conspiracies?

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

@mhoye We're all flawed human beings, but I am certain that Dolly is among the least flawed of us.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

Hanging out with the 10yo in a little piece of 1977 that seems have gotten broken off and gotten lodged in our living room: we're playing Othello while watching the Rankin/Bass The Hobbit, and drinking Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray. I hope she's enjoying my childhood.

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Boris Mann @boris.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

A lovely excuse to learn some Australian slang as part of a write up of how Canada walked away from negotiating with Trump ifloz.substack.com/p/king-carney-ac…

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

YMMV, but if you somehow see this I think it's a legit recommendation: you should probably try reading a book written by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I'm happy to make recommendations on a starting point if you don't immediately know someone in the Fediverse who is already doing so.

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

myrmepropagandist @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

Let's suppose that tomorrow every data center and LLM service just stops working. It all freezes up. What is the damage? I think some high-volume low quality content creators would be in some trouble. Some search engines and cloud software would need to be reverted. Some companies would need to […]

sauropods.win

Original post on sauropods.win

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2026

One of the many things I love about the beach town we come to every summer is the presence of the Wu Tang house.

A small, fairly modern-looking house; the building itself isn't particularly notable, but the front yard (which is artificial grass) is filled with LED palm trees, large lawn flamingos, a fake dog skeleton, a giant metallic rooster with glowing red eyes, and...well, let your imagination fill in the rest.

Towards the front of the lawn is a small yard sign (the size of US political ya4d signs) that reads "Wu Tang is Forever."

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Reposted by Whitney McNamara

Leander Lindahl @leanderlindahl.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

I don't get the argument that public institutions "have to be where people are". Why? Pornhub has about the same amount of monthly active users as X. No one thinks our EU commissioners or the Swedish parliament must be on Pornhub. In the pre-socials era no one expected the prime minister to […]

mastodon.social

Original post on mastodon.social

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Starting day three on the north fork of Long Island. We've yet to have a meal that didn't involve tomatoes, corn, or peaches from a farmstand. Sometimes all three. Deeply content.

A beach landscape, early in the morning.

Taken from the beach, looking out into the Peconic bay. There are clusters of beach grass on the foreground, and a wooden jetty leading out to the water in the center of the scene.

To the left, the sun is just a bit above the horizon and casting a long reflection on the water.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026

There are a number of things in today's NYT that make me angry, so I'm going to pick the most petty one: "men shouldn't wear shorts to work" merits an opinion piece? I get that the idea might have been to bring something a little more light-hearted to the opinion pages, but that was not a good […]

mastodon.xyz

Original post on mastodon.xyz

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

The kittens do not yet understand that they are inside cats, and I get many resentful glares when I go into the back yard.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

We definitely needed the two foot tall rusty metal A, and almost needed the antler- themed coat rack, but we definitely don't need the phrenology head. Even though it's right there to take.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

One of our neighbors put one of those ceramic phrenology heads out on the sidewalk (among other things), and I am reminding myself that we have no need whatsoever for a ceramic phrenology head.

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Whitney McNamara @whitneymcn.mastodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026

@fiend_unpleasant Typo corrected. 😅 Though to be fair, a lot of bloomscrolling is kinda plant sex...

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