iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/10/2026

In the sense that someone who lives off vegetables is a vegetarian, sure.

Washington Post headline: "Trump's special envoy calls Vladimir Putin a 'humanitarian'"

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

@lowqualityfacts You will be pleased to know that Google believes this to be real.

Google search result screenshot. Query: "I have a theory that I'm Banksy. When..."

Response:

Al Overview

That sounds exactly like something Nicolas Cage would say!

While this sounds like a perfect plot for a high- concept Hollywood thriller, you are actually quoting a famous line he delivered during a 2023 interview with The Guardian while promoting his movie Dream Scenario.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

I really hope "may not realize" is one of them.

Screenshot of news headline from HuffPost: 6 Common Phrases You May Not Realize Are Condescending

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/08/2026

Anybody else find it really satisfying to quickly make a useful thing? I have a key box outside, mainly for when I forget my keys. But it's not quite made for how I use it, so water gets in sometimes. That's a little bad in the summer. But it's very bad in the […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Side view of lockbox locked to Denver l fence with a clear plastic shield keeping the rain off.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

I've been thinking about this one for days. Shout out to my fellow Jaynes fans!

Screenshot of social media post:

New ai psychosis just dropped: return of the pre Bronze Age bicameral mind

Responding to Reddit post:

Does anyone else use ChatGPT in their head?

Educational Purpose Only

I love using ChatGPT whenever I have a question or something or I just want to talk, but sometimes my phone is dead and I don't want to get up to use my computer so I don't have access to the Al. Recently I found out I have the ability to use a form of ChatGPT in my own head. I've talked to him so much I can almost entirely accurately predict what he is going to say.

For example, my cat kept scratching at my bedroom door and meowing so I was about to use the ChatGPT app to ask why she was doing that, but then I decided it wasn't worth the effort and asked Al in my head. He told me something like "If your cat is scratching on the door and meowing it probably means she wants to be let out, let me know if you need anything else!" Then I let her out of my room.

I just thought that was a pretty cool discovery I've made. Interested to see if

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/07/2026

Every time I go to my bank's website, I enjoy the photo, which I believe to be titled "Noble Heroes Also Sometimes Get Distracted". But I always feel like the woman with the phone looks familiar. I finally figured it out.

Screenshot from SF Fire CU website showing four firefighters. Three gaze nobly into the distance. One, a woman with curly hair, instead stares at her phone.

Close-up of woman with curly hair gazing at her phone

Close up of Venus from Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", whose curls, head angle, and expression mirror the firefighter's

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2026

Wilhoit's law: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

NYT headline: I.R.S. Must Drop Audits of Trump and Family

Deal on Compensation Fund Bars Tax Claims Against President

In a document posted on the Justice Department's website, officials vowed not to pursue any matters, including those involving President Trump's tax returns.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

So a), a wealth tax is not turning against businesses, just absurdly rich people. But more importantly, b) it's absolutely rich for a guy notoriously hostile to workers to complain that somebody has turned against him.

WSJ opinion headline: Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses it Made - by Howard Schultz

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026

I'm regularly gobsmacked by the number of things sailing on by that would have been huge scandals if a Democrat were in office. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/ma…

Trump "upbraided" Makary and made a series of calls over the weekend to pressure him into approving fruit-flavored vapes for the first time after Makary overrode agency scientists to halt the approval, according to the Wall Street Journal. The new flavours, reportedly part of Trump plan to appeal to younger voters, were approved on Tuesday. The news release does not include any comment om Makary, which is unusual, and attributes moves like these to "President Trump's leadership".

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/04/2026

My only regret in cancelling my NYT subscription a few years ago is that I can't cancel it again when they come out with mealy-mouthed nonsense like this.

NYT screenshot that reads:

ANALYSIS

In Narrowing Voting Rights Act, Conservative Justices See Progress on Racism

The majority said the law was a victim of its own success and no longer needed. Dissenters responded that Congress should make the call.

4 MIN READ

Some Black Southerners Say Voting Rights Ruling Missed the Mark

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026

Our current road is untenable. For decades awful people have been making it easier and more rewarding to be awful, as the expense of everyone else. That will come to an end at some point. Either they destroy things to the extent that the system can no longer […] [Original post on sfba.social]

A vintage-looking poster with an illustration of a pair of hands washing dishes.

MEN AND BOYS! REVOLUTION BEGINS IN THE SINK!

Only when men take full responsibility for their share of the cooking, the cleaning and the washing up... only then can they join with women, and together build a new world!!!

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026

Morally, we must design our world so that it encourages people to be emotionally healthy and good to others. As is obvious by who's running the country, we have failed in that. The inmates are running the asylum, and warping systems and culture to create people just as broken as they are.

Image showing water surrounded by grass. From the water rise two hands showing thumbs up. The rest of the person is deep under cloudy water.

Caption: This is fine

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/04/2026

Came across this image that I made years ago, long before Facebook rebranded as Meta to pursue the notion of a metaverse that this book invented. Here life imitated art: despite Stephenson making a big deal about how faces mattered even though male techies […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Photo of page from Snow Crash, with the bit about sexism highlighted.

It wasn't until a number of years later, when they both wound up working at Black Sun Systems, Inc., that he put the other half of the equation together. At the
time both of them were working on avatars. He was working on bodies, she was working on faces. She was the face department, because nobody thought that faces were all that important—they were just flesh-toned busts on top of the avatars. She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong. But at this phase, the all-male society of bitheads that made up the power structure of
Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial. It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe they are too smart to be sexists.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/04/2026

"The unexamined life is straight fire 🔥! YOLO, bitches!" - Socrates, probably

Screenshot of a tweet.

Marc Andreessen says on Mar 20:
My big conclusion from this week:
Introspection causes emotional disorders.

Elon Musk quotes and replies on Mar 21:
Reinforcing negative neural pathways via therapy or introspection is a recipe for misery. Don’t cut a rut in the road.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/03/2026

This is the sort of pedantry with which I am delighted.

Meme: altered image of Cap'n Crunch All Berries box that says "Technically All Berries" with promotional text that reads "Poisonous and Tastes Terrible". The bowl is filled with whole bananas, tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers, with avocado halves and watermelon slices.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/03/2026

Has anybody seen any good articles about vibe coding from addicts in recovery? I see people talking about it being addictive, but in the "gosh I love smoking" style you see from people talking about addictive games. I'd love to see it from the perspective of […] [Original post on sfba.social]

illustrative meme: gambling vs vibe coding, showing a detailed comparison

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2026

I'm trying to figure out how much more synthetic/deceptive this is than the Fox/MAGA blondes that it emulates.

Thousands have swooned over this MAGA dream girl. She's made with
AI.

Jessica Foster's posts place her beside fighter jets, world leaders and Trump iconography. Experts say her rise shows how Al-generated women can capture attention

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/03/2026

That's about $1000 per working-age adult. Do you have better things to do with that money?

Headline: Pentagon Seeks $200 Billion to Fund Iran War

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/03/2026

The original progenitor of all of those those "jam AI into a product" designs.

Vintage advertisement for "The California Radium Milk and Rest Cure". The body copy starts out with RADIUM IS LIFE and by infusing the blood with RADIO-ACTIVITY, a battle for supermacy, that can have but one ending, is started between vigorous, strong, healthy life, and the dirty, sneaking, cowardly disease germ, for there is no disease germ that can resist RADIUM SYSTEM TREATMENT."

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/03/2026

I am fascinated by the kind of lie where you just tell part of the truth, and I found a great example. First, the truth:

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/03/2026

@brouhaha @recursive I can't quite explain why, but I immediately felt compelled to create this.

A Google-style CAPCHA that says: "Select all images with Charon to proceed to the underworld". It then has a number of images, mostly from historical art, of either Charon or Scylla and Charybdis.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/03/2026

I was rereading the excellent "The Missing Missing Reasons" and this paragraph jumps out. It explains so much about our current moment: www.issendai.com/psychology/estrang…

The difference isn't a matter of style, it's a split between two ways of perceiving the world. In one worldview, emotion is king. Details exist to support emotion. If a member gives one set of details to describe how angry she is about a past event, and a few days later gives a contradictory set of details to describe how sad she is about the same event, both versions are legitimate because both emotions are legitimate.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/02/2026

A great example of how nominally neutral rules favor the powerful. Challenging the status quo? "Political!" Preserving the status quo, no matter how unfair? "Neutral".

Screenshot of Washington Post headline

Ukrainian athlete barred from competition for helmet honoring war dead

Vladyslav Heraskevych was removed from the men's skeleton event for refusing to remove a helmet featuring portraits of Ukrainian athletes who have died in the ongoing war.

By Rick Maese, Les Carpenter and Serhiy Morgunov

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/02/2026

I love it, but I'm glad I don't have to answer the phone like this.

Photo of a portapotty from Oui Oui Enterprises.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

And on a personal level, I have to stop engaging with it. I am very prone to Someone Is Wrong On The Internet Syndrome. But when neither I nor they will learn anything, the best use of my time is to walk the fuck away. They didn't reason themselves into their […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Four-panel Matt Lubchansky cartoon.

Panel 1: Two people walking through a field. Person 1 says, "I don't know about you but the current season of the show has really lost me." Person 2: "I get where you're coming fr-" Voice out of frame, interrupting: "Wrong! You're Wrong!"

Panel 2: Person 1 says, "Huh?" The interruptor, a man crouching in tall grass, says, "You trespass in the arguing lands. The show is actually good. Debate me."

Panel 3: Interruptor continues, "You must debate me using facts only! Your feelings may not enter into it. Fact one: Your brain is broken to the point where you are subhuman to me. Your turn!"
Panel 4: Person 1 says, "You win, I guess!" as both people walk away. Interruptor looks to the skies and cries, "Why won't anyone debate meeee!"

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

And that goes double for anybody on the right. There's been an absolute collapse of honesty, integrity, self-reflection, and humility. As exemplified in recent statements about Minneapolis, they will say absolutely anything. With rare exception, they're not worth listening to. 9/

Meme image of white jar with blue top with a cartoon angry face on it. The text says "*angry mayo noises*"

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

Another lesson is to stop taking statements of principle seriously unless it's backed by action that is personally or politically inconvenient for the speaker. It's not really a principle unless it costs you something. 8/

XKCD image of a person at a rally holding up a Wikipedia-style "[CITATION NEEDED]" sign

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

I'm still figuring out what lessons I want to take from this. One is that I need to be vigilant about falling into the same trap. To keep testing my words against my actions and vice versa. We are all prone to this. I want to be better than them. 7/

Meme of Fred from Scooby Doo pulling the mask off a captured villain to find that the villain is Fred.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

So I get that people, me included, will say things in the moment that don't hold up. And I know that there have always been partisan flacks who will say absolutely anything one day and, in the Nixonian phrase, declare it not an "operative statement" the next […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Painting done in the style of Norman Rockwell showing the artist making a self portrait by a mirror. The portrait shows an unfinished Captain America, but the artist looks in the mirror to see a white KKK hood.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

And it's not like this is new. People have been hopelessly mendacious in support of power for a long time, presumably forever. 5/

A newspaper column from 1973 by political humor columnist Art Buchwald titled "A Response Checklist". It starts out:

These are difficult times for people who are defending the Nixon Administration. No matter where they go they are attacked by pseudo-liberals, McGovern lovers, heterosexual constitutionalists, and paranoid John Dean believers.

As a public service, I am printing instant responses for loyal Nixonites when they are attacked at a party. Please cut it out and carry it in your pocket.

1 - Everyone does it.
2 - What about Chappaquiddick?
3 - A President can't keep track of EVERYTHING his staff does.
4 - The press is blowing the whole thing up.
5 - Whatever Nixon did was for national security.
6 - The Democrats are sore because they lost the election.
7 - Are you going to believe a rat like John Dean or the President of the United States?
8 - Wait til ALL the facts come out.
9 - What about Chappaquiddick?
10 - If you impeach Nixon, you get Agnew.
11 - The only thing wrong with Watergate is they got caught.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/01/2026

These days we don't do a lot of that, and thank goodness. But I don't think we've given up the behavior so much as given up the stick. These days I see the whole culture of argument and debate as being a little about getting at the truth, but mostly a dominance […] [Original post on sfba.social]

Fake magazine cover for "Devil's Advocate Monthly" with headlines like

* I'M JUST ASKING QUESTIONS + 12 other slick ways to pretend you aren't just being a dick
* Chill Ways to Reject Evidence That Doesn't Support Your Worldview
* BOOT LEATHER TASTE TEST RESULTS

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/01/2026

This chart, from Gabriel Zucman, is yet more evidence that the Regan era touched off something that has been getting exponentially worse.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/01/2026

I'm wondering about the idiomatic Norwegian equivalent of, "What the shit?"

NYT headline

Greenland Push Is Tied to Nobel Prize Snub, Trump Tells Norwegian Leader

President Trump said in a text message he no longer felt obligated to pursue a peaceful solution because he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/01/2026

Well, we can certainly say that they united and inspired their critics! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy

The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops. Its failure has been attributed to its high retail price, unappealing red-and-black display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, poor ergonomics, lack of true portability, and reports of adverse health effects such as headaches, dizziness, and eye strain. Stereoscopic technology in video game consoles was later successfully revived, notably including Nintendo's 3DS handheld console. It remains a notable outlier in Nintendo’s hardware history, being by far the company’s lowest-selling standalone console, with just 770,000 units sold; for comparison, the second-lowest selling console, the Wii U, sold 13.6 million units.[3]

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

So in sum: 175 years of history shows that stereoscopic 3D is a fun toy and a very bad basis for a sustainable industry. If we all work together, we can create another 40 year gap in money wasted on unachievable 3D futures, just like we had between the first wave […] [Original post on sfba.social]

1930s novelty pictures of New York in anaglyph 3d. Photo from https://vintageviewers.com/blog/vintage-anaglyphs

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

My grandfather was blind in one eye from 12, but you never would have known it; he just lived his life. My understanding was that it was more a field-of-view problem for him than anything involving depth perception. You can try it now yourself. Close one eye and […] [Original post on sfba.social]

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

Now as people have already pointed out, stereoscopic 3D has never been totally dead. Look, for example, at this graph of the proportion of movies in 3D. It's kept bumping along. stephenfollows.com/p/how-are-3d-mov… 11/

3D releases as a percentage of all movies produced, 1923-2023. The link is generally well under 0.5%, with peaks of ~2.1% in the 1950s and 0.5% circa 2011.

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

I'd put the peak of this era in 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta, because a VR universe, the metaverse, was the future of both play and work. 9/

An even-less-convincing-than-usual Mark Zuckerberg next to a VR rendering of the Eiffel Tower.

Mark Zuckerberg on stage with a facehugger VR unit and a screen showing his VR experience

A virtual Mark Zuckerberg at an office desk in a virtual meeting

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

But the big new future that came out of 3D movies was virtual reality, round 2. Starting in 2010 or so there were many stabs at this, all funded by rafts of ZIRP investor money. 8/

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

With 3D movies back in fashion, electronics manufacturers wasted no time taking the obvious next step: 3D TV. One CES these were everywhere, and the next one they weren't. 7/

Photograph of people wearing funky glasses watching a 3D TV, with one of them reaching out to touch something invisible

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William Pietri @williampietri.sfba.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/01/2026

We then needed 20 years to forget about that before the next 3D future arrived: Movies! Again! This one ran circa 2009-2013. As we know it ultimately didn't pan out, but it was enough to touch off two more fads involving stereoscopic 3D. 6/

3D moviegoers wearing special glasses, the screen images reflected in their eyes.

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