iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

There is no justice when laws are enforced without dignity. There is no humanity if we don't feel pain when we see pain.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

I'm worried by the pleasure that so much of our country seems to feel while watching others fail or be hurt. Regardless of your political views, it is dangerous to accept the bargain of getting what you want in exchange for all of your empathy.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

Every nuance stripped away, pared down to the simple act of someone with power hurting someone without it, over and over. The way we taunt countries with threats, the theater of ridiculing people who have entered our country illegally, the vitriol with which we cancel well-intended welfare.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

It's impossible for me to read the headlines today and not be reminded of the film's depiction of violence as entertainment.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

One detail that astonishes me is its view on entertainment: only two channels, sex and violence. There's a scene where a character is flipping between two holographic projections: a person seductively dancing, the other shows an authority figure beating a vulnerable person.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/03/2025

I think about George Lucas' THX 1138 a lot. If you don't know it, the film preceded Star Wars and was his directorial debut. It explores a dystopian future...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 31/01/2025

1925 vs 2025. The US now builds more three-car garages than one-bedroom apartments. www.npr.org/2023/05/08/1...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 29/01/2025

It's wild living six hours ahead of the East Coast right now. So many new rules announced while I sleep. I wake up, bring phone to my face, and ... – Canadian Geese now American Geese – US Cabinet privatized, now wholly-owned by News Corp - Denmark = Enemy, TikTok = Friend

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 19/12/2024

If American high school seniors had to spend a semester mastering one game, what should it be? Civilization or Cities: Skylines leapt out at me.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 17/12/2024

There is so much latent need for low-cost, non-alcoholic, non-digital, in-person interaction.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 16/12/2024

Reminds me of the Jesus Phonebooth in THX 1138.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 14/12/2024

I presumed a big jump in his public net worth was the news of SpaceX’s $350b valuation on their stock buy back. Surely that wasn’t news to him… he was spending with much more information than the public had.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 13/12/2024

It was reported that Musk spent $250m to elect Trump, or about 6% of his net worth. That would be equivalent to $60k for the average American, 30% less than the cost of a Cyber Truck.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

I only meant to reference your own description above: "The over-eater whose brain and gut chemistry were set by parents"

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

It's not sustainable for the population to keep gaining weight (and justify it because their parents conditioned their eating patterns) and require society to pay for the consequences. The govt would have to *force* people to slim down to make it work. What would that look like?

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

I think most people would be freaked out by the alternative if they played it out in their minds...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

It sucks, but we inherit our parents' choices (and DNA) and we don't have the 'right' to a different reality but we have the freedom to make choices and pursue outcomes that improve our situations.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

The consequences of sipping alcohol are much different from liver failure due abusing alcohol. CTE from football is an established and broadly known risk and you should not play if you are not willing to make the tradeoffs.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

Regarding gray area, yep that exists, it is messy, but I don't think it's as vast as you're suggesting.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 11/12/2024

At a minimum we can accept that there are obvious irresponsible choices, right?

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 10/12/2024

"In America 100 years is long ago and in Europe 100 miles is far away."

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 09/12/2024

The Jihadi from PBS Frontline is good background on the events leading up to this week’s collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Features interviews with opposition militant Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontli...

pbs.org

The Jihadist

Designated a terrorist by the United States, the powerful Syrian militant Abu Mohammad al-Jolani now seeks a new relationship with the West.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

What the norms in Europe re: forcing someone against their will into treatment?

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

Those exist. The issue, AFAIK, is legal limitations to compelling those suffering from mental and addiction disorders to receive treatment. Plus, there is a vocal segment of the far left that decries compelled treatment as abuse. I do not agree with this.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

A lot of boosters are excited about AI. I don’t see it that way. That may bring workers back to downtown, but from the outside, I think it further binds SF to elitist, anti-social tech. I don’t see a good path that doesn’t start with affordability, for both tourists and locals.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

What do you think will be the plot points in the narrative of SF regaining a reputation that is commensurate with its natural beauty, unique architecture, diverse and welcoming culture, and optimism?

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

Cities are cyclical. I'm only 42 and old enough to remember that people were commonly were afraid to visit NYC, and if you had to, you were warned to carry a wad cash with you to make the mugging efficient. NYC has shed that reputation...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

Obviously those of us who have spent significant time in SF know the city is much more than this. And most of us are trained to offer reasons for each of these seemingly intractable issues. But I haven't been able to convince anyone here...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

Like a lot of Americans, it completely confounds the European mind that such a rich, powerful and liberal city could contain so many scenes of misery and inhumanity...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

Unfortunately SF maintains a strict hotel zone centered around Market Street and Union Square where they have also penned in open-air drug dealing, people suffering from mental illnesses and addiction, as well as the homeless. This is what tourists see when they step out of their lobby...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

After living in Europe for 16 months, one thing is for sure: SF's reputation is in the gutter. Europeans are confounded by my pride for SF, they feel pity for me. And it's not because they've only been persuaded by media. Those with the strongest opinions have visited and seen for themselves...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 26/11/2024

If social media is frequently making you emotional it’s because you’ve been captured by an algo. Your weakness has been mapped. A healthy group of people is not constantly excited or upset.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

Esto es para los corredores de Sevilla, uníos a mi club de running, hacemos una carrera fácil todos los domingos y después tomamos un café juntos. strava.app.link/UkucrL8YOOb

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

Colorized versions of these b&w's are sometimes let downs because they're almost too familiar, they don't look like portals to another time, they destroy the illusion, compress the time, render an exotic artifact into a snapshot of the ordinary dressed in different clothes.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

I think b&w photos and film cause us to conjure a past that never was, and consequently we feel a nostalgia for the simple glamour of this never-existed.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

Look at that ceiling lamp. This photo was 10 years before Sputnik.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

Twice in one day! Colorize. "Committee to approve fashionable clothing suitable for sale to Soviet women, Moscow (1947)"

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

I don't know enough to say for sure, I assume some combination of the quality of the original exposure (how much tonal data was captured) and the math driving the publicly available algos. I just colorized this photo of Abe and tinkered with the saturation in Photoshop and the result is richer.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

I love b&w as an art form, too. And I'm not suggesting b&w art can be improved. My interest is purely about time travel by way of bringing an artifact forward into modern resolution, showing how different timelines share the same spaces.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

In most of these cases, especially photo journalists, you don't think they would have captured the scenes in color if they could?

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 25/11/2024

When I encounter a B&W image, wherever on the web, I immediately stop to colorize and sharpen it. It's astonishing how much a long span of time compresses when you can recast the distant past in the color of the present. I'm using Deep AI, is there a better tool you like? deepai.org/machine-lear...

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 23/11/2024

Still can’t reliably use Bluesky or Threads for sports yet. Game just ended, looking for highlights, search results on both services are days old chit chat from low value accounts, video nowhere to be found.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 22/11/2024

I don't mind public funding for stadiums. What kills me is when public funding is used to build stadiums out in suburbs with no mass transit connections, ensuring all of that car dependency and surface parking for another few decades.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/11/2024

Not for journalistic, exclusively about the cost of compliance for a relatively small cohort.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/11/2024

EU laws re: user data protection and privacy rights, must comply with the law or make yourself unavailable.

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Zach Klein @zachklein.com · 21/11/2024

This is what a lot of US news sites look like in Europe.

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