iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 3h

The Internet is still okay sometimes

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 3h

Top quality reputation laundering is available, and cheap!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 3h

Is the first day of the year where little yellow leaves fall every time the wind blows. So I am pronouncing it Fall. Enjoy.

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 3h

That whole section is unappreciated comedy gold. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/script... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Part 1/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. A priest confronts a kid for falling asleep in church. The kid starts to recite Acts 20:9-11 as his explanation. He says : "And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed.”

Part 2/2 of a 6-panel SMBC comic update. After quoting the Bible verse, the kid explains "Paul’s preaching was so boring a kid literally fell out a third story window and had to be resurrected just to hear more sermon, and you’re mad at ME for finding you boring?" The final panel cuts to a later scene, where the priest declares "the scripture memorization prize is officially canceled. We will now be rewarding doing what I say."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 5h

I think it's not a great argument against AI eating a lot of the arts to say that AI can't be creative/original. Setting aside the question of whether they can... does *most* art strike you as extremely original? The vast majority of people, including great artists most of the time are mid.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 6h

One of my main mental buoys right now as ai eats the world is Bea Wolf 2. I don't think I can write any better than that, and it was hard, and every time I see a book get withdrawn (for secretly being ai) after winning many awards I think of the ballad of John Henry racing the steam drill*.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 9h

This is pretty bad, and getting shared a lot. www.apricitas.io/p/ai-and-the... The only thing I would say is that during this period, in my experience, the problem has been the extreme consolidation of platforms much more than anything I can imagine AI doing right now?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

People think Catholic and Jewish guilt are the same but it's actually getting the arrow of causality wrong. Jewish Guilt: I need my kid to do a task, so I deploy guilt. Catholic Guilt: I need my kid to feel guilt, so I deploy a task.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A.I. Jolson will be performing tonight in human-face.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Due to some reading I ended up in a wikipedia rabbit hole about Al Jolson, and I realized I'd never actually scene a blackface performance, even though they were still happening within the lifetime of my parents. The dominant impression was just.., how *strange* it is?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Just to elaborate, what I appreciate here isn't just the language and images, it's the way in which it gently snuggles up to that weird thing where there's a whole universe, which you can't help but perceiving is somehow just there for you. A whole sun had to exist to make light play on the wall.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Do you make "sonic typos" ? Meaning rather than a slip of the fingers you write a word that sounds like the word you intend? E.g. you meant to write bird but you write beard. You meant to write theirs but you wrote there's. You meant to write cot but wrote caught.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The special sauce at the burger place is just Thousand Island dressing. Always. Just buy a bottle of it and admit a few things from midcentury American cuisine are good.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Is the use of "they" to indicate a group or person you can't remember falling off in usage? E.g. "they make a toaster that does x" to mean "There are companies that make a toaster that does x." Or "that's what they're saying" to mean something like "I've heard that's what knowledgeable people say"

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I need to talk less about tech and econ on this site. Did you know about the Northern Bayberry, Myrica Pennsylvania? DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN USE ITS BERRIES TO MAKE CANDLES? This was a traditional use for many years. I'm trying to grow some.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One of the weird things about trying to start an orchard is you start side-eying weird stuff. Piles of cardboard in a dumpster. Stray animal waste. Fallen trees. I am an extremely shy person and I drove up to accost a county worker so he'd dump his load of wood chips on my property.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Stop going to bat for Elon." I literally have a book about how his Mars ideas are unworkable. It took years! I just don't understand this thread of thought were you see a capability and say it isn't real. I've seen people comparing Starship to the DC-X to prove nothing new is happening.

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's the one time this sort of thing worked. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gift PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

1-panel SMBC comic update. The panel shows a black and white photo with a gallery / museum styles description below it. The photos shows many silhouetted trees with a stark white background, and a bending trunk splitting the photo in half. The descriptions reads "From the Ansel Adams Dick Pics series (1953) // Gelatin silver print //Unsolicited gift of the artist"

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you want to know the actual best poem it's Senlin, by Conrad Aiken. Behold just a taste:

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't understand the need to say dickwad CEOs can't make good stuff. This is the world we live in. A lot of my favorite things in the arts and sciences come from absolute bastards. The real argument should be about how to channel dickwaddery into good social outcomes, not whether the stuff works.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Pretty wild. Deployed 26 starlink sats and now in orbit. De-orbit burn in 40 minutes, over the ocean. For context, a fully-loaded Starship could deploy 100s of communication satellites. Or, could deploy ~half an International Space Station per launch.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

WOW, RCP polling average has Trump less popular than he was right after Jan 6 (which, to be clear, was *extremely* unpopular)

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sign of the times maybe, but during a recent trip I had people from a huge variety of professions bring up existential AI concerns without me saying anything. Artists, publishers, entertainers, STEM types. Feels much more in the air than even 6-12 months ago, shaping people's choices a lot.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I keep having discussions with mathematicians, artists, etc., where they insist that we should make sure people are valued for being humans, not just their maximum economic contribution or whatever, and I keep wanting to shout... come visit any get-together of the special needs parent community.

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Just to be clear, I have been siding with machines since well before they were about to annihilate us. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/parado... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Part 1/2 of a 5-panel SMBC comic update. A man speaks smugly to a copper-colored robot. He asks "you think you can replace all mathematicians, eh robot? WELL TRY THIS: is the following statement true: “this statement is a lie.” The robot flatly answers "according to the ai-discovered theory of elliptic hyper-type manifolds, all such “paradoxes” resolve with a meta-inductive disosculated tarskian reach-around." The man is taken aback, answers "ah."

Part 2/2 of a 5-panel SMBC comic update. He then begins to asks "well let me ask you this: does a man who shaves all men who–..." The robot interrupts him "please stop embarrassing yourself."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Was just reading estimates that college enrollment in the US will likely fall off 10-20% in the next 20 years (lower fertility, possibly fewer immigrants and foreign students). And it's actually much worse than that because enrollment will NOT fall off at places like Harvard and MIT.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Kinda fascinating thing eating in NYC is that you can predict the cost of food based on the extent to which you're paying them for commodities vs rent. Flour costs the same everywhere, but room to sit-down costs NYC prices.

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

He's only given one final week to live but having a salary is nice. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/all-ri... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

1-panel SMBC comic update. A man is practicing for an interview in front of a mirror. He says "hey, that’s all right. Hey, we all make mistakes. Hey, who could’ve seen it coming? That’s it. Nailed it. Ready for the interview." The caption below the panel reads "The last available human job was being the thing AI apologizes to."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Does anyone know why Superman wouldn't KNEEL BEFORE ZOD? Was there some context I'm missing?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I kinda get why people hate on fussy philosophical stuff, but on the other hand don't you think we live in a time where it'd be especially helpful to have rigorous conversations about things like personhood, meaning in life, the point of art, the point of pure mathematics, & operationalizing ethics?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The other weird thing in NYC is I swear every time I come here I see more restaurants with AI ads. The fake food looks a little better each time I come?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'm sure there's a good story having to do with local expertise and survival of the fittest but it's amazing how the shittiest cheapest most fly-infested pizza place in NYC would be the best pizza in most other American cities.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Made it to NYC. Come see me if you’re at the book festival in Brooklyn tomorrow.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

One thing in my career that's hard to describe is that for a while there on the early Internet, nerd humor was sort of revelatory? Meaning like, there were all these formerly siloed nerd jokes that were suddenly getting shared. And people started making new ones and it was really amusing.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I understand the need for precision, jeez, philosophy. Although in fairness I remember learning discrete math and feeling like some of the definitions were along the lines of "a set of numbers is a smaller set of numbers if the number of numbers in the set is a smaller number"

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is actually what the Predator was doing the whole movie. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/suit-2 PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

4-panel SMBC comic update. A man says he wants a divorce to a person named Celia, that is out of the panel. Is the next panel, we see Celia, who is wearing a bodysuit covered in a static pattern, with only her face visible. She asks "is it because I spent our life savings building a camouflage suit so I could duck out of awkward conversations?" The man replies that that's precisely the issue, interrupted by Celia activating the suit. The static pattern now blends with her surroundings while her blank face floats, and her partner looks annoyed.

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Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe @dandkuniverse.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Listener Questions Episode #51: Daniel and Kelly answer listener questions about special relativity, organisms that eat plastic, and whether the future is already determined. www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We raise goats and I have 88.9 fluid ounces of whey. I am attempting to make brunost which I have never even tried. Stay tuned for updates.

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Seriously, Derek Parfit is an untapped comedy gold mine. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/identi... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Part 1/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic. A young man marches to his dad sitting on a red couch, stating "Your generation used up all resources and ruined the world!" The father turns, smiles and says "sorry, you can’t be mad! Even slight changes to human choices alter the set of people who get born." The father leans towards his son, looking over the couch's back to add "the generation that exists now is the one that arises in a world where we used up all the good stuff! Son, in a world where we carefully husbanded earth’s bounty, you don’t even exist!"

Part 2/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic. Taken aback, the son answers "you’re probably wrong but I don’t know how!" The father laughs loudly. The comic cuts to 15 years earlier, where we see the dad reading a book titled "Identity Metaphysics for Expecting Parents."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

When trying to transliterate the thing a southern lady says to you when shortening "honey" do you write "hun" or "hon" ? And do you include an apostrophe?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Working on some of my famous relatable dialog

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Niche gripe: Books that talk about the foundation of think thanks, writing of books, and creation of lobbyists by [political opponent of the author] as if it's a sinister conspiracy to manipulate the discourse. I see a lot of this, but the groups in question are almost always sincere and open.

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Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe @dandkuniverse.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

An Extraordinary asked if animals ever make mistakes, and @weinersmith.bsky.social knew just who to ask! On today's show we chat with Kelly's PhD advisor, Dr. Andy Sih, about what animals know, how that use that information, and whether or not they make "mistakes". www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The witch from Hansel and Gretel sells magic crystals. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/wolf-5 PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

1-panel SMBC comic update. The panel shows a sketched out YouTube video page, with a video titled "Today: is the wolf here? Episode #427 of the Wolfcatcher diaries." The channel has over 400k subscribers, and the thumbnail shows the title of the episode with a red-haired man pointing to a bold title font saying "The wolf is coming soon. Wolf! Wolf!" The caption below the panel reads "The Boy Who Cried Wolf later had an extremely popular YouTube channel."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Artists: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it. Mathematicians: but I don't want to lose my job. I love it. Economists: LONG HAVE I AWAITED THIS HOUR! DESTROY ME, EFFICIENCY, AND LET UTILIZATION-ADJUSTED TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY RISE ON THE WIND OF MY ASHES!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I don't mean to be melodramatic here, but make sure to check in on your friends. There is upheaval coming, and it's coming for identity, not just work.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We are about to see an avalanche of AI generated animations. I think all those low-quality children's animations can already be replaced, which suggests they will be soon. Opus 5.5 is incredibly powerful and cheap. The weirdening is accelerating. Like, this isn't even obviously AI.

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