iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 10h

When you say THAT IS SO RANDOM do you understand it to be ontic or epistemic randomness?

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Well yes, and I'm loosely on that cycle myself with my little orchard, but there are definitely times that are much more active than others.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

I think there's an "if I don't do it, I don't exist" feeling. At least for me.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

(would be nice if they had dentistry, lip-balm, showers, and penicillin, tho)

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Like you couldn't pay me to live the life of an 8th century farmer, but all change lose something good, and imagining sitting in the longhouse after a good year's harvest, near the fire in the middle of the room, when there is no work to do, sounds like a special sort of peace.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

I do want to emphasize that I feel extremely lucky. Not just to have this job but... like for me the idea of having a midlife crisis feels very alien, because at this point I actually got to do all the stuff I really wanted to do. Comics, science, poetry, etc. It's a privileged kind of stress.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Ha! That's good to hear. I feel like the idea of a Job Job is simultaneously scary (have I failed??) and lovely (you mean the job just ENDS at the END OF THE DAY?)

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Super interesting, thanks! I'd wonder a little if entertainers are in particular weird because of the nature of the job.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

I was just reading a book about agriculture that was only about 30 years old, and they talk about how in Britain, part of having May as a time for celebration was that it was a period in between the extreme labor patches of sewing and reaping, where the situation itself made work less frantic.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

You can always find more work online, or drive uber, or be developing the dreaded "personal brand," or whatever. Not to imply the past involved less work (it was certainly the opposite for almost everyone), but just to say there are no costless idle hours.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

And the answer, I assume, is a combination of social expectation limited opportunity. If you're limited in how much you can climb in industry, the "cost" to carework is much lower. Because of connectedness and extreme market efficiency, you can basically *always* be making money now.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

And they would help for a length of time corresponding to social closeness. So a cousin might make some food and carry the baby for a day. Your sister might stay a month. Your mom maybe a year. And as a modern person you think "that sounds amazing, but how could they afford that!"

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Possibly this was also true in the past, but one thing I think is perhaps peculiar to modern life is the extreme intrusion of opportunity cost. I was reading Marguerite Abouet's wonderful series "Aya" and she describes how in the 1970s in Ivory Coast, when you had a baby, all women came to help.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Possibly there's also this thing with being a freelancer who also, where you are simply not allowed to experience burn-out!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

Like possibly I seem put together from the outside, and I am in fact on track to complete 3 big projects this year, and have two awaiting me in 2027 already, but my GOD if you could see my email box.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 11h

There's pretty good evidence the lowest level of happiness for adults in Western culture is around 45 (I am 44). I used to think this was about control vs responsibility (you get a lot more responsibility but less control), however there's also the element of "I haven't felt ahead in 10 years."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 13h

Finalizing the Sawyer Lee 2 text. Slipping in literary references whenever dramatic text is called for. Bonus points if you catch all 3 without using AI or google.

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Reposted by Zach Weinersmith

SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Bonus points if you can figure out what the canine is. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-2 PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

4-panel SMBC comic update. Each panel shows a different animal with a cute name - A Buggyfriend, A Pider, A SnickySnek and A Verygoodboy. The caption below the comic reads "life goal: name a species in every genus that starts with A."

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I am only a burn-down-the-world accelerationist against ISPs and insurance providers. The rest of Creation may remain.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think we are finally getting close to being able to argue on the phone with insurance providers, and I am salivating.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There are a few companies doing laundry folding, and robots are getting OK at it finally. Problem is if it takes 6 hours to fold your laundry there's no value for most households.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don't love doing it but yeah, like surely most people don't have to book flights and hotel regularly, and when they do it's not a chore. This would've been really cool teach in roughly 1992. Now, having your ai agent fight with comcast... there I see potential.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I understand why they're trying to eliminate accountants! The dude at the 1.50 pizza parlor is being forced to work the counter by his Mom and being paid in leftover sausage. There's no juice to squeeze!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"You can't believe any western historian." "Yeah! That's why I'm saying maybe the Nazis were the good guys." "Wait no that's not--" "WOOOOOO"

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I really wish a lot of people would read Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," in which a college nihilist meets an honest to God nihilist. That's what's happening here. Mr. Carlson is the real deal.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Like every six months for ten years I've watched demos of AI ordering pizza and booking flights. These are incredibly easy, sometimes enjoyable, tasks.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Also could they please take every penny spent having an AI book your hotel and spend it on folding laundry?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Why do tech companies keep trying to get a robot to make pizza? Pizza is solved. I was just in New York and paid 5 dollars to disgust myself with my consumption level. Could they solve beer maybe?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Disbelieving basic econ stats was cool on bluesky until this guy ruined it.

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Reposted by Zach Weinersmith

SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

All these jokes about how it's hard to operationalize good values are gonna be really funny when the T-1000s start rolling out. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/specify PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Part 1/2 of a 5-panel SMBC comic update. A man praying at his bedside asks "God, why is it possible to be a good person, but impossible to simply specify ethical rules that always result in good behavior?" God replies "because ethics is like ALMOST EVERY OTHER PROBLEM."

Part 2/2 of a 5-panel SMBC comic update. God continues to explain as the looks gradually surprised and annoyed: "try to perfectly specify language-use with a simple rule set. Or boardgame strategy. Or driving a car. Or eating soup. Humans can hold about seven things in working memory at a time, and so have decided that anything requiring eight things is poorly specified! WooOOOoooo a talking ape can’t reduce something to an evolutionary arbitrary quantity of criteriaaaaa. Soooooooo mysteriouuuuus." The man then says "you’re being mean, God." God taunts him in return "are you SURE? Can you specify meanness? WOOOOooooo OOoooooo!"

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I’m not sure this is true. Twain specifically said later the book was written to “preach.”

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Reading the book Return to Akenfield (2006), and there's an interview with a 90 year old gamekeeper. He's complaining and at one point he says the young men these days don't know how to find a soft mouth. Several sentences later it turns out this refers to a dog that won't damage a pheasant.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It basically has no flavor. You soak in flavoring and it tastes like the flavoring. I ordered bulk from a company called... Anthony's Goods?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

She's Dickens but the jokes are funnier and the crying harder. And the plots (somewhat) less contrived.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It's certainly possible there's Really Good Stuff that's just buried, and it's hard to explain the idolatry that attaches to some writers without this sort of thing, but overall it seems to me much simpler to say some works stick around because they're really really good.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think the truth is that being considered canonical means that by some means your work is considered worthy of having a posse of people discuss in bookshops and conferences at some point in the future. That's all, but it's a pretty high bar!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

To me it's like beauty standards. Somewhere people got the idea that it's 100% arbitrary, but it's probably more like 5 % arbitrary, with quirks here and there. I think taste in literature is pretty similar. We still like reading Elizabeth Gaskell because she's really good at what makes books good.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Lots of people who were famous in their time end up forgotten, yes, but that doesn't imply that taste in "classics" is completely random. If you were trying to bet whether someone's work will be considered great in 100 years, it being popular now is a pretty good indicator.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Maybe this is depressing or something, but with occasional exceptions (Dickinson, arguably Melville kind of) writers who become considered canonically good were also famous for their work in their own time. Tastes change, sure, but it's really easy to overstate. Sorry! It's fairly discouraging!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I'm new to it, but it seems like it'd be fine anywhere you'd use lean ground beef in a lot of flavor. If it were bigger pieces it'd take more work...

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Just different. It's chewy protein that has basically no flavor, so it fits anywhere you'd put ground meat. I haven't used larger bits but supposedly they're okay for stir fry?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Textured vegetable protein is surprisingly good and easy to work with. I feel like it'd be more common in budget recipes if it didn't sound like apocalypse food.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

the high brow lowbrow thing as a 19th century and beyond thing that we’re still stuck with—I’m not sure it applies to that period. But how could a group selected to privately perform for nobility be considered lowbrow trash?

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don't think this is accurate. He played for the courts of two monarchs, his group became the King's Men, and in his lifetime was compared to giants of Roman and Greek theater.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

But like, this has long been normal. If you read collections of correspondence, people often note how they're more forthright with a pen than at a party! And they didn't even have Zuckerberg trying to cash in on their feelings.

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