iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Oh you’re fine! It’s just funny to be here again. I appreciate the solidarity!

This is the second kid we’ve done it for and I cannot wait to get to one day (though this is less traumatic and difficult than last time!)

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 9h

Day eight of triple feeding. My biology has rewired itself to only need sleep in two-hour shifts. I’m burning through new episodes of The Big Dig from @wgbh.org. I’m glad I have another two and a half weeks of paternity leave.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

The remade Battlestar Galactica Sherlock Game of Thrones (which started for me in Season 5)

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

I have no real solutions to this except that since things are moving towards more closed communities, it’s best to buddy up, network,and support each other because as a freelancer, it’s going to be a business of favor trading, vouching, and horse swapping.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

What’s the response? Well, one way is to just work with people you know, assign stuff out, etc. It’s understandable, but it comes with real limitations. What happens to new writers who don’t have a network? What happens to literary culture as we shut people out that way?

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

It also beggars me because the act of pitching is valuable. You have to develop the idea, and if you’re lucky you get feedback on it even if it’s a no. Ideas that started in one place for me and got rejections ended with acceptances. Offloading that is not good for you as a writer.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

It also makes it more difficult for the rest of us, actual people who want to be writer and not AI agents working for people who want a pat on the head.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

It’s really frustrating, for a few reasons. It burns out editors, like this one. Editors are massively overworked and most magazines or pubs are labors of love. Flooding them with slop makes their jobs absurdly difficult.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 10h

A magazine I’ve written once for and pitched a few times, Eaten, announced yesterday that they were no longer doing open calls for pitches. Why? Too many slop pitches ruining the whole process, making the inbox into a morass.

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 15h

ProPublica has made a database of all the incidents they could find where ICE detained citizens. Important work. This kind of data is too often hidden and lost.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 16h

My family’s nickname for Tammy Faye was “Jesus’s Cheescake.”

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Derf Backderf @derfbackderf.bsky.social · 17h

Televangelist Jim Bakker-- seen here bawling as the FBI drags him away-- finally kicked the bucket. Age 86. WHY do these creeps never die young? He and his gruesome wife Tammy Faye were the faces of Christian Nationalism in the 1980s. Here's my Bakker story:

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Gem Adler the TX 🔨 @gemadler.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Quote repost with a photo from whatever device you’re using without explanation

Where's Waldo but its King Theoden and hes holding a sign that says Where's was Gondor when the Westfold fell?!

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This would hit harder on Masto

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Quote repost with a photo from whatever device you’re using without explanation

Trolley meme except that every hostage is on the same track line and there’s a git command

$ git rebase master
Successfully rebased and updated refs

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Rahm Emanuel deserves the political wilderness both for his morally bankrupt actions and his utterly worthless political instincts

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Hey everybody the guy who thought Obamacare was a waste of time thinks something

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

That in a nutshell is the problem with so many of these pieces: they can't/won't reckon with structural realities so they can only frame things in terms of individual solutions. The higher ed thinkpiece industry is broken.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A 10K contribution and a $900 million return. The scale of the graft in Homeland Security is a) off the charts and b) possible because no-one believes they will face any accountability

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I have not, no. Will I be glad that I have?

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

excerpts not just a common core problem

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reading the responses to this just make me despair. If on this text-based microblogging site people can’t be counted on to read beyond the strictly literal, I don’t know what to say. Josh’s point is clearly not an endorsement of AI but some people clearly just needed to post 3 more times today.

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

unsurprisingly the "truth" one discovers from this Sigma Male Mindset is that of the opium-addicted aristocrat degenerate: * I should be allowed to rape my servants * Human life has a naturally enforced hierarchy * The people cannot decide their fate * I shouldn't be bound by even capitalism ..

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Some of the best TNG episodes fall apart if you scrutinize them too closely, but if you just sit back and accept them on their own terms they’re so inspired. This is one of them.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A really lovely essay about the importance of shared governance in a university and why the work, especially peer review, matters so much for the rest of society.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It happened at University of Dayton too; the football coach would periodically summon the guys to chase Klansmen off campus.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Social media has done a lot of harm, but to the extent that those harms are novel I think it’s more around depression and anxiety. When it comes to lowering our intellect or however people want to put it, it’s more a question of scale.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

In the 1920s a chapter of the Indiana Klan became convinced that the Pope was secretly traveling through the area by train, so the members dutifully hijacked a passing train and forced a millinery salesman to prove that he wasn’t the Pope in disguise.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

See, there’s a worthwhile honorific.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think it’s just their desperation to convince people AGI is happening because the public is so disenchanted with it. Straws are being grasped.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Anyway, lemme get a couple of the hairiest years of fatherhood out of the way and I’d love to go back to this. I love public speaking and it’s the thing I don’t get to do right now at all.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

They’re also eternally hopeful that the whole Vatican is just full of easily-duped suckers who don’t understand technology at all. You can see the backlash forming.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

lol ok I like this fan fiction, I’m here for it

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I had to pass on doing a lecture for a Chautauqua this summer b/c stranding my pregnant wife for a weekend was a no-go. (I’m a real gentleman, you see). But there are opportunities out there, we just need more cultivation.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Ohio Humanities Council has/had a whole speakers bureau and paid you $400 if an org was willing to host you. I gave a couple of talks that way and other orgs occasionally found me that way as well. (Sadly the budget got fucked by DOGE).

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Unsurprisingly I also don't have especially fond takes on Home Alone except for the violent parts and that's because it's basically live-action Looney Tunes. (Catherine O'Hara goes a long way, though).

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hocus Pocus was never a good movie, you were just stuck with a VHS copy of it and made do until Stockholm Syndrome set in.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We all want to escape back to childhood at some level.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Not all of my takes are popular but the more I discuss this one the more everybody seems to kinda agree with me; I really think Facebook tricked people into thinking they liked it (or they just miss being young).

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It’s got a total non sequitur Father Guido Sarducci reference, that counts for something

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yeah I needed a better term for it, but I haven’t slept longer than two hours at a time in a while

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Even as a kid it didn’t work for me.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I generally stay away from tearing down people’s cultural lodestones but I just can’t abide this one.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hocus Pocus was never a good movie, you were just stuck with a VHS copy of it and made do until Stockholm Syndrome set in.

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Tight, thank you. Hope things are good on your end!

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Zeb Larson @zeblarson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This looks really useful, thank you

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