iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

#yvr Danger slash Winnie the Pooh style antics may be available just around the corner.

Photo of a hive, its occupants showing themselves by the entrances. It hangs from a tree branch and a line of caution tape runs below it.

Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

#booksky #reading Another I really enjoyed recently, written by José Luis Zárate and translated by @davidbowles.us. The captain longs to taste the salt-crusted skin of his crew, rats disappear from the ship, and the night is filled with strange dreams as Dracula is carried across the sea.

Photo of a book held against a dark blue background. The books is The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate and translated by David Bowles.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

#booksky More recent reading! The Payback, by Kashana Cauley, is a good time, a bit of a heist/caper to hit back at a student loan company and the Debt Police, with their unchecked violence, their peculiar self-help obsession, and their turquoise uniforms.

Photo of the novel The Payback by Kashana Cauley.

Photo of dedication “To the student loan industry, whose threatening phone calls made this book possible”

Photo of two quotes at the beginning of the book.

1 - “If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.” - David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

2 - “Payback. Revenge. I’m mad.” - James Brown, The Payback.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

These shelves at my parents’ house are not “earthquake ready” so much as they are waiting in gleeful anticipation of an earthquake that will let them really kick off.

Photo of wooden shelves holding a wide range of repurposed food jars full of nails. Some of the jars are ready to jump.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

#catsky Resting up for the baseball and apparently also celebrating national cat day.

Photo of Waffles, a grey cat enjoying a restful head-down.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

#booksky I’d heard very good things about this one, and Notes from a Regicide definitely does not disappoint. Love, art, trans family, and revolution in a really interesting setting, a far-future that feels like a relatively recent past with its own distinct culture.

Photo of the book Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman. Cover features a picture frame within a frame, the inner one containing a partially obscured group portrait.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

#booksky #reading I wasn’t sure a second book spent stuck in November 18th would be especially engaging, but it was! Now I’m sad to see that the translation of the third book isn’t out yet.

Photo of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume 2.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

#yvr Message on the wall at the Militant Mothers overpass. Not sure if the tone here is one of frustration or hope.

Photo of scrabble letters stuck to a grey wall. The letters spell “Total annihilation is impossible.”

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

#yvr Pretty nice in Vancouver after/between the rain.

Photo of a rain-wet street surface of exposed brick and pavement leading up through the trees and cars to the sunny sky in the distance.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

A very merry Saturday to you, from the somewhat distressed/distressing face in the floor.

Photo. Splashes of water on the floor form a somewhat horrifying face, or maybe a comedic one.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

#booksky #reading I have now read the millennial beet-centric horror novel. There were things I perhaps wished it was more of and others I wished it was less of, but I definitely did enjoy it. There are as many beets as you’d imagine, maybe even more than that.

Photo of the book Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield. The pink cover shows a woman’s face in black with white beets, roots and leaves included, over the eyes. A mysterious hand, scarcely seen but for a protruding thumb, holds the book up against a dark blue surface.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

#booksky #reading I have read and enjoyed the cyberpunk baseball book, a sub-genre that I just hadn’t thought to clamour for.

Photo of the book The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel against a green wall. A quote on the cover refers to it as “fizzy and brilliant,” if that’s the sort of thing you like.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

#booksky Off the Map, an anthology of Vancouver writers with lived experience of mental health issues, is out on shelves, and if you’re in #yvr, today would be a great day to stop by @crossandcrowsbooks.bsky.social to get it! (You should probably also get Martyr! while there. It’s very good.)

Photo of shelf at Cross and Crows bookstore in Vancouver, BC. On display is Off the Map, an anthology of Vancouver writers with lived experience of mental health issues, along with Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and The Rise of Indigenous Economic Power by Carol Anne Hilton.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Ah yes, google photos, thanks for reminding me.

A photo of a sad face formed by splashes of oil in frothy proofing yeast. Below it, the text reads “5 years since…”

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

#dogsky A very pleasant Vancouver morning with the Sun Enjoyer.

Photo of a large, reddish-gold boy (dog) in the sidewalk sun.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

📚 💙 This is really good. A series of linked closeups that give you a sense for the rich world in the background.

Photo of the book North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Coffee time with tired baby. I am the tired baby.

Photo of white ceramic mug in the form of a baby’s face, twisted into a yawn.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Also, consider this festive 1847 illustration. You need to expand to really drink the whole thing in.

A wild image of raucous Christmas celebrations, illustration by Kenny Meadows in the December 25, 1847, issue of Illustrated London News. Father Christmas rises above the melee to pour out a hearty goblet. There is dancing and possibly magic afoot.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Nearby park looking quiet, crisp, and wintery on the weekend, before the clouds closed in on Vancouver.

Photo of park. Grass in foreground shadowed by skeletal tree line across the horizon. Low winter sun behind the trees.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

This is Waffles, peeking out from behind the laptop with a cheeky look.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

#catsofbluesky Waffles the cat, in the light on the window ledge. I hope all these new users have brought their cats with them!

Photo of Waffles the grey cat, in the window light.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

Reading Roadside Picnic in no way prepared me for the levels of absurdity in this one so far.

Photo of The Snail on the Slope by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. On the cover an indistinct figure is silhouetted within some mysterious looking woods.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 12/10/2024

Day 11 of #medieval #art and spookiness... Onward friends, into the weekend.

Illustration from a 15th-century Italian Book of Hours (Hart 20966, f. 106v). Death smiles back at us, holding a golden scythe and riding a cart pulled by beasts, severed heads under their hooves. Above death, cherubs dangle from grape vines in an elaborate archway.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

Recent reading from Simon Jimenez. Again I was delighted by something that I’d put on hold long enough ago that I’d entirely forgotten anything I knew about it.

Photo of book The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez on a wooden table.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

One of my favourite illustrations in the book is this alarming creature, a vaguely penguin-like monster with human arms and hands being surrounded by hunters. The creature was said to have been seen on the Brazilian coast in 1564. Do let me know if you've seen it since.

Illustration from Adriaen Coenen's 16th-century Visboek (Fish Book). It shows an alarmingly large upright creature towering over some hunters who are armed with bows and a sword. The creature is vaguely penguin like in a somewhat Lovecraftian way, and is raising human arms and hands to either side. The sun shines behind it.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

#art Day 10 of October medieval weirdness & we're straying into the late 16th century with Adriaen Coenen. Coenen was a Dutch fisherman, auctioneer, & wreck master. He also found time to create the monumental Visboek (Fish Book), filled with incredible illustration & covering more than just fish...

Illustration from Adriaen Coenen's 16th-century Visboek (Fish Book). It is a drawing of the tentacled half of a cuttlefish, limbs swirling into reddish-mauve water.

Illustration from Adriaen Coenen's 16th-century Visboek (Fish Book). It shows a fish covered in drawings of ships. It was said to have been caught in 1561.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 09/10/2024

Sometimes a man lowers himself from the ship, moving hand-over-hand down the rope to where the anchor is stuck. Sometimes he doesn't need the rope at all, instead swimming down through the air. Either way, he reaches the anchor & is struggling to free it when he is grabbed by those on the ground...

Woodcut illustration from Everard Digby's 1587 De Arte Natandi (The Art of Swimming). A human figure is shown in the lower-left, swimming through the horizontal lines of the water, their body forming a diagonal that points up and to the right, to where the sun sits in the sky and in the corner of the page.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 09/10/2024

Sometimes it starts with this ship being spotted in the sky. Someone aboard is doing a little fishing & flings down a spear toward the dry ground. In later versions it is an anchor which has been lowered & catches on the doorway of a church (not quite a whale but I do like the image).

Medieval manuscript (Harley MS 3244) illustration showing a ship with its anchor caught on a whale. The whale looks startled, fish-scaled, and unusually dog-like around the face.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 09/10/2024

#medieval #art #history It's week 2 of the strange or spooky in the medieval world & today's story takes us back to Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia, among other texts. There are variations on the story, but the common thread is a ship in the sky...

Medieval manuscript (Yates Thompson MS 26) illustration showing three figures in a small boat with a single sail on top of a mound of water. The figure to the right points upward.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 08/10/2024

To finish off the first week of #medieval spirits, monsters, and spookery, it's either a spell of glum club-carrying or a serene consideration of the unseen distance. Mostly a day of Column A over here.

15th-century manuscript (BNF fr. 22532) illustration: a hairy wild man with club on shoulder raises his hand as if waving to the viewer or perhaps gesturing upward to something unseen. His expression is glum.

15th-century manuscript (BNF fr. 22532) illustration in which a figure contemplates something in the distance. The figure has a goat-like lower half and a human torso. The head is somewhat cow-like, with pointy ears. The facial expression seems peaceful and slightly pleased.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

One sprite which she saw in the market was not at all pleased to be seen and known by a human. He demanded to be told how she did it. The woman told him all about the eel pie & the grease in the eye, how it had given her this special sight. He listened & then promptly ripped that eye from her face.

Illustration in 14th-century medieval manuscript showing a monk and a devil. The devil is reaching out a hand over the monk's head, very much as if it were a sprite reaching out to pluck an eye from a face.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

She said that the sprites had given her eel pie to eat & she had rubbed at her face, getting eel grease in her eye. After that, she found that she could see more clearly with that eye & when she returned she could see sprites walking in the marketplace that no one else could recognize as inhuman.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

The woman was whisked off to the realm of the sprites & to their magnificent palaces below the riverbanks. By the time she was seen again, 7 years had passed & no one in her family recognized her. Aside from her appearance, her eye had also been changed. It had been changed by eel pie.

Medieval manuscript (Yates Thompson ms 10, f. 011r) illustration showing water below and a watchful moon-face in the sky above. Human faces peer out of what seem like holes in the grass in the middle of the page.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 06/10/2024

Day 6 of #medieval October, it’s eel grease & dangerous sprites in the 13th-c writing of Gervase of Tilbury. This again concerns women washing linen in the water, evidently a bit of a dangerous activity. It's about a woman who reached out too far for a floating wooden cup & was taken by a sprite.

15th-century manuscript (Cod. Pal. germ. 794 fol 30v) illustration: a woman in a rust-coloured dress and blue cap washes laundry in the river next to a wooden tub. Writing appears at the top and bottom of the page.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

What would this special toad do? We'd never get to know. The bishop immediately ordered the poor toad sealed back up and buried, as if it were some horrible evil. Apparently a dog found in similar fashion was smelly and hungry but was kept by the bishop of Winchester. Not buried like the toad.

Frog illustration in a 16th-century Italian manuscript. The frog is being sprinkled by rain and looked down on by a watchful sun/face.

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Devon (Human Circus Podcast) @a-devon.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

William writes of a quarry where workers found a beautiful double stone, two stones that were mysteriously joined together. What was it? The bishop told them to split it apart and find out. Cracking the stone open, they found the special toad inside, with a little golden chain around its neck...

Illustration from 14th-century Italian manuscript. A frog is nestled between sections of text. It looks up and to the right where a blue crescent moon sits, cupping water like a bowl.

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