iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I've been contemplating a new career, and today I learn that "freelance pie advisor" is an option.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Harvest moon setting right now into my zinnias, with bonus angel's trumpet.

A photograph of the full harvest moon setting into the trees on the other side of a small lake. In the foreground, a large, white angel's trumpet (brugmansia) flower and leaves hang down. To the left is a tangled mess of pink zinnias.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Beautiful, and inspiring. I think I'd enjoy a project like this...

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Now that I've learned the muscles in my face and throat are controlled by a different brain from the rest of my body, I kind of feel like there's an alien living in me (not sure which one is the alien?)

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It's interesting that there appears to be the sun setting on the horizon. Did Icarus fall for hours and hours (assuming he got too close at noon)?

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I recently learned that the word for the divine act of turning someone or something into a constellation is a 'catasterism'. It hasn't come up a great deal in conversation yet.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

"A salad without Wish-bone is just a bowl of wet vegetables" never really stuck as a slogan, did it?

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This is fairly accurate. I grew up in NC, spent 14 years in Massachusetts, then moved back. My relatives said I talked like a Yankee now, but I reckon that was superficial. 'Y'all' (pronounced 'yaw') is very deeply ingrained.

A screenshot of my results for the dialect quiz that is trending right now. A map of the United States, with color-coded shaded contours trending from blue, "Least like you", to red, "Most like you". The red is centered on the southeast coast. "You talk most like someone from North Carolina".

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Our local great blue heron patrolling the lake in the fog yesterday morning. He wouldn't strike a classic heron profile pose, so here he is in stick form. #birds #naturephotography #heron

In the foreground, out of focus, are pink zinnias. In the middle ground is water, with a large drain with an ugly yellow mesh cap. In the background, a great blue heron stands erect on the grassy bank of the lake, with dark evergreen trees fading into the fog.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Before sunrise and moonset this morning, a quiet fog

Three pink zinnia flowers in the foreground, a lake and trees in the foggy background, and a hazy moon in the pale pre-dawn sky.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I forgot: they went back to rescue their dad, and they had to build their own time machine from scratch using his blueprints. That was what caught my interest.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Oh wait, they went back in time to rescue their dad, and they had to build their own time machine first using his blueprints. That was the thing that hooked me.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I must have picked this up at a Scholastic Book Fair, and I read it at least thirteen times. This was pre-Narnia and The Hobbit.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"The Bunjee Venture" by Stan McMurtry. Kids travel back in time in their dad's homemade time machine and befriend a sapient elephant-like creature who can fly like a balloon.

The cover of a book titled "The Bunjee Venture" by Stan McMurtry. Two children are emerging from a spherical contraption into a forest at nighttime. Gigantic trees and plants tower above them, and a pterodactyl is silhouetted against the moon.

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

"My piece was inspired by Picasso's Guernica...The patterns near Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s mouths are actually their last words in Morse code: ‘I’m not mad at you,’ and ‘Are you okay?’” -Jennifer Nelson (quoted in the linked booklet, alongside other extraordinary pieces)

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

So you're going to write at least a couple of dozen articles investigating him, right? That's what you do when a professor is accused of something, right?

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Lorna @florilegia.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I think everyone should see this incredible picture of Dolly Parton: it’s by Stacie Williams (asterosperma on Instagram) and it’s called The Queen of Appalachia

A stunning screenprint image in a style which is part folk art, part religious icon. Dolly Parton sits on a throne-like wooden chair, surrounded by garlands of flowers and leaves. Orange butterflies (I think they are monarchs?) hover around her head. Her hair is huge and golden, and she is wearing a long, sweeping orange gown, which is turned up over her knee to show off her brown knee length high heeled boots. Two black bear cubs play around her, one on the floor and one in her lap. Dolly stares calmly at the viewer. Her right hand is raised in benediction, and in her left she holds a ripe strawberry which she is feeding to one of the bear cubs.

The original post is here https://www.instagram.com/p/B8rvBpTlRxZ/?igsi=Z2x5aTB5aHp5NXFp

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

kimdorman.bsky.social @kimdorman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Kathleen Raine

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

My former lab had an already-awarded grant flagged for having mentioned "a diverse array of telescopes".

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I very much remember this being promised, and here we are.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Ah, I recall a few years where Swift would send me text alerts whenever a GRB went off.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Tickled to see the Green Bank 40-ft in there. It's a little workhorse.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I recall, in the 80s, parents protesting my high school English class because it included the New Testament on the reading list. Because it was "blasphemous" to treat it as "literature".

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 13/08/2026

You live any universe and on a planet where 4 billion years of adaptive evolution lead up to this happening today.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Back to Occoneechee Mountain after the recent rains, which finally cracked the crust of the drought and let the mushrooms bloom. #Mushrooms #Fungi #NaturePhotography

Fragile dapperling (Leucocoprinus fragilissimus). A top-down view of a circular mushroom cap. It is translucent, pale violet with many radial spokes of pale yellow, with a small yellow circle at the center. It seems to glow against the dark background of leaf litter.

Shaggy-stalked bolete (Aureoboletus betula). A tall, shaggy, red and yellow stalk supports a bright yellow and rust-colored cap that looks like a hemispherical dish of crème brûlée, or maybe a personal pan pizza.

Eastern North American Destroying Angel (Amanita bisporigera). I think. I wouldn't want to be wrong about this one in any situation where it mattered. It is an all-white mushroom. The stalk has a collar halfway up that seems to drape around it. The cap is shaped like a classic flying saucer.

Eastern cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis spathulata). A very frilly white fungus that looks like the kind of lace sleeve a courtier might have worn to a shindig at Versailles.

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Theodor Kittelsen, 'I Came to the Secret Springs and Lakes Where Moose Slake Their Thirst', crayon on paper, 1900

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

not enjoying this crossover between the emperor's new clothes and the boy who cried wolf tbh

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

May the road rise up to meet you...because it look like it's trying to do that for a while. I like when I switch to my single-vision prescription sunglasses and everything seems bent the other way.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I will never get over her delivery of "dazzling peach crahlbapple"

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

The letters have gone out, at least. I received notice I'll lose my coverage without meeting new work requirements starting in January, and that I must recertify every six months. Hopefully voters will notice, but I expect many won't, until they actually find themselves without coverage.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Chasing squirrels and geese out of my garden waving a rake and yelling "git! git!"

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

And put it on a biscuit instead

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Good lord, that was jumping in the deep end! But I think if I'd stumbled on that at an early age I would have been fascinated too, if mystified.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I'd been trying to get this shot for a month -- there's a window of time around the solstice where the alignment works out. But there are lots of other trees and leaves in the background which usually block the sun first along that line of sight.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

This is always a lovely spot, but especially so early in the morning with the sunlight slanting down the river. By the Eno River at Occoneechee Mountain in Hillsborough, North Carolina. #nature #photography #forest #naturephotography

A scene on a trail in the woods. A lone bench sits amid the twisting roots of a beech tree on a riverbank. The rising sun behind it is casting rays of light through the trees and illuminating the path on the left. On the right, the path continues into the shadow of mountain laurels.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

At this time of year, the rising sun shines through the helical gaps in Lu:ní Oni:-kǫ, the Twisted Old Tree on Occoneechee Mountain in Hillsborough, North Carolina. #tree #nature #photography #forest #naturephotography

The rising sun shines through narrow gaps in the trunk of a living red maple tree that is hollowed out in a helix shape. The tree is standing by a trail in a green forest. Occoneechee Mountain, Hillsborough, North Carolina.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

This is why I usually still study the route on a map and mostly memorize it before I set off on a trip. It was hard to check a paper map while driving, and the phone is just as distracting now. I wonder about the cognitive effects of never having to do that work.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The world's wealthiest man is also the world's most pitiful man. The world's most powerful man is also the world's weakest man. I feel like we're living in a fable. Can we hurry up and get to the moral of the story?

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Wait, are the Ferris wheel gondolas enclosed in plexiglass? In summer? In D.C.?

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

A beautiful thing about big events at the Mall is the contrast between the lively, colorful human activity and the stately, white monuments. They're trying to make the event blend in with the architecture, and all it does is diminish the space. No wonder nobody is there. Artless losers.

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Jadzia Axelrod 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @planetx.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Lynda Barry did not squeeze your heart and simultaneously explain the point of all art with the barest of line drawings so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."

HOW TO LOOK AT ART by Lynda Barry

In the first panel, a dog-headed woman, a mother, looks at a painting in the "Madonna with Baby Jesus" vein. A small blobby child is standing next to her.

Mother: IM NOT SURE HOW TO LOOK AT ART.
Child: WHATS SPOSTA HAPPEN?

In the second panel the dog-headed mother holds up her hands (paws?) trying to explain to the child.

Mother: SOMETHING BIG. A REVELATION.
SUDDENLY YOU JUST UNDERSTAND.

In the third panel dog-headed mother goes back to looking at the painting. The child holds up their arms to be lifted.

Mother: NOT SURE HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Child: HOW BOUT LIFT ME UP SO I CAN SEE BETTER

In the last panel, the dog-headed mother is holding the child, their position mirrored by the Madonna and baby Jesus in the painting.

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Adam Trotter @astrotter.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I can also recommend frozen seedless grapes

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 24/06/2026

No less than 60 million stars in one image. It's possible thanks to ESA's Euclid mission. For just one day, Euclid turned its gaze to the crowded heart of the Milky Way and captured the largest, most detailed photo ever taken of our galaxy's centre in visible light. Let's dive deeper 👇 🔭 🧪 ☄️ 1/8

A dense field of tiny stars fills this square image taken by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. The lower and central areas are dominated by bright yellow and gold colours, forming a textured background similar to fine glitter or sand. Dark brown and black patches cut irregularly through the yellow regions, like ink stains or clouds of smoke. Toward the upper left, the colours shift to purple and reddish tones, blending gently into the surrounding star field. Small blue points of light are scattered across the image.

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Reposted by Adam Trotter

Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 23/06/2026

This is truly an excellent in-depth post by @moultano.bsky.social: moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w... Realizing all these colors we're missing out on. Ah, to be young, and a bird again!

moultano.wordpress.com

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

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