iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I was able to go to a local No Kings rally this weekend and I’m glad I went because the energy really is contagious and the opposite of doom scrolling. we wore N95s. next time I want to buy & bring these cards to start connecting with other masked folks. www.mollymcleod.com/shop/p/mask-...

a stack of business cards that say “Thank you for wearing a mask! Want to be friends?” with a graphic of two anthropomorphized smiling respirators high fiving each other.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

were taking the dogs to my family cabin next week so spouse bought them life jackets. they are skeptical.

collage of three photos: a white spitz wearing a blue camo dog like jacket, a black poodle wearing a green tropical print dog life jacket, and a photo of both dogs from behind showing the full vests.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

backing away from the discourse to gaze upon this little flatty. (she is a tall dog who likes to get real flat.)

photo of a sleepy looking black poodle lying flat along the back of a grey couch.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I’m also recently very captivated by this idea of death eyes as a way of thinking about grief and sorrow, quoted from this article: orionmagazine.org/article/what...

‘You know, there’s a Syrian myth of going into the Underworld, and when you emerge, you come out with what they call “death eyes” — eyes turned inward. I had been given “death eyes.” I had been changed. I had a deeper sense of suffering but I also felt a deeper sense of joy. Hard to explain, but I remember someone saying to me, “Terry, you’re married to sorrow.” And I said, “No, I’m not married to sorrow, I just refuse to look away.” You stay with it — we are stronger than we know. But it isn’t easy. And you don’t have any assurance that you’re going to find your way out.’

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

12. this guy is lucky he’s so cute because he’s incorrigibly rude when demanding non-stop pets.

photo of a fluffy white dog lying on a pillow with his tongue out and his ears tucked back.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

hello, don’t be this person. it’s almost like… we are different people who benefit from different tools and that’s part of being human?

screenshot of a reply that reads “Wearables are totally unnecessary. I'm disabled and manage my pacing and needs just fine. It's called listening to your body and adjusting accordingly.”

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

it took a long time but I made this small basket more or less from scratch!

photo of a handwoven brown dogbane basket with a black chevron pattern and a buckskin rim.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

weird day on fb, somebody stole an old photo of mine for likes in a cross stitch group. why? (the photo is great btw. I posted it on reddit at the time which is where I assume it was stolen from. still tho, why.)

screenshot of a facebook post from Tia Kelsey in a group called Cross Stitch, Embroidery and Crafters on the Tedooo app. the post includes a photo of a bald white man sitting beside a berry large cross stitched representation of his face in blue yarn on white peg board, and a caption that reads “This is my husband next to the 8' portrait that I cross stitched for his birthday.” The post has 1.7k likes.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

I have gotten to the side and pattern of my basket though so that’s progress baby.

photo of a pale hand holding a partially woven basket with a black stripe along the bottom and a few additional black stitches above woven between the natural brown dogbane.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

been learning to make a tiny basket from scratch

photo of a flat woven dogbane disk with twined basswood warps sticking out the edges in every direction

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

a dear friend of mine is in labor today so I’m making some sage shortbread with the last of my @foxtrotfarm.bsky.social sage. plus, my mom gave me an old tin biscuit cutter of my grandmother’s over the holidays, so I particularly feel like I’m opening an ancestral portal today.

“Culinary herbs like sage are deeply embedded in culture and cultural memory (and rosemary and lavender and thyme), having accompanied us through the ages in our most comforting foods and recipes. Using them is a direct portal to ancestral experience and medicine.

We are all possibly entering an intense few weeks as we approach the presidential election. Sage can be an ally for us as we live through what can feel like unprecedented or even unlivable times, reminding us how much our ancestors lived through before us and how much beauty and safety we can find in small moments of care for ourselves and each other.”

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

[food] for me, part of getting back to serious work has been relearning how to cook, so here is the (gluten-free, sugar-free, very delicious) tulsi shortbread I made yesterday. 🌱 we didn’t have a working oven from 2021 until last week so it’s a big deal for me to have the option of stress baking.

photo of a batch of freshly baked green-tinted shortbread spread out on parchment paper with one cookie missing.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

in case anybody else is looking for a space like this today, I’m definitely planning to attend. more details & registration link via ig: www.instagram.com/p/DBub6hmM4xr/

graphic promoting a Post-Election Embodiment Practice on Nov 6 at noon ET and 9am PT, hosted by Óscar and Prentis at The Embodiment Institute. the graphic includes smiling photos of both hosts over a purple space-like background.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

portrait of a pair of croc thieves

photo of two dogs in the corner of a room with a single green croc. a black poodle puppy lies casually beside the croc in her bed, while an alert white spitz lurks in the background, partially obscured by a cabinet.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 24/09/2024

I registered for this so fast (registration link: bit.ly/MMH-creativenonfiction)

promotional graphic for a virtual event called Creative Nonfiction in Conversation with Eula Biss and Saeed Jones hosted by Harvard Medical School’s Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health. the graphic features headshots of both writers (Saeed is a thoughtful-looking Black man, Eula is a smiling white woman) and indicates the event is on October 15, 2024 from 4pm ET to 5:30pm ET.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 09/08/2024

my fitness tracker suggests that I may have gone horseback riding today, which, fascinating. possibly I was dodging a rambunctious puppy, very similar kinetically.

screenshot from a fitness tracking app that says:

“Activity detected
Maybe: Horseback riding
12:13PM, 12 minutes, 72 calories”

followed by a button to confirm the activity.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 26/07/2024

[medical diets] after my most recent GI/vasovagal dustup, I am once again thinking about food sensitivity and how much I hate elimination diets because they kick my brain into hypervigilance in a big way. I just found this model and I’m v intrigued. (she does NOT say all reactions are conditioned)

graphic of a circle broken into five sections that each point to the next section to create a recurring cycle.

The sections are labeled: Symptoms, Food / Body Mistrust (Fear), Conditioned Food Avoidance, Food becomes a Danger Cue, Conditioned Food Sensitivity (hypervigilant nervous system reacts to food).

Credit to Wendy Busse Consulting Ltd (2024)

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 26/06/2024

my brain basically melted in late 2022 and I haven’t recovered enough to Engage In Discourse yet, but I CAN engage in DOGscourse, which is where I tell you that we got a second dog this year.

photo of a white spitz and a black poodle looking out a window together.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

this very rude boy stole my seat and shows no signs of remorse

photo of a fluffy white spitz curled up on a gray couch surrounded by pillows.

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Brianne Benness @bennessb.bsky.social · 22/10/2023

I’ve been confronting a lot of ableism in my life this year, and it’s become pretty clear to me that oppression & white supremacy self-replicate interpersonally via abusive conflict regardless of which axis of oppression is at play. in August I briefly had the brain juice to explain it in an email:

“in the last year especially, I’ve been so grateful for my time and community in Toronto. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning how to discern between generative conflict and abusive conflict. which is to say, I was learning to discern between thorny disagreements in which two people are genuinely trying to understand the other’s perspectives across all of the enormous barriers that history & oppression have put in our way AND thorny disagreements in which one person is trying to keep the other engaged in disagreement for as long as it takes for that other person to get so exhausted trying to break through such an enormous barrier that they give up and give in. in one instance, two people are attempting to tunnel towards each other without a map; in the other instance, one person is lounging in the sun waiting for the other person to get buried alive in the tunnel they are trying to build alone.”

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