iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Eloise Birnam-Wood

Bazz @bazz67.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Fans of the aesthetic might recognise the first image, which has been floating around online since 2013. Finding a source has confounded three image searches, so, unable to contact the artist for purchasing, I’ve created a master copy. Original on the left, my version on the right. Moon to follow.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

I loved Help The Witch, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. My abiding memory of it is buying it in a bookshop in Edinburgh while up on holiday and then lying on the grass in Prince’s St Gardens to have a little read before my dinner reservation. Perfect.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Reposting my Craft tarot, because it’s Halloween and I can.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

The veil thins; the beloved dead come home.

A photo of an altar decked for Halloween, with candles, incense, sweets and bottles of water, a sage plant in a terracotta pot, a skull ornament, and, in a silver frame, a photograph of a young woman with long light-brown hair.

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Thei wante us talkinge alone on our phones to a demon thei created, and not goinge places and being wyth each othir yn art and joy and communitye. Thei want cinemas to shut downe, and broadwaye to go darke. Thei want wryteres to stop writinge. Thei want to sell us hell and have us pay for it.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Well, since you mentioned it… here’s four I made into tarot cards. Can you believe The Craft turns 30 next year?

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

The wren is back in my garden! Bit worried the Robin might try to bully it out, so I’ve set up a second feeder as far as I can from the Robin’s Tree. Wish my mum could have seen it.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Couldn’t sleep last night, so at 2am I decided to have a go at bookbinding. As you do. I had a knackered old paperback kicking around, and some fabric and paper and glue and board. It’s not perfect, but for an impromptu first attempt I think it’s pretty good.

A fat hardback book, bound in William Morris-style fabric and lined inside with gold-and-cream printed paper, presented on an orange background.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Not saying I live in a weird neighbourhood or anything, but a guy has just walked past my open window complaining to himself: “Buncha weirdos. No neck! No NECK!”

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I’ve been listening to this song since I was a small girl, per my mum’s music taste — seeing it analysed is another different way to enjoy it.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

History/genealogy folks — if you can trace an unusual surname to a small town to the point where the records run out, but then you find a separate source that records the same family name in the same small town, ~80 years before the last record, can you reasonably infer that this is the same family?

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Folks going up for #Pride in #London today, especially folks going for the first time: you will need sunscreen, even if it stays cloudy. Pride sunburn may be a rite of passage, but it’s also not fun. Take care of each other out there. I’m with you in spirit. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🩷💜💙

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the Prodigy? Because I love the Prodigy. I really, really love the Prodigy.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Took the cat to the vet for his boosters last week. As I put his carrier into the taxi’s backseat, I jokingly said “put your seatbelt on, there’s a good boy!” in that special talking-to-animals voice. As I climbed in and shut the door behind me, I noticed the cab driver putting his seatbelt on…

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Well, I just had a V interesting conversation with 3 Reform candidates. Our local candidate’s a student nurse. Farage has come out against abortion rights. Not one of the 3 could explain why she’d climb into bed with him on that basis. Not even the candidate herself.

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Reposted by Eloise Birnam-Wood

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

It’s time to reconsolidate a counterculture and politics against this shit. Science, art, medicine, poetry, philosophy as the beautiful life, the fullness of human civilization, that they want to destroy. Humanism, not cynicism, not slop, not tech “””nerd””” culture

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Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ @snarkysillysad.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Music is joy! #AGoodPlace Source: www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmil...

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

From Allen Ginsberg’s essay “Demonstration or Spectacle as Example, as Communication or How to Make a March/Spectacle,” some ideas for peaceful protest. This has been credited with the birth of Flower Power. I found it quite difficult to get hold of online, so I’ve never read it before.

The following are specific suggestions for organizing march and turning marchers on to their roles in the demonstration.
1. Masses of flowers—a visual spectacle-especially concentrated in the front lines. Can be used to set up barricades, to present to Hell's Angels, police, politicians, and press and spectators whenever needed or at parade's end. Masses of marchers can be asked to bring their own flowers. Front lines should be organized and provided with flowers in advance.
2. Front lines should be the psychologically less vulnerable groups.
The Women for Peace or any other respectable organization, perhaps a line of poets and artists, mothers, families, professors.
This should also be announced (publicized in advance).
3. Marchers should bring crosses, to be held up in front in case of violence; like in the movies dealing with Dracula. (This for those who use crosses or Jewish stars.)
4. Marchers who use American flags should bring those: at least one front row of American flags and myriad in the spectacle.
5. Marchers should bring harmonicas, flutes, recorders, guitars, banjos and violins. (Those who don't use crosses or flags.)
Bongos and tambourines.
6. Marchers should bring certain children's toys (not firecrackers or balloons which cause noise hysteria) which can be used for distracting attackers: such as sparklers, toy rubber swords, especially the little whirling carbon wheels which make red-white-blue sparkles, toy soldiers.
7. In case of heavy anxiety, confusion or struggle in isolated spots marchers could be led in
Sit Down

Mass Calisthenics
In case of threat of attack marchers could intone en masse the following mantras
The Lord's Prayer
Three Blind Mice (sung)
OM (AUM) long breath in unison
Star Spangled Banner
Mary Had a Little Lamb (spoken in unison)
8. More interesting Zen/Spectacle SIGNS
As In Oakland So In Vietnam Everybody's Made Of Meat
Nobody Wants To Get Hurt-Us Or Them
Everybody's Wrong Including U.S.
Hell's Angels Vietcong Birch Society
DON'T FILIP
We Love You Too
9. Candy bars carried by marchers to offer Hell's Angels and police.
10. Marchers encouraged to carry copies of the Constitution if they have them; or can buy them.
11. Little paper halos to offer Angels, police and spectators and patriots.
12. A row of marchers with white flags and many white flags in mass.
13. Those who have movie cameras bring them and take pictures of spectacle or any action. (To combine for documentary film which could be used in court in case of legal hassles later, and also to circulate for propaganda and profits.) Monitors who can should have cameras.

OTHER MORE GRANDIOSE POSSIBILITIES.
14. Corps of student newsmen to interview newsmen, propagandize and soften and charm TV crews etc.
15. Small floats or replicas in front:
Christ with sacred heart and cross (invite church groups to prepare)
Buddha in meditation (invite Zen people to come march and meditate on floats)
George Washington, Lincoln, Whitman, etc. (float or living masquerade)
Thoreau behind bars' (float)
Hell's Angels float-with halos, happy, praying (no ugly provocative caricature)
Birch Society float (old ladies in tennis sneakers)
Dixieland Band float dressed as Hitler Stalin Mussolini Napoleon and Caesar (See "Universal Soldier" song) 3
16. At first sign of disturbance, public address systems swing into vast sound to loud Beatles "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and marchers instructed to dance (if not doing calisthenics or Lord's Prayer). (These could be schematized as strategy 1, 2, 3, etc for diverting crowd and angels from violence.)
17. The Mime Troupe in costume a block down the march, walking doing pantomime.
18. Sound tracks with Bay area rock 'n' roll bands every 2 blocks, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans, etc. (These bands have their own sound systems.) Family Dogg people might be able to arrange this. This scheme to pick up on the universal youth rockroll protest of Dylan, "Eve of Destruction," "Universal Soldier," etc. and concretize all that consciousness in the parade.

19. Front (or toward front) —toy army in costume, Civil War or Revolutionary War or WW I uniforms and signs:
NO MORE
LEAVE ME ALONE
Addenda: Pre-March Propaganda
1. Muslims, unions etc. all invited to join inside the masses.
2. Leaflets with above instructions to marchers how to channel their anxiety and respond to attack
3. Daily delegations to Hell's Angels to talk to them, pestering them in advance.
4. Petitions and letters and news releases to papers setting tone of march: Petitions to [Gov. ] Brown, open letter to Hell's Angels one news release (We're NOT going to fight); open letters to Young Republicans, Democrats, Birchers, Army, Johnson etc. All the propaganda suggested at Tuesday meeting- conferences with Oakland police to force them to keep peace.
5. Emphasize in propaganda TRUST THE MARCHERS to be hip, calm and tranquil with a sense of humor and not get sidetracked into frustration/ personal violence.
6. Perhaps as propaganda, an imaginary ladies corps to pull down Hell's Angels pants in case of attack, or a (theoretical) corps of trained fairies to seduce them in mid-battle. This is a sort of press release joke to lighten the atmosphere.
WRITTEN: ca. Nov. 1965
FIRST PUBLISHED: Berkeley Barb (Nov. 19, 1965) pp. 1, 4. Reprinted:
Liberation, vol. 10, no. 10 (Jan. 1966); Massimo Teodori, ed., The New Left (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

It strikes me that this is definitely the kind of thing you shouldn’t get in trouble for writing. Anywhere.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

The Apothecary, digital collages. No AI, I find the natural kind sufficient.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Made this for an open call kinda near me and then realised that it was in-person drop off and collection and I’d never be able to make it. Boo. Posting it here instead because it’s easier than trying to catch three buses and two trains.

A painted portrait of the actress Pola Negri, looking very glamorous, with collaged additions: her hair has been replaced with snakes, making her look like Medusa, and her image is set in an ornate gold frame surrounded by angels with lanterns, roses, skulls, moons, stars and sacred hearts, and an honour guard of extravagantly dressed women with pink banners. Two banners draped top and bottom read “blessed am I among women.”

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I've just seen a wren in my back garden. Never seen one before. Almost perfectly spherical. A delight!

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Since I haven’t posted any art in a while, these are the covers and internal introduction pages for the book I’m making for myself based on my Tarot. The vision was to create a maximalist, celestial-aesthetic tarot based purely on public domain, stock, existing art, and advertising images.

The cover of a book on Tarot; a redheaded woman in a blue dress with tattoos of ancient motifs hangs a golden glitterball in a background of hanging gold stars. The action is enclosed in an ornate gold frame, and a banner reads “The Cosmic Love Tarot.”

A frame for text, constructed of gothic architecture surrounded by elements including stars, comets, winged women, planets, books, stone angels, and a woman in medieval dress with a telescope and lunar globe. A crowned moon is in the centre at the top. There is no text in the space allowed for it.

A collaged image including mermaids, potion bottles, daisies, stars, a golden sun, and portraits of women with wings and gold haloes. A banner reads “The Major Arcana.” A winged anatomical heart is placed underneath it.

A collage featuring lotuses, lilies, ivy, shooting stars, and a portrait painting of a woman in Middle Eastern ethnic dress with a halo. In the centre are placed a chalice, dagger, leaf, and golden hoop. A banner underneath reads “The Minor Arcana.”

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Reposted by Eloise Birnam-Wood

Alex Davis @alexdavis1981.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Feeling spooky this Sunday? Then perhaps the UK GHOST STORY FESTIVAL could be for you, with a huge range of talks, workshops, panels and interviews both online and in-person! www.ticketsource.co.uk/ukghoststory...

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C.M. Rosens @cmrosens.com · 08/01/2025

Goths for Breakfast event is on! The ticket sales raise money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that provides breakfasts to UK kids living in poverty. 1 in 4 UK children now live in poverty, and over a million live in extreme poverty, often going without meals. Get your ticket!

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

My mum had to read My Family and Other Animals at school. As both a fast reader and an inveterate giggler, she reached the scene with the matchbox about 15 minutes before the rest of her class and lost her composure so hard that the teacher nearly threw her out of the room. Highly recommended.

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

This is a reminder that my father, when confronted, attributed 20 years of entirely unacceptable conduct (violence, cruelty, etc) on the fact that someone kissed my mother on a hen night once and she didn’t push the guy away immediately. This happened several years after the abuse started. 🤨

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

The great Boxing Day dilemma: in order to get all the food ate before it goes dodgy, we must eat like a Tudor monarch. Mandarin cheesecake or hot mince pies and ice cream for breakfast?

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Cats of Yore @catsofyore.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Gorgeous stained glass piece made by my friend @stonkers.bsky.social, inspired by the medieval Old Gaelic poem, Pangur Bán. The poem was written by a monk who would work tirelessly at his studies as his cat, Pangur Bán, faithfully hunted mice. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

A stained glass piece about 2 ft tall and 1 ft wide, depicting a medium haired white cat sitting on top of a stack of large hardcover books, two off white candles glowing nearby. In the background you see tall, arched church windows with a round window above them. The glass set in the windows is a mellow dark blue like the night sky. That in combination with the candles gives the scene a feeling of cozy nighttime.

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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

UK writers of any kind: see below

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

The death of Freddie Mercury, for some reason. My parents weren’t even particularly big fans, I just seem to remember the family talking about it when the news broke.

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frankenstonk's monster @stonkers.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, in the style of Beowulf

A medieval illustration of a deer that someone has photoshopped a red nose onto. Below it reads: "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in Anglo-Saxon meter, by Philip Craig Chapman-Bell. Via Etymonline on Facebook, who says "An Internet classic; but I can no longer find it where I first found it (Cathy Ball's Old English reference pages)."

Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus
Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor - Nafde pæt nieten unsciende næsõyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
Da hofberendas mid huscwordum hine gehefigodon;
Nolden ba geneatas Hrodulf næftig
To gomene hraniscum geador ætsomne.
Pa in Cristesmæsseæfne stormigum clommum, Halga Claus pat gemunde to him maõelode:
"Neahfreond nihteage nosubeorhtende!
Min hroden hrædwæen gelæd õu, Hrodulf!" Đa gelufodon hira laddeor pa lyftflogan - Wæs glædnes and gliwdream; hornede sum gegieddode
"Hwat, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor, Brad springõ pin blæd: breme eart bu!"

Here begins the deeds of Rudolph, Tundra-Wanderer
Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer - That beast didn't have unshiny nostrils!
The goodly nose-cartilage glittered and glowed.
The hoof-bearers taunted him with proud words;
The comrades wouldn't allow wretched Hrodulf
To join the reindeer games.
Then, on Christmas Eve bound in storms Santa Claus remembered that, spoke formally to him:
"Dear night-sighted friend, nose-bright one!
You, Hrodulf, shall lead my adorned rapid-wagon!"
Then the sky-flyers praised their lead-deer - There was gladness and music; one of the horned
ones sang
"Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer,
Your fame spreads broadly, you are renowned!"

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Eloise Birnam-Wood @birnamwood.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Imagine living in the flat next door to him while he’s rehearsing this.

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Reposted by Eloise Birnam-Wood

Jojo Moyes @jojomoyes.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

This is maddening if you use MS word to write books. Opt out to stop them using your writing to train A.I. Please share.

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TechnicallyRon @technicallyron.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

This is your annual reminder that it's probably best to re-order your prescription now if you need it because going off your meds at Christmas is less than ideal one year I had a panic attack and took out the Christmas tree so best to avoid that really

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Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

gitched sign + one of those pointless TikTok-style ads = unintentional cyberpunk at the Whole Foods

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jae @fiadhaich.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

TODAY: phone & email blockade organised by the dyke project on wes streeting between 12pm and 5pm. everyone should be able to find some time today to send an email or make some phone calls. mass involvement is key phone and email script available here: bit.ly/3ZyWGQ5 insta post: surl.li/cahdyn

screenshot of Instagram from the dyke project. It reads:
Phone and email blockage
12pm - 5pm Thursday 12 December
Tell Wes Streeting: Drop the puberty blockers ban!
Parliamentary office number: 020 7219 6131
Constituency (Ilford North) number: 0203 475 7901
Email: wes.streeting.mp@parliament.uk

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The Folklore Podcast @folklorepod.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

CALLING ALL WRITERS! If you are seeking publication for a book that you are planning or have written in the fields of folklore, the occult, witchcraft or adjacent subjects please get in touch. I'm scouting for possible commissions for a US publisher with whom I work. DM/comment for more details

media.tenor.com

a black and white photo of a spider with big eyes eating something

ALT: a black and white photo of a spider with big eyes eating something

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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”

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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Yesterday I learned that, when pronounced in French, "ChatGPT" is a complete sentence, meaning "Cat, I farted." Do with this information what you will.

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