iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It used to hang over the fireplace in the Bryant house in western Massachusetts. Bryant’s daughter gave it to the NYPL. The nonprofit owner now has a poster of it where it used to hang. My great-great-great grandparents were the caretakers of the house for Bryant, but that’s another story.

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I wonder if terms like “good” and “fine” derive from a kind of aristocratic plainspeak. I recall a story from someone who went through a gentry house slated for demo in the 1950s with the 7th Duke of Portland and said the duke just noted which rooms were “good” and which weren’t.

Oh yes, I get that a lot in my line of work, though it’s never stated directly.

Yes, I did contact the publisher. No help, I’m afraid.

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Hey it’s like when Elon invented the bus

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Well, a petition of 400 residents got a majority of the city council and the mayor to sign it into law. Potentially something to reconsidered in the future, but I doubt at the present.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

There’s an old industrial city near me with plenty of vacant factories on a canal system with existing but disused hydropower turbine systems underneath them. Plenty are not close to housing. Seems like a logical place for data centers if they must be built but city passed a permanent ban.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I would love a copy of this book and does not exist for sale anywhere on the Internet. It’s not even old. Must have had a very limited print run!

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Reposted by B Haley

Revolutionary War 250 @revwar250.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

25 SEPTEMBER 1776, HARLEM, NEW YORK: “Had [the British army] at their head our amiable and worthy General I think poor America would have ere’ now have felt [it] severely”: Henry Knox thinks the only reason the Continental Army has survived the last month is the timidity of British generals.

Henry Knox, painted by Charles Willson Peale

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Hey look, a guy who deserves to be a billionaire

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No, I think what you’re describing is useful. Knowing enough to know where to turn for help is crucial.

Speaking personally, I learned enough in a graduate program to know the broad outlines of trades-related skills and hopefully enough to know what I don’t know but what a specialist does. Which is helpful to an extent!

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One certainly could pursue a trades career after a program like the one in question, but in my experience the people who do that have prior trades training and use a generalist program to supplement general knowledge, not enhance trades skills (because you don’t really get any).

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No generalist program that has a couple of trades-related courses in it will provide students with sufficient skills to go into the preservation trades. If you want to go into the trades, there are specific programs for that. For planning, people graduate and don’t know what they’re doing.

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Something like 2/3 of all people who work in preservation do so in a planning capacity. Yet preservation planning skills are actively downplayed or have been outright removed in many existing graduate programs, sometimes replaced with trades training. This is a really big problem. We need planners.

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Just saw a post from a well-regarded preservation grad program that showed students learning how to cut Queen Anne brackets. Until recently they were turning out well-qualified people to do planning who met the Secretary’s PQS for architectural history. They have not become a trades program.

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Pretty sure “defense of historic preservation” already was, more or less, the purpose of the National Trust, but what do I know.

olive consumer's floating skull @machete.gay · 22/09/2026

Reposted by B Haley

This website is for people who have shit like "political junkie" in their bio who have never read a book written for adults in their entire lives.

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Looks like a good historic tax credit candidate

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Someone near me is trying to sell this mid-20th-c piece worth zero to $100 on Facebook Marketplace for $2800. I’ll be monitoring this and if they succeed I’ll probably change careers.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Odd to me that this critic applauds minimal interpretation and no audio guide. You can only get so much from the images if you can’t read Latin. Seeing it in Bayeux, where you can walk along while an audio guide narrates the entire thing, was a remarkable experience.

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I took several courses in some of the programs being cut. All of them were excellent. What sad news.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Holyoke, Massachusetts doesn’t have a lot of early buildings but they just lost one of their earliest, a fine brick Greek Revival from the 1840s.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Quite interesting to see a car with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker blast through a marked crosswalk where a Black pedestrian was trying to cross. People contain multitudes.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Why in the world is the City of Boston/ @parks.boston.gov/ @boston.gov planting Acer griseum, which is native to central China, in its parks? I thought we’d moved beyond this kind of nonsense as we grapple with native insect/pollinator decline, etc.? This is in Evan’s Way Park.

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If this is the bar, I could be an award-winning interior designer!

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Nice. I got a tuition break as a grad student many years ago. I guess it didn’t extend to undergrads back then.

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Architectural Digest selecting the person who “designed” this room (which looks thrown together by a college kid who inherited random furniture) and featuring the photo in its “New American Voices of 2026” is equal parts hilarious, sad, and insane.

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

that isn’t a counterpoint. Not clear why a random blue sky user’s post matters, but in any event I don’t work for the FT, so I don’t care what you think about it. Reporting that Trump promised something is not campaigning for him. Also, I read the article and it is not pro-Trump.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The FT is one of the best papers in the world and $45/month is not that much.

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Reposted by B Haley

Vincenzo DM @vincenzodm.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Remarkable: due to the fires in the High Fens in Belgium, a road, probably built between the late 6th c. and early 8th c., that connected Liège with Aachen has resurfaced. Photo: HBVL

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Maybe I’m crazy, but many of Historic New England’s houses are literally falling apart. I cannot fathom the decision making that led to allocating resources to something as objectively insignificant as this. www.historicnewengland.org/the-return-o...

historicnewengland.org

The Return of the Gropius House Clam Shell | Historic New England

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Also, a music genre generally suppressed by fascist regimes is fascist?

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

If he had been allowed to do this without a fight, we probably wouldn’t be facing the elimination or drastic watering down of Section 106.

B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Well, the “man of the people” who lives in a giant McMansion built on prime agricultural land in a car-dependent suburb could not unseat Richie Neal in the Massachusetts first congressional district

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B Haley @ghastlyfop.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

He’s going back to his home planet

HOMES was/is the acronym for remembering the names of the Great Lakes. If you replace the O of Ontario with the A of America, you can make it SHAME!

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Very nice. There are some real gems there.

c. 1791/1830 in Poultney, VT - $295,000

This wonderful Federal house is back on the market. If any house in this area needed a good steward, it’s this one. At this price it’s a candidate for flippers or other ne’er-do-wells. Look at that room with the Doric frieze! www.oldhousedreams.com/2026/04/22/c...

oldhousedreams.com

Stately c. 1791 Vermont colonial located within sight of the Historic East Poultney green! The potential is endless! Spacious first floor includes a kitchen, fu

Revolutionary War 250 @revwar250.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Reposted by B Haley

When Prince von Kaunitz, the chancellor of the Habsburg empire, reads the excerpts of the declaration in the newspapers, he declares it contains “extraordinary sections which may cause the spirit of rebellion to spread like a plague.”

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Reposted by B Haley

Revolutionary War 250 @revwar250.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

31 AUGUST 1776, VIENNA: The Wienerisches Diarium prints a much-abridged version of the Declaration of Independence, including the preamble and conclusion but—in this capital of an absolute monarchy—without the enumerations of George III’s alleged tyranny.

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