iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 46m

"it's Nuntober" I keep whispering to thomas

a TV showing the title credit screen of BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

successfully said "aura" in a conversation with a young person

the "guy in the corner at the party meme" it says
"they don't know I mean it in the Walter Benjamin way"
"So do we"

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

some serious "are you fucking kidding me" skies in NYC right now

a blue-purple-gold sunset over some uptown manhattan buildings

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

me looking between the weather report for the weekend and my tickets to see The Devils at Lincoln Center tomorrow night

theoden and the other two guys in LOTR standing in the pouring rain before helm's deep

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

this thread is giving me flashbacks to the time I was on an IcelandExpress flight that had to make an emergency landing in Goose Bay, eventually got us to Rekyjavik, then finally had us fly back to NYC on a former Iron Maiden tour plane bc I guess it was the only working plane they could find?

Iron Maiden tour plane w a lil demon on the back fin and IRON MAIDEN: The Final Frontier World Tour on the body. obviously not my photo but this was the plane

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

what we don't see is that if he would only swerve the tram to hit this cardboard mermaid, he could save an infinite number of cardboard mermaids on the other track

European tram driver championship in Warsaw, tram tracks and a yellow and red tram coming toward a yellow and red cardboard (?) statue of a mermaid, people all around

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sophie says she would be a very good tram driver (it's true)

A round brown and white cat with big green eyes looking up from behind a green pillow

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

thomas texted me from the @filmlinc.bsky.social book fair to ask "should I buy this, it's $30" and I'm pretty sure my response was the fastest I've ever said yes to anything in my life

old(er) poster for Ken Russell's The Devils, the text on it says:

"The Devils is not for everyone.

It is a true story, carefully documented,
historically accurate — a serious work by a distinguished film maker. As such it is likely to be hailed as a masterpiece by many. But because it is explicit and highly graphic in depicting the bizarre events that occurred in France in 1634, others will find it visually shocking and deeply disturbing.

We feel a responsibility to alert you to this.
It is our hope that only the audience that will appreciate THE DEVILS will come to see it."

and then there's an image of Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave being little freaks

then the credits, title, the old X rating

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

once again I am considering getting the Barry Lyndon tattoo about it

the last line of the epilogue text in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, it's in a cool font and it says THEY ARE ALL EQUAL NOW

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I'd totally forgotten we owned this on vinyl and also that it might be one of the greatest album covers there's ever been. would I say we are playing it at a volume appropriate to living in an apartment building with neighbors on all sides? oh for sure

cover of Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (she's dressed in work clothes and lugging a whole bunch of various work items)

back cover of Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (she's sitting in an armchair with a dog and fluffy slippers next to her)

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

right like I love to quote this Reductress post (about soccer players in particular), but the overall effect of her tattoos isn't even good! not that it would matter!

Reductress post with the headline "Overall Effect of Man's Tattoos Hot, Individual Tattoos Questionable" with a picture of two different tattooed white guys

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

yeah, this essay rules, read it defector.com/humanists-ha...

Our critics are really fucking stupid, and we’ve given them way too much leeway to conjure senile fantasies out of their own illiteracy.
Very smart people have already defended humanities scholarship for its difficulty as well as its sometimes intimidating specialization. Jordy Rosenberg, in the now-defunct AVIDLY section of the Los Angeles Review of Books, wrote a wonderful personal essay about the joys of struggling with Judith Butler’s ideas specifically. My point here is not to defend the alleged properties of our writing—which, as I’ve suggested, are mostly projections—but rather the specific reading practices already intrinsic to humanities teaching and research that attend to the difficulties of making thought manifest in language. Call it form, call it figuration, call it rhetoric; these are the features of communication that render its use irreducible to the simple transmission of data bytes and incompatible with the reactionary desire for immediacy.

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

we took the (white, canvas, kind of like gigantic sails) slipcovers off of the couch to clean them today and now Sophie has decided she’s a ship’s cat

a multi-colored (red/brown/black/white) cat with green eyes lounging in a gigantic pile of white canvas fabric

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

it might also be what prompted a friend in one of my group chats to suggest this tattoo, but that’s neither here nor there really

a mock-up of a tattoo of the word “respectfully” in script on a white person’s back in the tramp stamp placement

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

what’s the Odyssey about? I’m so glad you asked

the ancient “don’t email my wife” meme, there’s a beige suburban house with
“STOP NOW
don’t email my wife!!!!”
written on the white garage doors in red paint

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

needed to refer to this foundational text in something I’m writing and what I was able to come up with before going and looking for a screenshot was “that tweet about is the credit card in love with me” anyway as ever this remains one of the four noble truths of posts

@ negaversace: “is [pop star] a feminist? Is MasterCard a queer ally? Is this tv show my friend?”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

anyway here’s Bowie, who has only ever paid any attention to soccer when Egypt is playing, when you make bullshit VAR calls this is who you’re being mean to

a small white and dark brown cat with bright blue eyes sitting on a white-ish couch in a sunbeam. she is extremely beautiful

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

possession in this game as in specifically in the sense of

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

first of all, how dare you besmirch the name of Aimee Mann’s best song

email from Hakeem Jeffries that says “I’ve Had It, Helena”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

every world cup player is this reductress headline

screenshot of a Reductress article that says “Overall Effect of Man's Tattoos Hot, Individual Tattoos Questionable” with a picture of a white guy with tattoos

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

see also: my cat who’s named after Bowie and who’s breathtakingly beautiful and also so spooky that we sometimes joke about what a good prank it would be to tell people who come over to our house for the first time that we only have one cat, not two

a small black and white cat with shockingly blue eyes sitting on a colorful rug under a table

a small black and white cat with shockingly blue eyes sitting in a weird half-moon shape on a white chair against green cushions

a small black and white cat with shockingly blue eyes standing in a sunbeam on her tiny little slendercat legs like some kind of entity

a small black and white cat with shockingly blue eyes sitting on the same chair looking like a sweet little baby bear

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

the group chat is texting about mbappé

a screenshot of a text that says “je vous en prie eat my ass”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

this is the kind of essay that, ten years ago, would have been the only thing anyone on social media talked about for two or three days. what a stunning piece of writing goldengoal.world/2026/06/14/l...

For the 2002 World Cup, Dad and I stayed up and watched every single game. The time difference didn't matter. It made me feel like I was on the other side of the world, traveling freely. How could we not lose sleep after watching Senegal defeat France, the reigning champions? While watching that inaugural game on Univision, I heard the commentators speak about the giant upset in terms of colonization, "the colonized beating the colonizer," shouting about the power and beauty of soccer. When the final whistle blew, Dad jumped with joy, along with every Senegalese on the screen. Then, Dad turned to me and spoke of justice, of how everything was possible in soccer, of how empires can and should fall on and outside of the soccer field. I understood it as a win for all of us, the collective that as an adult I've learned to refer to as the Global South, or the Global Majority.

To play soccer all you need is a ball. I love writing because I only need a pen and a piece of paper. Both writing and soccer are
egalitarian in that way: the art and the sport of the people, for the people. Like any soccer fan, I've always wanted to go to the World Cup. On the field, anything is possible. Underdog nations can make a surprise run with a real shot at reaching the finals, like Turkey and South Korea in 2002, Uruguay in 2010, Croatia in 2018, Morocco in 2022.
I can only imagine what celebrating a goal from the stands must feel like, but what I do know is that in that moment of exhilarating joy, the whole world is either heartbroken or celebrating with you. An individual moment, a global moment, in real time.

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

[taking the deepest possible breath] the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602,

headline that says “why is trump hosting a cage fight at the White House” with photo of same

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

things are bad enough that my household has broken the glass on the absolute ultimate comfort watch, the only american television show to take place in the Almodovar Cinematic Universe (Designing Women)

a shot from a first season episode of DESIGNING WOMEN: an circa-late-1980s dining room, long table with a light tablecloth, a bunch of white women with extremely large hair, and two unremarkable men, gathered around it, a woman who looks shocking like young Monica Lewinsky (but isn’t) is sitting at the head of the table asking “more gazpacho anyone?”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

sounds like somebody needs to see some ALF hog

Joyce Carol Oates post: “not sure if anyone is here at Bluesky. when I visit the site all is calm, unchanging; I have not had a single new follower in many months; exchanges are always interesting & intelligent but relatively few. Bluesky exudes the air of an upscale mall, beautifully maintained, hushed.”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

everything, you useless, illiterate hole in the ground

“What really is the distinction between a nameless, faceless human you'll never meet except over the internet and a statistical approximation of the same thing?” screenshot from an NYT op-ed

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

found the shelf of recommendations I sent for the below exercise, this is from back in september, it would be totally different if I did it again now, which is part of the point. would have included Lucy Prebble’s Enron+Other Plays and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker if I’d had copies on hand

photo of a shelf of books: There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib; Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz; Be Holding by Ross Gay; Moby-Dick; Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music; The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje; The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst; Absalom, Absalom!; Lonesome Dove; Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning; Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels; Love is a Dangerous Word by Essex Hemphill; Milkman by Anna Burns; The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. Will Hermes’ Love Goes to Buildings on Fire is sideways across the top of the shelf

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

unfortunately this meant I had to go look through my photos to find my own favorite version of this sort of thing

[it’s a piece of text from Anne Carson’s translation of Orestes but “I’m cringe” is subbed in for “it’s rotten work”]
Pylades: I’ll take care of you
Orestes: I’m cringe
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

okay yeah so this is great, if the phrase “indie sleaze Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” lights up a pleasure center in your brain you’ll probably agree

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

ok this has been fun but I gotta make myself go outside and get a run in before the run clubs descend

a tweet that reads: Huge shout to my friend from an undergraduate philosophy program who started working out every single day, not for health benefits or to become conventionally attractive or whatever, but because -- and this is a direct quote - he was concerned that otherwise he might "become lost in the world of signs and forget the things they signify". I have thought about this every single time that I've worked out since.

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

“hmm are there any fun places to eavesdrop on people arguing about these books on Reddit, let me just type in the title and see” is the most I’ve ever instantly gotten a “well what did you expect” result

a post on r/NoStupidQuestions titled “How would I calculate the volume of my balls?”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

especially fun to get a nice text from my mom after the last few days of airport discourse on here

a text that says: We made it - at the airport, through security, having a snack, about to go find a seat for the next 3 1/2 hrs 😘😘

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

my single favorite piece of writing advice, answer hasn’t changed in twenty years

a page from Anne Carson’s “Autobiography of Red” that ends with the sentence “what is the difference between a volcano and a guinea pig is not a description why is it like it is is a description”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

a world-historical nightmare blunt rotation in my last three “trying to find out what everybody is yelling about on here” searches

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

thomas just pointed out to me that the artemis astronauts are now in a big conversation pit

artemis splashdown capsule and crew plus rescue crew in the “front porch”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

in honor of holy week, here’s the objective best tumblr post

kim-jong-chill
i need feminism because when jesus does a magic trick it's a goddamn miracle but when a woman does a magic trick she gets burned at the stake
mattheuphonium
fabulous
tockthewatchdog
i mean they did also kill jesus. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you're coming from
here but they very much did kill jesus

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

ok and honorable mention to my personal favorite that’s just for me (it’s a bluesky post, not a tweet, but whatever)

skeet from @ slime-golem.biz “Did I ever post this collage I made of Death from "The Seventh Seal" standing in front of a huge modular synthesizer” (the picture is exactly what the text describes)

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

four lesser-knowns that are canonical texts in my house

tweet from pebble @ ipaddlearound: “david attenborough: [mumbling] skip. i don’t like this animal. skip it.”

tweet from @ lovedropsx “Huge shout to my friend from an undergraduate philosophy program who started working out every single day, not for health benefits or to become conventionally attractive or whatever, but because -- and this is a direct quote - he was concerned that otherwise he might "become lost in the world of signs and forget the things they signify". I have thought about this every single time that I've worked out since.”

tweet from BAKOON: “the dogs fuckin found out about religion. call the cops. no not the regular cops.” accompanied by a picture of four ghostly looking white-and-brown dogs in a room howling and looking upward

tweet from perfumegenius: “I like watching The Gilmore Girls because they are never scared of dying”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

and yet a trace of the true new york exists in the false (present day) new york

a construction site on an NYC street, a green planted plywood wall around an out-of-service standpipe, above the standpipe is a small round hole about six feet above the ground, next to it on one side is pink handwritten text with an arrow reading “Dump valve gauge,” and, on the other side, black handwritten text with an arrow pointing at the hole reading “Very Tall Glory Hole”

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

it’s a beautiful Friday night and we’ve made it to the end of a very long week

a large wall mounted television, on a black screen white text reads:
APRIL - 1805
Napoleon is master of Europe
Only the British fleet stands before him
OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

this perfect little weirdo has to have tooth surgery in a couple hours, send your good thoughts to Bowie if you have them, she’s our whole heart (I can’t ever pick just one photo of her, she’s too beautiful)

a small cat with a cream colored body, dark brown ears, face, paws, snd tail, and blue eyes, perched on the edge of a bathtub

Same small cat scrunched up in a ball sitting on a person wearing a white sweater

same small cat standing up looking directly at the camera

same small cat curled up in a perfect orb shape, tail underneath her head

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

my go-to answer is “affluent white man enjoys, causes the blues” but this one unfortunately has only gotten funnier every year I’ve been alive and on the internet

Onion op-ed style article with the headline “We Are Not Properly Following Robert’s Rules of Order” there’s a grumpy-looking white-haired guy in the author photo

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Helena Fitzgerald @hellafitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

rev jonathan edwards, gazing upwards from hell

James Acaster saying “I’m a meme in america now”

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