iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Look who joined the family! I got this Olympus Trip MD3 at a flea market. It's fun to shoot with, but it's autoflash can't be disabled and everything about it is automatic. I ran through a roll with it the day I bought it, so we'll see how that turns out.

A close-up of a black camera with a round lens and a textured grip. The camera is held in a hand. The text reads, “OLYMPUS,” “DX,” “OLYMPUS LENS 34MM/48MM,” “TRIP MD3.”

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If I lead any other social groups, my family would probably tell me how proud they are of me. But it's a trans one, so they aren't.

Say what you will about trans people's supposed ability to better clock one another, even if you do clock someone, it's not like you can just go up to them on the street and say "hey, couldn't help but notice you're trans and so am I, lets be friends."

Jae @jaehanley.social · 04/10/2026

To be trans is to be of a people and not. We are of a people in that we are all trans, but lack the ability to accurately discern one another and connect without explicitly connecting on that basis.

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I'm reading Woodworking by Emily St. James and it has me in my feelings. I'm going to have a lot of thoughts when I'm done.

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Jae @jaehanley.social · 04/10/2026

I think I have the right amount of angst for the moment #photography #selfportrait

Portrait of Jae, a Black woman with shoulder-length locs and octagonal wire-frame glasses, looking downward with her head slightly bowed. Her arms are folded in front of her, and deep blue light from the upper left leaves her face mostly in shadow against a black background.

Jae, a Black woman with long locs and octagonal glasses, turns her head to the right with one hand raised near her chin and lips. Blue light picks out her shoulder, hand, and the edges of her locs while the rest of the frame falls into darkness.

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Jae @jaehanley.social · 03/10/2026

I should start printing some of my photos. I don't have any of them framed and hung at home, and that feels like a real waste. Just makes the photos feel more ephemeral than they should be.

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Reposted by Jae

mb ◡̈ @mbbischoff.com · 01/10/2026

girls, get your photos in

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Jae @jaehanley.social · 02/10/2026

Trump having Grok affirm him into a war with Iran really capstones everything going on with AI, doesn't it?

Jae @jaehanley.social · 02/10/2026

Captured on Ilford HP5 Plus, taken with a Reto Pano point and shoot. #filmphotography #ilfordhp5plus

A tall, narrow building rises toward a bright, overcast sky. The structure is made of dark glass and light panels, with rows of small windows. The image is in black and white.

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Your straight friends read a gay book and get gagged by mess you've heard a million times before in your queer circles.

And so here I am. I am Jae. I struggled to get here, fought for it. But the fighting has ceased, and my joy is no longer bound by resistance.

The anniversary was still important, and I will celebrate it, but just as a country gains its independence, eventually the meaning of the day it got it becomes less about the struggle it took to get there, and more the celebration of its existence.

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Things have changed for the better, but at some point, maybe around year four or so, the feeling of waiting for changes ended. I had just become me.

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I’d watch people’s anniversary videos on YouTube. The fifth one always seemed like they felt that nothing much had changed over the last year. I, having the privilege of seeing a year pass between videos in minutes, couldn’t believe they thought that. And now here I am.

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Today is my fifth HRT anniversary! Before I started medically transitioning, I always thought the fifth anniversary as this milestone, an end to second puberty.

A black and white photo of the author, Jae, looking towards the camera, her head and shoulders at a 1/3rds angle to the left. She is wearing a black sequence dress, and has dreadlocks at mid-length flowing down the sides of her face she wears hexagon glasses which are particularly reflective on some of the borders.

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Jae @jaehanley.social · 30/09/2026

I still love this photo because there's something so dissonant about these robots, their surroundings, and the film used to capture them. #filmphotography #photography

A line of white and black robots with yellow accents stands on a light-colored sidewalk in front of a beige building with black trim. The scene is brightly lit by sunlight, with shadows cast on the ground and a few green trees visible against a clear blue sky.

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A gun shop & training center opened in Journal Square, and I'm more concerned about the lead levels inside than its existence. There's an uproar about it, but I don't know, I guess being a doll's changed my perspective and position about guns.

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Jae @jaehanley.social · 29/09/2026

This White House will complain about movies being made overseas, then make it impossible for most people to get a film degree.

The place I get my film developed cost $20/roll. So add another $100 in real costs.

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Fam, they want $100 for five rolls of EKTACHROME 400. That's $2.76 every time you press the shutter BEFORE development costs. Yeah, I think it's over for me. Just buy a used Fuji x100v and be done with it. Or just suck it up and run around with my bulky 35mm prime lens instead.

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If I had transitioned back when I was in college, things probably would have been harder overall. Being a Black trans woman starting my career in 2012 would have been brutal. Having the respect of my professors would have been harder. But, I would’ve had more agency in the direction of my own life.

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Logically, I’d be in a better place if I minored in computer science. I do have regrets about my education. If I did it all over again I would have minored in photography.

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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I got a BFA in graphic design, and I entered the profession being one of those unicorn type designers who designed and coded. My pretransition self was a lot more passive about the direction of my career and over time I ended up being a developer who knew design more than anything else.

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Reposted by Jae

People are gonna find out exactly why their “super qualified Black friends are job less” They will feel bad but continue to gaslight their Black friends about it or justify when the racists who do it lie to their faces about being “intimidated “ or “ culture fit” www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/mil...

eeoc.gov

Mile Hi Foods to Pay $1.5 Million in EEOC Race, Sex, and National Origin Discrimination Lawsuit

DENVER — Mile Hi Companie

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Conflating capital with genius is our modern Mandate of Heaven.

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Numberblocks has my five year old learning about exponents and he doesn't even realize it. Mwuhahahaha!

I keep walking back from the edge of buying an Olympus 35 SP, because I keep reminding myself that I already have a Sony A7C with a 35 and 50mm prime lenses that don't cost me $20 to develop 30-something shots.

When historians document this time, and discuss the imagery of 2020s facism, there will be Gen AI renderings of Trump, of propaganda against minority groups and political rivals. Of a tone so common to anything produced by AI for these purposes. It will bring a shame akin to Nazi Neoclassicism.

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Generative AI's very nature as a tool to create a semi-realistic unreality made it an invaluable tool in the spread of facist ideology. The two are so heavily associated that the vibes of that unreality are now culturally inseparable from fascism.

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I need to deconstruct myself as a subject, because I'm tired of people only caring about my photography when it's a portrait of me.

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Cheers to those who cut holes into fences, because they thought what was on the other side needed to be seen. Cheers to the maintenance workers who never repair them because they agree.

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We're going into a debt crisis. We blew up the deficit for ICE and the the military, and not for healthcare or social programs that actually help Americans. Now the window for it may be closed, all because of hate.

Can’t run a deficit, and a sizable chunk of revenues over 30+ years is now trapped paying for debt. Probably a combination of increased taxes (which upends the presumptions built into everyone’s 401Ks), lower spending, and lower ambitious projects overall.

Those are the social dynamics we end up having to deal with as minorities.

Naturally, he’s upset. But my kid’s popular, has others who’ll play with him. So I tell him to play with the kids who want to play with him and exclude the kid that kicked him out. Guess who’s upset now, who thinks that we should all be playing together?

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My kid was playing with his friends, another kid joins in, tells the kids to run away from my son and leave him out from the game.

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Maybe like a film equivalent of a Fuji x100vi, with a fixed 35mm prime lens or something to that effect.

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I need to figure out what it is, exactly, I want to get out of film cameras. I already have a proper mirrorless digital camera, a Sony A7C. I wish that I had a film camera that had more control than a basic point and shoot, but not enough to invest in a redundant film SLR.

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