iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Best Buy Ever. (The kitten came free.)

The kitten lies in the hammock that's part of a cat tower.

I'm pretty sure who he would save from a burning house, the hammock or me.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

As if there wasn't enough insanity/evil to spread around.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

I just finished a book I won't name, because if you can't say something nice... Still, around two third of the book, I thought, 'We're not going there, aren't we?' We did go there. There are two types of story endings I don't ever want to see: 'It was all a dream' & 'It was all in his head.'

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

The one on the lower right. Such perfect side-eye.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

I have a better memory than I thought I had. I remembered reading this, seven years ago, and I now smiled and chuckled along with my seven-year-younger self. I hope you're not stopping? That restaurant review was fun but I'd miss the family columns.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

May Chuck be better than you hope and may the chemo be a nothingburger embuggerance.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

I don't even know that brand, yet I know I can agree totally.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

I was very lucky (I mean: Google?!) to find a mill here in Czechia that grinds local wheat & accepts orders, from 4 to 60+ kilos of flour. They send it out once a week, for logistic reasons & to guarantee it will always arrive within two weeks. So I'm sorted for organic, stoneground wholemeal & rye.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

It may depend if you cross borders? I was always travelling while having long hair & beard & shabbily dressed. It seemed too risky to have the loose leaf tea in a pouch, or in my case more likely a plastic bag. I was always asked where I went & what I carried. Having the shop packaging seemed wise.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I had rice with coconut milk & fruit for breakfast, and ate what was left for lunch, so a nice and cosy start of the day. I'm too lazy to get up but my one and only big poppy is flowering, so that counts for peaceful? No complaints about either adjective anyway. May calm & peaceful find you too.

A poppy flower I hadn't even planted has been rising up close to one of my shed walls. The poppy grew itself a way through the netting for my tomatoes who still have to be placed there.

More and more wildflowers grow close to the wall, so I'm thinking about placing the tomatoes somewhere else. That's not a problem. Removing the netting without hurting the poppy probably will be.

We'll see. Pretty red poppy though.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I stopped travelling quite some time ago but I remember I started travelling with various loose leaf teas, bought in my* teas store and still unopened, in my mid-twenties, so I must have done it close to three decades. *Of course I was someone who had and talked about 'my' tea store.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Someone here got an insane review by a reader who was offended that the writer had dared to introduce humour to a genre that should be free from humour. (I can't remember but I guess some incel with firm opinions about his favourite genre; I'm guessing SF or fantasy.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

I would have gone for the salad for the first one. (That recipe looks good though.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

It does depend a bit? I write pretty sloppy first drafts, because my overall goal is to get to the end of it. So, halfway through, I may realise (for instance) that a certain character requires more depth (or removing) but I will only act on that after the first draft is done.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

I started snacking on frozen watermelon again. I'll keep doing that - but I will add this to my repertoire. In a slightly simplified form. Without the walnuts. I have three walnut trees and the first few years I overdid things, walnut-consumption-wise.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Damn. The shop is out of courgettes, till Monday. Oh well, I'll survive.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Just what I need! Thank you.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Still only one thing to say after listening to the pod & debriefing: 'Oy!'

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

You would know this, I'm sure, but wasn't PN supposed to have a really big brain too?

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

This is a novel though, not a novella, so the old minimum price was €6 (and a bit.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

For sale now, only at the Bald Satan Shop, unfortunately - and 'thanks' to scandalous Amazon blackmail, I had to make the books more expensive: $8.17 for the paperback and $3.50 for the ebook. #Booksky #NewBook

Pic of the front book cover. Really hard to describe, so let's start with the easy bits.

Author name above: Jan Thie
Title below: In Meg we trust.

Illustration: a cropped pic that started out as a photo of part of my house, close to the front door. The roof is snow-covered and icicles hang from the gutter (and from wherever else they can hang). The small outside lamp is on.

In the cropped pic this means the icicles seem to shine from within. The open door is merely a black rectangle with icicles covering the top of it. The snow-covered roof is a ghostly blue that becomes a dark blue where the sky starts.

It has a slightly alien feel to it, which is helped by a twig of ivy that has escaped the snow and now resembles the V of a bird (or a spaceship.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I don't even want to be tall. Average, or a bit under, would be totally fine. I merely object to feeling like Danny DeVito each time I'm facing some 30-year-old (or younger) Dutch guy. (I read that thanks to these baby-bloomers, we are now the on average tallest country in the world. Bastards!)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Decades ago I visited my parents. The door bell rang and since I was closest I opened the door. A young guy stood there. Later my parents explained he was the neighbours' kid. I had babysat him but the last time I'd seen him he was about belt height. Now he was at least a head taller than me.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I am, or was, of average height. Up till thirty years after my birth that remained true, until the bastard babies born in the late Eighties or early Nineties, shot up from that respectable average of 1.80* to create an average of 2 metres** or a bit more. *5.9 foot **6.5 foot.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Have your eyes closed throughout, maybe wearing earplugs that take down the orchestra to a murmur and will probably* still allow you to hear when someone starts singing. Make sure to keep your eyes closed when you pretend you're in a pub, listening to people doing karaoke. *If not: such a shame.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

He put you through the DT mangle, so something unrelated? (If you ever can say that.) So, Needful Things. It is one wild carnival ride and his absolute funniest book (if you're a bit warped.) It is serious and sad in places (and I still don't know what Sk has against dogs) but it's mostly fun.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Great crust & crumb (again.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Do what you can, yes, but also be kind to your body.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Yah. He would say something rude and then either hug you or say 'I love you, son' or both. So, Part two: there are possibles. Part one: a dead cert.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

If he was a rapist, the only crime I want to see her convicted for is probably just a misdemeanour anyway: Littering.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

I was just looking at a promising recipe, when *that* line hit my eye again: 'Remove from the pan and set aside.' As in the reasonable alternative being: 'Remove from the pan and throw straight in the bin'? It's not a serious gripe, obviously, but really. #Foodsky #Recipes

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Reposted by Jan Thie

Cslmn @rapsacnomlas.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

We have two straight men in the restaurant, and one of the ways I know they're straight is they're sitting diagonally from each other at a 4-person table

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

I'm straight but I used to do it because the hearing in one ear was crap. (They're both now equally bad at what they were designed for, so I could be part of the experiment again, if I still went to restaurants, which I don't. Though I'm sure I'm easy to categorise in many other ways.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

I don't ask for or listen to the feedback of anyone else though; they can have the finished product.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

I am incredibly lucky that I have two first readers who both have improved my manuscripts. Both have good story brains but the first is also a good proofreader who catches remaining typos and other mistakes. The second points out how the stories could improve. They are both always right.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Laughter is booming inside my skull; like that of Satan having won another soul with a shiny bit of shit temptation. I might have felt slightly more sympathetic, if this lazy thief did not hold her 'commercial' audience in such contempt. Begone, you feeble nitwit, be trapped forever in AI Hell.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

And not even ending up as a pig on Circe's island. Mind you, I already dislike the idea of Nolan directing it. The Coen brothers would have been perfect for this. I mean, a shaggy dog story, with Gods!

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

I tested out an interesting-looking recipe. Technically an appetiser but I had it for dinner with a cucumber salad: foodmymuse.com/stracciatell... It's really good. #Appetiser #ItalianFood #Ciabatta #Breadsky

All the ingredients in mise en place. To the left a ciabatta-type bread. Above that a bottle of light soy sauce. (I only need a teaspoon of that.)

Then the bowls.
The two bigger ones on top. One with the mozzarella & cream, the other with half a finely cut fennel bulb.
Below: six small bowls.
The top three: olive oil, herbs & sugar, sliced fresh green chilli pepper.
The three below:
Fresh basil, thinly sliced garlic, blitzed almonds.

On a green glass plate.
First a layer of, cheese/cream, topped with some of the raw fennel and fried garlic.

On top of what I mentioned in the previous pic a layer of the peper and almond and herbs & sugar. Those I had in a bowl and ai poured the very hot garlic oil over it. Also, more garlic and fennel.

I added fresh basil on top. Leaning on the plate are three slices of a sourdough ciabatta bread.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Those who will read my coming book (and read past chapter 12) will get this. Others won't. Not ever #Booksky #SpaceOpera

A blue rubber suction ear syringe bulb, held up in my left hand.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

'Tis the season to take all the logs outside again, and to start the soot-clearing of the living room; especially the big fern, since its leaves are covered with the dust of ashes. As is the small bookcase and that small cupboard in the kitchen. I'm late this year because laziness. #SpringClean

A pic taken in the winter. The wood burner is burning and a huge pile of logs lies on the two metre long shallow elevation in front of it. There's also a wooden basket with kindling wood.

Same wood burner and elevation but no more wood and freshly cleaned.

My huge fern that sits on a small table. To its left is a small bookcase. To the left of that, half of an open kitchen cupboard is visible. It also gets covered in soot. I can't close the kitchen door because of cat.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

We lived close to train tracks when I was young (6-14). I wasn't a great sleeper even then and, lying in bed, stuck in half-asleep land, I found the sound of freight trains soothing and I would often imagine riding on them who knows where. (I still have a soft spot for hearing distant trains.)

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

I always listen to TS in bed. I'm also an early riser in the summer months, turning off the lights around midnight. Meaning that ideally I should be in bed at nine... in 35 minutes...?

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

I need to do the last bits of editing tidying up on two books, then we'll see.

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Jan Thie @janthie.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

My next novella may a detective story. Working title & subtitle: Murder in the library (Please tell me you are joking) It should be very silly. I typed a short opening scene, with the ghost of the murder victim looking at his corpse. I may use him as gloomy & passive onlooker throughout.

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