iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 23/09/2026

I hope you only receive salutations and gifts made and given in good spirits, sport, and intentions.

A digital birthday card.
A black slate is filled with skulls with long shadows. In bold white letters across the middle, “HIPPO BIRFDEE!!!”
In the lower right black and white tentacles back the red signature of the poster.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 19/09/2026

Do you hold sacred wisdom? Will you pass it on?

“A” title screen for what appears to be the classic Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with Link, a light skinned elf wearing green and white, riding a ruddy brown horse with a white stripe down her forehead :it’s Epona!: through Hyrule Field. The title, however, reads:

THE BOY'S NAME IS
ZELDA
THATS HOW YOU GET THE SECRET QUEST

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 17/09/2026

Was trying to clean the algae growing in the outdoor water bowl for our dogs and backyard critters—made the background for a Joker card…

A piece of user fine grain purple sandpaper with a bright green splotch.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 16/09/2026

Q4: #HorrorWritersChat Within the vein of the prompt, a snippet of a WIP of someone “infected” with and themselves “being” a parasite:

She raised her hand in a finger gun, leveled
at my chest.
"I shot him in the heart. It exploded in his
chest. The ball pierced his heart as it
compressed," she squeezed her hand shut. "Then began to expand as it passed through..."
She splayed open her fingers, then stretched them wide. "His heart just flew apart, and he died."
She sighed. "He didn't deserve it. But, where I was going, no one could know, and he was far more credible than some farmers talking about star rot and witches in the Highlands."
I felt that pulse in my chest again. The thing
in the stone, yet deep and far away.
"You're not pulling from someone else's
death." I say.
"Shh," she puts her finger to her lips, holding her hand like a gun again. "Some stories are still being told.
"I left the house and walked all night to the tree. If the sun had breached the horizon, it had not pierced the slate of fog and clouds. There was only dark grey and black shadows making up the world.
"In the roots, that yellow glow seemed more intense compared to how dark it was outside. As if I was in the hole that the sun hid during the night. My husband was there, unmoved, unmoving. He was becoming iridescent like the blossoms around him.
"I said his name. He did not respond. I got close to him and said our secret word. A special thing we said to each other to express our love in a unique way."

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 09/09/2026

Seeing Reading Rainbow visit the set of TNG and Michael Dorn coming out of his trailer as Worf and loudly proclaiming, “OUT OF THE WAY I TAKE VERY LARGE STEPS!” is one of my favorite Trek memories. DS9 is my favorite. I like the new shows started with Discovery. I liked Picard. Keep Trek alive.

A 90’s laser grid graphic with pink cursive, mirror bold font, and a bright white finish to the phrase, “I Believe in a Star Trek future.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

I think this is a mixture of family from both New England and the Southwest, plus TV, and those couple of years in Florida that broke me of some Okie shit. But…some of these questions—“THE WOLF IS GIVING BIRTH?” Am I on a watchlist now? mydialect.us/quiz-standar...

Results for poster, showing he speaks like most people from the east and mid/southwest, and least like Great Lakes or PNW areas.

A question from the dialect quiz:

QUESTION 47 OF 60
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
sunshower
the wolf is giving birth
the devil is beating his wife
monkey's wedding
fox's wedding
pineapple rain
liquid sun
I have no term or expression for this
other

Question from dialect quiz:

QUESTION 52 OF 60
I ____ her lifeless body from the pool
dragged
drug
I use both interchangeably
other

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

And, finally, of course, fungus and a dramatic dolly zoom.

A fallen tree with white fungal shelves growing along its sides.

A straight path through arching trees that goes on into the unseen distance. Dead leaves litter the ground.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

I did not film my way in, I did not know what I was about to find. But here is my retreat back to linear space.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

The park is still green, but baking under relentless heat. We’ve had 20+ 100° days. This is supposed to be a marsh that connects to the small lake.

A view of an empty flood basin. Under normal weather and good rain, this is usually a foot deep with water. There is grass growing amongst stumps of trees felled by beavers.

An expanse of tall, wild grass. Under normal conditions, this would be marshy, with standing water.

Dry, cracked earth, where about a foot of water should be. This is the side of the marsh closest to the lake.

Opposite side of the expanse of grass, showing muddy shoreline to the lake and grass filling in the earth as it begins to dry.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

Proof I exist in meatspace, plus deer!

Average white guy—author J.D. Buffington—takes a selfie in front of a trail sign reading, “Green Dragon.” He wears a floppy fishing hat and a rainbow tie-dyed graphic tee with the vampire from the poster for Salem’s Lot and the word “CRACKER” in heavy metal font (in full it reads CRACKER BARREL, but is cut off).

A doe, a deer, a female deer, standing in a gully off the trail. She is looking right at the photographer. She is surrounded by various trees, vines, grasses and dead leaves,

The same deer, different angle, not as clear, she is in motion. Too the right of her in the photograph, a fawn blends in with the fallen foliage, its back to us, revealing its white spots on ruddy brown coat.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/09/2026

Took off early this morning to beat the heat and take a walk through nature at Mohawk park. Walked around for about 2 hours, racking up over 4 miles.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 03/09/2026

Pilotwings 64 is more gruesome than some fighting games.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 02/09/2026

Wednsday. Day 3 of trying to do nothing for R&R on a week off. T minus 2 days (9/5) until I turn 47. Now watching, for the first time ever, Fargo (1996), dr. The Coen Brothers.

The opening statement from Fargo (1996), which reads, “THIS IS A TRUE STORY.
The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987.
At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.
Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as It occurred.”

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 02/09/2026

Of course our current host of megaflora are all rad, redwoods, the giant Armillaria ostoyae—a single fungal organism in Oregon over 8k years old and covering 2k acres—but the beyond ancient Prototaxites are hella cool. Like fungus, but tall as trees and layered like lichen. Just, earthly dongs.

An artists rendition of Prototaxites. They grew layer by layer, looking like a cactus without spines or a palm tree with fronds. This image shows several grey/green towers in a marshy creek bed.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 31/08/2026

This lady was very unhappy about the car rides to and from, but fortunately we’re only about a mile from our vet. Clean bill of health. Good weight. Fully vaccinated. Home and sitting pretty. Now my vacation week begins in earnest (read: I ain’t doing shit and that’s the point).

An American short hair, black cat—it’s Nora!—sits on a kitchen table covered in cat things, sitting on a mouse shaped cut out with a grooming arch that she is sitting within. Her yellow/green eyes look up into camera.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 28/08/2026

No, it’s not this bright, it’s actually pretty dark and only a sliver at the top of the moon is lit as the bottom is becoming rusty, but the eclipse is happening!

A blurry phone photo of the moon under partial lunar eclipse, about 10:40pm CDT.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 22/08/2026

Oh, it’s an Aqua Teen joke.

A crossword board with the “words” “ HOOA, “BOOBS,” and “CARL” circled in red.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 18/08/2026

JB Smoove had some major Bugs Bunny energy as Leon.

JB Smoove as Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm, a black man wearing a blue durag and red sleeveless shirt. A white balding man, Larry, is seen from behind. Leon is captioned as saying “…the scent of—of fuck on their body.”

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 18/08/2026

I know everyone’s been patiently waiting, so, thank you—and please tip your monsters and hostess cakes—I present: Nora. #BlackCatAppreciationDay

An American short hair black cat—it’s Nora!—is standing front legs on a blue heating pad (it’s not on, she just likes the surface) on the photographer’s lap, back legs on the arm of a red recliner. She is meowing and exposing her bright pink tongue and stark white fangs. She wears a grey flea collar. A brown and black long-haired chihuahua-it’s Rasputin!—is wedged between photographer and the other arm of the chair, faced away, only the back of his head and ears visible. He lies in supplication to Ms. Nora Jones. So does the photographer.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 16/08/2026

So do you run around saying “hey!” a lot?

The Far Side by Gary Larson, a single panel comic of a “scientist” (you can tell, he has a lab coat and clipboard) is wearing a strange helmet as he walks through a neighborhood. He’s surrounded by dogs in yards, in the street, chasing a car, all yelling “hey” and only “hey.” The caption reads: Donning his new canine decoder, Professor Schwartzman becomes the first human being on Earth to hear what barking dogs are actually saying.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 13/08/2026

Paula Abdul. The Straight Up video. I had a few celebrity crushes (some less “conventional”), but I remember being jealous of Arseno Hall in the video. I was 9.

Paula Abdul in close-up to her face, black and white, from the video for Straight Up.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 11/08/2026

Second celebrity I’ve been blocked by. There is no ethical feeding art to LLM/mlm’s. I don’t care about your lawyers or disclaimers. I don’t care what the machine thinks about the thinking machine story, because the machine doesn’t think.

Screenshot of Bluesky post:

J. Michael Straczynski @straczynski.bsky.social
The standalone book of Harlan Ellison's I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM is taking preorders, with writing essays by Harlan, and since MOUTH was the first Al story, for fun we fed it into an Al system and asked for its opinion. The reply is fascinating.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 10/08/2026

Many salutations! 🖤🦖🦕

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 09/08/2026

I really appreciated your heralding “The End!” I have breakfast, watch a history show, read your newsletter, then journal, and from there go on about my Sunday. But today’s newsletter hit me pretty hard. A lot of my intrusive obstacles are GAD and :the world: but *I’m responsible for facing them.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 05/08/2026

As a member of the HWA, I must admit I don’t always read every newsletter, but seeing a pro-AI oped made it in? I started reading. I stopped where I highlighted in this screenshot.

Technology keeps changing, oh-so-rapidly these days. We went from screaming about having to pump our own gas to screaming about self-checkouts. (Following highlighted by poster) Back in the day, film studios were upset at the invention of home television sets, musicians were upset about electric guitars and synthesizers, filmmakers were upset about YouTube, visual artists were upset about photography, photographers were upset about Photoshop, and now writers are screaming about AI.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 04/08/2026

Dear friends, please copy and repost the below. It only took minutes for him to block me. I’m not trans. I have trans family and friends. For such an ally, he’s being very antagonist.

Ken Jennings on Bluesky blocking me after asking him to help with damage control he caused.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 03/08/2026

Transcription *might be a good use of an LLM, as it’s not creating anything, but they’re not using transcription services or programs which have existed for decades. Answers for problems that didn’t exist, only creating new problems. It hasn’t hit Star Trek levels of functionality.*

A post card reading:

THE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
Over 30% of physicians and APPs utilize Al
Ambient listening during encounters.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 02/08/2026

Uncanny X-Men #205. They started getting into what Weapon X did to Logan and other mutants (Lady Deathstrike is the villain and Logan is protecting one of the youngest mutants, part of the Power Pack team). My dad rolled it up and smacked a spider on the ceiling. It left a mark there for years.

Cover of Uncanny X-Men #205, May, 1986, featuring Wolverine seen laying down, head, still masked, upside down toward us, his feet away and at the top of the comic. He’s mostly bare-skinned, but attached to tubes and metal ligatures as if he’s in tortuous traction. The lighting is all pink and Logan does not look comfortable or brave.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 02/08/2026

Juxtaposition is the only good thing about social media. The natural flow of my timeline reveals Thiel’s real face. Put on the fucking glasses.

Screenshot of the Bluesky timeline where someone shared something about books and Peter Thiel, his face visible, followed by Brooke’s amazing drawing of what a fetus looks like under the skin.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 31/07/2026

I didn’t say I was a *good reader.

The “You know, I’m something of a scientist myself” meme from Spider-Man with Willem Dafoe as Norman Osbourne. The caption substitutes “scientist” with “writer” in this case.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 30/07/2026

Huge cold email that starts like they’re complimenting my book, yet, reveal they haven’t read the book at all in the first paragraph and of course devolves into a sales pitch about amping Amazon reviews. So, if you haven’t read In the House of In Between, it has a definitive answer and IS solved.

Screenshot of an email that reads:

What haunts the Backlund House remains unsolved

Hello J.D.,
I really enjoyed learning about the mystery behind In the House of In Between. What stood out most wasn't just the haunting, but how genuinely unresolved it stays, no violence, no death, no clear explanation across an entire century, and yet the Backlund House still delights and terrifies every guest who walks through it, from Phoebe Backlund's original golden age spiritualist visitors to Noah Benjamin's modern investigation with tomorrow's technology.
One detail that stayed with me was the simple, unsettling truth at the center of the book, that what or who haunts the property remains unsolved. That's exactly the kind of open question that pulls paranormal history readers in, a haunting with no tidy answer waiting at the end.
While researching your work, I noticed there is an opportunity to strengthen your online discoverability.
Since this book spans the full paranormal history of one house across generations of inhabitants and investigators, strengthening the review base and search visibility now makes it easier for readers searching for exactly this kind of layered haunted house story to find it.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 22/07/2026

Reminds me of the Larry Niven created Man-Kzin Wars series covers…

Cover for Man-Kzin Wars XI, featuring a humanoid lion like alien, a Kzin, with a sword in hand, and hovering (protectively) over a human holding a rifle.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 21/07/2026

This isn’t the Pacific, this is a bay near the airport in Anchorage which is well away from OCEAN, but I wanted to dip my toes in as close as I could get. I’ve enjoyed the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. I nearly slipped. Sometimes we all slip, @chiitan.love, but it’s never the end.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 16/07/2026

He was THERE. Marvel made a very serious and heartstring tugging event. I think they even made donations from sales? I could be wrong about that, but the art and stories were respectful.

A banner splash image of Spider-Man, from behind, staring at the ground level wreckage of the destruction following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 15/07/2026

Only human art and design work graces my books. It always will. bookshop.org/shop/jdbuffi...

Cover of short story collection, NOTHING BUT THE WILLOWS & OTHER THINGS THAT ARE NOT THERE by J.D. Buffington. The cover is a drawing on black paper of a willow looking like a mournful, yawning face, by Stina Patton

Cover for In the House of In Between. Black with a red-lit door. A shadow where no one is standing. Designed by Lane Faglie.

Cover of Fruitless Bodies by J.D. Buffington
Acrylic on canvas, a wash of orange, white, and black is centered in the middle of indistinct green foliage.
Original art by J.D. Buffington

41: An Autobiography. The entire cover is blank, however raw paper, off white and rough textured. The front cover features a simple black font of the title and author name. Designed by J.D. Buffington.

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J.D. Buffington @jdbuffington.com · 14/07/2026

Caravaggio, Bernini, McFarlane, Trevor Henderson

Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio
A young woman is gripping a man’s long hair as he lays in bed, in her other hand, she is cutting off his head with a sword and blood is spurting on the white pillow. He is in shock and pain. An old woman with a brown cloth looks on.

The Abduction of Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
A white marble statue depicts the abduction of Persephone by Hades, Cerberus stands watch. It is all very lifelike and un-exaggerated, especially where Hades’ hand grips Persephone’s thigh.
The statue is in a museum and surrounded by onlookers.

Spider-Man as drawn by Todd McFarlane, his suit is red and black and the eyes are very large and white. Spidey is in a contorted pose and surrounded by webs.

The Hugger, By Trevor Henderson
A photograph of a children’s playground at night with a bright overhead light illuminating a vaguely humanoid creature hovering in mid air with extremely long arms outstretched to its sides in a “hug” sign, its body is skeletal and nude.

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