iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Julia DeFranco

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

This week on the blog: a few thoughts on the Declaration of Independence for its 250th birthday, with particular attention to "every act which may define a Tyrant." acoup.blog/2026/07/04/c...

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

This is second hand, but my wilderness first aid teacher had a story about some German tourists hiking down into the Grand Canyon with no actual water. They had snow cones though, so I'm sure they were fine...

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Chris Vagasky @coweatherman.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Need to make sure @whysharksmatter.bsky.social’s new book becomes a NYT Bestseller bsky.app/profile/whys...

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

about alliteration and assonance and what it means to make art.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

because I have a book of poems by Robert Frost and decided to write one of them out and then was thinking about the poem, and about how poems change when you read them silently vs read them out loud vs memorize them, and got to interrupt my husband (working from home) and talk his ear off

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

many of the hobbies and recreational activities I used to enjoy are no longer available to me. And, at the same time, there are many activities that I can still do that are enjoyable and satisfying. My emotional range is not much different. I can still, for instance, get inordinately excited

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I'm not in fact getting up at dawn to go outside. Many days I don't get dressed until mid-afternoon. My ability to do paid work is more or less non-existent, my ability to do *volunteer* work is extremely limited, I don't do very much housework, my social life has significant restrictions,

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I would have to get across how life is simultaneously narrow and more limited, and also just life.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

III. Sickness I've had chronic fatigue syndrome for over a decade now, and mostly I don't talk about it (what is there to say? and how to talk about it without other people thinking I'm offering them a puzzle to solve?) but if I was going to explain what life is like with this illness,

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

That's a thing about being in nature and in solitude in nature and having a specific emotional experience that had to happen in that specific context. Anything else the poem might mean has to start from that understanding, attempting to express the inexpressible moment in time and space.)

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

you can't possibly accurately understand what he's trying to say about anything else. Sometimes you go outside around dawn and everything is quiet and empty and still and ... transcendent. And it doesn't stay. You're not going to get that same feeling at three in the afternoon.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

(As with a lot of Robert Frost, I'm not super opposed to looking for Big life-meaning type stuff in them, but I think you have to *start* with appreciating the poem as expressing a thing about nature and being in nature that's hard to express, and if you miss that thing

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

And of course, "dawn" and "down" and "day" alliterate, and they're all on the stressed syllables so it's just such an incredibly line phonetically. And right before the last line, which has no alliteration either, as if to emphasize that all goodness and beauty is gone.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I was going off about this with my husband, and he pointed out the incongruity of dawn going "down", and I think that does so much! The sense of things being wrong or off, the parallel with the fall of man evoked by Eden in the previous line.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

And then there's no assonance at all in the last line! Every other poem in the line has at least one repeated vowel sound. The last line is abandoned.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Anyways. It's a very fun poem to say out loud, and a very fun poem to memorize because the words are so consciously chosen. Even small words like the "so" in "but only so an hour", that could have been "for" except the "so" has the same vowel sound as "only".

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

and the -ly and early are joined by being in the same word. Huh.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

you know, just writing this out I think I got that wrong, I don't think "leaf" sounds connected to the start of the line because er and ee are similar, it's more likely to be because the -ly in early alliterates with leaf, and of course the er in early

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

has repeated er, uh, and ur sounds and all of those are really close to each other, and the er er of "her early" sounds similar to the ee of leaf...

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

recover since with that very word we suddenly switch to assonance, "her early". I don't know if there's a special word for it when poets use similar vowel sounds that aren't quite the same, but I do think it matters that "the sad, somewhat uncertain rustling of each purple curtain"

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

fundamentally artistic in nature. II. This poem This poem! It's got so much going on in such a short space. The alliteration of "her hardest hue to hold" (4/5 words in the line alliterating, 3/3 stressed syllables) and then the first word of the next line also alliterates! But there's no time to

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Does making the first "leaf" in "so leaf subsides to leaf" gold enhance the original intent of the poem (a special leaf turning into an ordinary leaf) or detract from it (a thing "subsiding" to itself should perhaps be jarring or confusing)? There is a need to make choices that are

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Obviously writing someone else's poem down is not the same as writing a poem. But it can *interpret* a poem in a way that's a little bit like playing someone else's musical composition. When some words are written in gold, not writing a word in gold emphasizes its non-golden-ness.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

An adaptation or a translation alters the original work, and a very skillful translation can do things with the new language that are consistent with the overall intent of the original work that cannot be expressed the same way in the first language.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

who have their own interpretations of tempo and dynamics and so on. A novel only really exists while being read, the characters and events imagined differently by each reader, often differently each time it's read and then imagined yet a different way in memory.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Excuse me while I go off a minute about art, this poem specifically, and living with a chronic illness. I. Art Art is creation, communication, deliberate choice -- and, often, collaboration. A composer writing a piece of music that gets played over and over again by different groups of musicians,

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Reposted by Julia DeFranco

Sarah E. Bond @sarahebond.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Since it is National Brother's Day and my son is spending it by taunting his sister about donuts, I will leave you with much more peaceful siblings, namely the Romano-Egyptian tondo of the Two Brothers (Antinoopolis, 117-138 CE). egyptianmuseumcairo.eg/artefacts/po...

Gallery number: 14 – Upper Floor

Period: Roman Period, reign of Hadrian, (c. AD 117–138)

Size: H. 24 cm, W. 38.5 cm

Place of discovery: Middle Egypt, el-Sheikh Abada, (Antinoe)

Material: Wood (unspecified), encaustic, pigment (unspecified)

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julie khaner @juliekhaner.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yemen, Liberia, and Belarus opposed the measure. all the best people 🙄

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Seattle Aquarium @seattleaquarium.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Sunday vibes with Sekiu ✌️😎

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Comics in the Spooky Age 🧛‍♂️🧟‍♀️🎃 @comicsinthega.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

I just donated to Trans Lifeline. The Trans community has been under attack for years now, it keeps getting worse, and they need help.

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Joshua Libling @jjl.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Stunning from @forbiddenfae.com

Bottom of a bee themed D20 showing flowers

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 18/05/2026

1. Incredible breaking news and a landmark ruling out of Colorado. The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that hospitals MUST not capitulate to Trump, and must continue offering trans youth care under state law. They found vague federal threats "speculative." Subscribe to support our journalism.

erininthemorning.com

Colorado Supreme Court Rules Hospitals Must Not Comply With Trump, Must Continue Offering Trans Youth Care

The ruling is a landmark ruling in keeping gender-affirming care legal and available in blue states.

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Reposted by Julia DeFranco

𝕳𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖔𝖗𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖙 🇨🇦🦇🥀🕸 @horrorculturist.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

The "dark, scary raven" cliché is ridiculous to me. Like crows, ravens are social, playful, and diurnal. They love sunbathing, FFS. In Native cosmologies, Raven is a creator, healer, and agent of transformation. Tired of living in darkness, he brought sunlight to the world. bsky.app/profile/lori...

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 10/05/2026

I really wish people aspiring to write understood what a competitive advantage being able to write without AI will be in the coming years.

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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 06/05/2026

COVER REVEAL 📚 How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by @jwashing.bsky.social Releasing July 21st wherever good books are sold (or borrowed). Available for pre-order now.

How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention by John Washington

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Kevin (Des) @jambodes.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Poverty and homelessness in society is a political choice.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

This was very enjoyable to listen to!

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Dr. U. Whitcher (U. is for Bear) @yarntheory.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

For folks who prefer the lede less buried: here are enthusiastic/philosophical reviews of Fonda Lee's Last Contract of Isako and Ann Leckie's Radiant Star.

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Peri Pakroo @peripak.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

"This couldn’t be a simpler scandal to sum up for the American people, if anyone cared to do so: This is Donald Trump ordering the looting of the public treasury for his own benefit."

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The Onion @theonion.com · 30/03/2026

Trump’s War On Iran: Myth Vs. Fact theonion.com/trumps-war-on-iran-myt…

MYTH: These strikes could lead to a long war.

FACT: It depends how many decades you consider “long.”

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

I don't know what SCOTUS will do on birthright citizenship case, it's anybody's guess. But if they endorse Trump's diktat, the only response is defiance. Outright, open defiance by the states. A decision not just erroneous but illegitimate, beyond their power, null and void from the day it's issued.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

And I would rather win elections than identify the right people to blame for losing them.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

(And it's much easier to get someone who wants to vote to vote, then to get someone who wants to not vote to change their mind.)

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Over being effective. Because people don't like being told what to do and do like arguing, and because arguing against an idea still spreads the idea, and the number of people who kinda sorta intend to vote but might not far outnumber the people who refuse to vote on principle.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

And the voting rant: Voting is awesome. GOTV (get out the vote) is good. Discourse about the effectiveness of voting and whether not voting makes someone the scum of the earth/personally responsible for the wrong person getting elected, is not GOTV and is in fact prioritizing being "right"

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

(There is also: sharing an idea to argue against it is a form of spreading the idea. Sometimes it's worth it, in order to spread the counterargument. Sometimes it is better to just make the case for the thing you want without reference to the competing perspective.)

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

(And yes, this thread is also an example of prioritizing being "right" over being effective. People gonna people, and I do not actually have the ability to stop people from discoursing about protest effectiveness, and it probably doesn't do that much harm. Which is why I'm only going to do it once.)

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Of feeling right on the Internet.

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Julia DeFranco @juliadefranco.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

But people do not like being told what to do and people do like to argue, and presenting this as a thing people can argue about means more people will argue it. It is sacrificing the desired outcome (more people at protests, more people thinking protesting is a worthwhile thing to do) for the cause

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