iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Idle Tuesday thought: Techbros thinking to hasten the Singularity find they are hastening the Bulterian Jihad instead

Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

#portfolioDay It's all generative art (generated by programs made by a human). Inspiration from nature, math, writing #XQuery #SVG #HumanArt #CreativeCoding

Asemic writing, perhaps, full of swoops and swirls and dots, An embossed appearance in bronze and silver. A cross between an Arabic and an alien spider vibe.

A still life of pomegranates in hexagons of various sizes and shades of grey. Formed by repeatedly breaking down an image, subdividing the areas with greatest variation in brightness and mapping brightness levels to a gradient (here a grey scale gradient).

Abstract in bright colours. There are swirling black lines dripping ink over a burnt orange background. Where the loops intersect, some of the regions are coloured: various blues, yellow, a smidge of grey.

A study in textures. It looks like leaves in the rain. Shades of grey against a dark background, somewhat grainy appearance. Colophon: a random shape iterated with various shifts and rescalings and opacities.

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Claus @wrench.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

Amazing little website: They catalog crawling bots, analyse them, and, my favorite, let users interact with the bots by leaving files to be crawled on. A mix of automated data analysis and handcrafted commentary. The site's design is also very pretty. A small downside is that there seems to be […]

wandering.shop

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

#WordWeavers 10/11: Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters. From Crystal Falls (coming soon!) a sci-fi murder mystery (text in alt)

Text reads:
The sun caught the tops of Mount Eos first. Bright flags of brilliance bloomed above them, then steadily crept down from the heights. It was not a monolith, but formed a rank of craggy pillars with wild buttresses and columns of twisted stone. In the rosy light it looked like a fairy castle, ethereal and unreal. Crystals sparkled across the turrets and towers, flashing as the light descended and caught a new set. No. *This* was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Zee had done well to find this place, convince him to come. It felt healing. Soothing. A good place to rest. To stop. He felt an easing in his chest, a tightness loosening that he hadn't even known was there.

Then the light hit the plateau, and Cantor realized that no, no, he hadn't seen anything beautiful before at all. In a sudden flush of pink and red, the whole plateau burst into flame. Light bloomed all around them. It was like a flower opening, no, a gentle smile on a lover's face, the first sip of coffee in the morning, a warm zephyr making flowers nod across a meadow. No. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt as if a hand had reached into his chest and squeezed, a goddess had whispered into his ear. *Look at this.* Mount Eos indeed. Goddess of dawn. He felt breathless.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

In today's adventure, we learn that AT&T can do things fast when they want to. (Backstory: the multi-week saga to get my landline fixed. Twice.) Last Thursday: they finish installing fiber on this hill Wednesday: the hey let's schedule a fiber upgrade door-knocker Friday: it's done I am still […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

An early #Caturday cat trifecta (I suppose I should say, photographer is me for all these.)

A cat sits in a shelter in a catio. The shelter has an entrance in the shape of a cat. A cartoonish black cat figure interweaves through the photograph, as if it were part of the catio. A turducken of cats, if you will.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Homage to The Blank Signature An experiment with image slicing an interleaving. You would not believe the trouble I had to go through to get the strips to abut without gaps. No, starting one strip where the last ended was not good enough.

A cartoonish black cat with green eyes peers our in a birch forest, interweaving through the trees.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

#WordWeavers Oct 7: Share a line of dialogue that tells us everything we need to know about a character's personality. From Cantata Deeps, Anselm explains his selling technique.

Text reads:
Anselm chuckled. "Ah, my lad, my lad. What is truth, hey?" In response to Cello's frown, he added in a more serious tone. "Something destroyed the freighter. Was it a gas leak? Maybe. Was the captain old and crusty and set in his ways? Most likely. Most of them are." A little smile directed towards Pettrie. "Did I ever claim my story had anything to do with those sensors? I did not. The young man asked and I raised my eyebrows and glanced towards them, and they all assumed that it did. People want to believe, lad. They want to think the universe is filled with tidy narratives, to feel the breath of the divine, and touch wonders inexplicable."

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 4: How isolated are your characters in your current WIP? Physically: They're stuck half-way up a mountain in an electrical blackout zone in a storm. And the bodies are piling up. Mentally: Cantor Mason screwed up his last case very messily, very publicly, and in a […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

#WordWeavers Oct 3: Share a line from your WIP that foreshadows something important without giving it away. The monk had his hand on the man's chest and mumbled, apparently offering prayers for the departed. He stood, finally, re-straightening the boshiya to keep his face properly covered […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

#PennedPossibilities 1146: Does romance ever feature in your work? Sure, kinda. Cantata Deeps is one giant love story. But it is the love between Sonata and her brothers and between Pettrie and his partner Anselm that interests me more. Sonata feeding broth to her dying brother. Pettrie […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

#ScribesAndMakers Oct. 3: Is there a common thread throughout your creative work People broken in various ways, stumbling through it all, relationships carrying the day My fav scenes to write are moments of quiet intimacy, not in the romance/sex sense, just people interacting with care and […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

Oh joy, the bots have moved on from just repeatedly downloading every file they can to actively trying to attack my website. Joke's on you, bots, I write my HTML by hand, so hacking on wordpress APIs ain't gonna get you *jack*

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 2: Do you have plans for your next work yet? How Deep the Light of Stolen Suns just came out a couple days ago Next up is a sci-fi murder mystery, first draft just about done I already know that we'll see more of investigator Cantor Mason After that? The back-story of […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

The modern dilemma: Without my adblock/VPN filtering, the modern web is unusably inundated with crap With my adblock/VPN filtering, the modern web is unusably inudated with anti-bot roadblocks *Old woman shakes fist at computer

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Madness, poetry, love, and rage. Solae, constructed to be the Jade Emperor's spy, flies out on a secret extended mission. Between command directives that bind them, assassins, traitors, and the mind- and body-stealing Thanarchs, they struggle to control […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The cover of the novel "How Deep the Light of Stolen Suns" by Mary Holstege. The image is dominated by a bright halo of golden light. Clumps of stars fall towards it, made dark by its brightness. Just coming into frame on the left is the silhouette of a spaceship. It has a large bulb at the front and a long thin tail. There are a series of delicate petals perpendicular to the shaft, fanned out into a flower or star.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Taps sign, again. Sighs. It doesn't matter how eye-popping the fine (or points-docking) is, it is never close to the amount of the ill-gotten gains. This is a post about Man City

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

#PennedPossibilities 1139: Do you have a ritual before you sit down to write? Yeah, I listen to my brain yammer at me for half the night, grab a cub of coffee and say ALL RIGHT, I'LL TYPE, YOU MONSTER

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

This is to signify that Blotrz has passed his plasma blaster markmanship test in the Centauran Fleet.

It's alien writing, that's what it is. Spidery loops and whorls and flourishes and dots in dense clusters across the page. Old gold and pinkish red embossed on a maroon background. It is Blortz's certificate, certainly, and they are most proud of it.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

#GenerativeArt interlude WIP: so not the vibe I was aiming at I set a parameter hilariously wrong, but I kinda like it, so I rolled with it #SVG #XQuery #CreativeCoding #HumanArt

Spidery looping clusters of writing. Is it writing? Lines of text? They almost look like lines of text, but with large gaps. There are looping strokes, and dots and little marks. Arabic? No. Not Arabic. Something stranger. Eerie. Alien. Green and yellow. Does the colour signify?

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

#PennedPossibilities 1138: Tell us about a time your MC forged their own path In Keeper of Maps, Jali literally (yes literally literally) forges her own paths several times It's kind of a Map Maker's whole thing

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

#WordWeavers 9/25 Do illicit drugs or alcohol play a role in your story? Belle Epoch series, certainly Dust is a kind of meta-addictor, that addicts you to some specific sensation related to your initial experience of it Pinkie is an addict, and the Atraxians dose Renny with Dust when they […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

#GenerativeArt interlude Mountains of madness A quick sketch, using simple geometry and bold colours #XQuery #SVG #CreativeCoding #HumanArt

A teal sky and and orange plain covered with sharp peaks, brilliantly lit (white, pale yellow) on the right face, cross-hatched red shadows on the back face. A pale sun shines high in the sky.

It is very simplistic, childish even, and yet even so there is something evocative about it. We're in the desert southwest, facing a long hot day of hiking.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

#ScribesAndMakers 9/22 Promotion day Releasing in a week: How Deep the Light of Stolen Suns Madness, poetry, love, and rage. It's a bit of an insane ride. Adventure. Love. Clones. Artificial people. Mind-and body- stealing space pirates. Poems. Lots and […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

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Reposted by Mary Holstege

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The future of the human mathematician anakedrhymejam.substack.com/p/the-future-o… #AI #math (No easy answers. An interesting read)

While some of the work is tedious and exhausting, a lot of the work is fun. It's fun to sit with a stack of paper and stare off into the distance trying to solve a problem.
To scribble some notes, day after day, until the pieces start to come together. To meet with a colleague and hash out our ideas and approaches and fill a blackboard with pictures and formulas and sometimes even a theorem and proof. Even the writing and proofreading is its own kind of Type II fun: the rhythm of the detail-oriented work, the realization of a missing step that has to be filled in, the satisfaction of a paper brought to near perfection.
Now there is ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude (and Kimi and Grok) and we're eyeing them uncomfortably, wondering if we want to bring them into the fun, and whether there will be any fun left for us if

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

How bad is Levi Stadium as a soccer venue? Bad enough that even though I have the fancy ass tickets and the fancy ass parking pass to go with it as part of my Quakes season ticket package, I sold them at a loss and will watch today's game from my couch. I regret nothing.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

#WordWeavers Sept 17: By the end of your story, how many injuries has your MC had? Cantata Deeps: Sonata has been stunned (several times), whacked with a baton across the head, and the knee, partially strangled, had her shoulder kicked in, and been smashed about in a tumbling escape pod. All […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

Separated scan lines probe for values above a certain cut-off. We remove or consolidate shorter segments, colouring by the start points. Hilarity ensues.

Here the palette is tropical, aqua, red, orange, and the pale of Caribbean water. The background runs through aslant them from the darker blue to the paler with the reds and oranges in between. There are a series of horizonal lines, mostly long dark blue, but for a few thin bands to the right and in an arc at the top, where tiny fragments of lines in red and orange cluster. Ribbons turning in the warm ocean breezes. A ballerina en pointe. The trailing leg and tail of an antelope.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

It begins with a fractal noise field, based on a different fractal noise field for the generators Dark ripples

Silver and black ripples over a slanting grey gradient, lighter in the top-left corner, darkening to the lower-right. The ripples are formed from arcing lines of varying lengths, creating a churning series of waves of froth and deep puddles.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

RE: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/11725903… This, entirely. Truth. Said the woman who was in those CS programs, those companies, those pitch meetings

hachyderm.io

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

#WordWeavers 11. What does your MC believe about themselves at the beginning of the story that turns out to be completely wrong? Cantor is convinced he's washed up and useless as an investigator Four murders later...?

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 9/9: What's your standard operating font, size, format? Or do you not have a standard? For writing, FIRA Code 13pt. Plain old text. One paragraph per wrapped line. For review/editing Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono or Liberation Serif 12pt, or if I want to shake things up a bit […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026

#WordWeavers Sept 7: Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake. From How Deep the Light of Stolen Suns. Solae learns the hard way that they should have been more careful about their opsec with the Thanarchs around: "What's that?" There was a small […]

mastodon.social

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026

#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree? Cantor Mason "Nothing, absolutely nothing. Leave me alone, Zee." "Observation, perseverance, empathy, organizing a mess of facts. You know, investigating. Don't let one little setback […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

I accidentally typed #SilentSinday instead of #SilentSunday and now I want to make that I thing How are you spending your #SilentSinday, eh? Me, I'm murdering another immortal in my WIP #writing

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

#WritersCoffeeCLub 4th of September: If you work digitally, what application do you use? Writing: Emacs on my Linux desktop. I author to markdown and use pandoc to generate DOCX, PDF, and EPUB. Editing: I use the formatted PDF on my Android tablet, using FoxIt PDF editor to scribble red pen […]

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

@zeff77.bsky.social Cleaned up some other issues for me, so thanks for that. Eventually, after several restarts, I managed to make it through.

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Mary Holstege @mathling.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

Some parameters create distinct patterning, like the skin of a reptile or waves in the sand /Fin

Loops of coloured motes, pink and pale cream over a black background. The motes gather into two knotted fat loops. Within the loops you see waves of motes, overlapping, along the knot ends, little triangular cascades, snakeskin.

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