iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 13h

I had a half hour between drop-offs at my job, just racked the elderberry mead. It's so damn delicious already. If it weren't actively bubbling so much I would bottle it immediately. I can't believe I made something so good. I wish I could share with my fellow Hooklanders.

In a clear glass carboy with an all-over honeycomb pattern is a frothing bright pink-red liquid merrily bubbling with an airlock.

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Thomas S Brown @tomsbrown.bsky.social · 19h

Indeed. Right here, in fact. thomas-brown-1.sumupstore.com/products?cat...

Photo of Samhain cards and prints among pumpkin cups crochet pumpkins, seed pods and so on.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 18h

No, I don't know Tom Cox personally. Sure I repost his observations and beg everyone to try a novel (Please read Everything Will Swallow You) and sure I'd buy him a pint if he was in my local pub; he's a damn fine writer and he happens to frequent my only social media, lucky me.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Work is mostly awful, but I manage to find some cheerful treasures now and then.

Several old Whovian books and a few zines of Dr. Who fanclub stuff

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I grew a pumpkin! I had a spot where slugs had made carnage of another crop, and thought Eh, why not. What a garden rollercoaster; much drought but I had rainbarrel water, much rain but nothing got moldy. Four more days on this awful job. Then I'll do nothing but garden and write my Hookland novel.

Pale buff orange smallish pumpkin in the flattend, heavily wrinkled style.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Isn't it wonderful that you can love a song, completely forget about it, and the first chords take you immediately back to that moment in time when you played it over and over. Once upon a time I came from a northern town. Many hugs to you, @trollbreath.com

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Working on a fall themed mantel, I got into redoing it for the solstice and equinox and it makes me smile when I look up from reading.

A weird greenish brown textured wall with a reddish brown stone fireplace a black iron camp cooking pot, a wild looking mismatched pair of brooms, a really huge valve wrench, and a mantelpiece decorated with dried flowers, herbs, and hops, beeswax candles, two chalices, bells, fa jar of tiny keys.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I have worked 23 hours and I feel woozy

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I'm so overwhelmed by my world: by the news, by the harvest season, by my unfinished Hookland novel, by my current job at another hoarder house, by my own unfinished projects that make me anxious about my own hoarding tendencies. And here is my solution. m.youtube.com/watch?v=6LuK...

m.youtube.com

Norton Lecture 1: The River | Laurie Anderson: Spending the War Without You

YouTube video by Mahindra Humanities Center

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I bought Maria's divination cards for myself as a birthday gift. They are even more gorgeous in person, in a perfect box.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I love this guy. I loathe Facebook but occasionally there's a gem. www.facebook.com/share/r/1EKJ...

facebook.com

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This elderberry mead is a gorgeous color. I hope it tastes as good as it looks.

A large jar with an airlock attached is half full of viscous bright purplish pink fluid. It sits on a dark wood table in front of a window, waiting to be wrapped up against the light.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

If I was a Dungeons & Dragons mimic monster, I'd eschew the dungeons and hide out in a yard sale

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

One of the most endearing books I've read this interminable year. I needed to read something like this, and so do you if you're following me (maybe weed out some bot followers, eh?). Blackwell's has free shipping, Villager is the price of couple of beers with the same giddiness and no hangover.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Caught in a loop of working until I'm too tired to remember to refuse work that's too hard, because I need the nest egg. Then I feel drained and don't write well before bed and despair, can't sleep and scroll Bluesky and feel terrified by the world. Hookland and Willerby and Tom Cox are my respite.

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Willerby @welcometowillerby.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Forwards, A Willerby Story. A timeslip is coming. Jamal knows how to tell Roman from Anglo-Saxon, how to recognise his village before and after the Black Death. But this slip takes him forwards, much further forwards than he expected. willerby.substack.com/p/forward

Jamal always knew when a timeslip was on its way.

First, a vague feeling of dislocation – the nagging sense there was somewhere else he should be, something else he should be doing.

Next, sounds and smells just on the edge of his perception that disappeared the moment he noticed them.

Finally, instants of time distortion, sometimes slowing, so it lengthened and slurred the speech of whoever he happened to be talking to at the time, sometimes speeding up so that birds and clouds moved impossibly quickly across the sky.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Reading about Ebola, thinking about ancestors, Black Death, COVID, if you'd be next, politicians playing it down. I had a sepia toned dream I was digging graves one after the other. Not putting anything in them, just preparing. Woke to a dead quiet neighborhood; feels like my #Hookland novel.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

What a crap time to break my phone. At least my desktop is working fine. Got a new one coming Monday. Guess I'll not be doomscrolling.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Fucking nightmares again. Partly due to working on friend's hoarder house and partly because Dave is gone for weeks and partly the ghost of my former best friend (or who I thought she was) taunting me. Even four cats and the smell of drying herbs can't dispell her ugly spirit. Ugh.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'm working on another "hoarder" house, this one is going quickly for a change, at least so far. There's another in this family, but he won't be ready for a while yet; it's good that he's with me now so he gets a sense of trust in the process. I wish it were easier. I keep planning to retire.

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Muir Hands @muirhands.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I don't ask you for much; please amplify this brilliance. youtu.be/ufDfaHA6pek?...

youtu.be

Danielle Ponder - God of You (Official Video)

YouTube video by DaniellePonderVEVO

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I don't know Tom Cox personally but I can tell you with confidence he's a good person you won't regret supporting ten years from now, unlike a popular TERF I won't bother to name. His books are magical realism done with such care and love the characters could be your neighbors.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I woke abruptly before dawn and thought I'd see if I could get LotRO up on my new PC before work. Since it's been a good while, I scrolled through new features and saw the "AI companion." Felt sick as I closed the download. I used to love that game; I was proud to be a beta tester at one time.

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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Write the book you would like to see someone pull from a higgledy piggledy pile in a secondhand shop 63 years after your death and say, "This looks fucking weird. I think I will buy it for Joan

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Tricksy Treatstealer guarding my fabric scissors like a proper dear. #Catsofhookland #Hookland

A slightly obese calico sleeping with her foot draped over some intimidating antique scissors. She's actually preventing me from sewing, but I'll pretend she's concerned that they not be used on paper or whiskers.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Cool, I grew up in Maine and have lived many places since.

Mydialect standard map, showing where I'm likely from - has firm concentration in downeast Maine

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Today at work I met an 18 year old gecko! I didn't know they could live so long. Its person gives it a new environment every week to explore and food variety. It seems pretty active. Not sure how happiness is measured in gecko.

A white lizard with lots of brown spots moves through an earthy terrain with brown leaves and greenery.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Had a few minutes to spare and oiled my wooden spoons. Sometimes a simple moment of domesticity makes me glad to be alive.

A collection of wooden kitchen implements glowing on a granite countertop. On top is a beautifully carved spoon I bought in Romania. I used to have two, but I had to sell one to make rent one sad year. Most are ordinary leftovers from other people's downsizing. I love and use them all.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

On my day off I'm heading over to a young mother's house to help her with housework. I know her peripherally from my Buy Nothing network. She's in a deep ADHD overwhelm; I did her laundry last week while she read to the kids. For free. Just because. You could do that, too. For Dolly. For all of us.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

September is here, and I'm ready for battle

Middle-aged white woman with curly gray brown hair and gray eyes looking at the viewer with a bit of suspicion and a bit of humor

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Bob Fry @bobfry.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sound on!

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I am grateful for all the pictures of people's harvests on Bluesky. It's worth scrolling the Discovery to look at the honest pride people have about them, no matter how small.

Close up of chopped swiss chard stems on a wooden block with a shiny red plastic tomato timer in the background

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

All the broken chairs seem to find me. I wonder what the symbolism is...no, scratch that, I wonder what the *cheerful* symbolism is

A rather beat-up but structurally sound Kennedy rocker about to be refinished and recaned by me

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

1) Laurie Anderson 2) Cesaria Evora 3) Crowded House 4) Almighty Lumberjacks of Death 5) Oingo Boingo 6) Grateful Dead 7) Neville Brothers 8) Ida 9) Marshall Crenshaw 10) Boston Pops

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Willerby @welcometowillerby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Welcome to Willerby, a village in which we've learned to live with the weird and uncanny. We have a website. Over fifty free stories, to read or listen to, with original music, photos and art. Visit us today. Three good stories for your first journey in thread 👇🏻 www.welcometowillerby.co.uk

Screenshot of the top of the mobile version of our website. A lino cut print of cobblestone road and timbered cottages with tabs for read, listen and book

Screenshot of text from the linked homepage.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

@theswampwytch.bsky.social I think of you now whenever I water my little swamp-in-a-bottle (bottle found in a swampy creek bed already containing fern, etc.).

An odd shaped old clear glass bottle saying "Pertussin" on the side held at an angle so you can see the green life within. I've had it four years now, I just add water now and then. It lies on its side on a shelf in my kitchen.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Thank you fellow Hooklanders for cheering me up. I have cleaned up the mess and begun again. Emily Banting wouldn't give up her harvest to a single failure, and neither will I.

A square wooden cutting board with a large knife and the juice remaining from recently cut up tomatoes. A small brown bowl of red cherry tomatoes. A large round tray full of halved yellow pear tomatoes arranged in a concentric circle. Heart shaped silvery metal measuring cups. A half drunk purple mug of milky coffee that says "Let's Stay Home." A small bunch of garlic by a tangle of young leeks and two large brownish yellow onions. An orangey green squash that might be an inedible gourd. A metal bowl with ripe and unripe pear tomatoes. A single acorn to remind me to go harvest acorns.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

An entire tray of ruined, rotten tomatoes. I was so tired I forgot to plug in the dehydrator. I've been crying off and on all morning about it. Something has got to give, and right now it's my mental health. I try to take breaks, check in on Hookland, see the house and garden's beauty. So tired.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I really need to invest in Perrier Jouet for when IT happens. It's out of my budget but if it's my one big expenditure this year it'll be worth it.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Only $16.45 for stories that are the right length to enjoy during a lunch break and as memorable as your grandfather's good yarns. I've loaned out all my Tom Cox books. They're that good.

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Scott Santens @scottsantens.com · 29/08/2026

I finally got around to watching this video by @barryseconomics.bsky.social about UBI and it's superb. It feels like a video informed by multiple articles I've written, especially my rats in cages one. I'd go so far as to say it's among the best UBI videos ever made. A++. Watch and share widely.

youtu.be

Why The Rich Think The Poor Are Lazy

YouTube video by Barry's Economics

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Lacking grandchildren to appall, I think it is about time to sell a fun relic of my goth youth.

Chainmail bikini top that saw the inside of some great clubs in its day. I hope some young person enjoys it as much as I did.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Here's a fine example of why you should order a copy of Everything Will Swallow You. Because Blackwell's ships FREE and it's a novel you will be proud to say you read before the rest of America realized how good Tom's writing is.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I'm trying to read every book I own along with the siren-songs of the new. Next up, Ship of Theseus.

A book, its cover, a tomato shaped timer, old binoculars, a bottle of sparkly nailpolish, a jam jar of sharp colorful pencils, on a linen tablecloth with wooden placemats.

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Melancholy Hammer @melancholyhammer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I bit the bullet and ordered mine despite the tariff. Friends, it was worth it. It sits between Hookland Fragments Vol 1 and Tom Cox's Everything Will Swallow You.

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