iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Tim Bolton 🐿 | 🏹 Ranatuor of Meriadoc 💍 (He/Him) @timbolton.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🧙 2/ I've created a guide for attendees (and ppl curious about Oxford): "The Rangers Survival Guide to Oxonmoot 2026" which I can finally share here too! Rangers of the North & Mithlondrim Smials represent NW England (and northern Wales) - I am a member in both. drive.google.com/file/d/1KwyI...

Cover page for Arador featuring a 2018 photograph of the Eagle & Child Pub in Oxford showing the blue sign with the bird carrying a baby in a cloth and the name "The Eagle and Child" in fancy lettering on the front face of the pub. You can see windows and a chimney.

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Clare Moore @clarelmoore.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Big Readers!! Our guests presenter on Monday is none other than the fabulous @alas-not-me.bsky.social! Join us on Zoom as we continue our read through The Two Towers and hear from the author of Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring 💍

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Mercury Natis @mercuryreads.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

EXACTLY. We COULD be talking about the weird cognitive dissonance of seemingly believing in faerie and also being devout, or we could be talking about how the aesthetics of Catholicism (rather than Protestantism) influence his ideas of beauty, but no. god forbid we have fun.

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Clare Moore @clarelmoore.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Westmoot 2026’s theme is Hope and Eucatastrophe and we want your papers! Be sure to submit a proposal for our event in Minneapolis, May 22-24, 2026! www.tolkiensociety.org/events/westm...

tolkiensociety.org

Westmoot 2026

The first Westmoot was held from May 9th-11th in Kansas City, Missouri, at the National WWI Museum and Memorial. It featured a range of presentations, including talks, quizzes, lectures, workshops, pe...

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𝔾𝕆ℝ𝔸ℕ @gorangligovic.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Realized it’s been a while since I posted my Bronze Age Fellowship of the Ring so here the lads are again

Bronze Age Fellowship of the Ring, nine stout fellas of varying sizes.

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Tolkien Society @tolkiensociety.org · 08/12/2025

Westmoot returns in 2026! Our new annual event - Westmoot - returns to Minneapolis on May 22-24. Bookings are now open, and we've kept the price the same as 2025 to help keep costs down. Look out for more info, including guests and more! Follow @westmoot.org www.tolkiensociety.org/events/westm...

tolkiensociety.org

Westmoot 2026

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Norfolk Record Office @norfolkro.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

A beautifully illuminated example of a #EYAMedieval document from our collection. This is a Psalter for Sacrum Use from the 14th century. #ExploreYourArchive #ExploreYourArchives #illuminatedmanuscripts

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Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 26/11/2025

A note from our CEO Andy Hunter expressing our gratitude for our extended book family and stressing the importance of supporting independent bookstores this holiday season and beyond 💜

Image reads: A Thanksgiving note from Bookshop.org CEO and founder Andy Hunter

Image reads: “Did you know that Black Friday got its name because it helps small businesses go from “in the red” (losing money) to “in the black” (solvent)? It’s no exaggeration that a strong holiday season is necessary for most local bookstores’ survival. And their survival is critical to us as readers, writers, and book lovers. Without booksellers’ passion and advocacy, our literary culture would fade fast.

Image reads: This holiday is about being thankful and connecting with the humans you care about: your family, whether they’re biological or chosen. We are thankful for our extended book family—the authors, booksellers, and readers—and we’re fighting for them. Please fight for them, too, by choosing to support local independent bookstores this holiday season. We are all part of the same chosen family—built of readers who are trying to preserve a human-centered future with a beloved bookstore in every town.

Image reads: Your purchase on Bookshop.org supports more than 2,500 independent bookstores (90% of the bookstores in the U.S.). They are thankful for you, too.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/11/2025

I quit the former Twitter two years ago this week, and I am here to tell you that my online life got a lot better for having left it. In two years I've not been tempted to go back, and I haven't felt any penalty in either career or community for not being there. It's nice to be here and not there.

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Queer Lodgings: A Tolkien Podcast @queerlodgings.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

We're super excited to share that "Queer Approaches to Tolkien" will be available in paperback on Nov 28th (less than 2 weeks from now!), and in digital format a few weeks afterwards. We can't wait to check this out!! robinareid.substack.com/p/queer-appr...

robinareid.substack.com

Queer Approaches to Tolkien: Essays on the Many Paths to Middle-earth

Publication date: November 28, 2025!

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

This clearly shouldn't be my first response, but I just find myself so remarkably annoyed not by the fact that my field is being co-opted by the worst people, but that it is being co-opted by the dumbest people, just the thickest, most arrogantly superficial 'trousered apes' imaginable.

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Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

look I know being an engaged citizen IS the work of democracy but it is also the work of elected officials not to create situations where everyone has to be mobilized all the time to prevent them from allowing some kind of Dickensian horror on a Sunday night while you're in between loads of laundry

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I said abolish and I fucking meant it @astridoverthere.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

Screenshot of the top of a Bsky feed, with a red circle around the hamburger menu in the top left.

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Have been feeling sad so I reread Persuasion. Am not sure that was the right call. Now feeling sad and yearning. Also, the age gap between me and Anne Elliot is increasing rapidly lmao

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Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 03/11/2025

...and less than 24 hours later Condé Nast has fired Lex and the rest of the Teen Vogue political desk, even as stories like this were bringing huge numbers of readers to the site

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The Prancing Pony Podcast @prancingponypod.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Our Call for Papers for the 2025 PPP Moot happening December 18-21 is here, as well as one for activities and entertainments! And if you’re wondering more about this event, check out our website for details, registration and more: theprancingponypodcast.com/moot/

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Tolkien Society @tolkiensociety.org · 28/10/2025

Have you heard about The Bovadium Fragments, the new #Tolkien book published three weeks ago (and the last to be edited by Christopher Tolkien)? The Fragments are a satire on the impact of cars, and highlight again Tolkien's concern for the environment. www.tolkiensociety.org/2025/06/new-...

tolkiensociety.org

New Tolkien book – <em>The Bovadium Fragments</em> – is satire on industrialisation

HarperCollins has announced that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Bovadium Fragments will be released on 9 October 2025.

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Sean T. Collins @seantcollins.com · 29/10/2025

I believe people who misuse Tolkien to advance fascism should have a brief but life-changing encounter with World War II–era Christopher Lee

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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Let’s be real: approximately ten seconds after you told Tolkien that Catholics couldn’t go to Mass because they were afraid of being disappeared by agents of the government, he’d be out there protesting.

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Mercury Natis @mercuryreads.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Tolkien, on the record, hated Nazis, hated Tyrants, hated Government Control & Surveillance, hated bullies, and especially hated bullies who enact violence on innocent people while trying to obfuscate that it's all about power.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

If you need to explain to an idiot why Tolkien would have despised these goons, I have already grabbed a picture of the relevant passage (and I doubt I was the first):

An image of a passage from the Return of the King, in which Robin the Hobbit Shirriff explains that 'the Chief' (Saruman) has coopted the shirriffs and uses them to lock up or beat people who protest is tyranny - and he always wants more shirriffs, "with all these new rules."

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Autumn views from the Blue Ridge Mountains this week. Couldn't have asked for better weather.

Otter Falls, a waterfall surrounded by rocky cliffs and autumn trees, with a bright blue sky

Sunset from the top of Grandmother Mountain, with scrubby mountain plants in shades of green, red, and orange

Grandfather Mountain as viewed from Rough Ridge on the Tanawha trail, with a blue sky with fluffy white clouds, and autumn vegetation in bright red, green, and brown

Natural stone carved into stairs up a steep path in Tanawha trail, surrounded by green rhododendrons and taller bare trees

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ClavdiaMinor @clavdiaminor.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

The Latin adj. “pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum” and the Ancient Greek adj. “καλός, καλός, καλή, καλόν” should just be translated as “beautiful”regardless of gender (I.e. don’t switch to “handsome” for masc. (or n.) nouns. The Grks and Romans used a single term; we shouldn’t code switch.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

"as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen [=Muslims]" between this and Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, the framers really went out of their way to say, "No, really, we mean to protect *all* religions."

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Will Sherwood @willsherwood.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Delighted to share that my (co-)edited volumes 'Tolkien and the Gothic' and 'The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien' have been reviewed for the Journal of Inkling Studies! www.euppublishing.com/toc/ink/15/2

euppublishing.com

Edinburgh University Press Journals - Table of Contents - ink: Vol 15, No 2

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I've gone back and forth a lot on whether it's wise to take or share protest photos, but I got a lot of requests to take pictures of my sign this weekend, so I did end up taking one myself. I need a little thematic levity to maintain the last vestiges of my sanity right now.

Protest sign with a picture of Aragorn in his crown, with Elvish-style text reading, "the only king I will accept"

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I have yeeted the LMS my uni has paid for and which you were probably thinking helps you teach Forgive me it was surveillant so mid and so broke

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Aidan Wachter @aidanwachter.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Some good thinking that looks beyond the optics and frames the past weekend a bit outside of what I have seen elsewhere. democracyamericana.com/posts/a40ac6...

democracyamericana.com

America As No-Longer-Democracy and Not-Yet-Dictatorship

Where does the country stand after the largest day of protest in U.S. history? Putting “No Kings” in perspective

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Hey, quick question: what the fuck?

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Lotta folks here at No Kings, Orange County NC. Lots of American flags, a fellow in an inflatable dino costume asking everyone if they've read the Declaration of Independence and handing out copies. No kings in North Carolina.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education. We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

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John Garth @johngarthwriter.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

I've identified the manuscript #Tolkien used for his landmark 1939 lecture On Fairy-stories – previously thought lost. See my featured article, available online, in the latest issue of the Journal of Inklings Studies! www.euppublishing.com/journal/ink

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Still trying to figure out the correct ratio of "avoiding social media for my own well-being" and "not disconnecting from the parts of the internet that keep me informed about the world".

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Mercury Natis @mercuryreads.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Anyone who knows me knows that I get angry whenever anyone calls Tolkien a Victorian author (weirdly common!). So it's been hilarious going through primary source student accounts of the 1910s-1920s where they're consistently are like UGH THE VICTORIANS OF YORE, WE ARE NOT THEM, THANKFULLY.

media.tenor.com

a woman with her eyes closed says that 's correct on a netflix advertisement

ALT: a woman with her eyes closed says that 's correct on a netflix advertisement

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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 27/08/2025

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

It's gotcha day for this strapping young lad who has somehow been living with me for 8 years now. My soulmate cat. Woke up this morning to him curling up with me and purring himself to sleep 😭🐈‍⬛💚

A short-haired black cat with yellow eyes and a pink name tag sitting on a sunflower blanket

A black cat holding a gray toy mouse with a red bowtie

A black kitten lying on his back, pawing at a yellow catnip pillow toy

A young woman dressed like Evie from The Mummy, holding up a black cat who is mid-meow

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Abby @arobertswrites.com · 11/07/2025

Frodo at the end of LotR

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Thorn Mooney @thornthewitch.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

I wrote a book for your mom! And for your UU minister! And for your neighbor! Get virtually anyone to leave you alone about being a witch! Let me deal with them! I use my most professional soothing voice! #witchsky bookshop.org/p/books/witc...

bookshop.org

Witches Among Us: Understanding Contemporary Witchcraft and Wicca

Understanding Contemporary Witchcraft and Wicca

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

I haven't seen this since it came out, which was before I read the Carpenter bio or Letters. I'm looking forward to seeing it again as a moderately better-informed person 🤓

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Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 08/07/2025

You are cordially invited to our Anti-Prime Sale, where every purchase will financially support bookstores, NOT billionaires 🥳

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Libro.fm @libro.fm · 09/07/2025

We're running a Love Your Indie Sale all month, with 2,000+ audiobooks—because we really, really do love your indie. And every purchase supports them, helping their small business and your community. ⁠ You don't have to be a member to shop the sale, but members do take an additional 30% off 👀

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

The thing is, by refusing to truly engage with the public and to support/value scholars who do, we cede the public understanding of history to these 'history buffs,' - and at the same time, contribute to the decline of our field, as the public doesn't know what we *do* that they should pay for.

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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Every time you say “fuck the south and red states they deserve all the pain they’re getting” you’re literally abandoning all the marginalized voters you pretend to care about when you act all concerned about gerrymandering and voter suppression. Marginalized people exist everywhere.

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Kaley 🍂 Midhiel @midhiel.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

As if simply *being* in Orlando in July wasn't bad enough, the weather (vaguely gross and stormy) keeps delaying my flight home over and over again, even when we were finally in the middle of boarding. My work obligations are finished, I haven't slept, let me go hoooome

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