iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

One of the things to come from GamerGate was the gamification of torturing real, live women...hounding them out of their homes, making them look over their shoulders for years. It was treated as a joke, nbd, the work of a few bad apples--as all terrorism against women is--& that failure leads here.

3242471133

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A truly heinous man has doxxed the Cornell victim on X and the comments are predictably vile. Based on countless interviews I’ve done with survivors, the trauma they are subjected to for coming forward is oftentimes even worse than the initial trauma they experienced. There is no real justice system

12671681376

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Finished (for now) drafting the current verse novelette. A real unwieldy beast of a story spanning 800 years of future history. 6 poetry forms this time. Unexpectedly indebted to a lot of weird fiction conceits. Gonna let it rest for a month or so and write some smaller stuff.

110

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Watching The Hunt for Red October for the first time, and while it’s a jingoistic Reagan era relic, it’s a beautifully shot and acted one Alec Baldwin is a surprisingly good Jack Ryan

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

They should invent a society where your life and happiness aren’t dictated by your contributions to the reproduction of capital

010

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Santiago Mayer @santiagomayer.com · 29/09/2026

Hey hot take but I actually don’t give a fuck if expelling a rapist from school “ruins his future”

385135842363

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you like this 2025 poem, where a far-future revolutionary workers’ state uses alliterative poetry as a vehicle for political discourse, wait till the next all-speculative issue of Forgotten Ground Regained! I have two poems in it, along with a lot of other terrific alliterative poetry!

044

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Paul Deane @rhunedhel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The next issue of Forgotten Ground Regained is going to be on the theme "Speculative Visions" -- i.e., poems that qualify as Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror While you're waiting for it, here's an SF poem I recently published: alliteration.net/poetry/knot-... #alliterative #scifi #poetry #poem

alliteration.net

Knot Loosener Memorial Disputation with Gas Giant

SF Poem in alliterative verse by Michael Hessel-Mial, attributed to "Cultivated Fortune, ca. 4,000,000 hours past"

042

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

They should do a trailer with a repeated deep horn blast interspersed with echoing samples of “Spoonful of Sugar”

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Thesis: Animorphs spends a lot of time looking things from the predator animal POV as an analog for humans in a universe of multiple sentient species. But rather than a “survival of the fittest” mentality, its philosophy of life is affirming, then overcoming one’s flaws to better live with others.

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I’m going to write something longer about invented poetry forms, but this meter I’m working with has me thinking: it’s not just about finding the natural cadence within the form, but letting the form reshape your language too

051

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It’s funny, I have a novelette draft about robot sentience, but it is spiritually opposed to everything these AI CEOs and rationalist cults are claiming about AI. I need to add a part where the main character looks at the camera and says “This is actually about animal and plant intelligence, reader”

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What if the elder gods were just teaching us historical materialism, and that’s what made it scary

110

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Lynne Sargent @lynnesargent.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

your land is one of play we layer you, heroines and fiddles there's something about the combination the flavour of purple and the sky I would carry you in my pocket; what a pleasure has the earth

141

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Extract from a 2025 poem published in @stateofmatter.bsky.social . “Transmission to Gravity” recreates Percy Shelley’s “Ode to Liberty,” its wonky history and its own enlightenment-inflected commitment to fighting oppression, in a far-future setting & invented form. stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-c...

Title header: Four Poems from The Covenant Database of Recorded Verse

Poem extract:

Long ago all was dust, fallow. Along
Came planets and people fully stranded, aflame
For pointless war, anointer
Of temporary weight, fate prepared for end of
Life. Before space flight, waste scored the sky,
All raged against all, and what they call
Weight no one saw; chaos alone reigned.
Yet gravity was not trapped; modestly it had set
Eyes for new ways, a truer sight:
Infrared, releasing secrets of planets,
That terraforming for carbon or water can
Be shared in equal weight, the
Wild harmony as yet unrealized.

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Master and Commander really was that good! I thought you all were just nostalgia rewatching! I expected “Gladiator with boats” but got a truly excellent nautical adventure yarn

010

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One weird culture thing about Minnesota, and a lot of Democrat stronghold places, is people I meet are pathologically afraid of anything rural, “Southern,” or “white trash.” Living in the south totally cured me of it, and now up here people are weirded out that I listen to country or eat spam lol

110

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is going to sound insane but I think, for whatever reason, there is a quiet coordinated campaign to persuade us not to rinse our dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Totally benign advice, but having seen coordinated messaging in the wild, it looks like that’s happening. But if so why?

100

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

James Crane @jamescrane.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I do think the history of slave revolts, peasant uprisings, proletarian insurrections, inmates seizing their asylums at once gives the lie to & realizes the truth of all the utopias of the philosophers since Confucius & Plato, & puts them to shame. Some of us are still orthodox communists, you know.

0223

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

R.B. Lemberg. Yes, still in Kansas @rblemberg.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Mutual aid alert. Siobhán Kirchstein, whom I've known for many years, is a trans woman who works as a janitor at KU and has been targeted for using a bathroom. Her case has been profiled in many venues, including by M. Gessen at the NYT. I've talked to her at length recently.

14845

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In very “wow, my students are really a different generation” news, I just read a reflection where a student described stopping using YouTube due to their declining attention span, then using YouTube video essays to build it up again. Very self-aware media use from a very different POV than myself!

010

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Tom Marcinko @tommarcinko.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I can’t tell you all how excited I am to have this story in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social

9479

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Strange Horizons @strangehorizons.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Iyá Mi / My Mothers by Oluwafemi Aderinola "Yes, we will breathe in your lungs when bullets fly. Yes, we will turn your enemies’ roads to crooked thorns." Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

0107

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The thing I’m writing right now has many audiences, but one of them is whomever would be most excited to know that there’s a rough analog of the National Miners Union in it

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I like it when in a movie, the bad guy’s little goons say “What the—?!” during an ambush by the good guys

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

K.A. Applegate can really nail a cold open. One minute you’re morphing as a parrot to embarass the Rainforest Cafe, next minute your dog robot friend is telling you about how your evil alien empress mom is doing a secret shark soldier program in the middle of the ocean

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I’m kind of confused by how people talk about this particular song, and there seems to be a lot of projection going on about the lives and political beliefs of remote, mysterious median Americans. But like, idk my wife and I are socialists who listen to a lot of country music, including this song!

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It took a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to publish these shorter sci fi poems, but I understand the pathway better now. Now that I’m writing these longer hybrid narrative works (which I have been calling “verse novelettes” in my head) I feel like the rules are out the window.

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I will not vote for Newsom if he is the presidential nominee in 2028.

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

One of my favorite parts of “To Locked Feathers,” which came out in Strange Horizons last week. It’s “femme fatale visits the detective with a mysterious case,” but this femme fatale can shift gender at will, and both of them are deities! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A lot of my sci fi worldbuilding names are really florid but I have one planet called “Gas Giant”

010

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Watching Jerry Maguire for the first time, which measured against the history of cinema is just pretty good, but compared to the the streaming era seems like this mind blowing experimental study for having such techniques as decent lighting, longer shots, and dialogue not written by Joss Whedon

120

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

As of today I’m 39! Last year of my 30s!

110

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

One thing I like about old style Marxist writing is how 80% of the time it’s extremely dry, tedious analysis then 20% of the time it’s the rhetorical equivalent of muppet Animal going crazy on the drums

120

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

Strange Horizons @strangehorizons.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

To Locked Feathers by Michael Hessel-Mial "vexing the other techs by peering into colliding particles, genetic codes, finding and exposing the doings of nonmortal ways for the benefit of humans." Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

084

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The answer is of course Lord of the Rings. Liking it doesn’t make you conservative (how could I not love it) but it’s right there!

053

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Saw Backrooms, which was alternately pretty cool and pretty silly. I don’t think the creators had enough of a handle on what to actually do with the spooky places, and seemed to chuck in weird scary guys to make up for it. Part House of Leaves part Stranger Things, but too much of the latter

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“With love, Rubbed Elm checked the fittings on their filter masks, then with swinging force yanked the post fittings from the ground, the sheep ambling off, likely to perish after a thousand hours’ exposure. The lowly Rubbed Elm murmured slurred chants of grief.” strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

strangehorizons.com

To Locked Feathers

Locked Feathers discharged two pulse-beams into the hearts of Shining Director and Fingertip Deluge, killing the patron of stars and the patron of cell division

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I saw an IG post with the word “BAHAMAS” and thought it said “BAHA MAS,” like a Baha Men / Taco Bell brand collab

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

“Planets blossom and succumb, their people like chemotrophs who perish in the accumulation of oxygen. Little can be done but relinquish the desire to understand.” Terraforming conspiracies and mythic noir up at @strangehorizons.bsky.social strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

strangehorizons.com

To Locked Feathers

Locked Feathers discharged two pulse-beams into the hearts of Shining Director and Fingertip Deluge, killing the patron of stars and the patron of cell division

011

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

One strong impulse in much of my narrative poetry, informed by my interest in Marxist ideas of history, is that the most conventionally beautiful or rhetorically stirring passages are ones most saturated in ruling class ideology and shouldn’t be trusted. I’m fascinated by this tension.

140

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Okay I’m overdue for this little thread about my brother, Matt Hessel-Mial, who died 40 years ago on this day, a month before his 9th birthday. I never met him, but he is my biggest hero and shapes everything about how I live my life. I’d love to share a bit about his story.

140

Reposted by Michael Hessel-Mial

amanda moore 🐢 @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"ICE arrested 50,000 people in July, and another 50,000 in August, eclipsing the monthly arrests made during the peak of Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, Operation Catahoula Crunch in New Orleans, and Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota." www.turtlediaries.net/p/ice-is-sti...

7315169

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

“The appearance of things too is a promise that conceals the growth of what is unseen. I reveal nothing, but you may find, in the light of the bodies that pass me, some spectra for your query.” strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

strangehorizons.com

To Locked Feathers

Locked Feathers discharged two pulse-beams into the hearts of Shining Director and Fingertip Deluge, killing the patron of stars and the patron of cell division

000

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I can’t fathom the idea of staying on Twitter. I was getting Rhodesia nostalgia and “Jewish question” content pushed onto my feed every day before I left last year. Why eat from the trough of right wing slop?

010

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

New publication! My long narrative poem, “To Locked Feathers,” is out in @strangehorizons.bsky.social This poem explores how societal violence is filtered long after through myth, modeled after the Homeric Hymns, through sci fi, structured by noir. Please read! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

strangehorizons.com

To Locked Feathers

Locked Feathers discharged two pulse-beams into the hearts of Shining Director and Fingertip Deluge, killing the patron of stars and the patron of cell division

155

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

@foofarawpress.bsky.social Hi! I’ve tried to use your novelette submission page several times over the last few days, from different browsers as well, and it doesn’t appear to be working. Just wanted to put it on your radar! I hope to be able to submit once I figure it out!

100

Michael Hessel-Mial @mrpoemguy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is a really good example of how even self-identified liberals are pulled deeply far right by Zionism (obviously Barlow has been off the deep end for a long time)

010