iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 6h

Perhaps of mild interest to Courtney, it was invented in Denver.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 9h

Two thumbs? Pretty deluxe.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 9h

It has been so long since I read it that I only remember the bare outline of the story. And that when I read sometime in the late 20th century or very early in the 21st it was rare to have bisexuals as protagonists in SF.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 9h

Cultivated penstemon hybrid 'cha Cha Cherry ' at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

An inflorescence with more than a dozen funnel shaped red flowers with white streaks inside the throats and narrow spear head shaped leaves attached to the stem below the flowers. In the background there is a large greenhouse.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I have enjoyed a good number of works by him, though I've not read everything. I remember being super excited about the bisexual starring characters in Aristoi as well as finding the story a good solid space opera. I might revisit it at some point.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Aber ich liebe deutsche Memes. Na ja, ich liebe die Memes, die ich verstehe.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It is. Doing some investigating it is called "No Spot of Ground" by Walter Jon Williams and I probably read it in What Might Have Been? Vol. 2 in the 1990s. Stick with me for quite some time.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think it was in a collection called Alternative Generals. Let's see... Nope, wrong it was a novella by Walter Jon Williams called "No Spot of Ground" and he was a colonel rather than general.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Side note: the most interesting story about Poe I read was a short alternative history with him surviving to become a general for the Confederacy. He is just as good at that as you would imagine and it really highlighted his worst qualities.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Data point on use in pop culture: He is a character in the comic book The Dreaming issue #8, "His Brother's Keeper".

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I deny being an ancient plant god, but I won't deny knowing Seth.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I went east today and wrote about a rare penstemon from Indiana. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...

en.wikipedia.org

Penstemon deamii - Wikipedia

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Eventually everything will have a square photo of decent quality and the illustrations will be only found in the penstemon articles. And all the articles will be spectacular as well, but it will take a few years.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The groups are blue/violet, illustration, pale/white, pink, red/orange, and yellow. There are still lots of problems and all the images need more complete alt text, but it improves over time.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

To expand and explain. Tables on Wikipedia can be made sortable. I love this feature. Possibly too much. But if you put a photo into a cell in a table, how does it sort it? By the alt text. So I gave every photo a standard start to its alt text so they would sort into six groups.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

But is The Beetle any fun for modern readers? Should I give it a go?

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It has not been a spectacularly productive day in the knowledge mines, but I did change the list of penstemon species so they can be sorted by color. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

en.wikipedia.org

List of Penstemon species - Wikipedia

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Being me, I see this is good, but I keep looking at all the other pages I want to get to this level. Gotta fix sulfur flower! And all the penstemons. So many penstemons.

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Reposted by 🍂M.T.Botany

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Voter registration deadlines are SUNDAY in Alaska, Rhode Island, South Carolina. And MONDAY in: Arizona, Arkansas Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and *Texas*. If you live in these states, verify your registration now, literally.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In a way you just asked me for the answer in a different way. I wrote about 75% of that article. It is one of my favorite grasses.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It did seem like a part of western N. America, though it was a dream so I cannot rule out the possibility that I was planting Bouteloua dactyloides on a previously baren island. Though sandstone usually means continental landscape.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Her scales are fine, the rest of you are all severely unaware of how weird the world is, right outside. You all need your weirdness goalposts moved. Go watch some hoverfly larvae feeding on aphids.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

*does search* Huh. Subfamily of beetles. Oh that is an interesting paper title. "Review of the Extant and Fossil Dasytinae (Coleoptera: Melyridae) of Colorado, U. S. A." It is on JSTOR, I might take a short break from reading about plants.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My dream last night: There was a short rocky hillside and I had planted buffalo grass on it at some point in the past and now I was looking for signs of growth and how much erosion due to rain was occurring.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Checked out a book called The Atlas of Botany from the library. Lookit what I found inside:

A big ol' leaf pressed inside a book on a page with the header RESCUE MISSIONS at the top right. The leaf appears to be a maple, but without the bark I'm not going to guess. Dull green from being pressed and dry.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fine tradition to delegate to a most trusted advisor, who will, naturally, be a schemer with a mind like a corkscrew.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I plan to play skull No. 3 in the apocalypse. The one you find next to an evocative notebook. I won't be the eldritch horror waiting to serve tea to adventurers in the house that looked abandoned.

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Reposted by 🍂M.T.Botany

🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Fall. 🎶 Tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la-la Chop the wood to light the fire Tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la-la 'Tisn't much that I require When the fog of life surrounds you When you think you've lost your way Come with me and join the forest Come with me and join the play 🎶

media.tenor.com

a drawing of a tree with a face on it in the dark

Alt: A cursed Edelwood tree broken with the black oil dripping from its broken trunk and human-like face. A few leaves blow in the wind. Over the Garden Wall

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

18.3 °C (64.9 °F) at the Esperanza Base (Argentina) on 6 February 2020 So this was an almost summer like temperature in winter. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate...

en.wikipedia.org

Climate of Antarctica - Wikipedia

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I guessed they would. I know way more about plants, but I'm vaguely aware that bats have a quirk where they carry lots of diseases. The one other thing I know is, "Don't eat wild omnivores. You'll catch something awful."

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What I am hearing is: 1. Eradicate rabies. 2. Eradicate ebola. 3. Eradicate all species of bedbug. Then everything is perfect forever, and I'm sure my hubris in reordering nature will have no blowback whatsoever.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thanks. I've only read it once so far and her name has not yet imprinted on my brain.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I need to know which Miss Wilson this is, I've not been able to use any of my usual tricks to figure this out.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I like the Denver model where we have a specific separate tax for our Scientific and Cultural Facilities District that funds the metro area art, history, and nature museums plus the zoo and botanical gardens.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And all the hard working people contributing to Addams Family Values when Wednesday and Pugsley put little Pubert in while playing French Revolution, face up as well.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

To be fair, whomst among us has never? We all had that play set when we were kids.

A black and white line drawing of Wednesday and Pugsley playing next to the Christmas Tree with the new doll and guillotine set.

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Reposted by 🍂M.T.Botany

Mike Thompson @passwordismiket.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

On the one hand, conservatives deny climate change exists and oppose policies to address it. On the other hand, liberals haven’t convinced conservatives that climate change exists and haven’t offered pain-free solutions. Hence, it’s complicated.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Maybe, hopefully, it was your brain evaluating the situation as safe from the behavior and body language of the bear. Though I agree that it is slightly worrying.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For me, it is seeing a pollinator on the bloom. Next most likely is that I want the sound of the morning or evening to accompany the image to give a better sense of the habitat.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Less likely for me since I am out of the city less, but also a possibility. I don't even own bear spray. It has been a rough year all over the west and the risk is higher.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think this is the week where I finally upload my videos of various wildflowers and state parks in Colorado to Wikimedia.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks to my fellow Wikipedia editor, Abductive for this DYK. They are a *seriously* impressive editor with more than 138,000 edits to the English Wikipedia.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Fun plant fact on the front page of Wikipedia today. "Did you know that the species name of Viburnum awabuki is derived from a Japanese word for its propensity to blow bubbles when exposed to fire?" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viburnu...

en.wikipedia.org

Viburnum awabuki - Wikipedia

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Because Colorado is a sane state the Republicans want to trick us into disarming in the face of their gerrymandering and mid cycle redistricting. "No" until there is a national prohibition on this practice.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The fact that it gives us no reason why this message is being muted is frustrating because it means there is no way to diagnose the behavior. I've been seeing this rarely but regularly for about a month.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I suspect this is some sort of BlueSky moderation. Something in their vibe coded stuff has decided that their tone is not civil. I have been seeing this lately and it is quite annoying.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It is a very particular taste. Eco is like Tolkien, a scholar enjoying his area of study in writing fiction.

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🍂M.T.Botany @mtbotany.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Different strokes. I read it at like age 14 and was just enchanted. All the details and references felt like a window through time. Plus I just love me some lovingly detailed descriptions. Probably related to my love of exact descriptions of plant species.

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