iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Throwback to Patagonia - the wide and deep Futaleafu. Waterfalls and glaciers on either side. I was so busy battling the wind, it was hard to appreciate in the moment. (Despite being headed downstream, if I stopped paddling I moved backwards.) We did pretty much every possible kind of kayak.

A huge river with two kayaks ahead. A steep mountain wall is to the left, and a glimpse between two mountains ahead shows glaciers. The sky is dark and moody.

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Emily Gorcenski @emily.gorcen.ski · 28/09/2026

Here’s the most incredible story you’ll read today. A small plane with four people aboard crashes in a field. Another pilot witnesses it. That pilot happens to be flying a bunch of skydivers. They offer to jump to assist, are given permission. The skydivers happen to be EMTs. Everyone survives.

wisn.com

Skydivers alert emergency crews, assist after plane crashes near East Troy airport

Four people were aboard the single-engine plane when it went down in a cornfield near Carvers School Road in East Troy at about 1:30 p.m.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 29/09/2026

The OG internet is SO COOL. This post to you brought by the fact the entire 100+ years of my hometown newspaper is available for free online. It's even searchable. So far what I've learned is, well, we've always been like this. #stonehamma stoneham.advantage-preservation.com

stoneham.advantage-preservation.com

Digital Archives of the Stoneham Public Library

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Frankie de la Cretaz @thefrankiedlc.news · 28/09/2026

SOURCE REQUEST: looking to talk to Native or Indigenous fans of the WNBA about the loss of the Connecticut Sun. DM here or email frankie at britnidlc dot com

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 27/09/2026

Despite reading a lot, my to be read pile is out of control. It's about to metastasize from its current insufficient space to the rest of the house. This is good justification for going part time, right?

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 27/09/2026

The ground was spongy and littered with leaves and branches. A big one from one of the great oaks narrowly missed the marker for Daniel Green. And a vast wave of fungi swept in front of the grave whose name was hidden behind lichen and rain and centuries. #stonehamma #oldburyingground

Piles of mushrooms in front of an illegible grave, with rain falling

A huge branch hovering above a copper capped tombstone for Daniel Green who died in 1725

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 27/09/2026

Friends: after months of needing to appreciate the good weather while it's here, and before the holidays... This is the time. Right now. To rot your brain on a video game.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 26/09/2026

"He never meant to be an ancestor, but it's the only thing more unavoidable than taxes." Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning from "Never Whistle at Night"

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Boston French Toast Alert System @bostonfrenchtoast.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The gales of November coming early www.universalhub.com/2026/gales-n... #Boston #noreaster #rain #wind

Approaching nor'easter swirls over the Atlantic (Lake Ontario in upper left), photo by GOES-East satellite at 12:11 ET

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 23/09/2026

Quoth Krampus: “This stuff is right up my alley: people associating with the wrong crowds, being subversive, thinking naughty thoughts. With Flock, we can find that, and we can punish it before people have had the chance to actually do anything illegal.” www.boston.com/news/off-bea...

boston.com

Krampus crashed Billerica’s Select Board meeting to 'support' Flock license plate cameras

“I’ve been keeping a list of who’s naughty and who’s nice for centuries. Frankly, it’s about time you people started automating it.”

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Orkney Library & Archive @orkneylibrary.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Today is #HobbitDay because Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were both born on September 22nd. Normally we'd shire a hobbit pun or two but it might just feel like a tolkien gesture and we don't want to embarrass our elves. Anyway it's a good day to come and boromir #Tolkien books. 📚

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 21/09/2026

It occurs to me that of all the genres of town commission that should be able to decode the mailing list signups, we historians ought to be up to the challenge. I guess I should be grateful none of them are in cursive. But also, a 2nd grade teacher might have better luck.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 21/09/2026

I want an account that is just, like, Bluesky context that does nothing but post explanations and links of what everyone is talking about.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 19/09/2026

I have successfully made oak gall ink. It's possibly a lifetime supply of ink for only several multiples of what it would cost me to buy the same thing. Deeply satisfying.

A bottle and tag that say : oak gall ink

A bottle and a sticker and a card that says "Oak gall ink"

An empty brown bottle, a bottle of gum Arabic,a bottle of oak gall tannins and a bottle of food grade rust

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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 18/09/2026

…yeah, okay, that’s pretty much it.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 16/09/2026

Help! I've been overcome with existential despair, but I still need to get stuff done! No one has ever experienced this problem before.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 16/09/2026

Most of my hobbies these days involving going to great time, effort and expense to do things which can easily be done in modern ways for pennies. Did I just pick up a bunch of oak galls while camping? I did. Am I planning on turning them into ink? I am. Does this have any practical purpose? No.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 13/09/2026

It can feel safer to hunker down and not do risky things. But is that actually safer? Thoughts on hiking and work - and what happens when you play it safe for too long. mytruantpen.com/2026/09/13/t...

mytruantpen.com

The risks you don’t take

I’m an avid hiker – loving nothing more than to follow my legs to a place you can’t get to any other way and stand overlooking vistas you can only achieve with effort. Over the years, I’ve go…

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 14/09/2026

This one comes from the stuff I brought back from Necronomicon. #collage #cthulu #cargooutofspace

A complicated collage with eldritch themes

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 14/09/2026

It's slightly embarrassing how many glow in the dark paints I currently possess. Plus that one black light ink.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 14/09/2026

I had a sudden, urgent impulse to collage a card. I have a box where I slip pretty or interesting things in case of such urges. None of my stuff ever has a title, but this one is called "Let the Bright Seraphim". #collage

A strange collage notecard. The back layer is handwritten music. Stacked on it are washi tape with mushrooms, a painting of oak branches in a dark glass bottle, a yellow circle of watercolors with swirls, a card of a dark and menacing figure with a speech bubble that says "hello" and a card with an ink bottle that has been colored in with yellow ink

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 13/09/2026

mytruantpen.com

The risks you don’t take

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 13/09/2026

The thought around the risks we see vs the ones we don't has been top of mind for me lately: mytruantpen.com/2026/09/13/t... #hiking #mortality #risks

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The year is 400 BCE & you're in one of the hottest places on Earth, the Dasht-e Lut (Lut Desert) of Southeastern Iran. Wouldn't it be nice to have a refreshing sorbet? A =dessert= in the =desert=? Thanks to this structure, you can! Let's learn about ancient Iranian refrigerators called 'yakhchāl'.

Yakhchāl of Abarkuh, Iran
Pastaitaken - Wikimedia
Yakhchal of Yazd province

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 13/09/2026

Yesterday I visited Bell Rock graveyard in Malden, looking for the grave of Sophronia Spear Butler. I can't figure out where she's buried. Anyway, that graveyard goes almost a hundred years older than the Stoneham Old Burying Ground I'm responsible for. It has some awesome stones.

A mottled short gravestone with a deaths head. The text is hard to read.

A deaths head gravestone in high grass. On either side of the skull, which has a weird set of wings above it, are symbols: a coffin, a scythe, some tools

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Ellen W. @spurioustuple.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I am looking for someone who works at an airline because logistics fascinate me and I have a genuine, non-snarky question about checked luggage and it’s nothing I’m mad about.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 13/09/2026

At this point, I've probably thrown at least 100 parties in my life - whether that seems like a small or a large number to you. I still have a backup plan in my mind for what I'll do if no one shows up.

A back yard with chairs, lit torches and lights

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 12/09/2026

Looking forward to a rainy cozy day after a stretch of terrific weather

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 12/09/2026

Something you might not know about 9/11 if you're 30 or younger: we all thought there would be a ton of injured people. We did massive immediate blood drives to serve that need. Instead: either you made it or you didn't. So many were just... Gone.

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Best reasoun to have a Ted Lasso adaptacioun set yn Earlye Modern Englande ys to have Roy Kent do a low angrye growle of zoooooooooouuuuuuuunnnnds

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MisterJayEm @misterjayem.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I'm a fan of the band, but this may be better than their albums

ChatPileBand

Taking band promo photos is one of the greatest indignities one must suffer. Four grown men standing around a train track or some shit trying to look cool while people drive by wondering why a group of gas station employees would need senior portraits

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 10/09/2026

If you were going to have one piece of music stuck non-stop in your head for over a week, I highly recommend Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto. With that said, I might have to pull out the big guns to evict it. Hellllooooo Scheherazade! #rimsky-korsokov #earworm

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 08/09/2026

I found a secret hideout - a fort. Forts, hideouts, tree-houses, secure places ... they played a huge role in the life of my child mind. How many places did I discover and dub as my secret refuge? (So many.) I may be old, but I'm not too old to relish a hideaway. Did you have one? Do you still?

A blue chair hidden between boulders in a green forest

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 03/09/2026

People. Spiritualism didn't start with the Fox sisters. They caught the wave, they didn't create it. For real. If anyone is to blame it's Ben Franklin, or his spirit, Been Franklin.

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

sometimes when I take my little boat up the river I can spend 5 or 6 hours and not see another person. And I come back able to function again. I haven't read this poem before, but I'll be reading it again.

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Andromeda @ulveheksa.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Questionnaire by Wendell Berry

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 01/09/2026

Hard to get nicer weather for a game at Gillette.

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Rob Delaney @robdelaney.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I’m reading Cannery Row. Jesus Christ is it amazing. So great to live in a world where I can be almost 50, have been an avid reader my whole life & have barely scratched the surface of the surface of spectacular books out there.

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One Does Not Simply Re-Tweet a Meme @evilmagnus.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

“The whale anus doctor thinks the 60 person Somerville polycule would be a personal hell” is not a sentence I expected to type today, yet here we are. Here we are.

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Colin McMillen @mcmillen.dev · 28/08/2026

Leopards Eating Faces lifetime achievement award

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Irene Kaoru @irenekaoru.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm at the laundromat I'm at the notary I'm at the combination

Photo of a sign that says "Laundromat Bingo Tanning Notary Canoe Rental"

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Jason Song Quinn (Comms Open) @hulkhoquinn.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Think about Miss Piggy. She lost a best friend and now an ex-lover in matter of 24 hours.

Miss Piggy and Dolly Parton in fancy dresses posing together

photo of Tim Curry surrounded by muppets, smiling for a photo. A quote from curry is added “it didn’t go very well. It didn’t survive the shoot. She felt I wasn’t being faithful to her” it’s him discussing his ill fated affair with miss piggy

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ᴋɪɴɢᴘɪɴ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴋᴘᴇɴ @killlthehype.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026

16 months ago: Never forget how it started.

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

You knowe when the heroine doth face the dragon wyth a looke of elegant courage -- the sworde, raised -- eyes steel -- so you almost pity the dragon? Wel, everye daye you fynde some joye or peace or tyme to create or room to helpe somebodye, or even just pull thrugh, that ys you. You wynne the daye.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 22/08/2026

I reading with a cat on my lap when biology forced me to get up anyway. I managed to convince said cat to return to my lap when I sat back down. Henceforth this date will be known as the date of the Miracle of the Cat and the Lap.

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K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 20/08/2026

I am very very sorry for the Dolly Parton Christians who are forced to live with this shit.

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Brenda @mytruantpen.com · 19/08/2026

It's fun to dress up and be fancy.

A woman in a blue ballgown at the top of a staircase with a golden background

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