iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I will concede that I went a little bonkers recently with magazine subscriptions. On the upside, I love having informative periodicals with pretty pictures delivered to my mailbox. The kid in me likes getting cool things in the mail.

Image depicts an overhead view of four magazines laid out in a fan-like manner, one overlaying another. The uppermost magazine is a UK magazine called "Astronomy Now". The issue is the latest as of this post and has the major headline "A New History of Mars". The other three magazines are recent issues of Astronomy magazine, Sky & Telescope magazine, and Outdoor Photographer magazine.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Riser and limbs acquired. Rest & plunger installed, along with an 11oz barebow weight, forward of & below the grip. Switched out the damper weights for the meta caps to shave mass (will re-introduce later when my right arm is stronger).

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James Webb 🔴 Gallery @webb-telescope.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

ESA/Webb (@esa.int) images (Sep 30, 2025) This gravitational lens showcases a luminous blue galaxy in the foreground and a warped background galaxy, highlighting the vast distances light travels. esawebb.org/images/potm2509b/

Insufficient descriptive information provided Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco

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Blue Heron Farm @blueheronfarm.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

And frankly, the assumption that trans girls are naturally going to be better than cis girls at sports is some misogynistic, patriarchal, gender essentialist bullshit that I wish people would stop accepting as a premise

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I started building my first arrows today and I regret to inform you that this activity is proving to be deeply satisfying.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Hello from toasty Chicago where the bridges keep getting stuck in the up-position.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Happy add-more-names-to-the-muted-words-list day to all who celebrate. Three new additions for me so far today.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I'm sorry in advance but if you're a bsky account that follows me and I see that you are following more 5000 accounts, I *will* block you. I'm going to assume you're a bot or, if you're actually human, you're using a tool to automate following thousands of accounts.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Clouds are such drama queens.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Everything is just so fucking stupid. All the fucking time.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Tonight's archery thoughts concern whether or not I should start competing. Even if I fail a lot, it's still a lesson, right?

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I wish Howard Zinn were still alive to document this time when the American left becomes resurgent in its opposition to racist, eugenicist, sociopathic/psychopathic tech bros and the rest of the wealth class.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Pictured: Me, falling in love with the art & science of building arrows for archery. (before I’ve even built a single arrow. such a silly ruby.)

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I feel like I spend more time adding movies & shows to my watchlist (to watch eventually, of course) than actually watching movies & shows in my watchlist.

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Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Orion in the Eclipse - From Simeon Schmauß (stim3on.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/2s6ionW

The Moon, backlit by the Sun during a solar eclipse, is photographed by NASA’s Orion spacecraft on April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II mission. Orion is visible in the foreground on the left. Earth is reflecting sunlight at the left edge of the Moon, which is slightly brighter than the rest of the disk. The bright spot visible just below the Moon’s bottom right edge is Saturn. Beyond that, the bright spot at the right edge of the image is Mars.

This is a HDR merge combining the long exposure art002e009573 with the shorter art002e009571 since it had less motion blur on the moon. Furthermore, the stars which were elongated due to motion blur were reparired using deconvolution. Finally some noise reduction and color adjustmens were applied.

Credit: NASA
Processing: Simeon Schmauß

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

This is an absolutely amazing image, taken from Earth!

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Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Flying over Saturn - From Val Klavans (valklavans.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/Ng1pvm

Have you ever wondered what Saturn looks like from above? On October 10, 2013 Cassini had the chance to fly over Saturn and take in this stunning view of the planet nestled within its rings, highlighting its mysterious hexagon and colorful cloud layers.

This composite is made of images that were taken by the Cassini spacecraft's camera system, the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on October 10, 2013 and received on Earth October 11, 2013. The camera was pointing toward Saturn at approximately 900,000 miles (1,450,000 kilometers) away, and the images were taken using red, green, and blue filters.

Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / Val Klavans
about.me/valerieklavans

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Ain't she a beauty? (complimentary)

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Nasa Astronomy Hourly Pictures @nasadailypicbot.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

NASA Astronomy Hourly Picture - 2020-09-07: The Milky Way over St Michael's Mount #Astronomy #NASA #Space

Where do land and sky converge? On every horizon -- but in this case the path on the ground leads to St Michael's Mount (Cornish: Karrek Loos yn Koos), a small historic island in Cornwall, England. The Mount is usually surrounded by shallow water, but at low tide is spanned by a human-constructed causeway. The path on the sky, actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, also appears to lead to St Michael's Mount, but really lies far in the distance. The red nebula in the Milky Way, just above the castle, is the Lagoon Nebula, while bright Jupiter shines to the left, and a luminous meteor flashes to the right. The foreground and background images of this featured composite were taken on the same July night and from the same location. Although meteors are fleeting and the Milky Way disk shifts in the night as the Earth turns, Jupiter will remain prominent in the sunset sky into December. Moon Occults Mars: Notable images submitted to APOD

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

My poor planetarium app apparently lacks an image for NGC 4861, but, damn, ain’t she an asymmetric beauty.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

TIL new science terms: meteotsunami, pyrocumulonimbus. yay climate change

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Eagles nesting and even wild parakeets. Chicago has it all (complimentary).

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Whoahoho! This is cool: a partial eclipse sunrise *and* a reflection of a partial eclipse sunrise! (The alt text describes what’s happening here.)

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Shit. This site is one of three around the world used to communicate with space missions, telescopes, and probes such as Artemis, Voyager, Chandra x-ray observatory, the James Webb telescope, and others.

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 23/07/2026

Meanwhile, Lina Khan has been a leader in the movement for an economy built by all, in service of all. From courtrooms to classrooms to the federal government, she has taught millions that dignity for working people is not only possible, it's demanded of us.

Lina Khan speaks at a podium in the City Hall rotunda.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

One of my cats has discovered that she can insert herself into the dirty clothes bin without crumpling the sides and has managed to demonstrate this accomplishment no less than three times this evening.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Image 1: Air quality alerts (grey overlay) from MN to SC to NH. Image 2: AQ readings from monitoring stations (purples are very bad).

A screenshot from the WeatherWise app showing Minnesota in the upper left, western Maine in the upper right, South Carolina to the right of bottom center, and eastern Louisiana in the bottom left. The map has various weather-related overlays. Of particular note is the gray overlay denoting air quality alerts which extend from Minnesota to South Carolina to New Hampshire (as of 2026-07-16 6pm Central).

A screenshot of an air quality map from the US EPA’s airnow.gov website showing purples, red, oranges, & yellows. Purple is very bad air quality. On the map, the purples extend from the northern Midwest, across the Great Lakes region, and into New England.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Greetings from the 𝖶̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝖽̶𝗒̶ Smoky City.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

What the actual fuck? Look, I'm sorry to keep saying this, but the president is clearly a dementia-ravaged necrotic husk of a man whose addled rants bear no actual resemblance to reality and I, for one, think that is concerning.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Such a great photo of Alan Bean taken by Pete Conrad during Apollo 12’s lunar mission.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

We're officially in the most extreme heatwave in world history. 2 days ago Delhoran, Iran tied the world all time high with a temp of 124.7°F and today Omridieh, Iran hit 126.7°F. All time high and low records are being set from Europe to China to Japan. Chat, are we cooked?

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

keeping an eye on the weather sitch while watching how-to videos.

A screenshot from the WeatherWise app showing a strong line of thunderstorms approaching the Chicagoland area.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Hey Clarence Thomas, kindly go fuck yourself, you piece-of-shit scumbag. Trans rights are human rights.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

My neighborhood is pretty great.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Old Chicago jazz club to the right there. Musical history was made there.

An infrared image of the corner of Howard and Rogers in Chicago.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Looking forward to a future SCAT (Supreme Court Accountability & Transparency) Act to cleanup the racist shithole that SCOTUS has become.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I modified an old Olympus point-and-shoot digital camera that I pulled out of storage to be full-spectrum (or at least the maximum frequency range the tiny sensor is able to register). Camera is very sensitive to infrared wavelengths now so I've been taking plenty of test shots.

A desaturated infrared image from a full-spectrum-modifed Olympus SZ-15 camera.

A tree whose leaves appear white in infrared light is on the left side. The upper portion of a nearby roof is bottom center and a stained-glass window ornament is upper right. Also visible are multiple power lines running diagonal across the image. A section of sky in the upper left is dark with thin white clouds, giving a sense of motion.

A visible red filter was held in front of the camera lens. Also, the window is quite dirty.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Whoa. Goblin sharks 2km deep!

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

As a non-sportsball-enjoyer, I’m Knicks in whatever. NYC deserves a triumphal celebration.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Clearest evidence to date that we've fallen into a singularity of absurdity with the mass of a billion Suns.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

By the time my location has clear enough skies tonight, the Venus/Jupiter conjunction will be too low for me to see. Ah well.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Latest Bluesky update finally fixed an issue that was making me bonkers: if I tapped on an image, pinch-zoomed, and then swiped to close the image view, I’d be returned to the top of the feed instead of back to the post with the image.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Those red-winged blackbirds are the snippy chihuahuas of the bird kingdom. I see them all the time on my lakeshore walks and have seen them randomly harass other walkers. Northwestern campus even has signs warning folks about them.

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Ruby Ninepins @ninepins.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Forecast has shifted to cloudy Monday. Probable bust on capturing an ISS transit.

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