iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

One good thing here is that the hospital food at UVMMC is better than most. Not always— I have eaten a lot of extremely overcooked chicken breast and fish fillets but today I had this: the best thing I’ve eaten since I got landed in this place almost 10 days ago.

a sort of semi Caesar salad with a nicely cooked, not overcooked hunk of salmon on it that I actually enjoyed

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

My new friend goes everywhere with me

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Me at about 16 c.1963 with the telescope I made, at Stellafane

A 6" astronomical Newtonian telescope I built in my teens, in front of the iconic pink Stellafane clubhouse, with it’s low stone wall in front, and people gathered around or on it. The dweeb is me. Ledge poking through sparse grass. That place (a National Historic Landmark) still looks pretty much exactly the same but the trees behind the building are either gone or much bigger. The iron post the telescope mount is on is still there.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The Soviet answer to old Borden’s ads.

A full page Saturday Evening Post ad from the early 1950s for a vitamin drink product called “Hemo” with anthropomorphic cattle listlessly playing croquet (“before”) and vigorously playing baseball (“after”).

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Another shot, from the same roll if not the same day I think.

A rather forlorn elephant peers out of the darkness of the inside of a truck. A bored cop stands guard. An adjacent STOP sign has a sticker reading “THE ARMS RACE” after the word “STOP” and another sticker advertising a local radio station.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Burlington, Church Street Marketplace, late 1980s or early ’90s, I think, Pentax K-1000 with f1.7 lens, scanned from film mid 1990s. One of my best photos, I think. Blow it up.

In the foreground, but out of focus, is a street performer, “Haystack,” seen from the back doing the sword swallowing gag where the “sword” is not going down his throat but from the right angle maybe looks like it does. Big crowd of shoppers and tourists in front of him facing the cameras, almost all White. One little kid near bottom left is totally buying it. One guy, visible if you can blow it up enough through the crook of Haystack’s Elbow, wondering seriously what is up with all these White folks.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I don’t know who created this, but h/t @sapphic-film-nerd.bsky.social for finding (making?) it. Also think about Alice Goffman’s flagrant misconduct and the contrast in consequences; she lost a job but was not hounded, let alone to death.

A 3 by 3 grid of squares with images of people accused of plagiarism. 7 of the nine kept their jobs. Two were forced to resign, the only Black ones.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

the whitest white man in the history of White men.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I keep seeing a floofy cat on it’s back playing with some weird cat toy. I spend too much time here.

satellite image of tropical storm Lala, with a partially dashed slightly irregular line from upper left to lower right—pathway of storm or cat toy, your choice

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

More textures. These photos (scanned from film) were taken decades ago at Union Station in Burlington when it was vacant and semi-derelict, before it was redeveloped.

rusty metal window frames with glass missing, boarded up from the inside. A couple of rotating latches are partly visible. The structure casts shadows on the plywood behind it.

a bright red sliding door panel with splotches of peeled paint revelaing the galvanized bare metal. A green frame part on the right edge.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I love that stuff too, and have habitually photo’d it from my Kodak Gold/Pentax K-1000 days. Here’s the side of a steel drum I found up in the woods on our property when we bought it 34(?) years ago. Whatever is left of it must still be there. [resolves to post more texture shots]

rusty texture that looks a little like a bunch of coastal islands on the edge of a shallow blue sea, formed of rust on a bllue-painted steel barrel.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The article is good sarcastic fun, and I’m not sure I’ve seen this for ex-twitter before

this is a screen shot of most of a paragraph, but the important part is the descriptive phrase “Elon’s rage arena”

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I did packaging design for a living (retired now); in my opinion the only relevant time frame now is the few seconds during which a shopper walks by your item on the shelf. It is true few companies make packages meant to last, though, except for novelties, which actually I think is what this is:

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

worth the price of admission just to see this:

the Steamship Ticonderoga at the Shelburne Museum. It is mostly white with a red area below the draft. It’s situated on blocks on dry land, with a grassy lawn around it.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

It works pretty well. Seems like a legit use for AI. I posted this painting in another context yesterday and thought I’d try it here; the generated alt text is much more detailed than mine. I also tried it with a photo of a classic car and it correctly IDed the make & model (& brand of tires).

Generated alt text:
An abstract painting features a vibrant and chaotic mix of thick, impasto brushstrokes in various colors. Dominant hues include bright red, deep blue, orange, purple, and white, with accents of gold and black. The texture is highly pronounced, creating a three-dimensional effect with visible ridges and peaks of paint. Shapes are fluid and undefined, suggesting movement and energy, without depicting any recognizable objects or figures. The overall mood is dynamic and expressive.

my original alt text:
abstract expressionist painting in acrylics, roughly 1990, on paper, with reds and blues and ochres, about 22 × 30 inches

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Understanding Musk [middle of thread] it all hinges on “crime genes” …never found by science, while those guys seem to think that because genetics is real, crime could have no other cause than genes. There’s a gene for “conservativism” and one for liberalism, right—wait, that’s the crime gene

one of Musk’s fans, one Hunter Ash, post:

“Do these people not beliebve in genetics at all?”

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

my connection started with a call put out to designers and printmakers by an enthusiastic new director or something whose name I don’t remember, for volunteers to help clean and organize the print shop, which had been closed for a while I think. A bunch of people responded, and it led to stuff.

To this day I regret that I failed to put a date on this. It is an 72pt alphabet of Bruce Rogers’ Centaur font and a caption that states that the font family is not available from “today’s computerized typesetters.” Of course now it is. But this was the mid 1990s, I think

Several large letterpress manicules, and a bunch of little ones, scattered around, all pointing in as many directions as was possible, and the words “THIS” and “WAY” and a question mark. It is a summary of my usual mental state. Xacto knife for scale

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

None of this seems terrible, and in fact is what our hospital food is like here (although they’ll sell you a coke in the cafeteria, if you want), but I’m guessing they’ll sneak beef tallow and road-kill racoon in there too.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

If you like Indian this is a good start:

cover of Chetna Makan’s “30-Minute Indian” cookbook

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

screenshot because replies and quote posts are disabled. This is defeatist thinking. No one victory—including unpacking the court—is final. It will always be a battle. That’s not a reason to give up.

“The Supreme Court as currently constituted is terrible but if actually do Court Reform the next Republican Trifecta does it too and then you actually do lose birthright citizenship and everything else that for now we aren’t losing—it’s why 2016 was so important”

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Afternoon sky. How many cloud types?

many discrete clouds of various types and altitudes, not “marching together.” Trees at the edges of the photo, The Camel’s Hump just visible at the bottom.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

perhaps the very archetype of the NYT lifestyle item headline:

“My Town Wants to Build a Homeless Camp. What Can I Do”

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

An oft-interrupted day, but I’m past halfway; it’s a short book with many pages of useful notes and references. Good detail on the development of vaccination in the context of developments in the science and changing public attitudes—going back to Cotton Mather of all people and forward to now.

Cover of Thomas Levenson’s new and angry and IMPORTANT book. A POX ON FOOLS

The true believers, grifters, and cynics who convinced us to reject vaccines

Please buy or check out this book.

I wondered whether that Dawkins blurb on the back would help or hurt sales. I suspect help, fwiw, which is not really a compliment to Dawkins.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Well, it has the right style for a science building of a certain age. My alma mater’s version, which housed physics and chemistry labs and lecture halls (now repurposed).

a photo of Williams Hall at UVM, in all its red brick and sandstone gingerbread glory

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

My dad drove one of these in the early ’70s (not the “muscle” version) and I think it was the best looking car he ever owned, and a big step up from the Ford Falcon in which he had inflicted major driver-ed trauma on me. But I had left home by then and never got to drive it. Sort of wish I had.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

What the fuck is a “blob” anyway? And has Bluesky shrunk the allowable size for banners/avatars?

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Good to know about the heavy metals and such

Ad for fertilizer claiming it has all the elements in the periodic table

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

love that but honestly this can be as simple and direct as this

a can of strong IPA from my local (pop: 4600) brewery. I have extensively explored the available-in-local-stores universe of IPAs, and this is the finest I’ve found. I wish it tasted just like this and only had 5%ABV alcohol.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Every time I think about life, the universe, and Trump, my anxiety flares to the point of paralysis. Our ancient lilac, however, is blooming more effulgently this year than I can remember it ever doing. So there’s that.

pale lilac blooms in foreground, lawn and shadowed trees in background

pale purplish lilac blooms against greenery

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

First book in a long list that any politician who wants to talk about war should be required to read.

title page of Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam - A History”

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Yes, at last! And for at least a minute.

pale purple lilacs blooming in foreground, lawn and driveway in background, a couple of white birches back there amongst the maples

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

no comment, just a comparison. I am less than a year younger than Trump and 7 years older than RFKjr. This is my hand.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

didn’t quite get this done for Mothers’ Day but this is my mom, 95yo or so, deep in dementia, but knowing all the words to her old songs.

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Proportionwheel @proportionwheel.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I know when I’m sauteing mushrooms I always wear my camera, with the cap off the lens, right where it will catch all that delicious splattered fat.

cropped from ai generated image, showing a camera hanging from the “persons” neck, with the lens about 3 or 4" from the frying mushroom slices.

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