iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I don't understand what Amazon has to gain from the extreme enshittification of its recommendation algorithm. I just looked up a classic Barbara Trapido novel from 1983 (re-released by the NYRB) and Amazon recommended a bunch of self-published AI-slop-covered dreck as "related this item." Why??

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Brought a small jar of the jam to share with my food history class today

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Taking today’s inspiration from the office supply closet

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

First time making Kousa dogwood jam. Foraged from trees near a local bakery. I really like the flavour! Great on a slice of olive bread #forage #yyj

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Answers are split evenly at this point. Wishing there was a polling option on Bluesky.

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

History of sexuality question for everyone/anyone: Which flawed source base do you think more accurately represents actual sexual practices in a given time and place? Its legal codes or its pornography?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Medlars have been foraged and are boxed for bletting * this post is just an excuse to type the word blet

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Are twizzlers summer items? Real question

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

There are not enough newspapers today called the Weekly Bazoo

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I am an immature educated person, but I won't be dissuaded!

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

you know you're in for a good read when the title page carries this warning

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Dreamed my mom was in my history of sexuality class, answering student questions, and she told them “confirmation causes pig resonances.” The sentence was so nonsensical that I wrote it down when I awoke. Asked my very Freudian mother what she thought it meant, but she’s stumped. Any guesses?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I love the fact that the guy on the cover of this porn title from the 70s could totally walk off the page into the streets of #yyj without anyone blinking an eye (well, except in the cruising sense)

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Anyone whose curiosity has been piqued by Rachel Avis’s New Yorker story and has the stomach to read more might want to check out my book on the topic: how a celebrated author who openly lived as a pederast got away with it and was adored by all his famous friends press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

press.uchicago.edu

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Aram Sinnreich @aramsinn.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

My sister @rachelcleves.bsky.social, a historian of sex, wrote a phenomenal book about this, and about how and when the tolerance for p*doph*lia changed among the intellectual class, through a biography of the 20th C. novelist Norman Douglas: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

press.uchicago.edu

Unspeakable

The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Cha...

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Working working working, but all I want to be doing is eating bonbons and reading Dungeon Crawler Carl (I'm up to the third book). Thank goodness I've stumbled into this series in the summer and not during the semester. Odds on my finishing all eight books before the school year starts?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

When I was growing up in NYC in the 80s, there were always jokes circulating. We'd tell them at school. My dad would come home from work with new jokes he'd heard. No one ever tells me jokes anymore. Has the tradition faded? Or is this because I left NYC and moved to Vancouver Island?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

buddy is just totally ignoring the signage put up by my helpful neighbors

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Gwendoline Riley on writing as sculpting: the book is already there and needs to be revealed by moving words. This idea has resonated for me recently: that stories are living and find their tellers. Some have found me and I've risen to the occasion. Others have visited then found different authors.

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Best part of this research is that one of the site names is “Wetwang Slack” (just found out that the late great Douglas Adams was fond of the name of this town)

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

English people say “Don Jew-un” (as in Byron’s Don Juan)??? I was married to an English person for 27 years. Why did I just learn this from the LRB podcast??? (Clearly we didn’t talk poetry enough)

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

early 50s dog-collar-on-the-ankle teeny-bopper trend kinky or not?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Add this to the "AI will be the very goodest historian discourse": when I agreed to Adobe AI's generous offer to provide the "5 most important points" of the seminal text "Spanking War Brides" all I got was bubkes

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Best guesses at what the "5 most important points" of "Spanking War Brides" are, according to AI?

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Spotted this friend foraging for seafood while I was foraging for berries on my daily walk

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Pie is goood for breakfast! Blackberry pie made from yesterday’s three pounds of foraging

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

How long until dessert?

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kats4democracy.bsky.social @kats4democracy.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Seeing this 12 hours later, it's perfectly acceptable to eat this now, for breakfast!

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This pie deserves all its loves. Soooo tasty. 😋

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Cracking up at this exchange in the comments section of the NYT article on the Booker long list. It sounds like something out of a Saul Bellow novel. I think someone made up the name Morris Schmellberg.

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Highly recommend volunteering for this to any interested parties. I've been going for five hours straight and have barely answered a tenth of the questions that have come in. It's a lot of fun, if totally dizzying.

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Dan Howlett @dhowlett1692.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Clearly I need to find more historians of sexuality to do AMAs with us! Anyone out there who wants to come to AskHistorians, happy to talk and put you on our calendar!

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I would totally encourage other historians of sexuality to jump into the AMA and help out. There are so many questions to answer I can't possibly get to all of them. And of course some of them are outside my expertise and could use other eyes!

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I am doing an AMA (ask-me-anything) on the AskHistorians subreddit this morning. Ack! Pretty nervous about it, but should be an interesting experience. Here's a link if anyone's curious: www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

reddit.com

From the AskHistorians community on Reddit: I am Rachel Hope Cleves, a historian of sexuality. Ask me anything!

Explore this post and more from the AskHistorians community

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Ansley Erickson @ansleyerickson.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Summer academic: 1) I'm not getting enough writing done 🥲 2) Huh, I just wrote 12K words in the last 4 days, reviewing other peoples' work. 😵‍💫

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

OMG, the hats! and the whip, which isn't *not* an ejaculating 🍆 Source: Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

And now AI has graduated to book festival scam emails! Amazing how all these random book clubs, literary festival organizers, podcast agents, and literary marketers all summarize my most recent book in identically banal language.

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

OMG, the hats! and the whip, which isn't *not* an ejaculating 🍆 Source: Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Me at 25 with my baby. My baby at 25. 🕰️✈️

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Picked up two volumes of John Murray’s 1819 edition of Lord Byron for $17 CAD at auction! Unfortunately missing volume 1, but who needs it 🤷‍♀️

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Picked up two volumes of John Murray’s 1819 edition of Lord Byron for $17 CAD at auction! Unfortunately missing volume 1, but who needs it 🤷‍♀️

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Ate all the berries while hiking in Bamfield: watermelon berries (a type of lily, taste like cucumber, refreshing and bland), wild blueberries, salmonberry, salal berry, thimble berry, blackberry

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Rachel Hope Cleves @rachelcleves.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Two years ago I filed a complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency about West Jet stranding me in Japan for a week without contact after cancelling my flight. I *just* heard back from the CTA who informed me that my case hasn't started yet. Why isn't this dysfunction a national scandal?

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