iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I saw the news before bed last night that Glacier was temporarily closing the GTTS because of our current storms, woke up expecting to see snow on the Logan Pass webcam and was pleasantly surprised at just a rainy foggy sunrise www.nps.gov/glac/learn/p...

Webcam shot of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park: it’s a dark foggy morning among the subalpine firs growing in small groups with shrubs and grasses. Paved paths winding among them are visibly wet with rain. The whole scene makes me want to remain in my warm bed.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I thought 12 was going to be the baseline wrong answer until I got to this marvel

a question that reads "wouldn't they need to add eight more to have a baker's dozen?"

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

brb, retreating to my clam nook to stare at the sea and Contemplate

A small space with white painted walls and white wooden wainscotting. There's a medium-window with a white frame. The view out the window is of some seaside buildings in Brighton on the right and the blue sea on the left. A washed-out blue sky with wispy clouds above gives the feeling of the sun directly overhead like it's high noon. In the foreground in the room is a small dark wood table and on it, about the size of an auto tire, is the bottom half of a ceramic clamshell. At least I assume it's made from pottery. Maybe there are giant clams in Brighton.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

everyone's posting the photo of the grandpa upside down in the air at the Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park and it's a terrifying and sad one, but as a tent camper this is the one that scares me, sleeping bag = shat from: www.krtv.com/news/local-n...

A bull bison, head down meaning serious business, charging in an open field towards a four-person tent with a man inside it. There are camp chairs around the tent, and a picnic table with more chairs closer to the camera, and a lodgepole pine forest in the background.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

when your friend is trying a new look that doesn't quite work for them

gif of a pretty blond man with blue eyes and sassy smirk on his face leaning forward to ask an unseen person sitting across the table from him "One has to ask, what is with the tan, Dan?" it's a clip from the show The Vampire Lestat where Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt halfway through a scene of an awkward and pissy conversation finally asks the question we're all wondering: why is Eric Bogosian's Daniel Malloy red as a boiled lobster

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I’m a patriot, but for our National Parks and genius like this

A photo of delicious things related to I assume a quesabirria taco stuffed into a taco shell mounted into a cup, two beverages one that looks like a mango and chamoy situation and the other like horchata, and three crispy fried balls nested in a paper boat with two dipping sauces and a wedge of lime. The text below the photo reads:

“Midtown Global Market’s El Taco Torro

New Vendor

Midtown Global Market’s El Taco Torro serves Birria Crunch Bombs (deep-fried tortilla balls filled with birria beef, Oaxaca and mozzarella cheese rolled in a tortilla chip crust and drizzled with…”

Here the Minnesota state fair website has a link to read further.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

in this brief period when fireworks are legal to buy here, I decided to sock a couple away for another fun future event

part of the merch behind the counter at a local fireworks stand, I asked the person running it for nice ones that went up in the air, had lots of nice light and color, no smoke bombs or parachutes please

The selections of the fireworksmonger: MILK & Honey and CIRCUS. The former has 22 shots, the latter 16. Note that MILK & Honey is 100% Natural. Oh good, wouldn't want RFK Jr to be sad. The total came to $20.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

no big deal, just a nice first day of summer on the Bitterroot River

A deep, fast river slightly high from snowmelt flowing towards the camera. Cottonwood trees line the banks. There is green grass beneath them and an old sun-bleached log in the grass in the foreground. The sky is blue with a scattering of clouds. In the distance is snow-topped 9,400 foot St. Mary’s Peak in the Bitterroot Mountains along the Montana and Idaho border.

The same river, looking down stream. We are standing along the bank of a backwater. The water has old gray tree trunks sticking out of it in the foreground. In the background, an abandoned railroad trestle crosses the river and there are log jams piled against its piers. Cottonwood trees line the banks, beneath them the grass and bushes are high. The water is dark, the sky is blue with just a few clouds.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

and Fester doesn’t have a patch on the Hapsburgs for spookiness, for instance this guy

Oil portrait of Charles II of Spain, the Ur-Hapsburg when it comes to inbreeding in European royalty. He’s got a long face with large eyes, flattened nose, recessed mouth, and a jaw and chin jutting out past all of the rest. He’s looking at the viewer as if to say, “none more spooky than me.”

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I took this with me from my bedroom at home to my first year of college in the dorms, and my roommate absolutely hated looking at it. Post a poster you used to have in your room, apartment, or house.

The black and white cover of the band Bauhaus’ single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” It is a still from the 1920 movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with Conrad Veidt as the sleepwalking murderer Cesare carrying a woman dressed in white who has fainted. I guess I had to establish my goth cred right away in 1990.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Happy start of Dracula Daily! I love that the whole start of the novel wouldn't be out of place in Food & Wine magazine. In honor of Jonathan Harker eating the local cuisine for the first time, I'm making chicken paprikash this coming week.

Another screenshot of a paragraph from the first chapter of Dracula, again from Jonathan Harker's journal: "I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was 'mamaliga,' and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call 'impletata'. (Mem., get recipe for this also.) I..." and here my screenshot cuts off because the main event, the discussion of the food, is over for now.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

My favorite yard/estate/church basement rummage sale finds today in Missoula

Painted portrait on lacquered brown wood with scalloped burned edges of a gray and white Schnauzer. The ears are up and alert, the nose is shiny black. The dog’s name is painted in white in the lower right as SHOTZY. Shotzy’s portrait is sitting on a table, propped against a wall with other artwork around it just out of view. There is a handwritten price tag of $2 on it.

A six-foot-tall Cool S cut out of plywood and mounted on a light blue metal stand for stability. It stands proud in direct morning sunlight against the outer white wall of a garage. As you would expect, it was at the sale of three or four of your classic Guys (who were selling lots of music physical media, audio equipment, home brewing supplies, vintage movie posters, and zines)

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Enjoying our home popover brunch with a bottle of Kirkland Signature's finest

A bottle of orange mimosa from Costco. It's Italian sparkling wine and orange juice from what the label claims is "real Sicilian blonde oranges." Given the usual good quality of Kirkland Signature products, you know what? I actually believe them. It's pretty nice stuff, not too acidic, not watered down, not sweet. Went well with our popovers with whipped butter and black currant jam, and a pile of bacon.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

And all the Airports never. Seeing this poster as a kid freaked me out

Movie poster for Airport ‘77. Between the tag lines at the top and the photos of the all star cast at the bottom is a green and gray illustration of a jet underwater in a stormy sea. Only the tip of its tail is above the waves, and its nose is tipping over an undersea cliff into the dark depths below.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Our new Christmas tradition began tonight: margaritas, sheet pan nachos, and a first time watch of the John Wick franchise

A great big baking sheet lined with parchment paper fresh out of the oven, covered in yellow corn tortilla chips, black beans, sliced red onion, pickled jalapeños, a Manchego cheese sauce, diced tomato, fresh cilantro, and crumbled cotija. All the colors together are very festive.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

It’s a lebkuchen assembly line up in here

Three baking sheets lined with parchment paper and covered in traditional German gingerbread cookies, each decorated with sliced almonds. The dough is dark brown, and the cookies are in bell, star, and heart shapes. The sheets sitting on kitchen counters and across a stove top, resting after rolling and cutting, waiting for their turns in the oven. My kitchen overwhelmingly smells of mixed spices.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

“We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now”

Keir Starmer standing at a podium? lecturn? with the seal of the United States placed on the front of it. Behind him are gold drapes and the flags of the United States and the United Kingdom. Starmer is saying into a microphone, “there’s a famous slogan in the United Kingdom”

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

I made King Arthur Flour’s garlic and herb monkey bread from their Baker’s Companion to go with a pumpkin (a roasted speckled hound) soup for dinner and I think this is going to be the regular friend for soup in my house

A closeup of a golden brown piece of monkey bread with a bite mark that’s being held in the hand of a white woman. The bread has flecks of green herbs here and there. The rest of the loaf is in the background on a blue and white flower-patterned platter. The bread has a brown crispy outer crust with streaks of more herbs. The crumb looks tender beneath the crust.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Cold apples are snappy apples! Learn it, know it, live it.

In front of a bin of locally-grown McIntosh apples at a small old grocery store are two white cardboard shipping boxes sitting on a black plastic milk crate. In large lettering the boxes read:

KEEP UNDER REFRIGERATION
Bitterroot Valley
(image of two red apples) APPLES
COLD APPLES are Snappy APPLES

The all uppercase words are in green. The case sensitive are in a cursive-looking red font.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

For Halloween, four horror novels I’ve read in the last couple years that were so good, immersive, strange, and gory I think about the worlds the authors created all the time

The book cover of Christopher Buehlman’s The Lesser Dead

The book cover of Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Getting through today with physical media

My hand holding my copy of D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Black Messiah from 2014, a CD I had on repeat on just about every player in my vicinity for months after it was released. It has The Charade on it.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Back on my bullshit* again *treating myself to baked goods at Montana country cafes

The whiteboard menu at the Hand Me Down cafe in Dixon (aka the town's new name in Salish: Sćilíp) sitting on an old timey mercantile counter with lots of vintage cooking and food items on the shelves behind, and glass front cases just beyond it filled with baked treats and tableware. The ceiling above is stamped tin, there are old pendant lights hanging down above the cases, the cream-colored plaster on the walls is cracking from age and moisture.

The main points of the menu read:

SWEET
Double Chocolate Donut $2
Dixon Melon Fritter $3
Lemon Poppyseed Cake $4
Toast w/Huckleberry Jam $4
Rhubarb Cream Bundt Cake $4

SAVORY
Bacon Burrito $8
Pico Burrito $8
Bean Burrito (vegan) $8
Chilaquiles (V/GF) $10
Chimichanga $10
Chip & Dip $4

DRINKS
Drip Coffee $4
Espresso $3
Latte $4
Flavored Latte $5
Herbal Tea $3
Tulsi Lemonade $4
Sparkling Lemonade $4
Hot Chocolate $4
La Croix (or) Orange Juice $3

Another view of the front counter. Propped up against a box behind it full of leafy greens is another whiteboard that reads

LOCAL PRODUCE
MAKE AN OFFER
swiss chard
cucumber
yellow squash
heirloom tomatoes
broccoli

A bouquet of late summer flowers such as mums and black-eyed Susans sit next to the board in a mason jar. Behind and above a back counter is an old timey cigarette stock shelf, now filled with small vintage tchotchkes. A stainless steel refrigerator is at the end of the back counter. It's covered with stickers, magnets, and posted items including one at the top that reads ABOLISH ICE. There's a wood stove just beyond the order area with a pipe going into the cracked plaster wall. A doorway painted blue is in a bricked alcove past the stove.

The aforementioned rhubarb cream bundt cake, sitting on a small vintage saucer. It's deep golden brown, covered in a white glaze, with bits of green rhubarb peeking out from the crumb here and there.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Home after two weeks rambling around the Upper Midwest for the first time. One of the small things I was surprised by was how Michigan's U.P. is able to make delicious things out of their large thimbleberries; the ones here out West are small, dry, and crumble instantly into nothing when picked.

Sideways view of a hand-held pastry, a turnover with a center filling of thimbleberry jam. The puff pastry has lots of holes caused by the steam of melting butter. There's a base layer of waxed paper and napkins around the base of it protecting the hand and person eating it from getting crumbs all over themselves because it was so flaky and tender. The thimbleberries inside were tart, sweet, delicious.

Photo of Jamsen's Fish Market and Bakery's menu written on a chalkboard outside of their walk-up window in Copper Harbor, Michigan. The building is painted in multiple colors, the fulls design of which was a rising sun with rainbow sunbeams. The menu reads:

BAKERY

Raised Donut with Thimbleberry Glaze $3.25
Vanilla Cake Donut with Thimbleberry Frosting $2.75
Chocolate Cake Donut with Thimbleberry Frosting $2.75
Thimbleberry Turnover $3.25
Michigan Blueberry Muffin $3.50
GF/DF Lemon Blueberry Muffin $3.75
Blackberry Lime Scone $4.00
Cheddar Bacon Chive Scone $4.00
Strawberry Buckle $3.50
Pannukakku (Finnish Pancake) $3.50
Brockway Biscuit Sandwich:
Sausage Egg & Cheese $6.50
Egg & Cheese $5.50

GIANT COOKIES $2.50

M&M Chocolate Chunk
S'more
Reese's PB Cup Chunk
Oatmeal Raisin
Salted Caramel

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

I shall call them Dave, Captain, Rat, and Brian…or maybe Waylon, Willie, Johnny, and Kris

Four baby robins crowded into a nest. All of their beaks are pointed up and out, impatiently waiting for food. They’re just about ready to fledge. The exterior wall of the house behind them is flecked with bits of their previous meals, smears of droppings and pin feathers.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

The situation here can only be described now as a mess of babies

Interior photo from a robin nest. Less than two weeks ago there were turquoise blue eggs. Today there are three? four?—I really can’t tell where one ends and another begins—small bald and pink baby birds with patches of white and grayish fuzzy pin feathers. They hatched sometime in the last 24 hours. They all look so delicate.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Checking up on my new neighbors just outside my door

A bird’s nest high up against an exterior house wall. It’s beautifully woven with brown and some green foliage and grasses. Inside it are three tiny turquoise blue eggs. Two are almost fully visible. The top of a third is barely peeking out because I couldn’t position myself without getting too close—I was already getting yelled at by their robin parents.

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Up early this morning to hit a dozen yard and estate sales. Greatest find of the year so far: 750 ml bottles of a Seattle coffee liqueur and a Philadelphia coffee-infused rum for $5 each. The couple selling them said they were gifts but didn’t like this kind of liquor.

Two hefty sealed and full bottles of dark brown liquor sitting on a white kitchen counter with a white toaster visible in the background. One label reads Seattle Distilling Coffee Liquor and the other label reads La Colombe Distilling Different Drum Pennsylvania Rum. The coffee liqueur is noticeably thicker than the rum, with syrup-like streaks of the concoction running down the inside of the glass. On the top of each sealed lid is a pink price sticker of five dollars. Is it even legal to sell hooch at a yard sale?

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Big day for one of my best friends who was born and raised in Chicago. I got this text earlier

Screenshot of a map of the South Side neighborhood where two houses 5 blocks apart have location pins dropped on them: one where my friend grew up, and the other the childhood home of Da Pope

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friend of the pod 🫛 @rebeccaschmitz.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

After 25 hours and 5 minutes, and getting up to help Booker take a break with her own long question in the last hour of his speech, Shaheen decided to say fuck it to all that work.