iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I can't find the image easily, but yeah Kate lived on my wall. (Before that, Star Trek "poster books.")

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 28/09/2026

I'm with you on most of these, although there was a great New Yorker article in the late 90s about how "hopefully" and similar constructions are sentence adverbs, which I fully accepted and accept. "Decimate" and "begs the question" are the ones where my brain cannot help but silently note it.

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 25/09/2026

I mean: Carol Kaye, full stop. But if you need more names ... Debbie Googe, Janet Wygal, Kira, Cait O'Riordan, Sara Lee, Aimee Mann. Oh, and Tracy Pew, why not.

000

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 25/09/2026

Full agreement. I've seen people quibble with this, and it is certainly of its time as all things are (there have been some interesting updates/extensions from Captain Awkward and Pervocracy). Foundational wisdom that is well worth considering/pondering!

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 20/09/2026

An especially enjoyable Field Notes this week; I really liked trying to follow along on a satellite map as I read.

063

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 17/09/2026

So very very sorry to hear this 💔

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 09/09/2026

Communication expert: "If I use your name 4-5 times in a conversation, you will like me even if I don't like you." Keep giving that advice, supposed expert! Because wow is that so grating, when someone keeps repeating my name. Instant salesman (derogatory) tell.

030

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 08/09/2026

I love this song so very, very much. Crushingly great.

011

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 08/09/2026

Sixty years of Star Trek. I have not kept up with the franchise beyond dipping in from time to time to see where they've taken it. But that show, in all its goofy and yet sometimes moving splendor--ground zero for the sf media fandom explosion--was vitally important to me as a kid.

030

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 04/09/2026

I know they're both based on the Harvard dataset but it seems like that old NYT quiz from 2013, even with fewer questions, was able to not only pin me down to NC but to also to my hometown. Whereas mydialect guessed Charlotte/Atlanta/Nashville.

011

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 04/09/2026

To me the most interesting part is the "what gave you away" at the very end. (What gave me away: soft drink, the devil is beating his wife, y'all, saying "spicket" but spelling it "spigot.")

110

Reposted by Richard Butner

Evan Dorkin @evandorkin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Anyway, fuck Warren Ellis is still on, and I guess so is fuck Image.

314111

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 01/09/2026

I have consumed the ice cream created in honor of astronaut and engineer Christina Koch at her (and my) alma mater, and found it to be delicious (cheesecake w/ blueberries, raspberries, and graham crackers).

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 25/08/2026

Yr required reading for the day is Anya DeNiro writing about Christopher Brown's first novel, about what science fiction can do, about this strange place we find ourselves in.

021

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 03/08/2026

Neko Case, getting it done re: G. Hansard.

0287

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 03/08/2026

I saw the new Spider-Man movie a few hours ago and the main thing I remember about it was that the person sitting next to me was wearing a scent I can only describe as Vanilla Musk Explosion. And not a fancy Vanilla Musk Explosion. We're talking dollar store Vanilla Musk Explosion.

000

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 30/07/2026

I feel this hyperbole with arts/music documentaries, too. "This person/group was under-recognized and unappreciated, but watch the doc to learn why they are actually the Greatest/First/Only!" No sense of surrounding cultural flows and support because that might be seen as diminishing.

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 22/07/2026

Thanks to a friend I got a ticket & ride to the Cat Power show last night in Saxapahaw. Dear ol' Chan is still in possession of all her mighty powers, even when dealing with cyclosporiasis! And still the kind of person who made sure all the little kids up front got set lists after.

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 16/07/2026

What a monster of a song, "Lost Boys" by Phoebe Bridgers. I had missed this video when it came out a couple weeks ago. Crushing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KXn...

youtube.com

Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Boys (Official Video)

YouTube video by PhoebeBridgersVEVO

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 15/07/2026

Sack's not on the menu at the Waffle House but at least Sir John can cry "let the sky rain potatoes" (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V, Scene 5) and get his hash browns scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, capped, and peppered.

120

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 15/07/2026

Friend to Lord Rockingham, I presume

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 14/07/2026

The Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter is live. You know what do do.

149

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 13/07/2026

Sitting at Logan waiting on a delayed plane. I am full of gratitude for Readercon and the folks there: good friends, friendly acquaintances, and all the folks working behind the scenes to make it happen. Always nice to find a pocket universe where words and books matter.

060

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 10/07/2026

Thanks for coming to the reading! It was weird but fun to be in the lead-off spot

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 07/07/2026

Welcome, there are many rooms in the louche wizard castle

130

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 06/07/2026

My Readercon 35 schedule is simple: I'm reading Thursday night at 8, stop on by! Other than that I am looking forward to hanging with friends and friendly people.

1102

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 06/07/2026

Seven is a reliable eye-faucet opener

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 26/06/2026

I got Mamdani too. Was exactly 50/50 hope/doom. 20% chud. 34% techbro. I do wonder who the other "closest match" personalities are but not enough to take the quiz again.

000

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 09/06/2026

Maybe you watched this a few dozen times when it was released. Maybe it's time to do that again.

youtube.com

Talking Heads - Psycho Killer (Official Video)

YouTube video by Talking Heads

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 04/06/2026

It is absolutely amazing that Hillary Dawa Sherpa crawled down from the Yellow Band and through the Khumbu Icefall after they'd taken out the ladders. This story is only just beginning to come out. www.bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.com

Mount Everest: Sherpa guide found alive after going missing for six days

Cleaners found Dawa Sherpa crawling towards Base Camp six days after he went missing at a higher altitude.

100

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 30/05/2026

It strikes me that this was probably a @kellylink.bsky.social handle at one point, now that I think about it.

100

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 30/05/2026

Yeah, I have been wondering about that movie, and that description seals it for me

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 28/05/2026

If your site just got upgraded to WordPress 7.0 and you don't want to fiddle with ssh and config files and so on to turn off the Those Two Letters junk, this plugin does what it says: wordpress.org/plugins/turn...

031

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 27/05/2026

I wish that I could use "House of Eats, Shoots & Leaves" as the title of the story I'm working on, but sadly I cannot. Saving it for later.

120

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 30/03/2026

Just let me know when practice is! (As you know) I love the song title.

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 06/03/2026

It'd be nice if Bluesky implemented blocking the way Discord does, so you could click a Show control to see a post that a friend of yours is responding to but you've got blocked (and you don't know why). Probably there's a downside to this that I'm not thinking of, shrug.

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 27/02/2026

For decades my favorite headline has been "Drink Beer, Lose Weight!" but now I see in the NYT "A Creamy Salad Dressing That Will Change Your Life" and that's a strong second place. Probably would've taken top honors with an exclamation point.

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 21/02/2026

The absolute first one was probably Sidney Aptekar aka Thomas Mario, but it was Paul Harrington's HotWired columns in the mid-90s that really cracked open the world of drinks writing for me.

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 20/02/2026

This is great! And yet, one wonders what the experience is like w/ 3/4 oz. lemon juice and 3/4 oz. grenadine to 2 oz. gin. For scientific porpoises, of course.

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 20/02/2026

That is a buttload (technical unit of measure) of lemon juice. Like, why would you subject yourself to that much acid.

110

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 08/02/2026

"Horrid man" and "serial groper" are just the beginning, for him and for several others who were at that ICFA...

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 08/02/2026

Yeah, the old place does threading a lot better. Especially for accounts you don't follow. Show me the whole thread by the OP, not just ten posts at a time!

010

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 06/02/2026

Two hotshot Islay stillmen hide their growing passion for each other while competing to produce whisky with the highest possible phenolic PPM. Peated Rivalry.

020

Richard Butner @richardbutner.com · 02/02/2026

Make a List of the 150 People You Feel Most Closely Connected To Dunbar's Number Challenge!

010