iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I used to do that song (with some minor regional variations) as a naturalist at an outdoor science school in CA. It is indeed a catchy one! Useful because if you can remember or invent enough variations you can keep it going for a long time if you need to keep the kids occupied.

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Mara Wilson @marawilson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don’t think I’m ever going to get the appeal of pivoting to video for podcasts. I’ve been listening to podcasts for 20 years, and never once have I thought, my God, I need to SEE these people! I’m on a walk or doing the dishes, I don’t need video.

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aquila 🍉 most normal frankenstein enjoyer @belllmonts.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"dracula is actually about repression" "dracula is actually about bloodsucking landlords" "dracula is actually about assault" "dracula is actually about xenophobia" "dracula is actually about bram stoker being closeted" dracula is about all of those things welcome to the gothic genre

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Matthew Noe @noethematt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Every book its reader Every reader their book Ranganathan got this right back in the 1930s

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Do yourself a favor and read this epic travel misadventure thread.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A+ sign off. Wishing you smooth skies and no additional surprise stops.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It’s certainly making me feel crabby.

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 20/09/2026

I hate doing the "a rollback of trans rights is the gateway for a rollback of women's rights" thing because trans rights are human rights in and of themselves, whatever the impact on cis women. But goddamn I wish more cis women had a sense of history and self preservation.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I hope your recovery with your newly installed inorganic parts goes as easily as possible.

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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 18/09/2026

Humaning.

A four-panel comic. In panel 1, a Northern Cardinal and American Goldfinch perch above a busy crowd in a city, looking down. The cardinal says "It's a nice day to go humaning." The goldfinch says "Just look at them. Majestic." In panel 2, a close-up of the two birds. The cardinal says "Nobody tells you that you'll reach a certain age and suddenly get into humaning. I hit 3 years old, and then bam."The birds are looking out over the crowd scene. In panel 3, the cardinal says "Their calls sound funny to us, but each one has a unique meaning." Below, people are saying various things: "I'm tired." "Where's my phone?" "I'd murder a burrito." In panel 4, the birds look down excitedly at a man walking by. The cardinal says "Wait, is that a guy who got dressed in the dark and put his shirt on inside out and backwards?" And the goldfinch exclaims, "Holy... that's a lifer!"

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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Ok that's 3 minutes, keep moving, got a lot of sad teens here.

Just 3 minutes with a mini horse or donkey improves teens' moods, study says

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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Don't want to be a buzz kill and I love a good "we stopped a data center" as much as the next guy, but I fully expect there to be AI "sacrifice zones" just as there have been for oil, chemicals, etc and stopping this shit shouldn't rely solely on communities having the energy, time, money to protest

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Watch this space dance party and enjoy a brief respite from paying attention to The Horrors here at ground level.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Dammit. Rewatching the video of the 2011-era Doctor Who cast & crew lip-synching to 500 Miles has been one of my most reliable sources of online joy, but now these jerks decided to proclaim their transphobia.

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UCL SSEES Library @uclsseeslibrary.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It's never too late to return that overdue library book... 😊

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I don’t believe AI will kill us all. But I do believe it can make all our lives worse, which has already started to come into effect, and it’s clear that the people behind the technology don’t care at all about the human cost.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Everything I’ve read by T. Kingfisher has been fantastic, and I think Nettle and Bone may be my very favorite of them.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I learned from the book "The Last Days of the Dinosaurs" that one factor that may have helped turtles was cloacal respiration (getting oxygen from the water via their butts), which could have helped them stay safely deep during the hours after the meteor when the air was superheated.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

So glad no one was hurt! Meanwhile, some bears and raccoons are about to try to teach themselves to read with this trove.

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👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 25/08/2026

everybody is (rightfully) remembering her incredible charity work, the 300 million books and counting for kids, the moderna vaccine, all of it she also wrote 'I Will Always Love You' and 'Jolene' on the same dang day. absolutely peerless

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

with alt text. this is so beautiful 💕

Dolly Partons IMAGINATION LIBRARY

Dear Imagination Library Graduate,

My, how time flies. It seems it was only yesterday when your family and friends read you your first story. You were just a baby. Now you're five years old and about to go to school. How exciting!
This may be your last book from my Imagination Library but you have to promise me you will keep on reading. If you go to your local public library you will find a great number of books just for kids your age. Every book is a treasure and every time you open one up you will meet new friends and take wonderful journeys to magical places.
I hope you have a great time in school. I bet your school will even have a library where you can check out books. You and all of your friends are very special. There is no limit to what you can do or how far you can go.

Just remember the lessons my family taught me - dream big dreams; learn everything you can learn; and care for all those who care for you. You do all of these things and you can be anyone you want to be.

You are terrific, and remember...
I Will Always Love You,
Dolly

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Thank you for telling us about him. He sounds like a gem of a person. My condolences on your loss.

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Marian Call @mariancall.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

it's the averaging effect that i hate, the way that LLM-informed infrastructure tries to helpfully guess what I want, and it always guesses in the direction of what most people have wanted before me. Wrong. It makes me irrationally outraged. YOU DO NOT KNOW MY INTENTIONS, CLIPPY

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Sticky pads/to do list pads are a great idea. Also bags (tote, messenger), towels (there are some very cute printed tea towels in the world), earrings, or socks.

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Birthdate and name matches are causing US Citizens to get arrested in error by ICE as they board airplanes. This is the same level of rigor they're bringing to claims of fraudulent voting, and is obvious as an error-prone method to anyone who has taken an introductory stats class.

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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 09/10/2025

Higgledy piggledy Timothée Chalamet Has a name meriting Endless design Much like his forerunner Benedict Cumberbatch: Hexasyllabically, Easy to rhyme

tweet from childish branzino @absflora:
timothée chalamet is the new benedict cumberbatch in the sense that you can say ANYTHING and we know who you mean. tiffany chevrolet. timpanogos charlemagne. symphony cabernet. jiminy castaway.

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WitmerLab at Ohio University @witmerlab.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

It's #InternationalCatDay and #caturday so we'll dip into the #PinkysDinosaurAdventure archives for an image of 8-week-old Pinky the Kitten with a somewhat larger friend.

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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This is never getting fixed until Democrats start vocally arguing that IMMIGRATION IS GOOD instead of just saying, "well, we'd like to enforce immigration laws a bit less harshly than the Trump administration"

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

As a librarian, I’m imagining lots of conversations like: “Sorry sir, I can’t come show you how to attach a pdf to your email now. Mittens JUST sat down in my lap. Disturbing him is against library policy.” My job satisfaction would go way up even as my productivity dropped.

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Seanan McGuire @seananmcguire.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I hate the fact that life has turned into an endless series of single-use kitchen gadgets. Want to go to a theme park? Better install their proprietary app. Want to go to another theme park owned by the same company? That will be another app.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

That was my $7 plus tax and tip learning experience of the day.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Went for coffee after work. They had a "dirty coke" special: Coca-cola with espresso, plus cherry & lime. I'd never seen coffee & Coke combined. Seemed like an odd idea but surely they wouldn't offer it if it sucked, and cherry goes with both coffee and Coke. Worth a try! Folks, it was disgusting.

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 29/07/2026

You may recall the case where Lynne Freeman sued Tracy Wolff for writing a YA set in Alaska where the male lead was hot and broody, just like in Freeman's book. This litigation went on for three years before a judge finally read both books and said there was zero infringement.

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Matt Ortega @mattortega.com · 28/07/2026

Stephen Miller said just the other day that all asylum claims are "fake." A couple deported from the U.S. to Guatemala were gagged, bound, and shot dead. Their 14-month old found crying next to their mother's body. People like Miller don't care though because this is the point: ethnic cleansing.

stlpr.org

Overland couple shot dead in Guatemala after local ICE stop led to deportations

The couple’s 14-month-old daughter was found crying beside her mother’s body in a sugarcane field last week, according to Guatemalan authorities and media.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Sounds like you found the vegans from the old joke about how they’re vegan not because they love animals but because they hate plants.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Thank you for sharing this super fun thread! I’ve really appreciated your wit, insight, and live emotional reactions.

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Rob Sheridan @rob-sheridan.com · 20/07/2026

MULDER [slapping down plane tix]: Hope you packed your rain coat, Scully. SCULLY: Seattle? Mulder it's the weekend, what- MULDER [handing her a file] Confirmed sightings, Scully. This is big SCULLY [eyes wide]: My God Mulder, what am I looking at here? MULDER: The locals are calling it.. JIMOTHY

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The article says that after the crashes started getting attention the city said they would add reflectors and high visibility bollards. That’s a good thing. Car hitting a barrier is much better than hitting a bike, but the safest way is no crash at all.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I came up with a joke about Orpheus but it was too backward-looking.

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 15/07/2026

FWIW, the first known use of the Wordle word today was in 1607.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

There was one near me that was less than half the cost of other area theaters (more than a dollar but still a good deal), but now they’re renovating. I fear when they reopen the prices will be higher.

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bespectacledsparrow @sparrow-specs.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

When I was a new driver I'd prepare for a route I hadn't personally driven yet by getting my dad to draw me a map with just the relevant roads and landmarks I'd recognize. But yeah, sometimes you had to ask strangers for help.

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