iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Standard dialect, 52% similar to Minnesotans. If they'd asked pin vs pen & bag vs beg they'd have gotten me more accurate: Mom's side have a more Rust Belt accent & Dad's grade more Yooper.

A dialect map with a atrong gradient over the central US from deep red across northern Minnesota & Wisconsin to deep blue in Louisiana through Alabama.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The word of the day is "flat." And also another 4-letter word starting with "f."

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Oh no, how do I pick? Here's a piece of vein opal from Reynolds Mountain, Idaho. It's sun-baked but one corner broke to show clear layers. So maybe more agate than opal?

A chalky-looking white rock with a clear center that has very faint white horizontal layers. It's about the size of two of the fingertips it's held in.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I finally picked up a couple short-story anthologies by favorite authors and…this is funny. (Left is Kristen Britain & the story is from 2002; Ann Leckie's is from 2024) They are…very different, to put it mildly!

A book open to a title page: "Linked, on the Lake of Souls" & the cover of another book titled "Lake of Souls"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

T@dzio Mueller, whom I'd never heard of before but who seems like his whole thing is his "don't believe the hopium" bull. No, it's not all great but he doesn't seem to be doing anything to make it better, so…

Taddy-boy insisting that green energy buildout means nothing because banks have still invested in fossil fuels too

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Huh, perhaps yours went through German to get to English? Though I'm going to have to look up "lickworms"!

Translation from Finnish, above a picture of a very handsome black and tan dog with a stuffed koala: "It was my birthday today 🐶 I turned 4 years old. I got two koalas as a gift, even though my mom says the other one is Mint's. But it's mine.
We didn't get to go to the park because it was too hot, but we got to eat some lickworms and they said there would be cake for dinner 🎂
-Santtu"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Can't possibly relate (secondary consideration: local winery)

A bottle of red wine from Turtle Crossing winery, featuring what I think is a wood turtle in a bunch of red poppies.
Wood turtles are A Thing in my part of Wisco.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

There, I have my garden* in. * I live in an apartment, therefore my plants also get smaller accommodations

Two tall skinny ground cherry seedlings, one in a round terracotta pot & the other in a long gray plastic pot.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

My coworkers think they are HILARIOUS. (No one was hurt & I fixed the broken parts, but also geez this happened YESTERDAY!)

Sticker on my office door with a quadcopter UAV & the words "I don't just fly drones, I crash them too"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

"Help, I've fallen and I ca-ENT get up!"

Crop of landslide photo, the bottom most shrub of a thicket appears to have arms & legs & be sliding downhill.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

"Bologna, approved by the Sturgeon General":

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

…or not. Satellite shows a perfectly circular cloud!

Satellite view of North America at night, there is a perfectly circular bright white cloud over Iowa which is currently raining on me.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Noticed milk starting to go sour, so thought I'd scald it & then make yoghurt. Instead it made a big curd. So, and @sjgochenour.bsky.social I blame you, I made my first tiny batch of mozzarella at 9:00 pm:

A bowl with two dessert spoons in it; sitting on one is a white ball of cheese roughly the size of a walnut.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I've got some loop hooks that take the pressure off my ears, though I'm not sure that would help?

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Also, I got a brainwave & just made it in my tupperware instead of transferring it later!

Tiramisu in a small food storage container. There is cocoa powder on top of 3 layers of brown biscuits & cream-colored cheese & meringue.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

I'm running Graysky & while it's got some annoying quirks, O get no logo:

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

This afternoon, looking over the Turkey River valley from the Chicken Ridge scenic overlook:

Panoramic view of approx. 270 degrees from W to SE across a ridgetop and over wooded valleys and snow-covered fields, blue sky above

View up-valley, ridgetops, wooded slopes, snowy fields on terraces

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

A friend's phone is set to French for practice purposes & now I get this when they send me a thumbs-up.

Message app.
Me: "Yep! Would 2 work?"
Friend: "A ajouté un «J'aime» à «Yep! Would 2 work?»
Which was apparently a thumbs-up on IOS in French sent to an Android set to English

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I require poutine! And cider! Luckily I had the fixings.

A white plate with green decoration on a red placemat. On the plate is a rather unappatizing-looking pile of fried potato wedges, white cheddar cheese curds, and leftover turkey gravy.
Tasted good, though

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Ok, this was too perfect. Don't eat unidentified berries, kids! (I did not. I took the photo IN ORDER TO identify these)

4 pink fingers poking out of a green fingerless glove are steadying a spindly branch from which small black berries on long stalks sprout singly.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

She's also got a ton of these cut-glass trifle cups, which as you see go for a staggering buck-forty...but surely they're worth at least $10 each! (Not when literally everyone's grandma has a set, no...)

Cut-glass footed cups, about 4"l inches deep on a short stem. A tag says the store wants $1.40 each

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

"How hard could it be?" I thought. "Mei Mei le Squoofins is mostly black, & JL has a ton of reference photos..." ...yeah, harder than that. But, despite that, may I present One Art!

A mostly-black tortie cat with a split brown face, one white toe, & a rear foot white sock, is drawn hunched over in Snoopy vulture pose. She is wearing a white supervisor's hardhat & a green lanyard with a picture ID reading "SQUOOF cat in charge of JL & house." In front of her is a clipboard with a checklist containing: "JL, bed, füd, litr, toyz, mous in cubbrd"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Oh THAT'S what happened! My poor SIENSE!

Hand sample of white chert, with a big round divot in the top where a chunk broke off. (Written therein: "Wyoming? Bighorns if so" because I found it in my car after the end of field season)

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

TW: blood (in medical tubing) Decided a visit to my friendly local vampires was a good way to celebrate Halloween. (Especially given how many car accidents will likely occur tonight...)

A very pale pink arm on a gray armrest. A piece of medical tubing is taped at wrist and elbow, where it disappears under a piece of gauze. There is blood in the tubing & a red stress ball in the hand: the owner of the arm is donating blood.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Only issues I've had with these are the fairly flat footbed & the fact they're from England, so returns are annoying. (And now, tarrifs)

A pair of shiny burgindy(ish) chukka boots, one standing & one on its side. The leather is comfortably creased & the welted soles are just starting to wear down on the outer heels.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

I found but did not pick this thing in the middle of a cornfield:

A large red-purple mushroom with upturned rim viewed from above, surrounded by soil & corn stubble

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Bonus millipede who does NOT want all their feet in the creek!

A dark brown millipede with reddish-brown bands between segments is curles into a shape like a letter p, about an inch above the water line on a rock. It was quite large

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Finally got my feet in a creek this year.

One shockingly pale leg & sandaled foot in a creek, lined up to give a sense of scale to the massive chert boulder the photographer is standing on. It's as wide as the foot & twice as long, & you can see some red & yellow banding near the toes.

A big gray rock. It's the local sandstone, broken off from somewhere upstream. The upper surface is pitted like a sponge with irregularly-sized holes: potholes where harder rock caught in eddies has carved out hollows. Some of those rocks appeared to still be trapped in their places.

Sandstone creek bank. Beds in the top third of the image are flat-lying, beds below them dip to the right--likely an old alluvial fan, or perhaps a dune, depending which unit this is. There's another flat-lying section in the middle, between two sets of foreset beds.

VERY round sandstone boulders in a clump: they're resistant bits of bedrock, weathered in place. There's a lot of these more-resistant spots in the bedrock, often with bedding planes at different angles to the surrounding stone & lumpy nodules sticking out.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Ok, that is officially Too Much Coleslaw--5qts. Not pictured: an additional quart of blaukraut. That big bowl will need to get given away, I think...

Medium and large lidded glass bowls, full of coleslaw, next to the mayonnaise & yogurt I used to make the dressing.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

... either we're finally going to do as I've been saying for years & dig the usable detritus out of landfills...or we're using woodlice as currency

A dark brown isopod (sowbug/rolly-polly/woodlouse) with tan markings. It is sitting on a very pink & somewhat fuzzy arm right above a gray watch strap.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Sure: Post a random pic or everything will go bad in August:

A medium-sized flight feather (secondary?) in mottled white & brown. The backdrop is the prairie I found & left it in

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Though now I look, that tendril may also be aiming toward @karidru.bsky.social ... I'm in that blue circle, he's further southeast.

Radar map over Iowa with text box indicating it's from 12:45am this morning. In the middle is a red and white blob of storms surrounded by green. A blue arrow drawn over it indicates general storm motion from west to east.
A narrow band of red extends south from the storm, and a blue circle near the end indicates a large area just north of Des Moines

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

I went to check how Lutheran World Relief is organized, as the one I know most about; it's firmly US based & also tries to be nonsectarian in aid, so not quite this. But I thought you'd appreciate this photo from the About Us section:

A black-and-white photo of a bunch of white men in 1940s suits & hats, in front of a refrigerated railcar. On the side of the car is written "74000 lbs Iowa lard for the hungry overseas sent by Iowa LWR appeal"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Something like this? Silde a bolt from a hinge-panel into the top, attach the panel, have 2 or 3 swinging panels that latch more like a garden gate & swing off the sides? Not impermanent, but would just need a few screws into wall/bannister.

"T track" for a table saw--a metal strip with a two-level cutout down its length, where a hex-head screw or a washer can slide along beneath a lip that keeps it in place after it's slid in at one end. Below is a hex-head bolt sliding down the track. The image is from the McMaster Carr website so it's got dimensions listed on the side, they're irrelevant to the idea here.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

The map dropped me near the west side, Wexford County. About the blue blob

A bedrock geology map of Michigan, with a blue mark on the NW part of the lower peninsula in a zone marked "gypsum-bearing rocks in shale"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Eclogite a friend gave me, further provenance unknown:

Roughly squarish, sparkly teal-and-pink rock

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

European (Dutch, here) racists STFU challenge, difficulty level: impossible

Skeet from @marga-rita.bsky.social: "The immigrants in the US, especially the ones coming from across the southern US border work very hard. Sometimes 2 jobs. The ones in Europe get subsidies for everything which discourages them from working and assimilating. 4 generations later they still don’t give their kids European names…"

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

If you see this quote with flowers from your gallery. My neighbor seeded his pasture with wildfowers:

Prairie hillslope flowers from near the ground: purple leadplant (maybe?), yellow echinacea/black-eyed suasns, white Queen Anne's lace, and pale violet beebalm/bergamot. There are many green and reddish leaves & grass blades; in the distance are some trees & a bright blue sky.

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Angry Rutabaga @streamlass.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

The weather heard me complaining about lack of snow, so dumped about 10cm on my folks' on the day I came up. Only the last 30km or so were poor driving, but the scenery is great. (And no, I didn't think to grab my skis 🥺)

A low hill across a field, both covered in snow. The hill slopes up to the right, & a row of pine trees along its base also increase in height from left to right. They are all heavily laden with snow. Deciduous trees in the background have a coating of rime on every twig. At the base of the hill, below the pines, a creek has cut a small cliff. Everything is either white or nearly black, though the trees are usually deep green and the rocks a buffy tan.

In the middle of the county highway, which has only been plowed here because the township plowman lives nearby (the county guy apparently came through once and then...fucked off to go snowmobiling or something, damned if I know; the rest of the highway was 4" deep snow): a very, very dimwitted domestic goose. It looks like an old pottery painting. I had to go AROUND the goose. It was not frozen in place, it just didn't want to move.

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