iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This sounds reasonably consistent with my experience; moderately annoying but not scary or painful:

(for the record, we highly *dis*recommend Geronimo Stilton, as the couple we tried were full of people being unpleasant to each other. But the girl version was the right level of light drama & silliness) Also, there are probably some adult books that would be improved by fun text design nonsense.

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 5h

Unlike cheap internet access or 3G phones (the true drivers of the 90s/2000s explosion) consumer AI is a means with no end. You can't sell that to consumers. Only to businesses that misunderstand the relationship between technology and profits/cost-savings. Because to them, it's magic beans.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

My kid pivoted to graphic novels & then manga, & still struggles a bit with wall-of-text books. Other stuff we liked in the interim: Ursula Vernon's semi-graphic series, and the handful of things with fun text design like the Thea Sisters.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

Yes, this!! I remember when Babysitters Club came out & there was a while where I could actually keep up before it became a confusing soup of many volumes like Nancy Drew & the Sweet Valley series.

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Kasey Gifford @kaseygifford.bsky.social · 23h

To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...

gadgetreview.com

One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center

A rare 200-tree American chestnut grove in West Virginia may be cleared for data-center development, but the project denies the site is on its land.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

a new take on "firewater"! 😆

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

(I am particularly sad in this case b/c both the book I started last night, & the other DNF that immediately came to mind had some particularly excellent worldbuilding & magic systems that I really wanted to know more about, but I don't think the stress of getting there is worth it at present.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

The real world gives me more than enough anxiety about future events w/o resorting to "let me tell you how it all went wrong" & "had I but known" framing.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 5h

Have discovered a new plot failure mode-- the structure of "character tells backstory in bits from the point of the plot where everything has fallen apart with repeated hints of doomful foreshadowing" does NOT work for me. Normally I'm fine with spoilers, but "now tell me how this part broke" is 😩.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I just learned about the Rodney Legg collection the other day! Some guy collected almost 200 stone heads from around the UK & Ireland and his executors donated them to the museum; they're all pretty great, but in that folk art category where we have no way to tell who made them when.

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In the last couple of years, we've seen multiple critical collections (museums, herbaria) close. The IUCN--the global authority on the status of biodiversity--recently published on how important these kinds of facilities are in conservation. Every day, the dead are working to protect the living.

iucn.org

From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums

The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation: a formal acknowledgement that natural history museums,...

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✦ kresendoe ✦ @kresendoe.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Ode to Pakicetus (2024)

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Hagai Palevsky (he/him) @dialhforhagai.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Wile E. Coyote, despaired, takes a bucket of paint and a brush and paints a beautiful two-bedroom house on a mountainside. He paints a beautiful coyote wife in the window, and two adorable coyote kids running around in the yard. He tries to enter this new coyote life, but it is inaccessible to him

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Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 28/09/2026

(eyeroll) (suddenly imagining Nick Fury saying "That's because they were DUMBASS IDEAS, and so we ignored them!")

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Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

"After he retired to the cave prayer grew in him like a forest, sowed its seeds inside his psyche, rewilded his heart. He didn’t see that centuries had passed without him."

A Saint looks up from his prayers to
discover he’s been dead for some time
For St Robert of Knaresborough
By Jay Hulme - from 'The Vanishing Song'

After he retired to the cave
prayer grew in him like a forest,
sowed its seeds inside his psyche,
rewilded his heart. He didn’t
see that centuries had passed
without him.
One day he
looked up, hearing requests for
intercession, and the woods were
older than expected, the riverbanks
shifted by the years —
and as he
knelt before the altar in his hermit's
church, his knees disappeared below
the edges of his emptied grave.

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Victoria Janssen @victoriajanssen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"On 9/24, the...Advisory Council on Historic Preservation terminated the Section 106 review process for the proposed Monumental or Triumphal Arch..., before consultation was finished. We urge you to raise your voice in opposition." Deadline: 11:59 pm ET 9/29/26. savingplaces.org/monumental-a...

savingplaces.org

Monumental Arch | National Trust for Historic Preservation

Members of the public have the opportunity to provide input on a proposed Monumental Arch at Memorial Circle on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, near Arlington National Cemetery and along the P...

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If you care about keeping the Academy of Natural Sciences open to the public in Philadelphia, I need you to read and share this thread. Trish Wellenbach was sent from the mayor's office to oversee the Academy of Natural sciences situation. She needs to hear from us. Here comes the action item:

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(so, like, fix your hearts & remember the fairytales where not making a meal of your fellow creatures even tho you're hungry means they'll be *not dead* to help you solve your problems later on & all that.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(and this has bits about *her* childhood and the grandparents who were there for her despite personal hardships she did not see at the time, and now I am grateful to them for helping her become a formative-in-passing moment for me, and THIS IS WHY WE TRY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER FOR EVERYONE.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(picked up off the library shelf b/c the art camp I went to between 1st & 2nd grades-- while my mother was packing so we could move to a house where my younger brother got a room larger than a closet-- had us copy out some of her poems, so her name has always been in my head tagged as friend.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Reading Nikki Giovanni's *A Good Cry* & having feels about it.

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Purrypurrydog @purrypurrydog.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Legend says if you say bad things about COBOL, Admiral Hopper will rise from her grave and squish you like the first computer bug

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Not typo exactly, but my father discovered that working for NAVsea (the Naval Sea Systems Command) with messy handwriting tended to turn it into nausea...

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

ooh, where do I find out more about ancient roman kitchens? (as opposed to the "eat street food b/c if people start cooking in apartments they'll burn down the city" problem)

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Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Agree with this—a) “get in losers, we’re bringing back justice and civil rights ” is a much more appealing message than figuring out whom to throw off the train, and b) I think candidates are underestimating how many Dem voters have trans/NB kids they would do anything to protect

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Skeletal analysis is up there with children's tombstones on the list of things that make one grateful for the modern world. (I can catalog a number of my bone irregularities, but they're things like questionable posture from reading too much & a divot in my pinky from the handle of my teacup.)

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Katie Hodges-Kluck, PhD @klhkhistorian.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

**Lights Out Alert Sunday & Monday Nights** Birdcast is estimating 300-400 million birds will be in flight.

From meteorologist Eric Snitil

**Lights Out Alert Sunday & Monday Nights**

"Heads up birders, I would not be surprised if the biggest bird migration night of the year happens over the next 2 nights. Birdcast is estimating 300-400 million birds will be in flight. That is a lot, but the pattern could not be better for migratory birds. A massive area of high pressure will turn the low level winds from the northeast to the southwest across most of the US. The last time we had anything similar to this in the fall was early October last year when a record 1.25 billion birds were in flight. I doubt we get to that level, but I suspect the number will top 500 million especially Monday night which looks to be the bigger of the two nights. You can help by turning off those outdoor lights on big migration nights, and the next 2 nights is about as big as it gets."

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Leanna Renee Hieber @leannareneehieber.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I have to get back to edits but if you're a New Yorker, if you work in NYC, if you love NYC, I bet you don't want to see over Five HUNDRED old growth trees get cut down across a whole swath of lower Manhattan?! You can send some emails. This is *specifically* an *unnecessary* cull!

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

all of this is exactly correct, and what i would add is: no person has ever spent 100 hours writing a scientific paper hoping, hoping with all their heart, that potential readers will skip that step to go straight to some mangled summary you didn't even write

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"The no of brains. It's like a tarot card."--me

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

...wait. Why would anybody voluntarily spend *more* time hanging out in an airport if they're not going anywhere? (I mean, obviously don't encourage the surveillance state or whatever, but I also don't see the appeal)

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Dilek Sayedahmed @dileksayedahmed.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I truly, deeply, sincerely do think the guy flipping burgers at McDonalds should be able to afford rent, bills, and groceries with his paycheck alone. That's kind of the whole point of having a job and I can't believe this is considered a radical position.🤷🏽‍♀️

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

the worst! 😩 ...now wondering if growing up with line-dried bedding may have helped me stave off a bunch of the environmental allergies & possibly explain why I only developed rainy-day headaches after moving 50 miles further north. 🤔

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The mucosal vax that passed its first mouse trials a month or two ago looked promising. (So, still several years out, probably, but something to cross fingers about.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

(Interestingly, my anecdotal conclusion on the incidence of bird poop-- which I've also never had a problem with-- is that the birds much prefer to perch in decent-sized trees, but will use a clothesline if there aren't any.)

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I don't think I've ever put on clothing with a spider in it, but as someone who line dries in the warmer months, laundry takes *so much less time & thought* when I'm tossing half of it in the drier & don't have to pay attention to the weather.

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 19/09/2026

The truth was that if United Health had an AI that was accepting a shitload of claims with a 90% error rate, United Health would stop using the AI in about 0.2 seconds.

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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 19/09/2026

This is why I think it's so important to push back against the personification of LLMs. If a person shoots someone while wearing a hand puppet, they can't claim the hand puppet did the murder.

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RossyDoesDrawings (commissions open) @rossydoesdrawings.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Time of man over. It goblin time now.

a drawing of a goblin who is roaring, with their hands raised

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The English Oak Project @thekentacorn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Never grow up, it’s a sign of surrender

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Punished Cat Guy (extra punished Cenobite version) @majima.club · 18/09/2026

So turns out the majority of my paycheck went to an overdraft I didn’t even know I had and now I’m at -$56 and I need to pay half of my electric bill before midnight so I’m uhhhhh working on some prints I’ve been putting off and if anyone wanted to pass this around it would help. A lot. Fuck fuck

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I aged out of upside-down about age 12 when my sinuses started getting all cross about it, and I am still sad.

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Noooo, goose! Do not burn the blankets & pillows without lung protection!

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thanate @thanate.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Some of the pyramid ones are (were?) made of a more plasticy mesh, but the last time I looked into this the conclusion was nobody had come up with a disposable teabag that didn't rely on some plastic content to keep it from dying in the tea.

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