iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Signs posted across the Capitol lawn at #NoKings protest in Montpelier, Vermont, quoting bits from On Tyranny by @timothysnyder.bsky.social

Modern tyranny is terror management. When terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploited such events in order to consolidate power. The second disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, [Text blocked by my dog’s head!] and so on, is the oldest trick in the book. Do not fall for it.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Cinnamon dgaf about anything except looking after her pack, delighting in all living creatures, and humping the occasional leg

Cream-colored curly-furred dog rests her face drowsily on the side of a green armchair

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Laverne Cox at the GLAAD Media Awards: “...all these words are designed so you don’t see us as people. You see it as some kind of idea that is meant to come and take something from you...”

Laverne Cox at the GLAAD Media Awards: “Words like ‘biological sex,’ ‘transgenderism,’ ‘trans ideology,’ all these words are designed so you don’t see us as people. You see it as some kind of idea that is meant to come and take something from you and these people—it’s never been about protecting women in sports; it’s never been about protecting the children. If they wanted to protect women and children, they would prosecute the motherfuckers who are in the Epstein files—many of whom are serving in this regime.”

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

All photos of my dogs sweetly playing together come out revealing the demons which possess them

Two dogs, one white, one black, in blurred close-up as they throw their bodies against each other, teeth bared (but not biting)

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

This part is crucial to understanding how making public services freely available is not only Good but cost-efficient because it’s more overall functional on systems

How much should a government be willing to pay to achieve those outcomes? How about nothing? When Washington State’s public transit systems stopped charging riders, in many municipalities the state came out more or less even — because the money lost on fares was balanced out by the enormous savings that ensued.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

I saw CHESS on Broadway last night and just as I’m thinking how weird it is that a game would carry huge political significance, @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social posts this, re a @gregsargent.bsky.social piece

Today's game is officially between two football teams but it's really between the forces of inclusive democracy and white nationalist autocracy, and whatever the teams do Bad Bunny wins for the day (which is now Bad Bunny Day across California). And for all of us who believe that this country and world is for all of us (who believe it is for all of us).

Greg Sargent writes: "But something deeper is going on here than Trump’s usual lashing out at a critic. This clash hints at a genuine fear on Trump’s part that he’s on the defensive big time in the war over ICE—not just in the political war, not just in the war that’s shedding American blood in the streets, but also in the culture war. Because the battle over ICE has become a culture war all unto itself. And Trump is losing it."

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

More people hearing American Nazi speeches yelling “BUNK! BUNK! BUNK!” til they get kicked out, please

That same year, the German-American Bund (the American Nazi party) held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The rally drew a huge crowd—with twenty thousand attendees, and at least that many protestors outside. The Nazis had draped the stage in American and Nazi symbols, including a giant George Washington banner hung alongside Nazi flags. As the drums beat and the Nazis marched down the center aisle toward the stage, the crowd—many wearing Nazi uniforms and black arm bands—made the “Heil Hitler” salute to the Nazi flag.

Dorothy was there. She saw that the same normalizing tactics that she had witnessed in Germany in 1934 had come to America. Like she had done when she wrote I Saw Hitler, Dorothy heckled the Nazi rally’s main speaker, Bund publicity director Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze. Dorothy laughed loudly throughout his speech and shouted, “BUNK, BUNK, BUNK!” loud enough to attract the attention of the Nazi guards.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

This bit rings some eerie klaxons: Dorothy had written a Cosmo profile of having met Hitler and found: lol, what a loser. This had now become a deportation level legal offense: an insult to him was a violation of “national self-respect”

The morning after Dorothy settled into her hotel in Berlin on August 24, 1934, she learned how easy it was to be targeted by these new Nazi laws. A Secret Police officer found Dorothy at the hotel and delivered the order that she must leave Germany immediately. She’d been found guilty of violating German “national self-respect”—forbidden by Hitler’s 1933 Editorial Law.”

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Just a lil vid of my very smol dog being peaceful and sleepy and good

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

My personal favorite, Rory Kinnear in Penny Dreadful

Rory Kinnear portraying the Creature aka John Clare in the tv show Penny Dreadful

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Wait there’s a glamorous French heist boom in progress? Please let the thieves be the Robin Hood fox and, I dunno, this

Cate Blanchett in Ocean’s Eight, striding sapphically down the street in a glittering emerald green jumpsuit

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Burlington, Vermont showed up with autumn leaves & protest! #NoKings

An American flag carries a sign that reads: “this flag is anti-fascist. No dictators. No Nazis. No fascists. No klan. No grifters. No Trump!”

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

I began reading Catherine Lacey’s BIOGRAPHY OF X and this first paragraph (just 3 sentences) was so good I needed months to recover before I could come back to the book.

A paragraph of text photographed from a book. The first sentence reads, “The first winter she was dead it seemed every day for months on end was damp and bright – it had always just rained, but I could never remember the rain – and I took the train down to the city a few days a week, searching (it seemed) for a building I might enter and fall from, a task about which I could never quite determine my own sincerity, as it seemed to me the seriousness of anyone looking for such a thing could not be understood until the body needed to be scraped from the sidewalk.”

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

This little face keeps me believing in goodness

Tiny Yorkie pup face peeks out from a green fuzzy blanket snuggled around her

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

So I just tried this and it’s real and omg little kids full of optimism will make you feel better about pretty much anything 🥹

If anyone needs a little motivation today, call (707) 873-7862. It’s a school project for kindergartners give you a peptalk.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

I read a picture book for kids and it got me in the feels. Recommended for readers of any age who want the reminder that staying on a straight path is not the only way to navigate a deep, dark forest. SEVEN WAYS THROUGH THE WOODS, by Jenn Reese and Devin Elle Kurtz 🌿

A picture book stands on grass with an oak tree behind it. On the cover is a dark-haired girl smiling as she turns to walk into a forest, with a griffin glimpsed flying through the trees. The title is SEVEN WAYS THROUGH THE WOODS, by Jenn Reese, art by Devin Elle Kurtz

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

So, I want to say a couple things about this book SUNWARD, by @willalex.bsky.social, which comes out in a few days. (If you pre-order it right now, it will be waiting for you when it drops!)

Cover for the book SUNWARD by William Alexander: a sun in eclipse shines out in the darkness between the surfaces of a moon and a red planet

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

This is one of The Gorinsky’s wee sugar gliders eeeee

I’m standing in a blue room smiling at a wee sugar glider perched on my forearm

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Cinnamon feeling very pleased with herself after doing zoomies around a creature who slipped across the veil from some gothic eldrich wolf shadow world. Seriously these two dogs are working in entirely distinct genres here

On a grassy slope, a cream-colored bichon leaps excitedly toward the camera, mouth wide in a huge happy grin, while behind her looms the eerie figure of a great wolflike dog with staring ice-blue eyes, whose fur seems to drip shadows

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

this could be the cover of any book I read passionately from age 9 through 14

On a grassy field, a cream-colored bichon dog and beautiful black pony touch noses through the wide poles of a fence

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Every strange new animal is just a fren she hasn't met yet

Cream-colored bichon dog running back and forth in front of a fence she could easily slip through, at which a black pony gracefully lowers her head to greet this barky critter

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Cinnamon knows nothing of the world's horrors and simply lives the liberation of, and wild romping with, all sentient beings.

Very excited cream-colored bichon dog crouches in play position while a huge tawny dog who is 80% fur, and possibly a bear, leaps into the air above her

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Mine also has baths and yet somehow

Scruffy Yorkie bathing in a river like a ruffian

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

ancient crone witch sending her three grandwitches out into the world to do witchy shit #plantsky #plants

Three spiky thistle stalks topped by purple flowers rise from a thatch of soft cream colored fluff

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Also these babes like caterpillars trying to fly

A bunch of — damn, I really need to learn the right terms for plant biology. Ok so they are golden fluffy tails on tall stalks sticking up in a wild green field with the sun shining through them

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

This raw beauty. Plantsky, can you tell me what kind of plant it is, and also what the soft spray part is properly called? I’d like to find the words

A fuzzy green plant with grasslike leaves against a deep blue sky, with one soft seeded spray catching the sunlight

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

Have begun reading THRUST by Lydia Yuknavitch and before I even hit page one, the dedication’s got me emotional

Book dedication reads: this book is for Miles Mingo, sun of my life.

And for every child who will cross the threshold next, every kind of body and soul, every orphan and misfit, every immigrant and refugee, every gender imaginable, every lost or found beautiful being looking for shore, home, heart. That space between child and not: imagine it as everything. Hold it open as long as you can. You are right. You are the new world.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Every day some fresh bullshit reminds me of these observations by @zeets.bsky.social

Zito: What's become apparent in the last few years to me, is that a lot of people find the idea that they should have a responsibility and obligation to other people around them, highly oppressive. It's a level of egocentrism that even children would be admonished for.

It seems that every time that any adjustment in behavior or endurance of friction was required for the greater benefit of everyone, people have reacted as if that sort of consideration is the equivalent of stripping them of their rights. It's been incredible to see.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Well. Where do we go from here.

Tiny Yorkshire terrier stands on a
path of grass mown through overgrown wild fields. The path stretches out before her toward trees. She has turned to look back at the camera.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Big sis checking in with lil sis

Tiny Yorkie squints as the fluffy head of a cream-colored dog looms into frame to gently boop snoots. The other dog looks gigantic in proportion to the Yorkie though she is actually a 14 pound poodle.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

The kickstarter is fully funded but don't sleep on getting these books as soon as they're out. The first one -- BREATH WARMTH & DREAM -- is already available and it's a miraculous fantasy work of witchy wonder. I read it in small doses, as medicine for the soul.

Cover of the novel BREATH WARMTH & DREAM by Zig Zag Claybourne. The outlines of two Black women face each other, hands touching over their heads, colors of sand and sea drifting through them.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

My wee soulmate drinking water from a tiny espresso mug

A tiny Yorkie climbs up from my lap to drink water, offered by a hand from out of frame. Her tongue is sticking straight down into the water, and her gaze is intent.

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Just looking at sunlight through a leaf, sunlight in a leaf.

Close up of a wide leaf against a window, the greenest green, glowing in intricately lined patterns of leafstuff

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Life with four dogs: drama, always drama

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Karen Meisner @whatnext.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Pooka is 100% an anime creature

Tiny yorkie perches atop a sofa pillow, huge ears pointed up like wings

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