Mr. Black YouTube video by AreaEightyNine

when your boss sends you a polished letter on nice stationary telling you that unionization just isn’t appropriate for your particular workplace

The uncanny suburb on Camazotz was a milestone in my urbanist awakening.

this is it right here. AI violates Vonnegut's number 1 rule for writers: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." AI shifts the burden of effort from the writer onto the reader/audience and that is unacceptable

In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came

A present to myself. I'm making good on my renewed commitment to physical media. Max Richter is spinning. A human being sold me this record.

I knew pickup truck cargo beds were shrinking, but look at how puny the one on that truck is!

Expropriate the expropriators.

Audrey from "Twin Peaks," grinning after she drove off a delegation of Norwegian visitors by telling them about Laura Palmer's murder.

There's a delegation of Norwegian visitors on campus.

Fortune from a fortune cookie reading “Silence the critic within.”

Panda Express has joined the war on the humanities.

Sperm whales’ communication closely parallels human language, study finds Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own

Sperm whalese audiobook of "Moby-Dick," they're going to love it.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Left, glass of golden beer with white head, right bottle of beer. Both sit on balcony railing in late afternoon sun, trees and a school in background.

Now in rotation: Penrod's Pils, premium Czech lager. Just in time for summer. Named for Rotten Penrod, a cat who passed 4 decades ago, but whose disgusting anal habits remain stuff of family lore.

#Homebrewing #BilliBräu

Sappho is laughing.

Went through the exact same thing last week listening to @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social.

Not related to the joke, but in the year 2026, one thing I like is that Calvin is just sitting there, doing nothing except listening to the record.

But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts

The “Calvin’s dad explains two types” meme, inspired by a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Clockwise from top left: 1) Calvin’s dad walks into frame to find Calvin trying to operate a record player. The dad says: “There are only two industries left in America: gambling, and fraud.” 2) The dad shows where the record goes, and how to turn on the player, while Calvin watches. Dad says “Derivatives? Gambling. AI? Fraud. Video games? Gambling. Social media? Fraud.” Calvin says “yeah”. 3) With one hand open palm up, Calvin’s dad cheerfully explains to Calvin out of frame below him, “The stock market looks like gambling, but it’s actually fraud.” 4) In bed in a dark room, Calvin clutches at his pillow, eyes wide in existential terror. There is no text in the panel.

Being into cats feels so debasing. You give everything over to this animal — time, labor, money — but when you want them to sit next to you, they refuse and jump away. When they finally sit on your lap, you sit motionless to the point of physical pain, afraid to disturb them. Humiliating.

Supplied by a late consumptive usher to a grammar school

But oh so fun to read about.

Dinotopia was the book perpetually checked out of my elementary school library. It was a wait until I could get my own hands on it.

I say explicitly when I do grad recruitment events that if you need an LLM to write an essay about why you wish to go to graduate school, perhaps graduate school is not the right place for you.

I don't know, but "nature over which no human hand has passed--alpine moraines and taluses--resembles those industrial mountains of debris from which the socially lauded aesthetic need for nature flees. Just how industrial it looks in inorganic outer space will someday be clear."
-TW Adorno

Left computer monitor with draft essay displayed. Right a grey Persian cat with golden eyes looks on.

I'd like to thank my RA Bhuta.

Satellite mirror plans could disrupt sleep and ecosystems worldwide, scientists say Letters to US agency raise concerns over tech firm’s plans to use reflective satellites and expand numbers in low Earth orbit

When Arthur C. Clark had Earth cast in eternal daylight at the end of "2010," I wanted to throw the book across the room.

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Killing my Instagram account. I joined to connect with people who share my odd hobbies, but the algorithm means that that is the last thing that site does. Beer and bicycle pictures will show up here instead, alongside whatever my usual here is.

Kills me every time.

Imagine if media outlets regularly published articles instructing drivers on how to be safe and included things like not speeding or driving distracted. But they don't because we as a society have decided that the current toll of traffic violence is completely acceptable.

wouldn't it be funny if EVERYONE blocked this Attie AI account @ bsky.app/profile/atti... before they could do anything with it

me to german friend: omg what a story to hear as a child of course you were traumatized

me 3hrs later to twin nieces: wanna hear a story