Agreed, but I blame playing with others on this app for my brain’s instant “wait, we’re doing bear vs. man discourse again?” reaction the first time I read this skeet.

Time for another rehearsal!

…while I’m looking forward to this concert, I’m looking forward even more to having *no rehearsals for a couple of months* after this weekend.

mental note: it’s nice to feel wanted, but try not to take four months straight of back-to-back gigs again

All of the people who wrote those “they were such good friends!” analyses of burials and historical figures knew *exactly* what they were doing.

Making something great out of random leftovers is the cooking skill I’m generally most thankful for!

If you also get rid of Apple Intelligence and make it so any new features I don't like can be easily turned off, you'll have my vote forever.

It used to bother me occasionally, but I think I've landed permanently on "clearly we weren't going to get along, so thanks for saving me the trouble."

I think I've read a number of novels with "hot trespasser" as a plot point...

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

But I fundamentally don't think someone whose life experience is in finance and who attained part of his success in that area by investing in private prisons is ready to get rid of private prisons, for example.

I'm glad to hear all that, because I think there's a good chance he'll end up as our governor, given the present polling.

If it has to be one of those three, (and it probably does, given our top-two system for primaries) I'll be voting for Becerra or Porter.

(Steyer says many of the right things, but as a billionaire I don't trust him not to oppose the reforms I think we need.)

I could probably get back into composition, though – that would take at least a year before I was happy enough with my work to show it to anyone...

Hm. I'm not sure if being a musician counts as making things, so I don't know if the hypothetical applies to me or not.

Practicing is intended for *performance*, though, and a year without performing might take more determination than I have.

Tim Curry is 80??!

...I need to go schedule several medical appointments.

(I heard a teenage voice say "Mom, you're too loud!" afterwards, and she yelled it even louder. Solidarity to mothers of teenagers everywhere.)

Wore one of @sarahmackattack.bsky.social's Biology Is Bigger Than Binaries t-shirts to walk the dogs this afternoon and had a mother yell "I love your shirt!" out the window of a car at me.

If I I become a ghost after I die, this is how I'll manifest – telling dogs and cats how adorable they are.

White five-petaled plumeria flowers with yellow centers against a background of green leaves. There's a tiny spider on one, probably enjoying ready access to the local gnats and fruit flies this time of year.

My plumeria is blooming!

(This is the first one in 30 years of trying I haven't managed to kill, and it got big enough to be transplanted to the front yard about five years back. Coastal Southern California isn't their ideal climate.)

Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.

Ug, I should have muted those first thing this morning. Still, it’s not too late to mute the followup discourse…

Oh, I need to try this!

Two hooded figures with lamps approach a moonlit, isolated cottage. A woman answers the door. We have come for the child, says the hooded figure So soon? she asks It is time, says the hooded figure. The woman is distraught. We should never have got him a library card! What is done cannot be undone, says the hooded figure We couldn’t see the harm! We just wanted him to enjoy reading! For most, it ends there, says the hooded figure, turning away and walking into the wilderness Oh lord, What have I done! says the woman, the child walks past her and out into the darkness with them. Do not cry mother. I am a writer now.

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

(Sorry, low on sleep and up early for a church singing gig.)

Software updates have gone from an occasional annoyance to an active, ongoing nightmare in the last five years.

And it's not just Apple, of course – I've been waiting for the end of this performance season to switch all my desktop systems at home over to Linux Mint (I'm not a fan of the bloat in Ubuntu in the last few years) to get away from the same issues with Windows updates.

Not to mention Adobe, etc...

Whoof, this is a rant I've been building for a while – I have four different Apple devices (two personal, two work) I've been holding off updating for far too long because I don't want to deal with the garbage they've pushed into both iOS and MacOS. All of them badly need security updates.

I hadn't had both things at once in mind when I thought about those activities. Clearly my imagination was insufficient.

*looking at the three heads of garlic in the fridge*

put garlic on the shopping list, got it

If the local plants could stop having sex at me, I'd appreciate it.

I can’t imagine trying to look big and fierce working for me, but I have definitely scared off a couple of men by sounding loud enough to be mistaken for a banshee.

I assume it would work on bears too, but I don’t have the urge to experiment.