On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

All the time. ALL the time.

I regret to inform you all that I know enough about this sordid history to say it’s PHYSIOGNOMY not PHRENOLOGY. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiog...

This magazine just fired all of their politics staffers

TIL ~1 person in every neighborhood is offering raw potatoes as an alternative to candy. It’s amusement for the grownups to see who goes for the potato. One of my kids picked the candy, another picked the candy AND asked to take a skull garland from the porch. We now have a skull garland.

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

End of an era. The running shoes with 1,000 miles don’t actually feel all that different from the new ones, but I figured I might as well give them a chance.

These AI features are always so half-baked. I’m starting to wonder if the people who come up with them, (and who code and test them, etc) are letting their dumb AI tools do most of the work. Like I expect rough edges but this goes so far beyond rough edges. lifehacker.com/health/i-tri...

When SNAP runs out on Nov. 1st, hundreds of thousands of people in Pittsburgh and across SWPA will struggle to afford food. I compiled (with the help of community members) a non-exhaustive list of where people can find help, including sites in Pittsburgh & outer counties. Please spread this.

If I were running the DNC, there would be Democratic Party sponsored food relief banks across the country right now that specifically welcomed anyone regardless of party affiliation. Along with the food, there could be voter registration and links to runforsomething.net

Another factor I think: when AI has whole departments named after it, it’s a lot harder to say “oops AI is dumb” and scrub that off. The departments/programs/etc will have to gradually evolve away from that naming and focus, extending AI’s appearance of legitimacy

Thread on reading your knitting @rcmacleod.bsky.social Each stitch in knitting is a loop. Another loop gets pulled through it. Note that a loop with something through it looks like a V on one side and a horizontal bar on the other. The loop on the end of this Bananagrams package will demonstrate

The chapter about how whales are actually fish is the best part of Moby Dick

yeah we're into LLMs (Large Lamb-bridge Models)

As People Mag Points out, a treatment for autism Dr. Oz just announced Trump’s FDA is approving is sold by a supplement company owned by… Dr. Oz. people.com/what-is-leuc...

Most European yarn shops put a pause on US shipping for the past week or so while they figured out the tariff situation. Now to take a big sip of coffee and put one skein of nice sock yarn in the cart…

One gold star to whoever can name the FIRST Jim Steinman song to use the lyric “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that” (it wasn’t this one)

Donated 11 hats to KnitHope today. I’ve been knitting these on and off since the spring. Some of them are in the second pic.

Garmin finally released a screenless fitness tracker that you can wear during exercise, but it's $600 and only for horses www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1277...

True but a lot of it is stuff like “what was my great great grandpas cause of death” which means reading 100+ year old handwriting where the words are obsolete medical terms. Most people who post modern cursive are actually doing pretty good with context clues and just need a word or two of help.

Why it’s important not to interrupt Bean

Realized recently that of the knitting patterns I wrote back in the early 2000s, most are gone. Published on websites that disappeared (mine or otherwise). They're in Ravelry and I can see what people made with them back in the day, but that's it.

Questioning my strongly held beliefs, specifically the one that I am allergic to wool. Gonna try knitting with some superwash, which tends to have little to no lanolin.There’s a theory that most wool allergies are really lanolin allergies. Wish me luck.

FOR THE UNION MAKES US STRONG

22 not counting airport layovers

Well this is cool. The city of Pittsburgh used extra pandemic funds to buy Pittsburghers' medical debt from collectors and cancel it. Nobody needed to enroll, people just got notices that their medical debt is gone. www.wesa.fm/politics-gov...

Put it all together, access to care of all kinds is under threat: * Covid vaccines for kids and pregnant people * Any type of care provided by Medicaid * Abortion care * Miscarriage care * Gender-affirming care * Birth control * Potentially SSRIs for pregnant people * Prenatal care * Rual hospitals

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

I thought I was the only one who remembered this! I only got to buy it once or twice because my parents thought it was “overpriced” and “dumb” (they were right but that is beside the point!!!)

Chatgpt gets the formatting wrong though. Those of us who actually know how to use em dashes know there is no space around them. If you see somebody using em dashes properly formatted they are not a bot they are a NERD.

Excellent article by @bethskw.bsky.social about wearables and why I’m so damn angry at people like #rfkjr for pushing non-diabetic folks to use things like CGMs. lifehacker.com/health/weara...

Really proud of this one. I got my VO2max tested to find out which of my estimates from Apple, Coros, Fitbit, Garmin, Oura, Suunto, Whoop, Withings, and Ultrahuman was closest to correct. lifehacker.com/health/teste...

On the kiddo's request (just finished the Iliad) we are now reading the part of the Aeneid that discusses the Trojan horse. And it answers some questions. Upon finding it, one of the Trojans was like "This is a trick, I bet it's full of guys" and throws a spear into it. They hear "AAUGH!"

@susanrinkunas.com is an amazing journalist; no one on the reproductive health beat is doing it better, and if ever their was a time for dogged reporting that demands accountability, it's uh, right now. Please consider subscribing if you can.

Pittsburgh had its first ever (!) Parkrun today. I walked it with my daughter (she can’t run 5k yet), while my son volunteered at the finish line. Beautiful day.

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

So true. Knowing how to mend and alter clothes is useful as a stopgap, though.

Parkrun is coming to Pittsburgh! Looks like the first one will be the weekend after the marathon, and they run on the north shore trail. (for those not familiar, Parkrun is a free, informal weekly 5K run) www.parkrun.us/threeriversh...

IDEA: Stop covering politics like its a fucking sporting event. The GOP spending cuts don't provide an "opening" for Democrats to attack. They are either going to harm people or not. Journalism is supposed to be about informing people.

Nah. Other video game movies take the characters (Sonic, Mario, etc) and give them a story. Minecraft has no characters. The movie is not based on Minecraft the game. It's based on Minecraft VIDEOS where kids spend hours watching someone else play.

This is where I admit that I don’t know what Bookscan is…but I do know that for my books (published in 2016 and 2018) I get a significantly higher royalty rate for ebooks than hard copies. So keep buying ebooks if they’re mine!

When I left the Washington Post in 2023, my colleagues and I were worried AI would hoover up our work and enable "zombies" to churn out stories based on our reporting and writing styles. Today WaPo announced a partnership with OpenAI. And here it is: Zombie Gillian Brockell. I DID NOT WRITE THIS.

American cheese is good actually Pineapple is amazing on pizza but the best meats to go with it are more savory ones like sausage Healthy meals should have LARGE portion sizes, not small ones. Fill up on the good stuff!!

There are a lot of bad things happening all at once, and it’s overwhelming to think about how to meet moments like this. Jean says to focus on 1 or 2 things that you care about, understand fairly well, and are either local or involve a topic where you’re likely to have influence and find community

A pretty important thing seems to be missing here: mealtimes. A late meal often follows a late workout, and they didn’t control for that.

You know what else is eugenics? The idea of affirming “natural hierarchies of nature” (aka, their belief that white people are superior to people of color) through selective breeding

Oh you want certain people “maxing out their fertility” but not others? Guess what, that is eugenics. They literally outline their eugenic program point by point for you NPR, just call it what it is!