Merriam Christmas

Looking for a Christmas miracle for a kitty (aging parent situation) for Baltimore pals: (1/2) ""My mom can no longer keep Angelo (alas!!!) and we are looking to rehome him. Angelo is a total sweetheart. He is 6 years old, gentle, playful, friendly, and a lovebug."

BREAKING: sparked by a mass exodus of X users in protest of a new function that feeds images to Generative AI for other users to edit, for the first time since April 8th, Bluesky gained more than 55,000 new users in a day. There are still 6.5 hours to go before the @bskycheck.com counter resets.

they don’t tell you when you buy a christmas tree at the christmas tree farm that you could take it home, decorate it, and then be relaxing in your living room seven nights later when A BAT suddenly flies out and starts CRASHING AROUND YOUR HOUSE

That was a productive hour. That was some stormy brainstorming.

WRITING SPRINT COMPLETE! Whoop. We return you to Xmas Eve, already in progress!

WRITING SPRINT COMMENCE! 1 hour of focused work on any task starts NOW! Let's jingle our metaphorical bells - go go go!

Tornado Warning inside a Severe Thunderstorm Warning inside a Flash Flood Warning in LA County at the moment, if you're wondering how things are going... #CAwx #LArain

A Christmas Eve WRITING SPRINT?! Sure! Starts in 12 mins at half-past the hour. 1 hour of focused work. Santa's working, why not us?

Love that my tweet gets posted every year! Also, our proof of concept for this (Double Happiness) is screening at Lincoln Center on Jan. 27!

Remember the 1980s when all music had synthesizers, which were co-developed and pioneered by Wendy Carlos, a trans woman?

As writers who put influential images on the screen, we need to get better at this - and I include myself. It's easy to use smoking to suggest a character is edgy, independent or a rule-breaker. But there are better ways.

Here's a particularly juicy nugget I found in my reporting . . .

The doctor thinks I'm giving birth, but unbeknownst to him, I'm about to execute a delightful update to the classic "snakes in a can" prank

asked ChatGPT to create an image in this style. it can't do it. remember what they took from us

(watching the movie elf with the toddlers) me: did you know that actor is andy richter and one time he liked my skeet about costco kids: oh wow, did he repost you?? me: *lowers head* no… just a like

You know what's a surprisingly fun part of writing? Cutting your own material for length. This can go and this can go and this whole bit is garbage! Whooop!

So where's this rain?

Let's do a fun Xmas thing. As we order delivery food during this SoCal storm, let's all overtip the delivery people. Like, madly.

In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shortswaiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. So when she came to town, I grabbed a camera and headed down to talk to them. I thought it'd be funny. It turned out to be something else entirely.

When you've finished that wonderful gooey dessert, pour some flavored sparkling water into the bowl, scrape down the sides and... toss back a fancy artisanal mocktail! Enjoy!

Always be the first one on the zoom call so no one can talk about you before you get there.

Remember that year where the general tone at the end was **worst year ever** because quite a few very old celebrities had passed away?

I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

White men are 30% of the population. They are also: - 98% of presidents - 90% of CEOs - 90% of billionaires - 80% of Congress Forever oppressed.

I know it's a false etymology, but I still like to think that the smilodon is named that because of its beautiful toothy smile.

Reminds me of Van Gogh's iconic shoes as in this painting, which could very well date to same time as those that recently washed ashore harvardartmuseums.org/collections/...

WRITING SPRINT COMPLETE!

WRITING SPRINT COMMENCE! One hour of focused work (doesn't have to be writing) starts NOW! GO go go!

I'm going to do a WRITING SPRINT! Starts in 16 minutes at the top of the hour. 1 hour of focused work on any task. You can jump in if you want!

Between writing sprints, I'm watching these "Anti-Chef" vids on YouTube. So charming. Fancy cooking with lots of technique and little experience. Recommend.

Important takahē news! www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

It looks like it's been scrubbed from every official 60 Minutes page now. It's only a 30-second promo but here it is if you didn't get a chance to see it.

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

I look at all the video creators and marvel at all the niche interests people are sharing in creative ways. Influence me! Thrive, you creative people, you!

For your collective delectation this holiday season: Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!) loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...

The actor Michael Sheen used all his money to start a fake debt collecting business, buy 900 people in Wales's debt, and excused it. If Musk bought ALL $194 billion in medical debt in the U.S. and excused it in the same way, he'd still be the world's riches man by hundreds of billions of dollars.

I don't care if Valerie is selling out and cashing in. Get it, Valerie!

WRITING SPRINT COMPLETE! Whew.

WRITING SPRINT COMMENCE! 1 hour of focused work starts now -- doesn't have to be writing! Go go go! (Or wait and go when it's appropriate for you!)

Well, now I have something new to shout when startled.

Big writing day part 2... another WRITING SPRINT! 1 hour of focused work starts in 12 mins. Jump in if you want!

Oh my goodness, YES! Why don't more people write musical covers of their papers??!

For the record, I've never used Midjourney or ChatGPT or any other LLM or art-mangling AI. I gave up on Google and use DuckDuckGo with the AI functions and images turned off under the Manage AI setting. I use spellcheck in Word because my spelling sucks and I visit the Merriam-Webster website a lot.

WRITING SPRINT COMPLETE! Those hours sail past!

WRITING SPRINT COMMENCE! 1 hour of focused writing starts now. (Doesn't have to be writing.) The secret is total focus, then you can stop and have a shower and a cookie. The hour flies past!

When TV writing went according to a predictable network schedule, I often had an episode to write over T'giving. But I can't ever recall doing this much writing over the Xmas break... well, buckle up your big Santa belt and get to it.

DHS just shared this video to X with the caption "This Christmas, our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks." The video is set to a version of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and has text that reads "Christmas after mass deportations." The end reads "Mirthnuke." Evil shit.

BIG writing day. Brace yourself to see multiple WRITING SPRINT announcements... including this one! 1 hour of focused work starts in 12 mins at half-past the hour. Jump in if it would help you. Doesn't have to be writing!

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...