INVOCATION O Muse, instruct me! In the rage that I feel May I find light. O Muse, inspire me! In a time of dark fear May I bring light. O Muse, transform me! With my heart and my soul May I be light.

This just in: Mainstream media rediscovers Goodhart's Law. Again. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/o...

If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.

You can't score 100% on the colonialism scale without introducing at least once invasive species.

Dialog from my Real ID appointment at the DMV, after I handed the clerk a neat stack of all required documents. Clerk: Wow, everything is here, in the right order! Me: I'm an autistic software engineer. Clerk: I'm surprised you're not telling me I'm missing documents. Me: We're not done yet. 😁

Happy 50th birthday to "Station to Station", my favorite David Bowie album. Here's the title track, which still sounds fresh and brilliant after half a century. And you have to admire a song that drops references to both Qabalah and cocaine. 🙃💜🎶 open.spotify.com/track/7cehkX...

My mom turned 90 yesterday. She's in ridiculously good shape and all there mentally as well. Her aunt died at 102 after starting to decline physically (but not mentally) in her late 90s. My two reactions to this: 1. I hope I got those genes! 2. I'm uncomfortably close to finding out.

Playing music is one of the best forms of self-care I know. For me it's the piano. It's sheer magic that I can coax beautiful chords into existence just by wiggling my fingers. And also some very not-beautiful chords, but I never said I was a *good* pianist. 😁🎹🎵

I'm making a Blue Apron dinner tonight that has "smashed falafel" in the recipe name. I'm intentionally not reading the recipe this afternoon to prolong my delight at imagining what that might mean. 🙂

I'm trying to create, connecting with friends, reading amazing books, exploring new and fascinating music...and still I can't escape the dread of what our world has become, nor the dark fear of what it is becoming. I had such hope for us. I don't know how to live like this.

I wonder if we could get people to believe that the em dash was named that in honor of Emily Dickinson? 😁

Did somebody say "melodic death elf"? 🙂🎶 tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Maglor

“No one really dies, they just drop their physical body, and we’ll all meet again, like the song says. It’s sad, but it’s not devastating if you think like that. It’s a continuum, and we’re all going to be fine at the end of the story.” ~ David Lynch - January 20, 1946 - January 16, 2025 #filmsky

Emily Dickinson: The only entity with a greater fondness for em dashes than AI.

Roses are red Nazis are lurking Beware of them here because

here's a thing to understand for cis people we voted how you wanted. the actual voting data for trans people shows this. we got a special extreme anti-trans-flavored fascism anyway. and now we're supposed to accept that the transphobia is here to stay. no, fuck you

Liberals: I need you to understand that if you nominate this man, we will NOT vote for him. Period. You've got three years. Reject him. Because if he's your standard bearer, you lose. Polite fascism is not an acceptable alternative to fascism.

1. Did you know that Girl Scouts has, for a long time, accepted trans girls and nonbinary scouts? Trans kids are under attack. Every year, I make a thread of trans and nonbinary girl scouts you can get your cookies from. Lets get our cookies from them this year in solidarity!

"The Bleak" #photography

I love the bold protest move of defiantly continuing to generate revenue for Musk. 🙄

It's very subtle, but if you look carefully, you can tell that my partner is happy with how she looks today. 🙂💜

A shimmering-bright morning in #SantaMonica. #photography

Slightly diminish a game: Lunaris

No new pictures Where are you mentally?

A Russian joke: Who are the two greatest Russian generals in history? General January and General February.

I think those of us born between roughly 1950 and 1980 benefitted from riding the peak of human achievement in multiple domains. We may reach greater heights in the future, but for now, most trend lines are accelerating downward.

Bob Weir has left us, and the world has become quieter and darker. www.mercurynews.com/2026/01/10/o...

Slightly diminish a band: Exodus Yep The Kestrels Madison Glider Duran Subtramp Irony Dan

As Cory Doctorow has repeatedly pointed out, it doesn't matter that AI can't do your job. All the AI vendors need to do is convince your boss that AI *can* do your job.

"Content" in Newspeak is "prolefeed". en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prolefeed

Friends, at a time when science is under attack & people are economically hurting, the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery, is introducing paywalls that didn't exist. If you're opposed to this measure, join me in signing this petition asking the ACM to stop. www.ipetitions.com/petition/res...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the sort of times when you should ask your doctor if Celexa is right for you. Common side effects of the times included agitation, blurred vision, confusion, and decreased interest in sexual intercourse.

In this brief essay, Cory Doctorow provides the best description of software engineering I've ever encountered -- and that's just along the way, in support of his actual point. pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1...

"Gnostic Speed Warbler" 😁😁😁

If I were only ~25 km west of here, this whole cycle of sun events would be happening right on the hour. Of course, I'd also be ~23 km from shore in the Pacific, so I'll settle for a stack of :59s. 🙂☀️

Behold the fall of Western Civilization, captured in a single screenshot. 🙄

the photographer was definitely like, "ok everybody, look tough!" but we know they're all just reading tweets with their arms crossed in a country club dining room divided up by bedsheets tacked to the beams

Yay, we've reached the "panem et circenses" stage! 🙄

This is some of the best (inverted) advice for creators I've ever encountered. I guarantee you'll recognize yourself in several of the points made. youtu.be/-V7f5Yyo2VI?...

Inspired by last night's events, here's a song that never gets old, no matter how much we wish it would. music.youtube.com/watch?v=je_K...

Behold the fall of Western Civilization, captured in a single screenshot. 🙄

This is some of the best (inverted) advice for creators I've ever encountered. I guarantee you'll recognize yourself in several of the points made. youtu.be/-V7f5Yyo2VI?...

So Twiter has long been a Nazi haven and stroker of Elon's ego, but now it also generates child porn if you ask it! So I think the best time to leave Twitter was years ago, and the second best time is now. Here's what I wrote when I left in 2023: badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/goodbye-tw...

Because I'm an autistic rebel who fixates on planes rather than trains, I subscribe to @faabot.paxex.aero . Lately I've noticed many updates like this one, where a range of delays is given, followed by an average below the bottom of the range. That math doesn't work. Can anyone explain this?

@daturabombs333.bsky.social , in my current mental haze, I read "poison path | egoist" in your profile as "poison pathologist", and had a moment of thinking "Oh wow, they're a doctor??" before I caught my error. 😁

I'm having a quiet New Year's Eve, so I decided to look over the photos I took this year. This one from July is my favorite. I put a martini down on the table next to my reading chair (which has a Hue light pole behind it), went to get something else, and saw this as I returned. Iridi bibo! 🌈🍸🙂

@yungdreyfusard.bsky.social , "teleri dockworkers union" gave me a much-needed dose of geeky humor. Thank you. 🙂

Creatives! Show me your favorite thing you made in 2025. It could be a sketch, a painting, a book, a sculpture - something YOU made that you're proud of, big or small. ------ I just finished a ground-up rewrite of my Android app Helios, which supports a solar devotional practice used in Thelema.

First: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??? Second: The image seems to imply that 100 million deportations would trigger a large tsunami.

Watership Dune