Spiral Wave — Allison Holt embroidery on painted silk

My dad and I just watched a deer stride down the sidewalk in front of my parents' house for all the world like she was walking home from Christmas dinner at the neighbours'

I think this is a really important point. When folks say "no AI" they often don’t mean "I can conceive of no possible use for AI"—they mean "the use cases I’ve been shown do not begin to justify the harms"—that’s not something you respond to by offering another narrow use case

As someone who’s probably on Bluesky blocklists for saying something other than "burn it all down" about AI, it also seems clear that asking for more nuance in these discussions in Dec 2025 is like asking for more nuanced discussion of immigration as masked ICE agents toss people in unmarked vans+

My coworker found an unlabelled photo and no one was quite able (or confident) to identify what it was of until they brought in the anthro lab tech who confirmed it was a skull with a trepanning hole

that the Whos celebrate Christmas suggests some knowledge of Christ, but whether this is our anthropic Christ or a distinctive Who-Christ remains obscure; some have argued Christianity was introduced to them during their refuge with Horton, which of course turns us to the matter of Elephant Religion

I just think that if podcast networks and streamers are going to subject us to the same ads four times an episodes, the ad makers should try harder to make the ads... good... like... at all

It was great to talk with @danaelkurd.bsky.social on It Could Happen Here about rising MAGA antisemitism, conspiracy theories and white Christian nationalism; where Israel fits in; and how our progressive Palestine solidarity politics can avoid allying with the Right

The holiday This American Life rerun this year includes a lightly abridged recording of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, if you needed a little pre-Noël cry-your-eyes-out

Lolololol at every academic who has paid zero attention to their library or constantly-decreasing library funding suddenly being like LIBRARIES SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING EVERYTHING THEMSELVES AND OUTSOURCING NOTHING like we all have teams of programmers and software engineers.

what worries me the most is seeing artists who should know better flocking back to failed copyright maximalism as the response to generative AI, especially when it could lead to legal precedents that undermine fair use standards that are essential for journalism, activism, free expression etc

This perfect plan got deferred to tonight. The Columbo murderer looked like Steve Buscemi playing Stephen Colbert, and I had popcorn and a martini for dinner.

#ArtAdventCalendar 2025 day 20 (it's getting Christmassy now 😉) Frozen Bones, Magpie Mine More information on this work, including detail, inspiration, location, and a work in progress animation, can be found here https://cognissart.co.uk/frozen-bones/ […] [Original post on mastoart.social]

I am on vacation! and truly I'm not sure I've ever needed it more

There are 6 days left to enter the raffle for this large aerial embroidery, 'Autumn in technicolour'. All proceeds are going towards my surgery recovery this new year :) Full details and entries available here: victoriaroserichards.co.uk/work/raffle-... and all shares very appreciated 🍂

I resisted the frying grilled cheese in mayo advice for years because it seemed SO gross, but I regret to inform you that it absolutely does create a superior grilled cheese.

Hello it is I, your bean correspondent, reporting with this delicious thread of recipes.

SNOW DAY

The takeaways: 1) It's useful for everyone to know that Poetry Foundation is now a nonoperating foundation, a shift in its IRS-regulated designation that means it focuses on external grantmaking rather than programming. 2) This change makes PF a national philanthropic org with a magazine attached.

The thing I find most frustrating as a disability reporter is that it is considered acceptable to only talk to professionals and parents — That disabled people, particularly those with cognitive disabilities, aren’t worth talking to. It has made me notice who gets asked for comment on other beats.

Calling to request a refill for a prescription on a Saturday should not mean I'm still playing phone tag with doctors and pharmacies on a Tuesday afternoon but we live in austerity hell

With the milder temperature today, it would be a perfect day for the City of Winnipeg to clear downtown sidewalks to the paved surface, as per their own policy (that they never follow). I bet the sidewalk snow plows would make quick work of this soft snow.

Everyone is sad about the end of mass market paperbacks and I get it (we live in a time when many once-reliable comforts are being destroyed) but the font is too small and they never actually fit in short-girl pockets. Give me a slimmer trade paperback any day, or an ebook I can read in low lighting

I get why folks wonder why ICE kidnappings aren’t met with more violent opposition, and I’ve wondered that too, but I do think basic humanity and taking care of each other is the fundamentally more radical opposition to fascism; sometimes a blanket is propaganda of the deed, too.

“Point and Laugh: Residential school denialism is not funny, but denialists sure are” A new blog post by me on residential school denialism and what we should do about it. skkb79-imrxk.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/p...

do I have a right to walk? that's the question I'd like to ask. do I have a right to walk without some inattentive idiot nearly ending my life because I was crossing a street, on a daily basis? because it feels like no

It’s not writing off a portion of the population to say that workers should not be racist to customers! The entire conservative movement has coalesced around the idea that it is somehow discriminatory to judge people by their actions.

I guess I'M the fool for assuming the Corydon bus would follow the same route as the Osborne bus on the north side of Portage but that is not in fact the case and how I came to be running down the middle of a deserted side street in the dark so I wouldn't miss a second bus

Dunno how this hasn't been picked up by the media yet but #BillC15 would remove the provision allowing libraries to send books to and fro by Canada Post at a cheaper rate. In Newfoundland about a quarter of the physical items signed out of libraries use this service! librarianship.ca/news/bill-c1...

But we are spoiled with our current level of snow clearing according to our current Chair of Public Works, so I guess this is as good as it gets.

I have lived downtown for most of my adult life and I have never seen the City actually follow their own policy of clearing the downtown sidewalks to the paved surface.

Interview with Alberta trans activist Marni Panas about Alberta's most recent use of the notwithstanding clause to go after trans kids' rights. We are going to run these fuckers out of office. 💜💜💜 www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

I see accessible typeface/font discourse has hit the mainstream, and I, your disabled public-service-working pal would like to remind you that accessible is contextual, dynamic, and the research on legible fonts is ALL over the place. The woke-est font is one geared for your audience and purpose.

So similarly, when we see people who prefer ChatGPT or a similar synthetic text extruding machine as a source of medical information, that means those are people who are under-served in the current system.

Students, staff, faculty turning to ChatGPT? That means they are being asked to do things they don't have the time, resources, support, etc to do.

No matter what you do in your classroom, the institution has positioned your students as customers. This impacts their experience of your classroom. You cannot make it a "pure" educational space free from market pressures.

Call for sources from one of our @xtramagazine.com fellows: "Are you a teacher, ed worker, or librarian in Alberta? I’m writing about how education workers are working with/around the recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and book bans. Reach out to [email protected] if you're open to speaking."

it might seem surprising that the people who said “look, let trans people live their lives, but i have Reasonable Concerns about sports and toilets” aren’t up in arms about this, but what you have to remember is that those people who said that are liars who were lying

I really can't emphasize enough that if you care about local politics, all you gotta do is show up. Just a regular schmegular person showing up. Literally just show up consistently in person and within a remarkably short amount of time, you will have a shocking amount of influence.

Day 4 of #ArtAdventCalendar this is from a couple years ago. I do these textile things more as a form of drumming than trying to make art but I like the way the colours interact

people thought Judith Butler was exaggerating before but she's been proven right, i think

There's a lovely template for your email included in the replies here, and in addition to all that here's a transcribed version of this image in the alt text with which you can copy/paste text into an email as well.

This is the guy that The Current had on this week??

Not to belabour it but this is what prioritizing defence spending looks like.

Elbows up!!!

All I want for Christmas is to stop clenching my jaw from stress

From the Department of Little Treats: I have been stirring a spoonful or two of lemon curd into my morning Greek yoghurt and berries and it's SO good

AGAIN!!! Support your public libraries. LIKE ACTUAL POLITICAL SUPPORT. I do not want to hear "I looooovveee my public library" from people who don't actually pay attention to whether they are being adequately funded and sustained, lol...

too many people are complacent when in fact what we need is to be active in preserving and EXPANDING public goods. folks need to wake up.

I love it