So the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk in...1975? Wait, what?

Some amount of squabbling is fine, actually. Infinitely preferable to Schumer, "we're continuing to talk."

So, the one headline was wrong and will continue to be wrong, but it's dumb to equate the part with the whole. (duuuuumb.) youtu.be/T8iw1A2utVA?...

Lots of people recognize 1999 was a banner year for art. NIN released The Fragile. I mean, name a better double album (to my 13-year-old self, and he will stare at you blankly for three minutes.)

none of them can stop us now...we will make it through somehow...

Lukewarm take: calling out a response for "tone policing" is bad, actually. Seems A) to credit posting etc. with a form of violence, and B) discourages people from addressing connotation - which is like a whole dimension of language, pretty big stuff.

patience, which among virtues is underrated...

It's hard to come up with creative ways of reminding readers which one has the goatee, which is why there's a relative dearth of mirror universe plots in sff novels.

I think there has to be a place in politics for people who went through some stuff, made bad decisions, and were morons on reddit for a while. It's 2025 and there are a lot of them out there now. BUT like you may have to show a bit more growth before you run for the US Senate my dude.

Add to the list of weird social media phenomena a kind of second-order gaslighting, generated every very once in a while like swamp gas when the internet manifests an expertise in semiotics that normal, unconnected people simply do not have.

An expanded view of the plausible simply IS realism.

We're not going to get a Louvre heist movie. We're going to get 3 more Italian Jobs.

When people think they're having a conversation but they're really playing Battleship.

Me: someone who reads mostly sff Steerswoman books by @rosemarykirstein.bsky.social Me: holy shit

Am I the only one unimpressed with the LWT Bari Weiss segment? The facts are damning and plentiful, but the rhetoric just isn't there.

No one rationalizes harder than people who back into parking spaces.

New legal analysis finds a "just kidding" clause. (It's the power of close reading, people.)

*looks at comments* I mean, I knew, but.... This site is supposed to be better than Twitter then, is it? Support NPR.

For all of one semester I taught a literature class to undergrads. Seeing response papers to "The Importance of Being Earnest" was eye-opening. You could see them figuring out in real time that literary analysis would be so much easier if the play contained absolutely no jokes whatsoever.

After my one true love was dragged to hell before my eyes, I spent years buried in European libraries desperately seeking the name of the demon responsible. I have gone mad, but now I have its name: Ezra Klein.

"Big tent", huh? NO. There is no size tent that is OK. Tents are terrible, on principle. I am anti-tent.

Good article by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social, but I think we can differentiate ostracism and shame. Former is a tool that's available to people who aren't Bertrand Russell, or saints. It's "just what the community does." Shaming, confers a level of moral consistency that's too easy to deflate.

Left behind? Stings, but I'll get over it.

Rewatched Howl's Moving Castle yesterday for the first time in ages. English dub is, I have to say, excellent. Lots of possible reactions to the way it ends - certainly very little concern for justice. Struck this time by the message that the people in charge can just STOP the war, if they wanted.

Lots of us aren't getting our politics from an opposition to points of view (in the real world) so much as getting our opposition to points of view from our politics (on bsky).

You'd think the virtual ground would be just littered with handy collections of evidence -- things X figure has said on video, tweeted, etc., that the left has come together as a community and produced as a public good for its individual members to share in their family Facebook chats.

Blueskyism is the performed conviction that difficult problems are easy, solutions are "blindingly" obvious, and there is a clear, accessible, and imperative way of feeling about everything - or at least one thing at a time.

Dude got famous for trying to get teachers fired, a project which continues more successfully than ever from beyond the grave. Which is its own argument against political violence.

Looking at hundreds of people blithely, angrily agreeing (with something I'm like 90% on) is kind of nauseating. Remember forums? Like, you enjoyed a webcomic, and there was a forum?

For me, at least, the way you tell that social media is not real life is how the demand to feel [x,y,z] recedes back to a dull hum.

I shudder to think about the number of schools without air conditioning in an era of rising temps. I've subbed in one during a June heat wave, and my lack of classroom management skills aside, not a lot of learning goes on north of 80F.

Look, it's a good conversation. Not saying that anyone using the word 'genocide' without knowing the history is doing anything wrong; it's political, it has an effect, it's an act. But we undersell the value of education, edification, etc. at our peril. Short-handed (and rejected) as "nuance."

The reason a lot of people on social media aren't going to take the win and celebrate (if/when something good ever happens again) is because on social media, the win is making other people feel bad.

There's really no such thing as a debate, contest, game, etc. that does not include a very deep-level agreement between the participants. And you have to spend time on that part, every go around. It's part of the thing.

Life's a bit too short to judge you on how/where you acquire your goods and services, but please stop saying you bought something "for" prime day

We shouldn't call them dystopias if just about everyone in them is doing pretty great (off screen).

Feeling like a little baby and it's a never again on "arm day" thank you very much

@repdonbeyer.bsky.social "It's been 10 years since we resisted a Steering Committee recommendation" really kinda captures the moment, y'know? www.axios.com/2024/12/17/a...