Here is my periodic reminder that I'm still looking for work. Writing! Gaming! QA! Agile scrum master! Project management! And more! My Resume: www.stephenblackmoore.com/pagecv My Portfolio: www.stephenblackmoore.com/portfolio LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-b... Seriously, I need a job.

I can’t be the only one who likes Red Vines but only when they are very hard. Eating one fresh from a new package is alarmingly soft & lacking in the “dog with a bone” experience, which imo is 95% of the enjoyment. I have to buy & forget them in the back of a cabinet for months before they’re good.

What (and I can’t stress this enough) THE FUCK.

Ok. So. They anonymised the sheep.

Got a notice in my work email that I am overdue to complete the required annual training on insider trading (which will be the exact same training I have watched multiple times already argh) and I am going to be thinking of these Venezuela-shorting assholes every fucking minute of it.

if you’re at a demo & someone is clearly filming for a hostile audience, instead of snapping a pic and dropping it in chats to ask people if anyone knows who it is, just ask the person where you can find them on social media! they’re doing this for views! they want to self promo! stop being afraid!

Somewhere, in Hell, Kissinger is watching this and thinking it’s all a little too unsubtle

Best thing I’ve read this morning, from a human rights lawyer in Mexico. Translation is in the ALT-text.

I am struggling with what might be a generational experience. The gulf war was pretty politically formative for me. It’s not history so much as memory this time. It is destabilizing to see almost the exact same gameplan but this time without the guardrails that at the time I took for granted.

THREAD: I'll fact-check all the viral misinformation about the US military operation in Venezuela in this thread This image, purporting to show the US military arresting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, is AI-generated. According to Google's SynthID detector, it was created using Google AI.

This aged well.

The little cat steps on the wizard's ear, waking him up. He goes to make waffles with persimmon jam and put some fish out for the little cat. As he makes tea, the air fills with the smell of lavender. He opens the packages and letters the dragon brought over breakfast.

compoundmate burned her black eyed peas and filled the whole compound with smoke. she was very upset and fearing she’d doomed her family’s prosperity in the new year. I passed by this scene on the way to walk dog, and paused to commiserate as best I could, but I had no black eyed peas to share…

Fuck it I don’t care anymore

Never too old to write angst poetry, I guess. 🎉

Corfe Castle, the model of Corfe Castle in Corfe Castle Model Village, and the model of Corfe Castle in the model of Corfe Castle Model Village in Corfe Castle Model Village.

One more pelican before I put my phone down down for the night. Taken this morning. 🪶

passed a billboard that said “shackled with lust? Jesus will set you free” leaving me with new questions about the services offered by Jesus

You really gonna tell me you have trouble with pronouns when you’ve been eating her/she chocolate all your life?

ME: it’s boxing day SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT: oh shit oh fuck

Beijing, 1915–1930 (warlord era).An annual elite Tantric Cham exorcism dance, performed by Tibetan monks from Yonghe Temple in Beijing. Imperial Qing costumes remained in use. The deer-headed figure embodies both evil and non-evil, a tantric method to expel disorder, guarded by republican soldiers

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

As a fantasy reader who dislikes romance plots, I am SO AGGRAVATED that “romantasy” isn’t a separate genre in book & library apps, and neither is a Boolean NOT search operator. My favorite genre is flooded with books I don’t want to read and can’t filter out of my search results. ARGH.

So I'll plug this: my newsletter today is about books (and game, and movies) that I loved this year. You like my work? Maybe give these creators a shot.

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

The Odyssey and Iliad get a lot funnier when you realize this is period appropriate armor

watching the CECOT 60 Minutes segment that CBS suppressed, it’s striking that Weiss specifically called out as unnecessary some of the most rigorous investigative work in the segment, including an explanation of how it was done (by human rights researchers)

I was practicing Folsom Prison Blues for my first karaoke outing and I accidentally sang “I’m stuck in Wholesome Prison,” so…

It’s funny: haven’t been to church in yrs, don’t know what to make of my relationship to religion, but somehow still know enough, & still identify enough as Christian, even if just culturally, to find this shit so deeply, personally, viscerally offensive to the teachings of the faith I grew up with

This song is so good it breaks me a little. www.youtube.com/watch?v=javj...

THREAD. My parents' cat Bridget vanished. As the weeks dragged on they became ever more worried, so to distract himself my dad began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up at some of art & music's most important moments. I've collected his work here...

sheesh, the only thing worse than getting kicked out of the polycule is finding out via jira ticket 😣

I went to the Merlin bird ID app to go listen to more calls from rock ptarmigans. They sound super weird and not like birds at all! But I was particularly delighted that the sound waves for the juvenile calls look like little birdies!

In case you haven't already seen posts about this horror show of a publishing contract. The commentary here and in other threads is an tutorial in spotting red flags, and this sort of deal is something no author should EVER sign.

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

A story I found about Haiti: In 1999, a group of Haitians were tired of political disorder and dreamed of a better life in the United States. So they built a small, 23-foot boat by hand using pine trees, scrap wood, and used nails. They called the boat "Believe in God."

Couple days ago, I found another band I'd never heard of - which has apparently been releasing albums for ~10 yrs - where I love almost all their music. It's the best feeling, like finding money in an old coat pocket. Despite the troubles, the world is also seeded with hidden joy! (Band: The Beths)

Upset that Oakland is extending the contract with ICE-collaborator Flock for surveillance cameras but I appreciate that they made some significant amendments to the contract to prohibit data sharing with Federal agencies or for particular uses. Read the whole article. oaklandside.org/2025/12/17/o...

Heinrich Kiepert's *Formae Orbis Antiqui*: 25 maps of 36 planned were published, 1903-1908ish.. All available for high resolution download from UChicago isac-idb.uchicago.edu/results.php?... someday i'm going to wallpaper my bathroom with these.

Oh no! The [thing] you like has been over-enshittified! Will you switch to: A: Honest but poorly maintained variant with less features B: Robust but functionally unusable nerd version C: 0.01% less shitty commercial alternative D: Too tired for this dance, fuck [thing], I quit

😭 no no, I'm not crying, I'm just refusing to blink to show I'm listening and now my eyes are fountains

Overheard at work: "My ChatGPT and I don't have the best relationship." Apparently, it kind of yells at him?? That really puts a new spin on the term "cyberbullying."

I got interviewed by R.U. Sirius about my new book.. Is he responsible for destroying consensus reality? Is reality gamified? Is reading my book like tripping on cough syrup? Read the interview to find out!

Oh.

Of course there will be tragedies w any rapidly-adopted new tech. Society has found ways to adapt in the past, but it is made much harder when the main developer is ACTIVELY CONCEALING EVIDENCE. How can we prevent these awful scenarios if everything is proprietary? arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

A family member whose retirement project was ranching her own cattle recently passed away. I used to text her fun cow articles and pictures, so this made me miss her. Appreciate a weird cow with your loved ones today, friends!

Highland cattle are famous for their ability to "disco nap". Normally these brief, efficient sleeps will last between three and twenty minutes, deploying a variety of objects as pillows, including moorland boulders, cars or any particularly large dog or sheep who happens to be nearby.

Also, like, aside from feeling violated, doesn't this just highlight how freakish people can be with regards to media. Just LIKE A THING you fucking loser. You don't have to be friends with the characters. Just LIKE IT. Touch grass you pathetic dipshits.

If you want to celebrate the life of Rob Reiner tonight and you haven't seen it, the documentary about his best friend, ALBERT BROOKS: DEFENDING MY LIFE, is as much about Brooks as it is Reiner's love for his lifelong best friend. As fall down hilarious as it is sweet & touching. It's a must see.

I’m just going to tell the story. Back in 2000 I was volunteering for the Gore campaign when he came along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Alfre Woodard and Dule Hill to a GOTV event here in MN. He ended up sitting down across from me stuffing his envelopes.