it drives me insane not everyone I meet is obsessed with the history of alphabets, because the shapes of letters tremble with meaning. A, you upside-down cow! You were right-side-up when mining workers stole you from their Egyptian overlords to make a secret code that was gibberish in Egyptian

There’s reasonable theories of why writers used to be able to hostile to the public and the industry in ways they aren’t now but the only real reason is they’ve starved us into acquiescence. No one wants to call out dogshit books and organizations because the leash is short and the pickings are lean

Birth rate discourse is like “It turns out if you give women more choices, they’re less likely to make ones that make their lives harder.” Which is really helpful in figuring out how we can improve society somewhat. But instead people are like wow giving women more choices was a mistake

i got 17 which is quite a few more than expected some of those i read absolutely do not belong on a list with this title

A few years back I asked a few close friends what their favorite books were and then I read them. Those books didn't end up being my faves but they were good and reading them made me feel closer to those friends. Just popped into my head and wanted to share bc I think everyone should do this!

University of Chicago Waives Tuition for Families Making Under $250,000 www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/u...

Joe: I am a 73 year-old retired mechanic in Forsberg, Nebraska. My 3 biggest problems are Iran's uranium enrichment capability, the casting of Helen in Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey," and the ability of Tennesseeans to check out "Roots" from a library 1000 media outlets: can we please talk at length

Walking boldly into the detransition clinic in my unclecore blue blazer: Hello, I'd like help with my detransition to male, please. As you can see on my license, I am a male. Under the influence of transgender ideology I grew these d cup breasts. I'd like them removed for free, please.

gibson’s neuromancer (1984) danielewski’s house of leaves (2000) robinson’s shaman (2013) honorable mention: leguin’s the tombs of atuan (1974) …i need to read more great novels, so much of what i read and know is punk counterculture

glow_in_the_dark_cats.psd

i watched tron: ares earlier this week and have been accumulating Thoughts, so, a thread

close friends who are aware of my bizarre, fucked-up personal situation have encouraged (bullied) me to create more of a clear-cut fundraising campaign to help with my upcoming move. if you can chip in, great! thank you! but please only do so if you can spare it. 💚 ko-fi.com/interrobangb...

Japan is one of the most R&D intensive non-US countries, and RIKEN is its most prestigious (non-university) research institute. If you isekai’d it into the US, it only has the fourth biggest R&D budget in the state of North Carolina, which is like the twelfth biggest state bsky.app/profile/awma...

bluesky, i love you, but there is no need to be conspiratorial about this LLMs make intelligence jumps with every 10x increase in compute, each jump means new applications and markets, the companies are racing each other for more compute politics aside, this is happening, the CEOs talk openly

I want to be clear, when it comes to the way I present my art, that I view my audience as a prisoner to my whose only options are to submit to my every whim or safeword out and run screaming into the night. My only interest in what they “want” is the ways in which I can use it to manipulate them.

The nice thing about games is that there’s five million of them released every week that you’ll never be able to finish. If you’re annoyed by one sucking up air you can just play a Tales game, a DOOM mod by a guy with an undiscovered form of OCD or a city builder where you make homes for gay mice.

illiteracy, the phenomenon that led to the broadening of the illiberal right, affects us all: our side is also losing percentage points on trust in data & expertise, emphasizing firsthand experience over collective knowledge, falling for and spreading misinformation

Commence 24-hour countdown!! 🚀⏰ MULTITUDE by @reasie.bsky.social releases TOMORROW! Dive into a cosmic summer sci-fi brimming with hope, humanity, and hiveminds 🦑🌌🐙 snag this perfect addition to your beach read TBR and preorder MULTITUDE today! 🏖️ www.apexbookcompany.com/products/mul...

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i read the dune timeline in the rpg handbook and a) it’s so silly, so hard to take seriously b) it’s way way too contrived to cover the later books c) it fails to fully cover the later books i am pretty sure this is some combined fault of frank’s duniverse notes and brian’s books

true joy is found on the other side of sorrow; light is only visible against a background of shadow banana bread, dude

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

me sleeping seven hours vs. me sleeping six hours and 42 minutes

when I first started doing comedy, a famous stand-up told me you could *guarantee* laughs by talking about universal experiences like being in school or going to the doctor. but she warned me even *alluding* to the third universal experience would make people frustrated and upset

I took this point from Mark Stryker, the Detroit jazz critic, to heart as I was figuring out my own practice as a critic:

I've been trying to formulate a delicate response to this idea, because I 100% agree with @misterbloat.bsky.social here; "reviews are (only) for readers" is a guiding principle for me as a critic and an editor. Undercaffeinated additional thoughts:

every time I eat pineapple I think about this post

the pride of small-font screens and the reluctant relinquishing to time

I wrote about how Titanium Court abstracts communication and starts conversations about what we give power, paired with some funny anecdotes and insightful takes from my interview w/ @apthomson.bsky.social. Game rules hard. Give it a read, maybe share if you like it! exalclaw.com/titanium-cou...

i am beginning to worry about my real-life eyeballs for Reasons

booting up forbidden solitaire for the first time

Ah, a common mistake, reinforced by the "double-valley" effect.

My birthday is coming up in just a few days, and if you'd like to do something nice for me, I have suggestions. 1. Buy one of my books. The Road to Nowhere trilogy is currently VERY on sale at the Bad Place in ebook format, so if you've always wanted to read them, now is a great time.

Picking up Vineland after a few months away from it and hoo boy that Tommy Pynchon was prescient, wasn’t he. “can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity” Can’t you?

What's notable to me about the Alito-Jackson spat on Monday is how little Alito's opinion bothers with anything resembling legal analysis. He doesn't respond to Jackson, in any meaningful sense. It's just an angry blog post about how she really ought to be more respectful to him.

I wrote a long read about the gerrymandering war, the red button-blue button test, and the future of democracy. Share as desired. mikeselinker.medium.com/gerrymanderi...

cyberpunk 2077: they got me with judy alvarez

(massaging my temples bleakly while staring at the computer monitor) but I do not want to troubleshoot the formatting of my epubs, I want to turn people into dinosaurs

I don’t want to be rude but this should have made two billion dollars

this is legit, i laughed that surprise joy laugh so many times here

Bashir/Garak is so Genly Ai/Estaven. Bro is always failing to understand shifgrethor.

My extremely not-requested opinion on the Met Gala's non-theme theme is that we can't have interesting fashion under fascism because anything genuinely inspirational the organizers chose would be challenged as "DEI" or "trans" content. So we get blandy bland bland bland.

yes???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

tell me your start-to-finish mental health bathing album