Now reading: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

“this is not just the flu” is incorrect, this is what the flu has always been and it is why i am annoying about getting the flu shot. get your kids the flu shot. anyone able to get the flu shot! this is devastating!

island motel, atlantic city, new jersey, 1985

🤞

Tonight I'm on a high-risk culinary mission: clarifying two whole pounds of butter with aromatics and spices into niter kibbeh. This means up to an hour of simmering and praying the butter doesn't burn. Fingers crossed.

so cool that when Kurosawa made Seven Samurai, he was like, "What if a movie absolutely ripped for three-and-a-half hours straight?"

A List of Predictions Made in 1926 About 2026 🧵

Got gifted a hand mixer and whipped up two loaves: a black tea cake and a lemon pound cake. The second is for a NYE party. Not pictured: hyperlemon icing. Very much needed for the pound cake.

This orange boy is also intrigued by the Manhattan Project's secrecy regime. @wellerstein.bsky.social

An absolutely wonderful, versatile, powerful and powerfully funny actor who enlivened everything he was in, and a huge loss. I'm not going to say the word, but we're all thinking it in his honor. RIP Isiah Whitlock. deadline.com/2025/12/isia...

This is really grim. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...

Lax-flowered Orchid Anacamptis laxiflora in the Channel Islands last summer, including a few colour forms #orchidchallenge #wildflowerhour

One person was killed and another was left critically injured after two helicopters crashed in southern New Jersey on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.

Bored Sicilian aristocrat with a side hustle in astronomy.

Memorable books read in 2025: Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Compass by Mathias Énard, Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger, Jr., and The English Understand Wool by Helen Dewitt. [1/]

This loaf came out a bit denser than I'd have liked, but I wasn't in the mood to do serious kneading. Two tablespoons of fresh rosemary makes for a strong herbal flavor that paired well with butter, poached eggs, and a little balsamic for breakfast.

I've learned a lot from making my first pound cake. The most important lesson: get a hand mixer already, good grief. I never want to mix butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon again.

Attempting a rose-cardamom-cinnamon swirl quick bread. However it turns out, my kitchen smells amazing right now.

One of my roomies in Philly was an old school Piney and he once said "Living in the Pine Barrens is like, 'meet me at the haunted abandoned plane fuselage. No, not that one the other haunted abandoned plane fuselage'

Anyone know why trips via HBLR aren't showing up on Google Maps properly? Not seeing any upcoming departures or directions involving the light rail. Paging @customeradvocate.bsky.social and anyone else who might have an idea...

Booting up the work Mac today to find my iOS thinks it's March 31, 1976...the day before Apple was founded. Nothing is working, of course.

I was just at the gym watching a The Wire s2 episode, and came back to this awful news. Ransone was incredible in that season — so believable as the screw-up determined to live down to everyone's low opinion of him. And great in almost everything else I saw him do. RIP.

Cat is bored, unimpressed with the representation of his species in Lord of the Rings.

This weekend's going to be a big first for me: watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Never read the books, never saw the movies before. I'll be going through the extended versions with a friend.

Controversial highway project canceled by Murphy www.nj.com/news/2025/12...

For the last few months, I've been working on a story about January's crash near Washington, D.C. What I learned was that it was simply an accident waiting to happen. Special Report: The night everything at DCA finally went wrong (via @theaircurrent.com) theaircurrent.com/aviation-saf...

More airlines here should consider cute livery like this.

HARD BOILED DETECTIVE: another cruel sunrise over the city of the damned. another corpse. another widow. another cup of black coffee to drag my sorry ass back to life- *sputtering* ME: do you like it? it's an ethiopian washed process single origin DETECTIVE: ME: are you getting apricot notes

I am absolutely gutted to hear that Dr. William (Bill) Burr of the @nsarchive.bsky.social passed away yesterday. Bill was so kind, so generous, and so important to the field of nuclear history. And he was just a great guy on top of everything else. It is a huge loss.

Staying cozy.

In case you have never seen this.

Marveling at the cutting edge in seating technology at the renovated Hoboken Terminal.

It's official: City Council passed legislation Thursday to restore the abandoned Greyhound terminal on Filbert Street as Philadelphia’s new intercity bus station.

I hope our newly elected councilmembers are ready to be @'d in the local Facebook groups over every single thing that happens in the neighborhood.

are we still on about em dashes and ai. imo human writers should just use the em dashes even harder. we should be out here pummeling out those em dashes like we're emily dickinson

Breaking News: Kathryn Garcia, a top aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul, is expected to be named the next executive director of the Port Authority.

hey.

What's old is new again.

appreciate what you have going, lincoln park

the nigerian spot in jersey city heights has finally opened. i have an interest

An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...

All right, Jersey City public transportation folks! #njtransit 🚊 Please fill the Light Rail survey out! www.research.net/r/LTRailF25?... 🚌 The Bus survey www.research.net/r/BusF25?id=...

it's over. my mailbox is finally free.

once more i have failed the kalustyan's challenge. (the challenge here is to enter kalustyan's with a shopping list and only buy the things on the list.)

disdainful

ocellated turkeys go so hard

big late breaking news: the market monitor for the largest energy grid in the u.s., covering much of the midwest and mid-atlantic, has called to block new data centers connections to the grid, saying current course of growth assures regular blackouts

meal prep update: buttermilk loaf with fresh herbs and whole egg wash came out tasty, if dense. should make stellar croutons.