Be near me board cheeses

I hope you’re having yourself a buggy little Christmas 🪲

I was reflecting on the year in news and probably my favorite story all year was people summoning Waymos and then setting them on fire in LA during the anti-ICE protests. Something delightfully early modern about it.

quick update from the catsitter

You’ll have had your yule-hole … YULE-HOLE, the hole in the waist-belt to which the buckle is adjusted to allow for repletion after the feasting at #Christmas Dictionaries of the Scots Language | Dictionars o the Scots Leid www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/yule

merry Christmas from these Keith Haring Lego figurines that were really quite fun to assemble

referred to as "devil honey"!

I know it was four years ago, but damn this still hits hard.

people are "lonely" because they use their phones/laptops too much, an issue that more apps will only make worse!

also remembering a very funny thing about this diary: Josselin haaaaaaaates the Quakers

the first time my former street dog saw a TV, she froze. Then she smelled it, realized that it wasn't Real, and has ignored all subsequent digital monitors for the last six years. An approach I think we can all learn a lot from.

Poor Ralph Josselin, keeping his diary in 1672, is just getting over being sick on Christmas Eve: "Being at my daughter Jane's at Lexden I was taken in my bed [on] Nov. 27. Coming out of it with the sciatica pain in my hipbone so that I could not step,

looking for something in Ralph Josselin's diary, which he kept from 1616 to 1683, and remembered that this text always upsets me because he dies at the end!!!!! Do we all die at the end?!

me learning there's a new In Our Time presenter, even though I constantly complained about Melvyn Bragg

When a cat names your magazine

I have never really understood the stereotyped hate for British food, which imho has highs and lows like any cuisine. A really, true high and a gift to the world: this dapper little gentleman

We are quite literally Back.

I love that these Sprouts have gained Immortality

A choice was made here. Neither you nor I will ever understand what went into this decision. But the options were weighed: a path was abandoned, and a new destination chosen. We should not judge.

feeling proud of my 4th-eldest sister, who just finished her fourth/last round of chemo. She looks like shit but she's a tough fucking lady, they caught it early, and we're all hopeful it will be ok. She's only 41. A reminder to all Persons of Bazonga Experience that you should check them regularly!

bluesky has lots of pet content, which I enjoy and often contribute to. But it also has a tendency to put the highest-engagement pet posts on the Discover page....which are often, inevitably, very sad obituaries for peoples' dogs and cats!!! I can only handle a finite number of these!!!

I am pretty suspicious of "ungrading" for two reasons: 1. everyone I know who does it has abandoned long-form argumentative writing in their classes 2. its evangelists talk a LOT (often using therapyspeak) about it as a solution for their own feelings about grading (rather than student outcomes)

something is going on with my quince tree and I am terrified it is fireblight. thoughts, gardeners of bluesky? 🌱 #gardensky

just watched The Castle as part of Christmas with the Australians. Very rich text lol. Also accidentally insulted these east-suburban Sydneyans by suggesting that my American ears could not tell the difference between their accents and those in the film

Taking Australians to the wine store is almost as bad as taking them to coffee shops. However they deemed this Australian red acceptable (and it is very nice)

Merry Christmas! Engaged in our annual rewatch of the Community Christmas episodes. Yvette Nicole Brown deserved an Emmy for this exchange

what rough grinch slouches towards Whoville

“there are only 7 full-time book critics left in the US: three at NYT ( Jacobs, Garner, Szalai), 2 at WaPo(Rothfeld, Charles), 1 each at WSJ (Sacks), NY mag (Chu), Slate (Miller) more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living” worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

Australian very proud of his first snowman

Big dog body, small dog chair preferences

“Small format wine”

Not now, haunted Victorian shoes

#1 house rule during Christmas wherein I am outnumbered by Australians siblings: no parodic imitations of American accents

Where we send you if we catch you inferring future events on the basis of resemblance to past occurrences. Or, at least, where we've sent people so far.

Partner’s sister is visiting from Australia and has never been to the northeast before. Was hoping for a white Christmas for her and upstate New York delivered overnight!

"Right, so here's our central problem: what we need to do is find a way to properly acknowledge this lane's important associations with teapots, without completely disregarding its associations with worms." "I've got it!" www.tom-cox.com/once-upon-a-...

I found a previously unknown document signed by John Milton while looking through a pile of receipts for hats and wine!

I watched AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH in Portugal today and I just want everyone to know that the entire movie was subtitled in English in Papyrus. The entire movie.

Bari Weiss would have thrived in university administration

I know it's been said before but no matter how rational I want to be, in my heart I still do believe killing mr peanut and bringing him back as a baby unlocked some kind of wretched demonic seal on human society

I am reading Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970). Thoughts: I'd forgotten how much eugenics is in this. The Ringworld is cool, endless descriptions of its physics are boring. Novel has horrible pacing, the alien sex stuff hasn't aged particularly well. Niven not very good at characterization or dialogue

Happy solstice / shortest day of the year from Adrienne Rich! “If I'm lonely it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore in the last red light of the year that knows what it is, that knows it's neither ice nor mud nor winter light but wood, with a gift for burning”

I think I’m going to make a ham for Christmas but I am a ham novice. Does anyone have any recipes or tips?

Happy solstice / shortest day of the year from Adrienne Rich! “If I'm lonely it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore in the last red light of the year that knows what it is, that knows it's neither ice nor mud nor winter light but wood, with a gift for burning”

Wait how else am I going to throw up off a bridge in 2006

It’s so cold outside that I saw a stockbroker SPOONING with ZOHRAN MAMDANI