Even the internet's favorite dog account calls out Ring video cameras what they are: Mass surveillance.

As soon as you hear that distinctive “whoosh” warning sound, get out of the way.

Ok, you can stop texting me, I saw the Ring ad. Troubling things about it 🧵: -The long awaited (much warned about) intro of “AI” recognition. It starts w/ searching for a “brown dog” but means the tech is there for lisence plate reading, face recognition, searching for suspects by description, etc

i need an emotional support perogi

In addition to being smart and affecting, this is excellent heron content. Highly recommend Commodore Rookery, a chapbook by Christy Lee Barnes published by @finishinglinepress.bsky.social. www.finishinglinepress.com/product/comm...

One week, two Charlestons (SC and WV), two indie bookstores, and lots of ongoing support—almost six years after the pub date—for the big success story from the little university press.

I'm still processing the news. I loved this gig so much. Getting to shout about great books by especially newer authors has been one of the most uncomplicated sources of joy in my life, and I'm gonna be sad about this for a long time.

man's always hated books and the people who love them tbh

As an individual, it’s pretty easy not to use Amazon dot com, Alexa, or Prime.

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end TPS for Haiti, making clear that TPS holders cannot be deported or denied work authorization while the case moves forward. AILA celebrates this win & will carefully follow further developments on Haitian TPS.

Yesterday I made a coffee & brushed my hair & sat down for a zoom meeting, only to find that the meeting was entirely an AI hallucination. Gemini saw an email thread about possible meeting times, picked a random date and time, & popped it on my calendar. DAMMIT GOOGLE I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS NONSENSE

Looking at continuing-ed course listings. “People who took this also took . . . Beginner Pickleball.” 😭

There’s a lot of evil in the world right now, including this specific variety: the “best bookstores in X city” blog post that includes Amazon affiliate links . . . to books.

The rest of the world: Using the metric system. The City of Pittsburgh:

To the hundreds of businesses small and large whose promotional emails I’ve been summarily unsubscribing from in the last week: I’m sorry. You can blame Gmail’s forced AI update that can’t be disabled without also turning off inbox sorting.

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

Well-reported story about the forthcoming data center just outside Pittsburgh, how state law made it inevitable even though the municipality didn’t want to approve it, and how energy prices are set: www.publicsource.org/springdale-d...

Conservatives don’t avoid hypocrisy, it's a flex. It says the rules apply to the suckers, not to them. Their entire worldview is that they should be in the powerful in-group that can do whatever it wants, and everyone else should be in the powerless out-group they can command, exploit, and oppress.

After the forced-AI update that happened for me last night, Gmail is borderline unusable. I’ve had it as my primary email account for more than 20 years, and I actually *subscribe* and pay a yearly fee, but I’m seriously considering ditching it altogether.

oh it's going to be a Recession recession

Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.

Today in LinkedIn: A Play in Three Acts I. Open LinkedIn. II. Read a post that says, in short, “Sure, my constant AI-equipped video monitoring of students to determine their attention at scale might be used for surveillance, but what if my version of the system is different?” III. Close LinkedIn.

My Bloomfield neighbor has pictures of a coyote in their backyard today.

Chat, please pull the antifatigue drainage mats outside and hose them off every night after service.

What volume of vehicular traffic do you think a purely residential intersection (with stop signs) might reasonably accommodate? Because from 3:25 to 3:55 pm today 298 cars and trucks drove through ours. That wasn’t even the height of Pittsburgh bridge-detour rush hour, but it seems like a lot?

Grim but fairly accurate picture of much of the Pittsburgh area. There are many gorgeous and thriving parts, too, even a good chunk of Swissvale. But too much of it is still neglected.

I had to get it out of my system. My open letter to the Block family in light of today's news they are shutting down the storied Post-Gazette. I am just so very angry. open.substack.com/pub/breathin...

reminder that Tetris is good for brain trauma stuff in case you saw the video and, like me, actively did not want to see it

Absolutely gutted by the loss of the second Pittsburgh paper in the last week. It doesn’t help that as I write this the local TV news is airing a story about the “January doldrums” that’s just one AI-generated video clip after another.

The closing of the CP and the PG aren't just like, a bummer, or like a regular fuck-the-Blocks moment. It's a drastic reduction in citizens' ability to stay informed and hold our local government accountable, which in today's political environment will have consequences that make my head spin.

NEW: Publishers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announce they are shutting down the newspaper on May 3, 2026. Hours ago, the Supreme Court of the US declined to extend a stay on a court order for the paper to pay its journalists following the end of a 3-year strike.

Happy New Year! I’ve been enjoying everyone’s year-end book lists! I didn’t keep close track of my reading last year, but here are a few favorites: Nicked (Anderson) Human Acts (Kang) The Which Way Tree (Crook) North Woods (Mason) Down the Rabbit Hole (Villalobos) Every One Still Here (Chuinn)

Well folks, some news. Ownership is folding @pghcitypaper.com. I wish I could say this was more surprising. I'll be on the lookout for new roles while I continue to teach and hopefully find places to publish some stories I haven't finished. In the meantime, I'm all ears for opportunities.

Google is useless, part 387. Top image search results are all slop.

If you're not familiar with his murals in Millvale the best ones are Christ being lanced by a soldier and Our Lady breaking a bayonet in a rage. Notice the crucifixes on the soldiers, the Sacred Heart badges.

From the acknowledgments in the delightful Nicked, by M.T. Anderson.

"When you revise a sentence you are revising not only the words of the sentence but also the *thought* in the sentence." —Lydia Davis, "Essays One"

All love to the fellow postal carriers, logistician workers, retail, and restaurant workers all carrying the end stretch of this year on their back. We're almost over this.

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

This holiday season, I'm reflecting on things like "why does our Amtrak station suck" and "omg am I agreeing with Brandon McGinley...?"

My parents planned a rail trip from Pittsburgh to L.A. When their nighttime departure was delayed by hours (iirc because of freight priorities in North Carolina), and then by hours again, they canceled their whole trip rather than wait around in that awful station overnight.

Both pandan versions worked pretty well, actually! I used this old recipe (scroll way down), omitting the anise and lemon. lianakrissoff.com/2021/11/14/t...

Seems real now

The sun will rise in #Pittsburgh #Pennsylvania tomorrow at 7:40, 26 seconds later than the day before. It will set at 16:57, 31 seconds later than the day before.

I have two half-batches of experimental pizzelle batter chilling: one with pandan extract and vanilla bean paste, one with fresh pandan–infused coconut milk. No doubt both will fail due to . . . lack of anise? Some obscure Abruzzian curse?

Produce alert for Pittsburgh locals: The pea shoots currently available at Many More Market in the Strip are very good. 🌱

Cover of the day

Handing in my honorary-western-Pennsylvanian card. (Pizzelles are sticking.)

Analog* Pittsburgh†: a running thread. I haven’t been to all these places, but thought I’d gather them together here. * loosely defined † and surrounding areas