obviously I don't feel bad for this guy but there is something weirdly poignant about lying about being a botanist. "what's my job? uh, in general, I am arrayed with the forces of... life. yeah, that's it. not the forces of death."

And to Tiny Tim — who did NOT die; who says that he will never die; who dances in light and in shadow and is a great favorite. He never sleeps, Tiny Tim. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die

[I turn on the TV and every channel is showing me being burned in effigy] This can't be good

SCROOGE (Walton Goggins) (VO): It had been seven years Old Marley had been dead. Unless this is known, nothing fantastic can be understood MARLEY (Danny McBride) flings open BEDROOM DOOR: Hey Scrooge what's up you sassy son of a bitch. Who decorated this place Jack the Ripper

Flying Squirrel Loves It Every Time

Writers should internalize Lao Tzu's lesson about how the emptiness at the center of a wheel is what makes it useful, and how a pot is valuable because of where the clay *isn't*. Corporate geek culture has warped us into thinking that negative spaces are flaws that need to be fixed.

Excellent work by new NYT headline writer Werner Herzog

If you think today's news headlines are horrific, check out this one from 1906. Chilling.

where does the new york times even find these people

Have bots gotten really wild for anyone else over the last few days?

Not sure I understand the theology at my kid’s daycare

The easy read is that she's anti-Catholic because she's English. But the real Mantel-heads know from her memoir that she's anti-Catholic because she was possessed by an evil spirit as a child.

Man, nothing better than the first twenty pages of a scifi novel before you know what any of the nouns mean. Teixcalaan is demanding a new ambassador? Oh man, the Councilor for the Miners seems pretty cagey. Oh shit, and Yskandar’s imago-machine is fifteen years out of date??

In The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, after hearing about a massive & deadly scapegoating, the narrator asks why the peasants didn't attack the landlords, their true enemies, & is told, "When your real enemies are too strong, you get weaker enemies," & every day I think about this & also see it

Extremely cool book! A series of stories in which McPhee travels through a wilderness with one person who’s trying to develop it and another who’s trying to preserve it, and they all have a meandering, combative conversation. He’s such a sympathetic writer - everyone is beautifully drawn.

Tried the Jacques Pepin apple tart recipe @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social recommended a while ago. So easy! What a thing!

“Once upon a time” from five other languages… 5. When animals talked and people kept quiet (Catalan) 4. When snakes wore vests (Iberian Spanish) 3. When potatoes were pale blue (Brusselian) 2. Long long ago, when goat hair was grey (Kazakh) 1. In the old times, when wishing still helped (German)

Hi all! I’m Ryan. Here’s a story I wrote for @newenglandreview.bsky.social about a guy who wants to get through a narrow hallway so badly that it destroys his life. www.nereview.com/the-corridor/

Amet consectetur egg sandwich

Maybe the best logo I’ve ever seen

red guy

#FrogFriday - An amplexing pair of undescribed treefrogs (genus Dendropsophus) that I observed on a rainy evening in Suriname earlier this year. Note the eggs visible through the female's translucent abdomen. #herps #frogtober #photography

To sleep like a baby…uh I mean a Treefrog! 🐸 Oh, they look so peaceful!

Music & food fortnight at BCS! "A Feast from Tile and Stone" by Ryan Eric Dull, BCS #317: "Gastel walked through the floor plan of the Last Pudding with his sous chef, who was chief mason. One felt terribly small, living for so long with a vision and finally settling for an earthbound knockoff."