Thanks to a bit of idle curiosity, I now know that cardinals (the birds) are so named because their coloration is similar to the vestments of cardinals (the Catholic clergy).

The existence of SSPX bishops poses a particular challenge for Catholic ecclesiology, but this is accurate & worth keeping in mind. There are apx 1.3 million "moderately or highly religious" LGBTQ+ Catholics in the US (per an Oct '20 study at UCLA Law) and 600,000 SSPX members (per SSPX website).

Alpha-gal syndrome sounds like something fun or at least entertaining not potentially life threatening.

Look what I found!

Look what I found!

Apparently everyone’s doing this now Link to do your own: bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/

This week’s mystery movie at my local cinema was Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. I was a bit worried during the opening ten minutes or so because it felt like the movie was trying too hard to be wacky, but eventually it settled into itself and turned into a reasonably entertaining comedy

Weird coincidence of having tar and feathering scenes in two different things I’ve watched this weekend (first: American Horror Story Freak Show, second Seeds).

Happy 100th to Mel Brooks.

Nature is healing

THAT’S CONGO, PhD. DDS. MD. TO YOU

Thanks to a depleted reserve of unpublished poems and a new shortcut I created to make the combination of multiple poems into a single word document much easier, my 2026 Poetry Submitapalooza went relatively quickly, so I’m done with poetry submissions for a while, but if I can get back in the

My daughter had a performance as part of her summer camp today and there was one girl in the performance who was obviously shy and uncomfortable on stage (the girls had a chance to introduce themselves at the end of the performance and she said her part staring at the floor),

David Brody, who is one of the agents who questioned the woman is a criminal and should be indicted.

Jonathan Ross is a murderer and should be indicted, pass it on.

I’m genuinely curious about the people who submit to journals and then pay extra for feedback. Either you think it’s good enough to be published and why would you pay for feedback or it’s not ready to be published and why would you submit?

Started my annual poetry submit-a-palooza yesterday. So far, 5 publications on my list have gone to paid submissions only and 3 are defunct.

We’re just normal men

The random thing I learned today: Humans are the only animals to have chins. All other animals have a jaw that slopes backwards after the mouth, only humans have a bit of bone that protrudes forwards.

Thanks to getting nerd sniped on Reddit, I have verified that there is at least one street somewhere in Mexico named for every single day of the year (including leap day!).

At some point album covers on Apple Music got animation and whenever it pops up it always kind of scares me.

Trump is an amazing negotiator. It took ten years and a change of presidency for the US to surrender in Vietnam, but Trump managed to surrender in just three months! #theartofthedeal

Weird dream with many cool moments just before waking up this morning but my favorite bit was when a savage pit bull kept the gate of the yard where it was barking at me, ran up to me, then rolled on its back and demanded belly rubs.

Name a TV show you're positive no one remembers but you.

A graph showing the percentage of PoC in Essays in the Pushcart anthology. Because I didn’t start collecting this data until late in the process and have not always been able to backfill the missing values (there are about 500 missing), errors in the early years are fairly high. The dotted lines

Some more stats from the prize anthologies: Overall, about 67% of the included stories, poems and essays were written by people with graduate creative writing degrees.¹ My assumption would have been that poets would have the highest rate of graduate creative writing degrees and essayists the

I’ve finally gotten around to doing some number-crunching on the data that I have on literally thousands of authors who appeared in Best American Short Stories/Essays/Poetry, O. Henry and the Pushcart anthologies from 2009–2022. Some early data points:

Wow, almost all the main cast of The Love Boat¹ are still alive. ⸻ 1. The original series from the 70s, natch.

Satte doun to enjoye the original booke of *Les Misérables* by the supposedlye talented Victor Hugo and lo! what a great thinge of sorwe and melancolie it ys to discover that the novel hath NO SINGING.

Typical Mamdani. He’s only saying all this because he believes it and because it’s true.

With the jubilation on BlueSky, I thought maybe it had finally happened. It hasn’t.

Apparently there was a LARP event at the Harold Washington Library today which explains all the people wandering around with cloaks and swords.

I need friends like these

Disappointed to see that Paraguay lost their opening game. Not because I want the US to lose¹, but because I really want to see a Paraguay–Uruguay faceoff. ⸻ 1. Although to be honest, I kind of do.

I’m thinking I want to start a practice of talking to strangers. Today’s stranger conversation: I noticed the librarian shelving holds had stopped her work and was looking at one of the books that she was shelving, reading the inside flap copy and I asked her about it. We had a fun conversation

Catholics and Jews are always big on the “one of us?” game, and I often wonder whether any other religions do that. I’ve never heard of protestants doing it.

Merge two movies: Long Day’s Journey into Night of the Living Dead

Given that the park is named after the notoriously genocidal Jackson Park (who at least was less awful than his brother Stephen Park), it may be time to rename it for someone less controversia.

I'd forgotten that the opening crawl for Revenge of the Sith literally both-sidesed the Sith's war on the Republic. "Very fine people, on both sides..."

In a conversation with my kids today, I told them that I was a communist and they asked what that meant and I said that people should contribute to society based on their abilities and should be supported by society according to their needs. Hearing that, they decided that they too were communists

[loud knocking] “OPEN UP. IT’S THE POLICE!” Me: Prove it. “HOW?” Me: Sing “Roxanne.”

Happy second birthday (plus two days) to my oldest pending submission on Submittable, some poems bequeathed to the bottomless pit of New Yorker poetry submissions.

A brief but touching thread from @jandersoncoats.bsky.social ...

A simile for the ages.

So cool to see something that the Catholic Workers were saying thirty years ago to deaf ears now being proclaimed by the pope:

This reply seems to be blowing up my notifications and while the usual thing is to do the “here’s my soundcloud/ko-fi/whatever” I have no interest in hustling people for money. A bunch of my stories and poetry are linked at my publications page and maybe those will give you some pleasure.

Assuming I’m not laid off or fired before the end of the year, my current job will be my last job¹ and this is just one more reason why. ⸻ 1. I may do some part-time things after this job, but my primary thing will be opting out of capitalism for what remains of my life.

If you’re up for a cool sci-fi heavier on characterization than tech, check out Parallel which is on Kanopy (you probably have access through your local public library if you’re in the US).