THE GREATER REALITY AREA begins 1/3! Three pieces a month free, one more for those who want to subscribe. There is no such thing as fiction, but there might as well be, so you can find it here. BACK TO REALITY, FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. www.greaterrealityarea.net

So many grand hopes for 2026. So few that I can put into words without violating Bluesky's community guidelines.

I would love to claim some bit of Arthuriana, or The Dark is Rising, or even Narnia, but honestly this was my very first love.

2026: lie down before you fall down

If ever a realtor should have skipped the HDR...

A-fucking-men. I kinda doubt the people who make this joke have ever heard anything but their radio singles Same thing a decade earlier with jokes about Dave Matthews Band. I would love to have a critical discussion of them! But "that band is lame" ain't it

@rahaeli.bsky.social Would you mind passing along the name of your spine surgeon? My wife is looking for options for her EDS-related neck fuckery.

Batman and Robin. I love camp Batman and I don't care who knows it.

Man I love the recorder.

Time for another rousing chorus of "NO MICE ON THE BED!!"

I read this in one much-too-late-at-night sitting and it's absolutely delightful. Funny, sapphic, with an eldritch horror aesthetic but it's really structured more like a cozy mystery.

The threatening nature of AI being dropped by its evangelists is, and always was, a sales pitch aimed at the people who had money to invest. Now that that phase is drying up, and the tech requires end users, they now need the support of the people they alienated with that same pitch.

I have successfully threaded the 30-year-old new-in-box sewing machine that I acquired from my mother-in-law. I was thoroughly daunted at first but the instructions pretty much worked! Next time, I trim the fabric for the curtains I need to hem and use the scraps to learn to tension the thread.

While I don't have strong attachments to some of these as Thanksgiving dishes (no ham for us, no mac & cheese, and... rolls? really? they're... traditional?) green bean casserole is the one I personally dislike, won't touch, and wouldn't miss.

Due to a _very_ quirky meat share guy, we got a turkey a month for an entire year. My wife got _really, really good_ at roasting turkeys. It takes practice! (And brining)

I showed up early for the zombie invasion of Trinsic and drank a couple ales with one of the members of the top RP guild on the shard. Eight years later, I had a job interview with, it turned out, Captain Sagan Adai. Who remembered the conversation.

Oh wait! Figured out how to get rid of the garbage Gemini button in Chrome: - Right-click - Unpin Gone!

@byzantienne.bsky.social I have an idea for our next 4th street fundraiser

"Somebody That You Used to Know", maximalist synth version

I worked with.. a dozen? at least? Gen Z coworkers over a couple of years and I can't recall ever encountering this. I wonder if it's as widespread as media implies - or if it's specifically a power-differential thing.

In honor of Veteran's Day, I will tell my favorite story of my father's time in the Marine Reserves. Now, for context, Dad was the least likely Marine ever. Not especially athletic, not particularly interested in the military, (1/x)

There were several settings in there that I wanted to change - worth checking! (I do not need cartoon nudity blocked, thanks ever so.)

Godspeed, voters. Get out there, do the thing, and stay a little extra situationally aware.

As part of my occasional project to read the fiction that influenced our current hellscape, I am poking at Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I realized last night that I have encountered this particular character before - only back then he was named Eustace Clarence Scrubb.

Read @annleckie.com 's newsletter, which mentions Taran Wanderer (a book I feel _very strongly_ about,) and I wanted to be slightly more specific about Annlaw being a bad teacher. Teachers who are phenomenally gifted in their art are _often_ (although not always) bad teachers (1/3)

I've had good results with tirazeptide for my long COVID so I'm excited about this study! (I'm not eligible because I'm already on it, but I wanted to spread the word.)

Man at post office tried to explain to me how the package chute works. I was like "Oh my god, amazing." He looked so smug and I was like "No, no, when I saw you walking across the parking lot, I was like, 'That man loves explaining things to women' and I was right!" He gasped like I punched him. :)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the frogs They are leading forth the unicorns & funny cats & dogs They are coming from the rivers, from the ponds & from the bogs Their truth is marching on Glory glory hallelujah Glory glory hallelujah Glory glory hallelujah Their truth is marching on

Pay them _dust_

🚨 New MASS BLOCK campaign. ::: 🚨 Terror Nazi’s from the Trump administration are migrating to Bluesky. Neo-Nazi cabinet members have been given their blue checkmarks & verification. Click —-> —- @whitehouse-47.bsky.social block —- @homelandgov.bsky.social block When in doubt, lock them out 🔐 🔒

This is one of the things my brain is tuned to keep track of so I can bring fun treats to the friends who enjoy them.

My MIL became our local party secretary and a state delegate by showing up to like three meetings.

Dude in grocery store goes “Some common sense advice: masks don’t do anything. Idiot.” I said “Forgive me for not taking ‘common sense advice’ from a guy wearing socks with Crocs in the rain.” I could tell by his face he’s gonna go to sleep tonight thinking about everyone on line laughing.

I feel slightly bad that what I take from this story is that there is an *actual* Father Dowling in Chicago right now. Truly we live in strange times

If you are paying significantly under market rate for a role and unhappy about the quality of employee you're getting, the solution is not to _lower the pay._ Christ.

Today's article is about a form of bad-faith speech somewhat akin to bullshit, which I'm calling (because why not) wank. I don't quite think I've focused the ideas down as much as I can, but I think it says some interesting things regardless:

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Out of curiosity (and because I encountered a definition that I am nearly certain is wrong), how do you define "high fantasy" vs "low fantasy"?

Out of curiosity (and because I encountered a definition that I am nearly certain is wrong), how do you define "high fantasy" vs "low fantasy"?

So! I've been on Zepbound for about six weeks, and I'm pleased to report that it seems to be helping quite a bit. The brain fog started to clear nearly immediately. I didn't really push my activity right away (I had COVID _again_ right before I started, so was taking it extra easy.) But now...

A bunch of phone games that had mysteriously lost their appeal became fun again after I got reading glasses, but I still want to kick whoever picked yellow text on a cream background firmly in the shins

Alex, upon bringing my breakfast: "The toast is extra-crispy because... I toasted it twice." I <3 my ADHD wife.

It is an absolute tragedy for me that I have zero interest in either perfume or fountain pens because _I fucking love little bottles_

Reading Cherryh's Alliance-Union books in whatever order the library sends them is clearly not the ideal way to do it.

One of the great grinding soundtracks. I could not get very far in this game - my timing is dogshit, always has been - but I would play this game for hours just grinding coins to get the best equipment so I could zone out to this tune.

Get your copy here books2read.com/angelmaker

One of my favourite books this year is on sale for less than three dollars American: @caitlinstarling.com's The Starving Saints: www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/... Read it: it's fucking great.

This is in fact one of my favorite scenes in the history of literature