reading update: been a bit of a slog lately. we re-read the lion the with and the wardrobe, which i honestly can’t stand (and not because of the jesus stuff). Almost done with book 1 of The Sisters Grimm which I would really recommend for older kids but it’s too much fantasy meta for a (almost) 5yo

sunset after 7PM and first batch of cucumber limeade of the year. hell yeah, we made it through the darkness

🎶 it’s beginning to look a lot like springtime 🎶

so a couple of weeks ago we finished reading The Night Fairy (10/10 kids readaloud) featuring a hummingbird character. now, for a few days we’ve been seeing a hummingbird feeding on our big aloe (it flowers every year like clockwork) and then today i notice we can see the nest. z is going to freak!

food pseudoscience is generally infuriating because of the embedded classism in it, but every once in a while i remember that Americans as a whole have essentially abandoned iodized salt in favor of koshering salt because of a false notion of superiority borne from restaurant use and i lose my shit

the unfortunate truth of the matter with oil and byproducts is that in the short run access will be rationed with price and in rich countries consumption wont really change and consumers will just eat the cost but in poor countries there will be demand destruction and possibly rationing.

i am so tired of discussions of risks of loans against private credit that neglect to mention the minimum and current levels of collateralization. in the case of CLOs there’s also the triggers (overcollateralization and interest coverage test) which can divert interest to extinguish senior tranches.

Starting a war with the people who control the trade lines that brings fertilizer right before spring is how you can tell no one in the WH knows what they're doing.

generally the rule with the global economy is that it can get through a really bad thing happening, many bad things happening in a lot of places, or a bad thing happening that lasts for a long time. its the combinations of those when the wheels really start coming undone

The H5N1 bird flu virus has been confirmed in northern elephant seals on the California coast. Just a few years ago, the virus decimated southern elephant seal populations in South America. @susrust.bsky.social www.latimes.com/science/stor...

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth

wait how is it even possible that every single woman in both teams is hot? yeah yeah young and +4sd athletic whatever but thats not this, those are all top tercile face cards. how do none or them have weird noses or crooked teeth or an unfortunate haircut like men so often seem to?

33 of the people pardoned by Trump for January 6 have committed more crimes including molesting children and killing people while drunk driving.

today i introduced the (almost) 5yo to animaniacs and then we had hot dogs and some italian orange soda. 10/10 afternoon

yes. people use “skill” but the only real measurements we have are wages and prestige, and the latter is quite fuzzy. when you actually want to be serious instead of just spit takes on the internet the correct nomenclature is low- and high-prerequisite employment, because that is how hiring works.

The very well-accepted term for "stripping the legal protections of a minority group and then sending a paramilitary force to carry them away" is "ethnic cleansing." They are planning to ethnically cleanse Springfield, Ohio.

Never mind the jobs you had. Tell me five classes you took in college: History of the Soviet Secret Police Feminist Film Theory Morphology Stochastic Processes Programming Languages

the online chuds are wildly underestimating how many first-time protesters are showing up to things and how fucking pissed off they are and how radicalized they become after being on the receiving side of the tear gas and police brutality. the fascists are sowing the seeds of their own demise

Weird how some drug dealers get pardons while others are subjected to extrajudicial murder just on suspicion of it.

i think about this every time i look at the latest Overdrive or Hoopla or Kanopy invoice. unless prices or demand stabilize, our budget and thus our library will soon be describable as “lessee of digital content with a legacy dead-tree side concern.” 📚

Non-protesting dad just trying to hustle his kids, as young as 6mo, out of the neighborhood. ICE threw a flash-bang INTO HIS car, all 6 kids in the hospital now. If anyone wondered how things turn against occupying armies there's a case study playing out in front of you.

It's been a while since we did Books I've Read to a 4yo That Are Not Meant For 4yos. The rundown of the last 3 months: The Borrowers, Lost Evangeline, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle (arbitrary scores: C- / A / B). I decided to do a "theme" cluster as we prepare for, potentially, a series

this is such a fun thread

The armed people that are all fiercely loyal to him and are organized under a department that reports to the presidency directly, allowing him to treat them as his personal police: the department of homeland security. The analog to what DHS can become is the Tsarist Okhrana or the Italian OVRS

you should never watch things at resolutions higher than they were originally meant for, even when available, because best case its so distracting you cant suspend disbelief bc it starts looking like a mid 2000s daytime soap (idk why, it just does) and worst case this stuff happens

i hate to be all like “decline of culture” but, god damn, kids’ TV (outside apple TV+) has sloppified worse than any other genre. And don’t reply “what about bluey?” bc that’s not a show for kids, thats a show for parents produced so that kids don’t mind watching it and i will not debate that point.

I mean this with the utmost solemnity and sincerity, go fuck yourself with a spiked bat you toad-kissing ass-licker. Protecting ACA *was* the fight, keeping RFK out of HHS *was* the fight, preventing deportations *was* the fight. Winning elections is for passing policy, not for chasing a high score.

Great and important reporting here. But the administration has been pretty clear about how these judges need to rule in order to keep their jobs. So I think we’re well beyond perception of fairness.

look, i get that it seems ridiculous to spend $30 for two-dozen colored pencils for a 4 year old but, hear me out here, you have to sharpen them like 1/10th as much, they last forever, and you never have to worry about sharpening only to break the lead or find out the lead is already broken inside

US citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents children would be coming to get bus, lawyers say

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

the 4 year old is very very into kpop demon hunters. well, at least she thinks so, because obviously we did not let her watch it and she just knows a couple of songs from it. anyways, she is convinced its about three groups of friends, the demons, the hunters, and the kpops.

Cumulative excess mortality following a tropical storm in the continental US. Young & Hsiang find that mortality rises after a tropical cyclone for ~172 months, including children not even conceived yet. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

new AI slop alert: sewing patterns. etsy et al are now flooded with AI patterns and AI generated images of the garment. the patterns are absolute garbage but they are hard to spot unless you are paying attention. look for reviews from people who have actually sewn the pattern

take a break from reading about the latest crimes the Trump family did, and read this instead. you’ll still be just as mad about our burgeoning kleptocracy, but at least you will know more about our home planet and the star at the center of our orbit. www.quantamagazine.org/why-is-venus...

Car company: our entry level cars are now like Ferraris!! Community: can we get a speed bump on our street to help slow down drivers City: No, it will upset drivers. That’s the entirety of the safe streets discussion.

can we get a gofundme started for the analyst who loses their job after having the balls to ask about this on the earnings call?

Today, in this endless list of posts of things to read to a young kid when you are trying to teach them how to think while reading literature, we take a step-back from the more complex and lengthier novels and take-on the Catwings series by Ursula k Le Guin. www.ursulakleguin.com/catwings

A revolutionary seizure of the means of persuasion…

if you’ve ever wondered why environmental economics is a worthwhile subject to learn more about, this is the perfect little example to illustrate it youtu.be/9KXOO3gK5wo?...

One of my dear friends is raising money for an immigration attorney so he can either stay in the US, or be able to start over elsewhere. If you donate I will post something good on a topic of your choice as long as i have expertise (depth and breadth subject to donation amount) gofund.me/263317f6

I don't know what to call the late-millennial / sometimes early-gen-Z style of video that is just a looking-at-the-camera lecture characterized by a very casual detached-cool affect that comes across as a caricature (in an unintentional "cool prof" way) but this nails it youtu.be/tFlHxHvniJk?...

does anyone know of any good studies with statistics on ischemia rate by age or age-group other than the recent CDC one from MMWR 73 20? the 65+ age group is way too broad to be useful to me in that one. doesn’t have to be an american study, just recentish www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

wait, holdup… the reason people are talking about dildos is because crypto bros are going out and buying dildos and wnba tickets and going to games only to throw the dildos into the court??? why is everything so dumb?? i imagine i will feel equal levels of regret if i learn why this is happening?

@christinatoms.bsky.social hey so i was looking at the recent rainfall over hong kong and noticed they are seeing events that are over 400mm in a 12h period and multiple periods similar to that in a few days and i started wondering about a couple of things you may know

income and employment tax withheld used to be a great resource the 10 months out of the year that withholding from IRA distributions doesn’t add a lot of noise, but cashflow data is subject to volatility from skew in compensation, and in fact stock-based compensation has made it very noisy lately

New: A donor to Mayor Adams has pleaded guilty to playing part in a sprawling insurance fraud scheme that a separate civil lawsuit claims also involved a company co-founded by Frank Carone, Adams' reelection campaign boss and longtime political confidant. www.nydailynews.com/2025/07/30/n...

You know who else set up a youth organisation to teach children about his ideology

if anyone knows of an academic monograph or dissertation that is available digitally, through ILL, or for purchase that is focused on fired bricks (like for buildings) of the US, specifically the chicago & new york metropolitan areas, please do let me know. it must exist and i really want to read it

picked up The Cats of Silver Crescent at the library bc the 3 things i was looking for were out. It seemed like a nice book. a young girl, cats that talk, a kooky great aunt! Well I’ve been spending half the time explaining new words and now I had to explain how shelters euthanize animals! oooooof.