It's your birthday, Duane.

the apocalypse world campaign is weird and insane. if you want a show about how the post-post apocalypse could change one's priorities, genders, and ethics, this is for you. or, you know, if you want a train that's a mall on wheels. that's there too.

some years ago at a meeting an academic said to me 'in the west, craft has come to mean "hobby"' and it genuinely destroyed my understanding. until then i simply did not know that in industrialised economies the act of production had become classified simply as 'something we do for fun'

genuinely thought this was somehow related to india the country before clicking through

i'm not saying you shouldn't participate in society, but you gotta admit advertising an anti-capitalist game published on the app store by offering the first act for free is funny

i am still reading about Partition. i am still aghast that it occurred, it was made to occur, it is - in fact - still occurring. it leaves me speechless every day.

If you read one thing today, or even this week, read this.

constantly reminding myself that marcus aurelius already solved social media (tr. maxwell staniforth) 52. you are not compelled to form any opinion about this matter before you, nor to disturb your peace of mind at all. things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you

My new favorite kind of meme is "here are detailed instructions on how to turn off AI". 🔨

a key problem of the world is that not enough people hate economics and too many people think it's enough to hate economics

no amount of state propaganda will ever convince me this man is my enemy

for my sins i have tried to read the transcript of the new york times podcast originally titled 'did women ruin the workplace'. i could not tell you what the hell they are talking about, or whether they are meaningfully making any kind of point.

Change in Headline

If you aren't seeing skeets from some of your fave people, they might have been labeled "Rude" by bsky mods. Idk what they are thinking, I don't need a mommy to tell me who to be buddies with. Anyway, go into Settings > moderation > bluesky moderation (advanced) and turn Rude off.

[To the tune of Eleanor Rigby] Big Ozymandy, Look at him stood on his plinth in the sand if you dare, Time to despair

MAD SISTERS OF ESI is coming in French! This is the first work of mine that’s been translated, and it’s been an incredible experience. Mathilde Montier did an astonishing job; her skill, care and artistry blew me away. It just made me so excited for language and writing all over again.

the law in its majestic equality &c.

i have to start following more cricket accounts. i know more about the world series than the india-australia ODI series

youtu.be/ehY2hRzbe3U i spoke to the comedian Vir Das about his work. i can't able to watch this video because i'm in it, but perhaps you'd like to?

There was no conceivable world in which the British justice system would find one of their own guilty of war crimes when they're enthusiastically supporting a genocide. But even still, the Bloody Sunday verdict is a slap in the face for all Irish people.

some poor online editor is really feeling this error right now. they're probably even in bangalore.

Every book on the le Guin prize shortlist is special in its own right. Ursula Whitcher's ( @yarntheory.bsky.social) North Continent Ribbon is a collection of stories about the sometimes slow, sometimes immediate nature of revolution. It is a stunning book. Everyone should read it

deepavali mubarak. light starts first within us, where truth lives.

A lot of hands went into this laser-cut sculpture of the U'duasha map from Sumirror by @desperateattune.bsky.social and I am very happy to have it on my wall now

we need to bring the ability to download things because someone went through the trouble of making a playlist. it doesn't need to be a good playlist. it doesn't even need to have good songs. just download it anyway.

reading about Partition and it only becomes more and more upsetting that it occurred.

insane to me that tech oligarchs have invented artificial sycophants because the regular kind weren't good enough. all the large language models do is tell you how amazing and great you are. the people who use it most are the ones who need it least, which is a true feat because nobody needs it.

<clears throat> www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0FP...

between two lungs / it was released the breath that passed /from you to me that flew between us /as we slept that slipped from your mouth to mine - it crept www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Uj...

non-dualism is the position that everything is logical, everything makes sense, we must all be materialists, that's how we know that the power of love can make miracles happen

sometimes it seems like leaders in parties like Labour and the Democrats would answer the question 'would you become Hitler in order to win votes' with the answer 'yes'

ah yes, 'humanitarian consequences', that famous concern of the governments of both India and the U.S. www.bbc.com/news/article...

skimmed past some dumb online anarchist/marxist-leninist types arguing at each other and reminded myself that i can just eat a kitkat.

whenever i feel particularly depressed about all this i listen to fareed ayaz www.youtube.com/watch?v=heHx...

something i think about a lot is in @kierongillen.bsky.social's The Power Fantasy, Etienne makes a critic ask Masumi - how much good art could redeem Hitler?

how do you pick anything but d. middle-east. south asia. the majority of china incl. sichuan. literally all of south east asia. the majority of japan. i guess australia is there.

Initial conditions: m1=48.9 m2=141.5 m3=79.8 (solar masses) v1x=-2.67 v1y=2.418 v2x=-0.165 v2y=6.457 v3x=4.831 v3y=5.779 (km/s) x1=-26.0 y1=28.0 x2=-2.0 y2=-11.0 x3=35.0 y3=21.0 (AU from center) Music: What Did You Do (The Expanse) – Shorter

the x-men panel at worldcon truly boggled my entire mind

Croft also btw a translator of the incredible Polish author Olga Torkarczuk, whose novel Flights is truly the most insane thing I read that year (One day I will read The Books of Jacob)

last litfic book i read was Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk . right now i'm reading Lili Is Crying by Helene Bessette and Death By Water by Kenzaburo Oe. you can just read books, friends. it's okay.

Ursula K. LeGuin on technology

colours on silk. left to right yellow/pomegranate peel brick red/manjistha bright red/alizarin brown/katha purple/sapan yellow/unidentified powder which we found in the unit white/undyed INDIGO INDIGO INDIGO

"if every victim of theft claimed back their property, it would 'financially ruin' the theft industry" said company whose entire product line was stolen.

reading old macro notes and remembering that i quite like economics, actually. fml

Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldn’t write it

tired and jetlagged and a bit turned around and so this is why i started writing a shitpost about lobsters on the moon

"you can never violate property rights for any reason, including potential massive benefit for all people" capitalists have turned into "if we don't violate property rights, we will lose massive benefits to some people (us)" capitalists when it comes to AI really illustrates how feckless they are.