The Mayor: "in the end, this is the compromise that folks agreed upon" - really BJ? How many restaurant workers were consulted beyond the ones bribed by the Restaurant Association?

This "compromise" is even worse than it seems because "small" restaurant employees won't get another raise until 2030 and no minimum wage until 2033. Except for Ald Jason Ervin, every quote in this, including the one from the Mayor, is disgusting & cowardly. blockclubchicago.org/2026/05/20/t...

Attention @nmamatas.bsky.social this just popped up on my youtube feed and as far as I can tell there's no connection. youtu.be/YPW_HeOHA1E?...

The baby Yoda movie isn't the worst star wars film but at some point buff Jeremy Allen Hutt says "it's tough being your own man when your dad is jabba the Hutt" and for that reason I think everyone involved in making it should be sealed up in an abandoned mine

No work tomorrow and the Novel is very high and also in that mood where anything prompts "speaking of whales..."

4 cultural items to answer Why are You Like This Note: all encountered as a kid/tween/teen -Young Adult Novel by D Pinkwater (taught me about Dada) -African Drum Suite by Art Blakey -Meshes of The Afternoon -The Best of Ernie Kovacs

Is Chicago? Is not Chicago! This is how I found out Indiana has a town with the most wannabe name of New Chicago and Steve is right, you will not see the final detail coming.

Sometimes the past was both wrong about some things and aware how wrong it was in not so subtle, horny ways.

Can see why Marvel's Civil War is considered a peak. The crappiest issue or the most barely connected story has a certain energy / polish & the good stuff is so good. Like Black Panther & Storm's wedding & choice to spend their honeymoon calming all the forces alarmed by a black power couple.

Whatever discourse you are doing, it will never top Strongbad.

im not saying this dude is crashing out bc his posts about worst movie of the year so far Obsession got 9 favs. But I’m not saying thats not the case

Seeing another round of Bluesky discourse as a sign seasons are changing and we are about to get into the truly insufferable "men shouldn't wear shorts" and other summer discourse.

Trot my Tot sounds like a very niche form of commie indoctrination / babysitting & I am down for "childcare of the deed".

I like this site and I think people who have a really hard time here are kind of babies. Sometimes I get yelled at on here and some of those times people don’t have a point, but who cares? If anything, I should evangelize for this site more as the last place on the internet I still learn stuff.

Annual reminder Memorial Day began as a commeration of Union Soldiers who gave their lives defeating the attempt to form a white supremacist slave state & Confederate soldiers were not honored because they were shameful assholes.

Some mutuals follow this obivious liar with crap politics and nothing will be lost by blocking / muting instead of engaging.

Oh man I loved her song Baba O'Reilly

Imagine those invested in cars (already bad people who worked to subvet public transit) insisting sidewalks be removed & vehicular homicide be legalized because the inevitable age of the car (and their profits) required it & anyone suggesting otherwise just couldn't tolerate change.

guys we don’t have to have discourse about this app every single day, we don’t have to do this

The Novel is annoyed at "bluesky bubble" discourse as brings up memorues of being an engagement addict getting a pure dopamine hits on other platforms.

Being a LiveJournal user who joined as MySpace hit (impacting LJ though it was more niche than Bluesky) gives perspective on feelings vs impact vs actual reach & how it always shifts. LJ also shows (alas) a niche space can impact politics culture at some level so keeping out Nazis is key.

Twitter is 20 years old, peaked around 2010 & had an aging, declining userbase before EM amp up bots & Nazis. It's just declining slower cos it was bigger. Kids, diversity & juice moved on long ago. This is an attention junkie scolding users & a site for not giving the fix that is his own problem

On early twitter posted this quote from Sara Jeong's Internet of Garbage, a prescient, nuanced book on managing harassment, disinfo & free speech. Richard Dawkins somehow saw it, reposted & I got flooded with rage directed at Sarah, much from Nazi coded profiles. "Bubble boy" my ass.

Also: Bluesky has much shitposting & porn & grit if you look for it. But Corey handwaves X boosting fash accounts (one incited threats against hospitals) & implies folks should just curate harder, then says a site that's a tiny bit more guarded is "unfun" cause it may take effort to get what u want

Despite whining about engagement. Corey turns off replies to avoid facing the ugliness of calling the threats, violence, disinfo & Nazism X actively enables "unfun" & impying you just didn't curate right & pretending Bluesky is worse cos not enough tasty engagement & sometimes harsh criticism.

Another whiny thread about Bluesky sans examples, but in post 6 Corey mentions a lack of gratifying *engagement* levels. Corey wrote a Baffler essay arguing pundits should disclose wealth at the start of any punditry. Bluesky whines should start by examining one's motives & hangups & an example.

I also voluntarily do not hang out where people shit themselves in public because I have a palpable desire to be ensconced from people shitting themselves in public.

This so dystopian. Just utter garbage imposed by market share. But worth being aware about. youtu.be/HqXw89o5u50?...

Cetacean Wealth Management

CHAPTER XCI1/2. The Rug-Pull

The Novel has pulled off a lot of bitcoin scams while ocean bound.

Widow's Bay is so good it doesn't matter if there is an ending, satisfying or otherwise, which is rare. Every episode has enough of a full setup and payoff that the larger narrative is kind of "the island is scary" regardless of any other conclusion.

"And then he asked me to multiply 3 times 30 the add 5 then multiply that result by 850 minus 7. And then he laughed and I laughed."

@patrickklepek.bsky.social @remapradio.bsky.social

From @joshtpm.bsky.social: In the Trenches with the Law — Thoughts on the Broadview Six Case talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/in-th...

Total tangent but uncanny how much U.S. Attorney Boutros looks like a young Bob Hoskins & imagining him telling the Judge in thick Cockney, "Nah guv, no one acted with the intent to mislead, the mates just got a little Sheffield in their eagernes to follow your order to give the law."

202. Challenge: choose cool cover versions of great songs. Only one per day, if not every day, for as long as one can. Usually "No explanations. No reviews" but happy goth day. youtu.be/UUIOfrzV3V0?...

If I were able to produce / greenlight shows, one would be a drama about interpersonal conflicts between members of a very successful Fleetwood Mac cover band in Wisconsin. The drama would be epic, but the venues and stakes would be relatively low.

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL RETURN OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL PIMPERNEL: SCARLET LEGACY PIMPERNEL ORIGINS SCARLET THE PIMPERNEL PIMPERNEL 1805 THE SCARLET AGE

Start of great thread.

This entire thread is a great examination of the way corporations fumble IP franchises and why (mostly capitalism but also they don't grasp storytelling).

An addendum: this approach also normalizes characters as people of destiny, special, *superior*, chosen by fate and family to be great, rather than ordinary people who must deal with extraordinary situations - which to me is always more dramatically interesting and less philosophically harmful.

/19 The defense points out that the AUSAs stood mute when the court speculated it was only a few lines redacted and probably just IT issues, even though they knew pages had been left out and the stuff redacted and left out was catastrophic.

/10 Trumpist prosecutor: well, firstly, this was only my second grand jury hearing ever, I am but a smol bean, and secondly, I just found out that vouching is bad? Holy fucking shit this is humiliating for DoJ.

Some notes now that I’ve seen the transcript of the hearing, thanks to @lizdye.bsky.social . First: the government dismissed the felony count in an effort to convince the judge not to make them produce full transcripts, knowing they showed serious misconduct.

I like that my feed right now is 100% lawyers going “legal expert here, judges only talk like this when they’re feeling a white-hot rage powerful enough to swallow a medium-size metropolitan area.”

Ah yes, "Advertising and credit scores" two things that are not widely known as money making & control schemes that never work as well as they claim & make life so much worse people pay to avoid them & are imposed by oligarchs using wealth to pretend such superfulous crap is a necessity.