Got last month's reading rounded up: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/4/...

It's called "the summer emotion."

I took too long to write my book reviews -- so there are many of them, including a lot of tech skepticism and a few rather wild books (image is Michael Cisco's 'Animal Money', which I spent the most time with.)

It’s almost like WE ALL SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN fortune.com/2026/04/10/a...

The annual "buyback" program spearheaded by the Missouri Invasive Plant Council offers residents a free native tree in exchange for removing invasive Callery pear.

I don't like coming up for air from a grading session and my internal monologue featuring the word "bloodbath" prominently. But there we are.

Here's this on liminal spaces, including/excluding airports. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/4/...

We're in the last 5 days of this TTRPG kickstarter! If we get to the $430,000 the books will include Summer of the Witch, a mystery I wrote influenced by Halloween 3, Midsommar, and The VVitch! :D www.kickstarter.com/projects/gau...

@radiosaturday.bsky.social has returned and given me reason to get much better at reading French.

A new piece about cynicism, rhetorical listening, and ego protection, dipping into recent discourse about transgender athletes and the "sad puppies" campaign to wrest control of the Hugo Awards. (Remember that? That was pretty wild, right?) [Crickets] Enjoy.

Okay, I've been wondering this for years: can someone who knows about contemporary high school English classes tell me what they're saying about semicolons? Because I have to teach sixty college Freshmen not to use it like a Big Comma every semester.

I'm not going to lie, but the ADD hit hard with this one: I wanted to talk about genre, but somehow ended up sprawled across political economy and epistemology. Send help.

You've got to cite your sources, and you've got to check your sources.

These thoughts aren't really complete, but this serves as a binding-together of some ideas and a jumping-off-point for some future things.

If anyone affected by this wants to find out what their legal recourse may be, I know some good class action lawyers.

Under the cover of war, the US DoJ has just quietly released some of the missing Epstein files that directly relate to Trump. In which, he is accused of sexual assault by a then 13 year old who says he tried to force oral sex on her. Shameless. news.sky.com/story/epstei...

Here it is again for the morning scrollers!

A round of book reviews, containing fiction about gods, ghosts, and monsters, and nonfiction about serial killers, supposed AI, whether or not we'll live in space, and how (maybe) not to go insane dealing with this stupid world. Or maybe to make it happen faster. Baudrillard is hard.

It's rough on the internet these days. Please take with the caveat that I am a teacher, not a security specialist or a lawyer, but I'm trying to digest and make accessible some of the things I'm coming to understand. If someone understands better, I fully welcome corrections.

The worst damage of the far right was enabled by the center right too fearful to push back against trump

Hi. If you design games, I think you should read this blog post. It's short! I agree with everything Markus says here. personable.blog/human-centri...

Some thoughts driven by the observation of a persistent brain bug:

Hey, so, I don’t do civil litigation, is it generally considered good when the judge does this? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Some bangers on this book round-up: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2026/2/...

The world's real fun right now.

I have now gone to a dealership and two mechanics to fix a car I bought less than a month ago because it stalls at red lights and randomly dies in the cold. While they all agree that there is a problem, no one can apparently identify what the problem is. Apparently, it drives done but not for me.

The world's real fun right now.

I hate that em dashes are seen as a sign of AI writing now. I default to using them a lot, and people seem to get mileage out of pointing them out -- and, to such people, I want to say: I'm sorry that you've never had a flare for the dramatic or so many thoughts you've got to interrupt yourself.

I went to the dealership because my car has a problem my normal mechanic can't figure out. The waiting room is filled with the sound of Jeopardy reruns and hold muzak from one elderly gentleman's phone. I've been here for nearly two hours and my brain is mush.

I like how, whenever I tell my phone to do something, it instead stops to tell me that I should be gambling instead.

“Homeland” wasn’t a word people in the US used to talk about the US when DHS was created. It felt at the time like Republicans laundering explicitly fascist language into their public project

On Thursday morning, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement toured a warehouse in south Kansas City with aims to hold detainees there. By the afternoon, city lawmakers banned such detention centers from being approved.

this is Minnesotan for "I am mad enough to bite through rebar"

If this is all a simulation, it's just proof that open-world games suck.

More isn't always better, and I'm beginning to think that obsessions with great magnitudes (biggest, strongest, fastest, etc.) is a mark of a childish character.

The Onion nailed it: "ICE Confirms Agents Do Not Have Faces Beneath Masks" "... seeing a man in tactical gear is far better than seeing a man without a face, staring deep into that empty chasm, and instantly going mad." https://theonion.com/ice-confirms-agents-do-not-have-faces-beneath-masks/

RT if you've never had a tab of ChatGPT open 'just to do quick research'

Add another one to the great big board of "Urban Planning Debates: Academic Research vs. Some Guy"

Starting off the year by pushing out reviews of the last...twenty? books I read last year. I, uh, I should have done this sooner.

I hate it here, for the record.

Entering our Too Lazy to Manufacture Consent era

My year of weird spices begins.

Here’s to 2026

> doing the reading, letting it change yr mind: Valhalla > doing the reading just to be a little shit: Jötunheimr > not doing the reading, admitting it, vibing: Midgard > pretending to have done the reading to escape notice: Niflheim > pretending to have done the reading, being a little shit: Hel

I went vegetarian at the start of this year for what my partner describes as "Dale Gribble reasons" (not trusting the gov't). On Christmas, I'm full of portobello mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, mashed potato, and wine. I feel like I've made good decisions.

I've made it difficult for myself to take a week off. Here are some notes on something I've been thinking about for a while:

started / going