A silly game I assume all writers play: trying to screenshot their books when they hit 69 or 666 on Amazon's sales rankings. Rules: 1) the number must be exactly 69 or 666; 2) category rankings don't count.

QRP with your wing art! (I have a LOT of wing art.) #birds

Remember "Catfish: the TV Show"? I wonder how many inquiries they got from dudes who'd been texting those "meet real women in your area" lines, thinking they were chatting with real people? Like, did they have a "dude, that's a call centre" form response?

Artists! Quote with you most detailed art! 🎨 I don't know, but it might be this picture of pirates abducting a child. There's a bunch of detail in the water, and their outfits.

This whole Andrew Tate thing is like that time Jimmy Savile thought he was a wrestler. Nice to see a man like that get exactly what he deserves. (Now, let's see him get the same in a court of law.)

So, a couple of weeks ago, my 3DS exploded. Old battery. I don't know. I wanted to play a game, so I put EmuDeck on my SteamDeck. Here's how that went:

After weeks of trying, it is official: I am too stupid or blind to do emulation on my SteamDeck.

This is a question for people who used to squash spiders/other creepy-crawlies, but now leave them alone/scoop them up and throw them out: What made you stop squashing your uninvited guests?

When striped socks go feral... <3

Years and years ago, I used to pass a graffito sprayed in an alley between East 10th and Broadway. It read as follows: DINNAE FERGET TAE EAT YIR MUSHY PEAS. Every time I would pass it, I'd say aloud, "I'm not forgetting. I'm deliberately rejecting." F. mushy peas.

Always did like this photo. (It's not AI--just poorly edited. I added some blur to obscure my messy kitchen.)

Ew. I've switched to Waterfox for now, spent the last hour or so twiddling my settings into place. There went the last of my trust in Firefox. www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla...

This is a total FAIL shot of a black-capped chickadee. I had the settings wrong on my camera, and also timed the shot badly. Kind of like it anyway, with the light through its wings. #birds

This nonsense doesn't belong anywhere in Canada. Healthcare should never run on a class system. It's vital that Canada nips this in the bud.

The song in my head today is... ...OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, my old man's a dustman! He wears a dustman's hat! He wears gorblimey trousers, and he lives in a council flat! (He isn't and doesn't, but there it is.)

I remember way back in like third or fourth grade, yarn being banned because everyone was doing "rainbow hair." The way you did "rainbow hair" was, you got bits of yarn longer than your hair, then you did up your hair in a hundred small braids, each with a string of yarn woven in.

Ever have one of those moments where, out of nowhere, you SUDDENLY notice how loud everything is--your electrical appliances, that hum in the walls, cars on the road outside, air in the vents? Then you remember that's all background noise; it isn't important; you don't have to listen to it.

NOW is the time to cancel subscriptions en masse, ask for refunds on pre-booked Disney holidays, return Disney merchandise, and flood their customer service department with complaints. The ONLY way to change their mind is, hit them in the wallet.

One time, I saw an Audi ad so cool, I considered learning to drive. (The one with the mechanical hummingbird, set to 'Open Road, Open Sky.') ...then I found out my friend had that car, and it was ALWAYS in the shop. Nothing's ever as good as it looks on the telly.

My take on "The Little Mermaid," from ages ago (the moment she throws herself into the sea). Eh...spoilers, I guess?

Every time I see the word "nincompoop," I think, "hey, there's a word I haven't seen in a while." But it hit me today, I see it quite frequently nowadays. I think it fell out of favour a while, and during that time, my brain marked it as an unusual word. Today, it has lost that distinction.

"Vulgar." Yep. It was that.

My one piece of (unsolicited) parenting advice: if you can’t afford to buy your kid the cool thing they want, buy them a cool thing you CAN afford. Don’t buy them a shitty version of the cool thing.

Well, there goes one of my all-time favourite game series. Dragon Quest...with an AI chatbot. Blech. www.videogameschronicle.com/news/dragon-...

If human beings could live on the moon, and they asked for volunteers to live on the moon...I'm a big enough idiot I'd probably go there. I don't know, man. I could fancy the moon. (Obviously, they wouldn't let me go to the moon. The moon hasn't got wheelchair access. But I'd try.)

You know how a toothache feels, that sick, throbbing pain? Imagine that multiplied by every tooth in your head, and consider giving this GFM a share. I know everyone's strapped this time of year, but teeth are LIFE! #teeth #dentistry www.gofundme.com/f/please-hel...

The worst part of Christmas hype going longer every year isn't so much the rampant, depressing commercialism as the CONSTANT reminders this holiday is coming, when everyone's together, and there's food, and presents. It's hard on folk with no-one to party with, for whom it'll just be December 25.

It's fern week 🌿 It turns out that ferns make a lot of appearances in my artwork, and it's no surprise considering how much I love them. These are just a few of the lino block prints I've done with ferns! www.kamakru.com/prints?categ...

Maybe I should be embarrassed, but I'm kind of into this new Star Trek concept. I mean, I loved Gossip Girl. I double-loved The Orville. This feels like it COULD be the best from both columns: space opera lite with a dash of teen drama. Watching it!

Some of my worst bird photography has been of starlings. I don't know why, but I never get good shots of these. This is a pair of them digging up worms. #birds

I posted this GFM a couple of days ago, for someone who's dealing with a painful and urgent dental situation. I appreciate all of you who've shared and donated: healthy teeth are EVERYTHING. If you can give this a share, or kick in a few dollars, please do! www.gofundme.com/f/please-hel...

You know what would be nice? A flatscreen television set, light enough for a modest-sized human being to pick up, but with the indistinct glow of a CRT screen. Shit looked SO good on pre-HD screens, all gentle and blurry and sort of luminous. Let's have THAT back, but liftable.

You know what was fun? Being a kid and not knowing the names of videogame monsters, and making up names for them in your head. Super Mario's Goombas will always be Ernests to me. (And blue suede Ernests for the underground ones.) Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure had tubies, and...parabolic curvy birds.

PS - I'm not saying ONLY share if you've got a huge following. Everyone should share this. Healthy teeth are LIFE. But...it would be SO great if some huge influencer boosted this, and it got funded. It's not fair that it works that way, that people in pain get ignored--but they do. Please help.

Bumping this up again because, man...you can't imagine, if you haven't been there, what it's like to wake up and tongue-survey your mouth for new damage. Tears in your cheeks from sharp-edged broken molars. New bits crumbled off while you slept. This person is living a nightmare, and needs help.

Is there anyone, like, famous or influential who could share this GFM? www.gofundme.com/f/please-hel... Today's update is killing me, but this person is a LONG way from her goal. She'll need a lot more than my donation to get there.

When I was a kid, I thought Taco Bell was only available in the USA, because their ads said "go south of the border." (They played the US ads unedited in Canada.)

My 3DS exploded. :-( Man, I'm so bummed. I don't get much game time, and when I do, THIS happens? I wonder if there's an idiot-proof way to emulate on a SteamDeck...

<3 Self-satisfied wee fellow!

This is a picture of a pigeon flying away. Pigeons have the LOUDEST wings, that clapping they do, y'know, when they take off like FAP FAP FAP FAP. #birds

Happy Thanksgiving

Last night, I dreamt I was working, and an ad popped up in MS Word. Then ads started popping all over my desktop, and I knew in the way that you know things in dreams, I was now being served ads on an OS level whenever I was connected to the Internet.

Today, I saw a Redditor claim seabird populations are down 90% from the 1970s. This is not true, as far as I know. According to the NIH, monitored seabird populations declined about 69.7% between 1950 and 2010. Still, that's a huge decline, and it got me thinking about my first ghostwriting job.

Some days, you're a paragon of professional competence. Other days, you're a sore-eyed, dry-nosed little animal, in need of your creature comforts.

#dailyart 81 bird study #birds

Is it just me, or does social media feel a bit like "the old thing?" For a few years now, I've been getting this feeling, like when forums started to decline, and newsgroups before them, where "the next thing" wasn't out yet, but you could feel the dwindling.

I was thinking I might try doing some pixel art. You do it a lot bigger, right, than how it's shown onscreen? Feels like good art for a blind-adjacent person to do.

Turned on my screentime tracker for my iPhone: three minutes last week! (I felt briefly smug, then immediately realised I'd just spent eight hours staring at my laptop. Because, y'know, work. I use screens for work. I rack up a LOT, like a LOT of screen time, only not much of it's on my phone.)

Speaking of birds, with human beings having the lips to whistle, was it just a roll of the dice we evolved spoken language as we know it, rather than more of a birdsong style of communication?

Has anyone tried setting a bird up with its own recording studio? Like, giving it a simplified, bird-friendly version of GarageBand, or something, showing it how to record a clip, and letting it loose? I'd be interested in what a bird would deem worthy of recording. Or...meme-worthy.