Wow. The front page of tomorrow’s Charlie Hebdo magazine in France.

I'm trying to look at the bright side potential of a week-plus of freezing temps: this could do wonders to put a dent in the local rat population.

Well, this is interesting: - fever gone - cough gone - senses of taste and smell *also* gone, suddenly, eight days into whatever this is I've never been anosmic before, and it's a very odd experience. I can see why this causes weight loss for chronic sufferers. Still negative for COVID. /shrug

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

too true Truly Impossible To Tell: Boston Prepares For Either Massive Blizzard Or Inconsequential Flurries

I have many books I no longer need or want. But the local library doesn't take donations anymore, used bookstores are selective about what they buy, and simply binning them all feels wrong. So I'm going to dress like a ninja and start seeding them in all the Little Free Libraries within 5 miles.

I'm not ashamed to say I've reached an age where I need reading glasses. I am, however, ashamed to say I've reached an age where I never remember where I last had them. #blurry

Day six of the lurgy. I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Because it's been a hard week, I thought I would re-post one of the things that lightened my own mood, this interview with a young dinosaur enthusiast in @chicagomag.com. www.chicagomag.com/chicago-maga...

I've reached the stage in this illness where I feel like I've been bingeing sit-ups for all the soreness in my abdominals. Also, my hair hurts.

Hey, look, Tags sells cats now!

Don't you hate when you try to do something like make a smoothie, but you're half asleep and you don't have your glasses on, so instead of strawberries you grab the meatballs out of the freezer? Or does this only happen to me?

It's 25F and the wind between these buildings is blowing a gale. And because this is a college town, there's a dude in shorts and flipflops telling everyone how he "doesn't feel the cold." Sure thing, buddy.

It never seems to dawn on them that some of us would use this sort of thing as a platform for future political endeavors. "Yes, Bob, I was on Trumps enemies list. That experience is what motivated me to run for dog-catcher, and I hope I can count on your support in November!"

@aserkin.bsky.social I laughed so hard at the line "The Bella Lugosi of Hemel Hempstead."

Apparently I didn't learn my lesson from PMC2025. As with last year, I promise to try not to be _too_ annoying about fundraising. OTOH, it _is_ a fundraiser, and also fuck cancer.

Happy start of the semester! Coming back from sabbatical and immediately facing a flood of student emails inspired me to repost this hack (I've used the accommodation letter one 10x already today). #Academicsky

Branch Manager coming in hot with a timeline cleanse

Even the ducklings hate ICE (Photo taken by a friend who's not on here)

Slightly diminish a band: The Danged

On one hand, we're losing Tampopo; OTOH, we're getting City Slicker back next week, several months after a fire.

- Rotary telephones - B&W televisions - over-the-air television reception, where someone had to take a turn holding the tip of the bunny-ear antenna if you wanted to watch ch. 5, otherwise it was all snowy - vertical hold dials on televisions, and how they'd slip out occasionally

Good, brief thread.

I invite all Americans to join Minnesota in a day of unity tomorrow.

Well this sucks: Tampopo in the Porter Exchange is closing. but I can't begrudge the owners for wanting to go do something else after all these years.

I wish she'd try napping at 03:00 for variety's sake.

This harked back all the way to eight seasons earlier, and how put-out Hawkeye had been that Trapper John hadn't said goodbye. He didn't even leave a note.

I'm asking the Department of Travel to please kiss my shabbily-dressed ass. (also: Dept. of Travel? When did *that* happen?)

I think we could all use a cat right about now.

Preserving sanity

This is an utterly appalling editorial from Pravda on the Potomac. Not a single word on international law or the US Constitution.

One of the tells, I think, will be who actually handles the courtroom prosecution. If it's Bondi, I think it'll just come across like a show trial, because it clearly will be. But if DOJ actually puts someone with actual legal chops at the head of the team, well... that will read very differently.

It was pretty widely conceded that Maduro stole the last election in Venezuela. That argues for U.N. action, not an illegal invasion by Trump. And if Trump had succeeded in stealing the 2020 election, that would have argued for U.N. action as well.

This is simultaneously incredibly tepid, and probably the best we could hope for from the Times editorial board.

Local TV news: "Tensions with Venezuela reached a breaking point overnight." That's not how I'd describe what happened.

Oldie, goodie:

It's a close thing, between the Park Tools "Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair" by Calvin Jones, or "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child (et al.).

This video landed just as I was old enough to realize we were in a staring match with the Soviets, and Reagan was president, and maybe that was suboptimal. Follow that up a few months later with "The Day After" on TV, and a lot about my personal brand of up-fucked-ness should become clear.

Assuming I don't squeeze in a bike ride later, my yearly cycling stats are in: Mileage: 5471km / 3400mi Total ascent: 52,134m / 171,043ft Time in saddle: 259hrs Not even remotely my most productive year in the saddle. I guess I'll have to fix that in 2026.

Johnny Cash's video for "Hurt" feels like an appropriate requiem for MTV itself.

Dear new neighbors: the recycling bin is for things that are actually recyclable. The city has a whole website for this. Recycling is not just "trash you feel guilty about."

Of course, if the measurements are being reported by 20-something males, that "6-9 inches" may turn out to be more like 3-4. Yes, I went there.

This is a good, thoughtful thread on AI. Normally my concern with analogizing the present directly to the past is how poorly they map to one another over time. OTOH, the current crop of robber-barons seem to be operating out of exactly the same 19th Century playbook as the last bunch, so /shrug.

Merry Christmas, @arguebarmies.bsky.social

Reminder: the correct response to news like this is some combination of "how awful" and "fuck cancer," not score-settling.

Ted Cruz has spent over a dozen years in the US Senate failing to do anything but be a gotcha-bro in committee meetings. His own social media people can't even be bothered to list his accomplisments on Wikipedia *because he has so few of them*. And now he wants to be POTUS? C'mon man, be realistic.

Galaxy Quest - a perfect movie, just a wonderful love letter to actors, sci-fi, Star Trek in particular, and to fandom - really deserves a proper physical release with decent extras. Think Weaver's right that releasing a R-rated cut would be fun, too.

This afternoon I've found myself trying to explain a joke about the highland bagpipes to a bunch of Slovenian cyclsts, and ISTG, the whole conversation seemed to make some sort of sense at the time, but I don't really know how I ended up here.

We went to my friend Danny & Chloe's wedding today (mazal tov to them both), and it was very nice. But now, hours later, I have that schmaltzy music they always play at Jewish weddings stuck in my head. Think 27 different tunes to "Od Yeshama" played on a Wurlitzer home organ-level schmatlzy.