Shoe stretchers?

Christmas Eve Hot Take: Some people made fun of Joe Quesada from banning characters from smoking in Marvel Comics, but it was a great move that probably saved lives.

In The Tyee’s 22-year history, we’ve lived many lives. Once a private company, it became obvious we’re better suited as a non-profit. Now, with our #RJO status, it’s all the easier to consider becoming a Tyee Builder. #CdnMedia support.thetyee.ca?utm_source=b...

That absolutely tracks. But, but, Carney is an environmentalist! 🙄

This ignores the fact that when someone is smoking, everyone around them is also (non-consensually) smoking. If they could change it to somehow being something that only the smoker consumed? Have a field day, knock yourself out.

Saw it as an adult & it rubbed me the wrong way. Like the worst sort of Christian-coded lesson on the nobility of suffering. Yeah, everyone rallies around George in the end, that’s his reward, but nothing about the system or obligations that wore him down to start has really changed.

This piece was in our main library in 2015 for a couple of months & a woman told me she would stop by on her lunch break & just sit & look at it almost daily because it gave her some peace. Few better compliments. Shore 55×40 140×101cm Oil on Canvas 2015 #ArtAdventCalendar

They are just hiding from the Yule Cat. bsky.app/profile/mmca...

[ Centuries from now, in an archaeology class ] "And notice how the inhabitants of this 21st century city emphasized the forehead in their sculptures..."

Not a toy. As a winged lion of St. Mark he's clearly a servant of the the Republic of Venice who ended up shipwrecked in the North Atlantic. As the Republic no longer exists, he's set himself up as a monarch to rule over the exiled toys.

This year made me realize just how much I love gardening. I love working with my hands in the dirt. I love digging holes. I love pulling apart rootbound plants and imagining it feeling really nice for them. I love seeing mushrooms and finding worms and knowing that soil is alive.

Mangroves are often referred to as one of the “big three” marine ecosystems, along w/ salt marshes & seagrass beds. Between them, they account for >50% of carbon storage in oceans. Mangroves are surprisingly effective in reducing the speed & intensity of tsunamis & tidal surges. Good news story!

Please tell me your faves of the year so I can load up my library holds for 2026

READ THIS: Still probably the best #ChristmasEve tradition I’ve heard. Iceland definitely does Christmas well — my Reykjavik clients had funny comments about this! Are you planning to curl up with a great new book on cities this #Christmas? Share your pick with us using hashtag #UrbanismBookClub!

Yeah, no thanks. Stop guilting people about being estranged from family members. It someone is they likely have personal reasons for being so.

it’s Christmas Eve morning and apparently Bluesky is in a fightin’ mood today. please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light

welcome to the Second Annual Bluesky Christmas Eve Snowball Fight! please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light

The document does not address the fact that right wing billionaires control these products and, as Musk has proven, can use them to literally push Nazi propaganda.

The document does not mention the suicides and deaths associated with "A.i." products produced by your partners. It does not address the cognitive decline associated with these "A.i." products. It does not address the fact that Trump is pushing these companies to make these LLMs more right wing.

Thanks for sharing this document, @rweingarten.bsky.social. I read it, and I believe it's inexcusably inadequate and will not prepare teachers or schools to confront the very real dangers of the "A.i." products pushed by your partners, including OpenAI. A few thoughts for your consideration...

Literally one of the reasons I’m skeptical of gAI is because I’m a historian and technology is one of the things I study, but also who looks at the recent history of Silicon Valley and trusts a single word they tell us

I’m happy to read this because I actually did have a weak spot in this as an ‘in’ for that crap. I HAAAATE a blank page. My only way out of it is bullet points and I feel gross about those. Honest to god, I find myself wondering if the equivalent of ‘automatic writing’ might work better for me.

The city council voted through a loan to the company to build the facility. A lot of people activated, however. There were at least under-18 speakers. I know that two of them were 12 years old. The kids are alright and that's why the powers that be are trying to marginalize them.

Still going, over forty speakers including many who didn't plan on speaking. One guy who pretended to be impartial speaking in favor but was part of the project. Not a single person in support.

At a city council meeting about an AI data center going up in my community. It's packed and people are furious. Calling the mayor and council members corrupt. Loud applause for open socialists and anarchists. Naked anti-capitalist rhetoric. Most folks here didn't even know about it until weeks ago.

The news that AI was being trained on stolen works? It was broken first about the BooksCorpus, on May 11 of 2021, and it was discussed in major news media thereafter. Romance authors talked about it. A lot. The first archive they stole was largely romance. arxiv.org/abs/2105.05241

The news about Harlequin translators getting fired en masse? You should care about that. They're doing it there because they think nobody gives a shit about romance and so it's fine to experiment with it first.

It is about this: because so many people do not give a shit about romance, shit gets tried in romance first. You should pay attention to romance publishing news and care about it, because they will try that shit here first.

“high school gyms don’t really have swimming pools underneath them” yes, this one did (they didn’t make it just for the film) but ALSO ALSO all schools should have pools and swimming lessons should be part of public education.

Randi has a storied history of being on the wrong side of key political issues when big money is involved (see also: healthcare). Almost makes you wonder why this person has been president of one of the biggest labor unions in the U.S. for *seventeen* years now.

The people who showed up to vote for a write-in dem candidate in a Trump+50 special election 2 days before Christmas are democracy's strongest soldiers.

On the 15th of December this year, Aotearoa New Zealand passed the 2.5 year mark for Self-ID. As we always said, there have been zero issues arising from this. Not a single incident recorded formally or informally, not a whisper of a problem. The anti-trans activists lied to everyone.

SOME OTHER BEACH BOY: hey brian why dont we sing "its my favorite time of year," a normal thing to say that has the same rhyme and meter basically BRIAN WILSON:

If you like a book? Review it. Ask your library to buy it. If you can afford it, buy a copy for a friend. Recommend it wherever you're social. Send the author an email, or a skeet, or a Ko-Fi. Write fanfic. Blow under the wings of the paper airplane so it can fly a little farther.

This is why I walked away from my career in tech marketing after I was laid off in late 2024. @monteiro.bsky.social said it best in this essay: buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

Okay @erinbiba.bsky.social it’s time for my second-most anticipated annual thread: Cats in Christmas Trees (and Battling Menorahs). Starting off strong with Donut.

We had a plane called ’Banshee’?

His advice is to look beyond the now: "If you have political will that is designed to destroy and they have the power to destroy, it is almost futile to try to push against the destruction. Instead, you have to get through the dark age by sort of deciding what the Renaissance is going to look like"

[8/n] Birth certificates. These are the current basis of legal sex in many states. But they're a relatively new legal invention. It wasn't until the early 1900s, the US jumped on the "vital records" trend wagon. Late-adopting states like New Mexico didn't even start until 1920!...

[3/n ] It’s true that ✨functional✨ eggs or sperm are binary, no questions there. But lots of people do not have functional eggs/sperm. Young folks. Old folks. Folks with elective/medical infertility. This binary definition may work in a lab, but it doesn’t work in law. What about genes…

Drivers are so stupid they dont realize they're the main beneficaries of this policy. Making driving harder for people who dont need to drive (like me) frees up space for drivers who do need to drive.

No sensible person should use an AI summary to make a determination about anything. But sensible people use Google and are presented with lies as the top results. So.

“biggest cure for toxic masculinity is platonic women friends” is correct

Right? Speaking as a CUPW union steward, Canada Post's "woes" are actually just investments in vehicle fleets and a new parcel facility. The rest is lost pay equity lawsuits and funnelling parcels to Purolator. Also... policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

as was evidenced by the ‘keyboard vs mouse’ studies way back in the day

I don't remember if I saw this posted by you or someone else, but there's also this study metr.org/blog/2025-07... which suggests that we maybe shouldn't be trusting self-reported productivity gains. Turns out people are actually pretty bad at perceiving time, shocker, I know.

Fish are assholes, the octopuses are right to do it.

"The Maltese Falcon" era of San Francisco is officially now more dangerous than the version today which makes every tech investor want to invent Robocop

Gremlins is on HBO max if you're looking for a festive Christmas movie.