Highly recommend this piece by Erin if you have a few quiet moments sometime in the coming days.

I wish I had the words to describe just how valuable @kissane.myatproto.social‘s latest essay feels to me: www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-...

So I posted this endnote yesterday, about this exact book, which is getting all these wild year-end accolades despite being so disconnected from the facts of the pandemic. (www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-...)

I just did a word count in the file of passages I cut from this post and it is almost 7,000 words long so that is what I really got you. 🔪🔪🔪

Happy holidays, Bluesky! I got you a megathrust earthquake, soil liquefaction, spine-tingling papers about the way our networks confound knowledge, and a PDF in a pear tree. It's my wrap on a year of trying to make sense of how we make sense of what's happening to us. www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-...

To @catacalypto.bsky.social and her many clever friends: should I play Pillars of the Earth with my Pentiment-loving 12yo over winter break, or will that traumatize her/me or be otherwise a terrible idea?

Well, I am sure having a ghastly time slogging through the research on how badly using social media to understand the world fucks up our understanding of the world *and* our assessments of our ability to understand the world

Will they get to you by Christmas? Absolutely not, but I have calendars that have a postcard on the back of every perforated page that I can send to you by the new year. www.pamwishbow.com/shop/p/2026-...

Two weeks of downtime on @unbreaking.org is going to be the longest I've been off this since…March? I have a big wreckage/salvage thing to finish so I will be logging off again to do that but dang.

This was SUCH a gnarly effort, especially for a bunch of volunteers. Huge congratulations to @reveleth.com and everyone else who contributed.

I cannot tell you just how *tremendously hard* various volunteers have worked on this massive @unbreaking.org update: sifting through awful, terrible news every single day, identifying connections and themes, all to build a clear picture of the harm the federal government’s caused.

What a weird, weird year. We got one last briefing at the door before taking a break

I would like to speak to Mike Google Docs. I have several things to say.

Undoing repost to quote instead, please take Glenn's post as a real warning, this is incredibly heavy and you may not want to read unless you're in the right frame of mind

If you're looking for a quick present for someone, ebooks are always great, and I've got a great one for the poli-sci, cyberpunk, big data nerd, and/or sci fi political thriller fan in your life. www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/...

Look I generally have plenty of executive function, I just don’t trust my board of directors

I was ill last week and our kid is ill this week and the hard-won knowledge I have gained from this slog is that Jingle Jangle is a million times more fun than Wicked.

Is it possible for something to give you food poisoning *before* you eat it?

goddammit www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/d...

Excuse me

A law that very heavily restricted AirBnBs in NYC went into effect in 2023 and the hotels (that all lobbied for the law so hard) have been cranking up prices ever since. www.wired.com/story/airbnb...

Fuck yeah First Presbyterian

Hey folks, if you follow me over the @ap.brid.gy bridge from the fediverse and your account is not bridged, I can't interact with you from this account. (Bridgy Fed quite sweetly DMs me that you tried to send a reply, but I can't reply back without switching networks.)

I allow myself exactly one Jacob Marley joke per year

Ian Bogost was bait to begin with

The wildest thing about these ludicrous boondoggles is there’s no material penalty for having been a booster and no material advantage to having seen it coming. Probably the reverse.

The problem with working with a theory with apparently explanatory power is that I am incredible suspicious about anything with high explanatory power so I am miserable the entire time whether it works out or not.

Did Jerry already make the one Pluribus a week more like Unibus joke

People will still fight you on here if you say that a majority of white women voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024. This should not be the thing that makes my brain turn to cinders today but it kind of is.

Not entirely clear to me what will happen at the border if I attend a conference in Vancouver in the spring, tbh

Zero point two tonal steps away from a Succession script

This is really important. Both in the fact of IMLS reinstating grants. (Which have been *crucial* for libraries and civic life across the country. Notably in rural areas.) And in the example that the overall stalwartness and rigor of federal district/circuit courts has made a huge difference.

I seem to have accidentally stumbled upon a lost media CHRISTMAS MYSTERY...can you help me solve it? Here's what happened: I sang a carol to my partner the other day, and he didn't recognize it. Fair enough, he's from England, so we don't always know the same music. So I tried searching for it...

while I'm talking out of turn Stevie Nicks sounds exactly like a stoned singing sheep esp in her solo career and it's charming, actually

is it permissible yet to express skepticism about the Brené Brown industrial complex or no

Who taught you math

Welp, radio is making me a terrible grump, time to turn it off and log out of all the things

Like I am going to read Nerd Reich but I have been reading about this in the mainstream press for years and years. And of course WIRED has covered the bejeezus out of it and there’s so much indie reporting. The frame warfare here deserves better arguments than “No one is covering it.”

The claim that no one in mainstream media is covering the influence of tech money in the rise of authoritarianism, which I just heard Gil Duran say on KQED, makes me feel insane. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

My eyes keep being weird so I'm trying to find non-text ways to get the information I need, and man, national daily news audio is a real hellscape of people acting either two notches dumber (relatability!) or two notches smarter (counterintuitive cleverness!) than they actually appear to be.

And yet wherever ICE and CBP show up in force, young people do come out to protect their neighbors—and at far greater risk to themselves than the risks posed by mass protests that may help in a diffuse way, or may work more like an accountability sink than a countermove.

The child for whom I have been collecting books recs was given the chance to request a book for the school library and she asked for an, uh, body horror…caper? About ancient fish gods that eat human fear? And it has arrived. So she is now slowly converting her classmates to the fish cult.

🎁📚 People who acquire books for middle schoolers: many banger recs await you in the replies to this post

my brain saw “whistleblowers” and “leave“ and told me FEMA got rid of leafblowers so make fun of me all you want but it’s better in here

New on H-Sci-Med-Tech: Check out @sarambsimon.bsky.social ‬(Northwestern University)‬’s review of ‪Brian Michael Murphy (‪Williams College‬)’s book _We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World_ pub 2022 @uncpress.bsky.social #hstm Review available @hnetreviews.bsky.social

if you’re cold they’re cold let your demons in

This year’s holiday recs request: Moar Books for child (12) who finally got to read the Murderbots and loved them the most, but is not ready for Locked Tomb levels of grief and death. Preferences in next post.

Another fantastic recs thread, this one for kids

The hour comes round again for winter mysteries

truth coming out of her cup noodles to shame mankind