You want to know what I did in 2025? I survived. I struggled through overwhelming to-do lists at work. I stayed curled in bed until afternoon on weekends, just staring at the stuffed animals next to me. I ate bags of popcorners on the drive back from the market. I got through it.

@alexstandardpod.bsky.social @rankingpersia.bsky.social

I can’t productively avoid writing this article anymore. It is not coming easily.

Dear relatives sharing this bathroom at my dad’s house: the shower has had a hair trap for 20 years. It works best if you clean your own hair out of it after use. Why do we have this conversation EVERY TIME WE VISIT.

Some people yell at movie or tv screens. I yell at nonfiction books. YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT HAITI WHY ARE YOU BRINGING UP POTSDAM. (Am reading “Silencing the Past” by Trouillot, and feel both bored and cranky)

@premeemohamed.com Christmas beetle for you! Thank you for your delightful social media presence, and your weird, compelling books.

This might be the first time nobody’s given me a book for Christmas. Interesting.

Hard for Christians and ex-Christians to grasp sometimes, but "secular" and "culturally neutral" are not the same thing. I can celebrate a secular Purim with just cookies and gift baskets and costumes. It's still *Jewish*.

Amazing nickname alert: I just learned there was an early Ottoman ruler called *Bayezid the Thunderbolt.*

It seems a new indie bookstore opened in my hometown and MY FATHER DID NOT TELL ME. CRIMES.

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

Honestly the most common reason I swipe left/unmatch from someone on The Apps is because they seem exhausting. I just don’t have the bandwidth.

Selling my ornaments at another craft fair (if you’re interested, see pinned post) and I’ve noticed this year that the green ones are just not selling. I have so many green ornaments in stock now!

@nobelessepod.bsky.social Roentgen spotted

Really neat example of how everything about an object—binding, foxing, water damage, annotations—can help us understand it.

Watching a certain rare books list 🔥🔥 in my email.

If you pirate media, you’re not allowed to complain when your favorite shows get cancelled, your movies get shelved in pre-production, your favorite authors end up unable to finish books quickly because they have to go get other jobs… don’t want to buy the media? Use your library. End rant.

More and more I think that it shouldn’t be “words of affirmation” but just “making the effort to communicate” that’s the love language.

Bad day with the weasels that live inside my brain.

You know that thing where a grass seed gets stuck in your sock and you can’t find the blasted thing? Yeah that’s basically how my day was. Thank goodness I have leftovers available for dinner.

A warning from the past: if there is anything you would like to preserve long-term in good condition, please don't stick tape on it! As tape deteriorates, it can discolour, become brittle, lose its adhesive strength, and leave a residue stain. Enough to give an archivist nightmares! 👻

Matboard paper cuts: 0 stars, would not recommend. Made me swear loudly in a quiet library.

A tragedy: my purse chapstick has VANISHED.

Ugh fine i’ll put my book down and cook some stupid turkey.

When I grow up I want to live somewhere people have a basic understanding of the idea that sound carries. Woken up by the sound AND FEEL of downstairs’ subwoofer.

hurrah for Past Me, who did a bunch of reading for another project that's actually relevant to this one too. Good thing I save my notes. There are a few more articles I want to read, but maybe I'm much farther along than I think I am, which would be a huge relief. Stress has been making me ill.

it’s important to remember that we can trust this application of machine learning—wrapped, alas, inside a chatbot—because we who are endowed with actual intelligence can independently verify the accuracy of the transcriptions.

Do not steal books, I beg. Borrow from a library. Libraries lend e-books!

Bibliognost [BIB-lee-uh-nahst] (n.) - A well-read person with wide knowledge of books. Use: “Gerald soon discovered that his years as a quiet bibliognost had been unwitting training for his new post as head librarian, where every patron appeared to require the services of a human card catalog.”

Today in Bodies Are A Scam: I know I will feel better if I eat, but the idea of food turns my stomach.

Quanked [kwangkt] (adj.) - Overpowered by fatigue. - Exhausted or reduced in strength, as by labor or exertion; fatigued; sleepy. Origin uncertain Used in a sentence: “After sprunting all weekend, then frooncing to get to work on time, I’m well quanked.”

Do you like your toaster? I want to replace mine.

Overwhelmed by life. Drowning my sorrows by making new ornaments for my Etsy store. Added 13 new extra-fancy 2.5-inchers the other day and now I’m doing some minis.

I’m just a grown-up PBS kid, standing in front of historians/podcasters/audiobook narrators/documentarians, asking them to please pronounce “succession” and “secession” differently from each other.

authors you have the chance to do the funniest thing right now

Lo I am ATTACKED

Has anyone tried telling them to vote as a “Simon Says”

Ever have a book/film/song/show/etc that spoke to you so deeply you’re actually afraid to recommend it to anyone, because if they don’t *get it* then they fundamentally don’t really get you?

For the first time in a while I had a dream about being back at a particular prior job. One of my most dreaded kinds of stress dream. Wasn’t as bad as usual, but I’d still prefer never to think of that place again.

@rankingpersia.bsky.social the viziers are at it again

"Everyone should have the right to refuse to engage with technologies that harm them, their students, and the planet."

Gotterdammerung is the fourth opera in Wagner's series Der Ring des Nibelungen. The other three are Fukkenshitterung, Mutterfukkerung, and Jesuskristerung. The series is about a German man hitting his thumb with a hammer and then dropping the hammer on his toe.

Family stuff is giving me a variety of uncomfortable feelings, so I am baking those feelings into peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, like a functional adult. I’m the youngest adult of the bunch, how am I the mediator?

Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve become someone who likes Brussels sprouts.

hey did you know remembering to eat on days off is a good thing? seems fake, i know.

Hey #academicsky I’m looking for some reading on Jews in the European Enlightenment, especially in 17thC Central Europe. Any recommendations?

Given how much I’ve cried in the psst six years, I really should have stronger abs.