Pat and I just got our medical insurance renewal. Our monthly rate is going from $763 to $2,323. Our deductible went up too. We knew it was going to be bad with the subsidies expiring, but holy hell ...

Important

Before you buy Girl Scout cookies you should know they support trans people and reject donations from anti-trans organizations, and then buy a couple more boxes!

I made a thing called Wellness Ping because someone I care about went silent and it took too long for anyone to notice. You get regular check-ins via email. If you don't respond, your emergency contacts get notified. Built it for anyone who might go missing and needs someone to notice […]

I’ve read a lot of stuff about both domestic and international adoption, some of it ragebait, but I think this is the most purely sociopathic, hand-wavy of details, some-Libertarians-fall-short-of-human things I have ever seen written about it. www.betonit.ai

#wordweavers 10/14: Who among your characters is the most cautious? In Lies, the antagonist. The murderer kills out of what might be called an abundance of caution, and finds it personally offensive to their worldview that Casey isn’t dead yet with the way she carries on. They would never dream […]

@rustiej.bsky.social I can see BlueSky comments on my bridged Mastodon posts but I can’t reply without an account, which I am too lazy to make right now. Hope this gets to you! Lies is a novel in progress, currently too messy to publish anywhere. Someday! Sunset Grill, I dropped when my […]

Getting back on the wagon with #wordweavers: Who among your characters is the biggest risk-taker? In Lies, it’s Casey. That’s her role: go out there, risk her neck, get results via whatever messy means necessary. It’s a mistake to think of Livia as a voice of caution, though. She just doesn’t […]

God, so much this. My family’s small business is down 20% in gross from last year and our expenses are up by at least 10%. We’ve been in the red for months; I’ve been running like a madwoman since May, trying to get new customers, open new markets, cut deals, anything to get sales. And almost […]

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

As someone who works in ag: THESE FUCKING DOUCHEBAGS I SWEAR TO GOD https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:nztbvvo2gl4227zuxjf7gog3/post/3m2oppf657s2l

Mike Johnson’s position is young pregnant American women shouldn’t have to wait before being turned away to die in the parking lot from an ectopic pregnancy the hospital is afraid to treat

I am having An Evening. Ok, the backstory here is my grandmother died in 2013; we got my grandfather out of the house in 2014; and we spent literally the next 5 years cleaning out the house. They lived through the Great Depression. They saved EVERYTHING. There was not a day cleaning out that […]

Just got my official letter for the fellowship to New Zealand! And I have a possible lead on a local farm sitter, but nothing is set yet. So I'm just going to put this out onto the Fediverse again, in case someone who knows how take care of goats in Real Canadian Winter (down to -40C temps) […]

#wordweavers 10/7. How does the world your characters inhabit deal with garbage? Lies is set in a multi-racial alien colony. At first they dumped garbage in the jungle. The jungle LOVED that and the fast growing, metal eating vines came looking for more. Then they dumped it in the river. The […]

ok I didn't mention this in my piece on friday but one of the things the judge asked about was whether the guardsmen were going to get paid during the shutdown the doj was like "idk" the state of oregon was like "we looked into it and the answer is no"

Correct. And one more addition: Fascism relies on a disciplined mass party, mass mobilization (that is, forced participation in state-run organizations), and the complete shutdown of any form of alternate pluralism. We're not even in that ballpark. We're headed for being Turkey or Hungary.

ironically this wasted even more time, but by GOD it felt nice

#wordweavers 10/3. If your antagonist had to live a week of your MC’s life, how would it affect them? In Lies: they would hate it. Their life is very circumscribed, with few choices and a narrow set of possible goals — but it’s also very straightforward: do this, be rewarded (and if no reward […]

#wordweavers 10/2. What do your characters argue about? In Lies the main argument is Casey trying to make Livia work. Livia views solving mysteries as a distasteful interruption to her pursuit of personal fulfillment and enlightenment of mind. Casey thinks a life of reading books, playing with […]

/2 I notice that the finger-wagging “you can’t see your opponents as evil” rhetoric from people like Megan is only pointed in one direction. The Right treating everyone but them as evil and inhuman is priced in, something we’re supposed to accept in the spirit of Kleinian discouse.

#wordweavers 10/1: Tell us what you’re working on now. What’s special about the project? Intending to: - Continue revisions/drafting on my scifi mystery Pocket Full of Lies, aka the “genderswapped Nero Wolfe in space” novel - Restart work on my webcomic Sunset Grill, on hiatus lo these five […]

So much this https://effinbirds.social/2025/10/01/alt.html

Every time I do a joke about messing with kids someone says I'm endorsing gaslighting, and all I can say is that if you couldn't lie to children you'd lose about 63% of the fun of being a parent.

Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/unified #smbc

They locked this firefighter up for FOUR WEEKS without due process (finally released). He had proper paperwork and status to work in the US--visa being processed, he was contributing to helping fight fires in Washington. He was ONLY released because of legal action. "The attorneys argued […]

This took an hour. Trying to recover access to the smbc Facebook page which got hacked. Ready to give up.

A government that deliberately abandons the rule of law is not morally entitled to its protections.

This is AMAZING. https://wandering.shop/@daviddlevine/115254796908881590

This one: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-0... Still think it's true, don't at me.

This message is very important to remind ourselves of and to share with other people.

Yeah, we can’t consume our way to an environmentally sound future but #ecommerce isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and I like finding out about different plastic-free packing materials. I use foam peanuts made of corn starch that are compostable (right) and I […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I initially didn't pay attention to this Kickstarter because, frankly, the title made me assume it was some kind of sex comedy. Instead it's a deeply Jewish comedic noir about demons -- so if that appeals to you, back it now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/hornytown

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com p.s. this week I am on a USA/Canada tour with my new book. Details and preorder links at tomgauld.com

Hovertext and bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/unread #smbc

I think this point is far more important than we realize. The fact that we consume completely different media showing us completely different things is a huge driver of division.

/2 But here's what people like Charlie Kirk know: It doesn't matter who the shooter actually was. It doesn't matter what their motives actually were. They can lie about it, propagandize it, deny it, and their audience will eat it up. And the legacy media will both-sides it in response.

Why are cucumbers like this #gardening

How like The glint Of a knife The stars Can seem, And I’ve got Coward’s veins, But blood That longs For freedom. #poetry

On the topic of “our” duty to persuade abusers, a tale: —— THE FINGER-TAKER’S SON Whenever the king became displeased with one of his subjects, he would send out his soldiers, and before long the offender would find themselves in the basement of the king’s finger-taker.

Please excuse the Substack link, but given that "84% of developers now use or plan to use AI tools"*, it is interesting to see measurable proof that this does not translate to increased productivity. "We should be seeing apps of all shapes and sizes, video games, new websites, mobile apps […]

The fact is the median voter does not care about the administration attempting to deport large groups of Guatemalan children secretly in the middle of the night. Democrats must learn to take a centrist position that does not focus on unpopular issues like the humanity of children and instead…/1

Thread, on how LA and MS are sending NatGuard troops to DC even as homicide rates are higher in many of their own cities, and even as Trump guts federal funding for any and all programs that reduce crime but don't use a gun. Social control, not safety. Over and over and over and over.

Been reading Wodehouse's corpus start to finish and this is the first truly great short story. Read to the end, would you? www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/10/at-g...

Books and gardening are some of the best hobbies because although you can spend a decent amount, and are unlikely to recoup in any meaningful sense, for an adult hobby there's a serious cap on spending. Like for the cost of a single malt bottle of whiskey you can get two plum trees.