(Gonna go tell the IT guys this, as they'll get a laugh out of it.)

Beginning to feel somewhat like the phishing tests on our company email are a bizarre form of enrichment program, given the glee I just briefly felt at immediately identifying such a test. In case you wondered how my mental health is right now...

A freight train blew its horn on the edge of town and the local coyote pack went up in answer. 45 minutes from Seattle and the wilderness is still here.

Read this. Save it as a favourite. Read it. Years ago my doctor said that the hardest part of my intense depression was how *convinced* I was by what the filter of depression told me. together we found something that the filter couldn’t deny, and I used that as a tool.

This is why no chase policies are important and it is important to point out the police regulalry violate them. www.washingtoninformer.com/dc-photograp...

ICE activity reported in South Minneapolis. Officers in gas masks have cordoned off the intersection of E 36th Street and Park Ave. They are currently moving down the street on foot and may be conducting door-to-door operations.

I’m seeing lots of people on here misunderstand the purpose of ICE watch. It’s de-escalation. And it’s grounded in the social science of violence. 🧵

The success of ICE watch interfering with ICE’s mission is almost certainly why DHS keeps sending more agents to Minneapolis. They used to execute their raids with just a few agents. Now they need 6-12 to even begin to disrupt the social pressure to be nonviolent.

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen *Everyone has stories like this*

"I'm not in Minnesota -- what can I do to help?" A list of ideas!

Kaya has another good thread on the issue. They are also one of the people I talked to during/after the initial, deeply distressing and unpleasant, explosion.

I had the 'joy' of being part of the initial blowup in the Writers Symposium discord when several of us, who actually had been trying to help her, asked for details about some accusations and were treated to increasingly incoherent rants about how we were all out to get her.

If you also are sick of Microsoft office trying to push AI and changing subscription prices you can buy a lifetime license on sale for $99 here bsky.app/profile/simo...

These assholes hitting doors like they're in Fallujah. These are homes in the United States. This needs to stop yesterday. There's nothing else congress, the senate, the SCOTUS, governors, police chiefs, and damn near every lawyer should be doing until it is stopped.

Baking shows in general tend to be lovely and delightful, but I'm watching MasterChef Australia: Dessert Masters and every person is just such a joy. The passion, precision, and love necessary to make really high-end, exquisite desserts like these comes through beautifully.

When criticizing people who are not at protests, please remember those of us who literally fucking can't for one reason or another. Being on the front lines of a protest is one of _many_ ways to stand against what's happening - please do not throw your disabled friends under the bus.

One of the best stories written in the wake of last year's fires was by @sammyroth.bsky.social, titled: “Los Angeles is a climate disaster. The fires will change nothing.” Glad to see him follow up with this very correct assessment that absolutely nothing has changed

ICE just reported its fourth in-custody death of 2026. It’s only January 10.

Stop falling for the “untrained” narrative.

In case you were wondering, this is very, very bad.

Hi folks, I'm seeing a lot of "Eyes on Minneapolis" & "We support Minnesota" sentiment. Here's a tangible way you can help: Trump just suspended federal funding for SNAP benefits to Minnesota. Second Harvest Heartland is an MN-based hunger-relief org. Please donate what you can. www.2harvest.org

Politically we have had the same disease my entire life. Back when Rodney King was attacked, when the Rampart scandal happened, when the Burge torture case happened, when NYPD was getting caught spying on citizens without a warrant...the signs were wrong red and flashing.

Also, how man of those "just give up" Eeyores are russian bots or bot-like users, on social media to spread dissent and negativity? Plenty. All the more reason to block them.

Jonathan Ross, who shot Renee Good in the face, is local. Derek Chauvin, who knelt on George Floyd's neck, is local.

ICE is tagging vehicles with pepper spray as part of their "warning" so they can say they were justified in their arrests of responders once a vehicle has been tagged. If your vehicle gets sprayed: -Keep windows up -Close outside vents -Turn heat/fan OFF -Get a car wash before any further activity

In unrelated news, I realized I was looking forward to an hour-long meeting where I run 3 managers through a long list of backlogged tasks so we can assign them out and it's a good thing I never considered myself cool bc I am definitely not.

Reminder as the new year begins that I head up GameSpot’s opinions section and would love to read your pitches! I’m always on the hunt for timely and thoughtful criticism and analysis on games and gaming/internet culture, so feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] if interested ☺️✨

As my coworkers casually chat about how sick they/their families are, I find myself actually grateful to be able to say "sorry, broken leg, have to stay home so I can rest it, oh darn."

3 studies: 1) January’s infernos in Los Angeles killed >440 once you factor in the smoke (official toll: 30). 2) Wildfire smoke kills 40,000 Americans a year, which could increase to 71,000 by 2050. 3) Canada’s wildfires in 2023 significantly worsened childhood asthma across the border in Vermont.

Anyways, 2025 was a year of extreme family health emergencies, illness, pain, and of course fear and grief from political sources, capped with a broken leg, so that was a lot and I would like a very boring year, please.

With a broken leg, I am in less pain than I have been, daily, for the last couple of years. This was my 6th doctor, 2nd specialist. Don't be afraid to fight for a good doctor if you have the resources, and if you don't, crowdsource in your communities for information and answers.

I broke my leg (mildly, just the fibula) and sprained my knee (maybe badly, waiting on MRI) and yet I still feel fairly amazing bc I finally found a doctor who listened to me and fixed the cough...accidentally also fixing a body-wide chronic nerve pain issue I've battled for 20+ years.

But the dogs have been loving the beach, and it has been good to be away and let my head clear.

Well, Merry Christmas us. Of course my first broken bone would be on vacation when I still have three days plus a 200 mile drive. Thankfully, it's just a mild fibula break on my left knee, so I can hobble and drive okay.

It IS kind if funny that work put me in charge of the AI integration for our team, but it has enabled me to be a very loud and educational voice, probably to the dismay of a few people also on the project who used to be excited about LLMs. I have broken several spirits recently.

It has the same energy of the dude in the HR training who thinks "Don't harass women" warrants a "JEEZ, guess I'll never speak to a woman again, god..."

I am getting very tired of "oh, so if we can't use LLMs, I GUESS THAT MEANS WE CAN'T USE SPELLCHECK, EITHER", especially when it's said as a gotcha.* I know context is hard, but come on. There's a vast difference between farming out the creation of your work and using a tool to check your spelling.

I have whatever the auditory version of photographic memory is, holding huge amounts of complex music in my head, which can be bad if I'm having a bad brain day, but also has been a hugely important tool for managing anxiety, insomnia, and boredom. But I get earwormed like nobody's business.

I spent nearly an hour trying to remember a musical artist a few weeks ago, without any luck. Lying in bed just now, tuned into the ADHD radio channel always running in my head and realized it was the artist I'd been trying to remember, complete with lyrics that let me look him up (Chris Isaak).

I am so existentially tired right now. I literally took my first full emotional breath this weekend and then got slammed with an immense, complexly traumatic family thing yesterday. The fucking timing of it, ffs. Even defanged by senility, my grandmother continues to spew trauma onto the family.

I was getting a little sleepy on the couch and then Magni dug the point of his elbow into the top of my foot and pushed off, grinding it across the top of my entire foot, sideways, at full weight. I am no longer sleepy, although possibly still whimpering.

There was a huge outbreak of a particularly awful equine virus from a major rodeo a couple of weeks ago and now everyone is scrambling to protect their horses as it spreads across the country. We're safe, but I am tired of pandemics.

The fastest way for a piece of music to win my heart is to take a sudden dip into a minor key.

It's also useful to tell it that it's wrong and prompt that it has missed an item which does not exist, bc it will flat-out apologize for missing this non-existent item and include it. Which makes for fun conversations in workplaces which have high accuracy reqs. Like mine.

However, since work wants me to show them how to use AI, I'm having a delightful time using it to build a case against itself. Malicious compliance ftw.

AI: because why use your actual brain when you can use something slower, more prone to error, and which is destroying the planet?

Currently fighting with Lowes over a defective brand new fridge, which is obliterating what little patience and resilience I have right now, so the sheer satisfaction I felt when I was the reason their Google ranking went down a star can perhaps be forgiven.

You know, I have like 100 things AI could actually do to improve my job, and yet I am consistently scraping the barrel for ideas when the CEO tells me to find ways to incorporate AI. *AI IS NOT FUNCTIONAL ENOUGH TO REPLACE A SINGLE HUMAN*. I can't even use it to reliably check broken links.