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@moriahbard
This is Nola Rose
It's her birthday. She's turning three. Her favorite things are yelling, hitting me in the face with her toys, chasing bubbles, and lying on furniture like a people
Because it's her birthday, I'm making you look at her little face
Happy Birthday, my beloved Miss Nono
ALTBecause it’s her
birthday, I’m making you look
at her little face
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
in more pleasant news: this year is seeing the biggest humpback migration in Australian history, bigger than it was PRE whaling. That's right, there are more humpbacks migrating off the coast of Australia than there were BEFORE industrial whaling started.
A huge, fat W for environmentalists and Greenies. what an achievement
we did it! we saved the fucking whales!!!!
Once hunted almost to extinction, the population of humpback whales currently migrating down Australia's east coast has bounced back and is
Further info for those interested
from The Memory Palace, by Nate DiMeo
I see the roadrunner having a go at a glory hole, but when it’s my turn I end up slamming my dick into the wall that I painted to look like a glory hole
I catch the roadrunner fucking my wife but when I go to fuck her to reassert my dominance I end up slamming my dick into the wall that I painted to look like my wife
The roadrunner never paints the wall, though. Wile E does. And then the roadrunner can use it like it's a real thing and Wile E tries to and can't. That's the gag. If you're going to reference looney tunes please do it properly.
This truly is the piss on the poor website
i catch someone making a post that inaccurately references road runner lore but when i go to be a weird condescending asshole about it i end up slamming my dick into my own inability to read a fucking sentence
Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"
And they were like "What?"
And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."
And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"
And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.
And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.
Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.
There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.
As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“
And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”
Not trying to sound like a boomer but going to an art museum for the first time in a minute is wild because like... (visual) art really does hit different when its not on a tiny screen the size of your palm
There's research that says art in person can affect us by triggering introspection because the phyiscal light and shadows hitting the texture of a painting changes the image and the experience in a way that printed or screen viewed art can not replicate. It's said that the minor shifts in those details is experienced by the brain in a way that mimics primal reactions to motion in wilderness that might alert us to movement in the woods, for example, that would directly affect our ability to survive.
So like yea, paintings in person, they do stuff. They make us feel aware of ourselves in a way that a flat screen just can't, and they remind us that we are human beings.
that's so cool! I wasn't thinking of realism specifically in the first post, but this reminds me how I've definitely felt that realistic oil paintings, landscapes especially, capture light and atmosphere in a way that even the most skilled photographers haven't gotten to yet. Ultimately because our sight as we experience it isn't just two lenses, but the way our brain puts together details, memories, expectations, patterns, etc to make a scene, which no lense will ever be able to capture. Like, I can see a nice photo print and think "oh, nice mountains" but I don't get the feeling of actually being there. Seeing old masters depict places I've been to and have been relatively unchanged is so special.
(Painting above by Thomas Moran, a Yellowstone scene)
Reading hitchikers guide for the first time was really funny because it was like ohhhh THIS the writing that every unfunny nerd has been trying to emulate from like ‘00-‘12 . But good.
#tbh my opinion on hichhiker's guide is that while i really enjoy it i feel like Terry Pratchett just kinda did everything Adams tried to do#but better and with more subtlety and greater depth of execution#So while i enjoy and appreciate it every time i pick it up im just kinda like#“whoah i should be reading terry pratchett”#and then i pick up praychett#and im like woah this guy was a fucking genius and did everything adams tried to do but more and better and in such a way to where its#hard for people to be annoying about it bc it possesses a lot of subtlty that#while adams is good he definitely lacks to the extent pratchet has#Also while pratchett practices absurdity he maintains a coherence of theme and idea that while carried by some overarching themes#adams definitley leans into the zany galaxy roadtrip at the detrement of coherence where pratchett generally succeeds
I think the key difference here is that Pratchett was a dedicated writer who wrote with intentionality and focus, whereas Adams was hurriedly throwing up half-baked radio play scripts in between his actual paying job of editing Doctor Who and then later procrastinating severely on forcing those scripts into novel and tv show formats while his agent tried desperately to figure out what pub he was getting drunk at so they could force him to come home and do some actual work.
#imma be so fr#comparing hitchhikers to any of pratchett's work is frankly insane#and makes me think you fundamentally misunderstood what at least one of them was trying to do#like these do NOT occupy the same conceptual space#this isn't one guy doing a thing okay and another guy doing it great#this is one guy doing one thing and another guy doing a vaguely related thing#you wouldn't say spaghetti is mediocre because fettucine is flat#like you recognize that that sounds insane right?
Looking at how those posters might have come to this idea, I think a lot of people encountering either Pratchett or Adams without reading other/earlier works probably feel those two authors invented that type of humorous storytelling, aka “stories with jokes in”. They didn’t! They really didn’t!
Pratchett and Adams wrote humour in a long-standing recognisable tradition of humour heavily influenced by the magazine Punch. Both authors clearly had their brain chemistry fundamentally altered by works like 1066 and All That, published in 1931. This was a joke history of Britain, showing some features recognisable to people who can read:
The wordplay, footnotes, arch tone, inaccuracies, long-payoff jokes and running gags, silly names, silly lists, references to shared/pop culture, references to classical culture, social commentary, use of absurdity, etc are features. These weren’t invented by Adams or Pratchett, and people who use them today actually might not be referencing those two authors at all; it’s a style of humour with a very extensive back catalogue, over 100 years old. Fun to read if you enjoy those authors; and since the inventiveness and wit are based on having a moderately clever author who is very well-read, it’s hard to write well in the style without at least being educated in the genre.
🫡 on it boss
this is a niche one but instead of "they would not fuckin say that" it's "they would not fucking use American sign language".
ASL is not the only sign language. two british characters in your fanfiction would not be using ASL. England in fact has its own kind of sign language, BSL, that forms a sign family with many other sign languages around the world.
ASL isn't even the original member of its sign family, it comes from french sign language. do you know sign languages aren't related to spoken languages? that's an important one! it's not a direct 1:1 with people speaking English around the world. people in other countries don't learn ASL just in case they run into an usamerican or Canadian (who do often use it)
i know the entire world is the USA or whatever and sign languages do sometimes borrow from ASL for signs they don't have, but please be aware that there are other sign languages and families in the world that are not in fact ASL.
I once saw somebody on this website say "Everyone should be taught sign language in school because then people from all over the world could communicate without having to learn each others' [spoken] languages" and I have never recovered. It was so many years ago but I simply cannot forget.
More people should learn sign language but buddy that is not how it works.
The bird app has a lot of garbage but this thread really tickled me this morning:
Bonus:
Me when I'm old as fuck and my grandkids talk to me: this reminds me of a post. I gotta go find the post
Grandkids: grandpa sit down you don't need to show us a post
Me: (not listening) Now where was that post....
every 14-16 year old is the bravest person on the planet to me
talking to a 15 year old like wow okay you are like if scrambled eggs was a person. I don't know how to save you. the way you move through the world is reminiscent of a stray cat whose soul got punted into a human body. said human body is currently undergoing changes and floods of hormones that would result in cities being levelled if you were perhaps a big dragon and not a medium sized primate. been there. good luck I love you
you don't have to excuse the behaviours of shitty teenagers, but you DO have to remember that they've been on this earth only as long as your cat. you have to ensure that the way you respond to said behaviour reflects this. yes they're an entire person. they're also going through a period of the most insane rapid transformation (physically, mentally, emotionally and socially) a person can experience in life. are they an irredeemable monster or are they just a very impressionable young person floundering through their first Strong Opinions based on what they've seen online, with ridiculous amounts of Hormone That Makes You Hate Everything in their bloodstream?
YOUNG TEENAGERS. are YOU an irredeemable monster or are YOU just a very impressionable young person floundering through your first Strong Opinions based on what you've seen online, with ridiculous amounts of Hormone That Makes You Hate Everything in your bloodstream? I'll give you a hint. it's the second option. cut yourself some slack too! try your very best to be kind, try your very best to consider people with differing experiences to you, and maybe take a step back from discourse that does nothing besides make you upset. you've only been an animal alive on this planet for a decade and a bit. there are artisanal cheddars at your local supermarket older than you. take it easy. eat more fruit. save up for a second hand bicycle. join a local club. it's impossibly difficult to be a teenager but you have it in you, whether you're aware of it or not. I hope you can be kind to yourself, because you DO deserve that kindness. kia kaha [:
If you're in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:
The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.
The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.
The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.
The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.
The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.
The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.
The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.
Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.
The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.
If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.
You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.
The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.
Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.
Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.
Veterans' benefits suck these days.
Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.
The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.
The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.
A lot can change in four years.
I hope Rian Johnson gets to make as many Benoit Blanc movies as there are Agatha Christie adaptations and more. I hope Daniel Craig gets to play the dapper, enigmatic, theater gay detective Benoit Blanc until he physically can't act anymore. And I hope that role far overshadows playing James Bond for years as his artistic legacy.
Johnson is the first writer in a long time to understand that the the serial detective archetype is a trickster spirit who takes power from the violently corrupt, and gives it to a common person who has passed his tests to prove they're good of heart and would use those resources to improve the world.
An investigative journalist infiltrated three white supremacist platforms, including the dating site WhiteDate, exfiltrating over 8,000 user
When she says it had a smurf village gender ratio, it's possibly even funnier and sadder than you could have thought. The article doesn't specify, but I keep hearing that out of 8000 users, less than 50 appeared to be women.
Root said she contacted a hacker who helped to exfiltrate the data. However, no hacks were required – all it took was a simple URL trick of adding “download-all-users/” to the top-level domain.
Holy fuck, I’m dying. Imagine being this bad at cybersecurity. How is the rest of 2026 supposed to compete?
Here‘s the full talk, check the setting in the video player for other languages:
The Heartbreak Machine - Nazis in the echo chamber
Transcription, because it is worth reading:
There’s a phenomenon I actually see extremely commonly when literature is used to teach history to middle school and high school students. Let’s call it “pajamafication.”
So a school district nixed Maus from their curriculum, to be replaced by something more “age-appropriate.” IIRC they didn’t cite a specific replacement title, but it will probably be something like John Boyne’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is tailor-made for classroom use. It’s taught at countless schools and it’s squeaky-clean of any of the parent-objectionable material you might find in Maus, Night, or any of the other first-person accounts of the Holocaust.
It’s also a terrible way to teach the Holocaust.
I’m not going to exhaustively enumerate the book’s flaws—others have done so—but I’ll summarize the points that are common to this phenomenon in various contexts.
First, obviously, the context shift. Maus, Night, et al are narrated by actual Jews who were in concentration camps. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is narrated by a German boy. The Jewish perspective is completely eliminated.
Second, the emphasis on historical innocence. Bruno isn’t antisemitic. He has no idea that anything bad is happening. He happily befriends a Jewish boy with absolutely no prejudice.
Thus we’re reassured that you too, gentle reader, are innocent. You too would have have a childlike lack of prejudice and you too would be such a sweet summer child that you would have no idea the place next door is a death camp.
In Maus, by contrast, the children are not innocent. They are perpetrators of injustice just like adults.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where children run away yelling “Help! Mommy! A Jew!! - the next panel says “The mothers always told so: ‘Be careful! A Jew will catch you to a bag and eat you!’ …So the taught to their children.”]
Maus also smashes the claim that people just didn’t know what was going on in the camps.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where a Nazi truck is arriving at Auschwitz guarded by men with sticks and a pointing, growling dog, the boxes say “And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore…” “We knew the stories that they will gas us and throw in the oves. This was 1944… we knew everything. And here we were.”]
Third, nonspecificity. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas turns a specific historical atrocity into a parable about all forms of bigotry and injustice. I’m sure Boyne thinks he’s being very profound. But the actual effect is to blunt and erase the atrocity.
There’s the too-cute-by-half way it avoids terminology: “Off-With,” “the Fury.” Harsh language becomes “He said a nasty word.”
Notice how “it’s a fable” ties in with the goal of eliminating anything parents might object to.
And that’s our fourth point. Bad things can happen, but only abstractly. Someone’s dad disappears. He’s just…gone. How? Who knows. People stand around looking hungry and unhappy and saying “It’s not very nice in here.”
The ending is sad, but it’s sad like a Lifetime movie. It’s sanitized, it’s quick, there are no details, it’s meant to poke that bit of your heart that loves crying.
Maus’s description of the gas chambers, meanwhile…
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the process of gassing and then taking out the bodies are described in detail as inmates are working. That it took 3 to 30 minutes to gas people. That the largest pile of bodies was by the door. The worker telling the story mentions “We pulled the bodies apart with hooks. Big piles, with the strongest on top, older ones and babies crushed below… often the skulls were smashed…” “Their fingers were broken from trying to climb up the walls… and sometimes their arms were wera as long as their bodies, pulled from the sockets.” Until the narrator says, “Enough!” “I didn’t want to more to hear, but anyway he told me.”]
A historical atrocity can never be a metaphor for all bigotry because the specifics are what makes it an atrocity. The Nazis didn’t just do “bad things, generally,” they did THESE things. And leaving out the details is simply historical erasure.
Finally, fifth: Fiction.
However much poor little Bruno and Schmuel might rend your heartstrings, you can ultimately retreat into the knowledge that they aren’t real and they didn’t really die.
Now, I write historical fiction, and obviously I believe it has a place, in the classroom and out. But no Holocaust education can be complete without nonfiction that teaches about real people who genuinely did experience it.
One of the striking things about Maus is how big the cast is and how few of them survived.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where one character describes to another many other people who didn’t make it. Eventually covered over in lower panels by pictures of the dead.]
Because it’s a true story, Maus can also explore neglected aspects like the intergenerational trauma, which simply vanish in a pat fictional story that is just finished when you get to the end.
[ID: Picture of part of a page of Maus where the illustrator sits at the drawing desk above the pile of bodies. The artist says: “At least fifteen foreing editions are coming out. I’ve got 4 serious offers to turn my book into a TV special or movie. (I don’t wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killd herself. (She left no note.) Late’y I’ve been feeling depressed.” Someone calls from out of panel, “Alright Mr. Spiegelman… We’re ready to shoot!…”]
Thus, books like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are not an age-appropriate equivalent way to teach the Holocaust, but a false construction of history.
This ends the first part of the thread. But there’s more…
The Maus incident is not an isolated case. It’s part of a broad trend of replacing the literature used to teach history with more kid-friendly, “appropriate” alternatives.
And outside of the Holocaust, it usually doesn’t meet with much controversy.
It might mean replacing Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave or Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave with modern historical fiction, for example.
Wars, the Civil Rights movement, Apartheid: any “icky” part of history can be a target.
But it plays out along the same general lines: Primary sources replaced with modern fiction, victim perspectives replaced with perpetrators, specificity replaced with Star-Bellied Sneetch-style “Why can’t we all just get along?” metaphors.
