𝔏𝔲𝔠𝔞𝔰 ℜ𝔦𝔷𝔬𝔩𝔦

Thrilled that @wearecontinue.bsky.social could support the amazing team at @softrains.bsky.social with their launch day trailer for Ambrosia Sky: Act One – it’s a really special game!

To be clear, I'm the sicko who writes down all the interesting words he comes across, uses the public library's proxy for online OED access, and will fill silences at dinner with "So today I learned what 'haecceity' is!"

For words in a novel, are there target frequencies and levels of obscurity for different sales categories or audiences? Like, say, 'adult fiction should require a dictionary for ten to twenty of every fifty-thousand words,' or etc.?

Are authors or editors encouraged to pepper infrequent words in their writing? Is there a generic/trade rule-of-thumb to delight those who like recognizing stuff from GRE prep, or who like to build their vocabulary, or who just feel better about the reading when a word or two is unusual?

"I didn't see it at all. It's just not there. It's not real. None of this is real."

"I'll get to it next week."

Single panel from "From Hell" by Moore & Campbell, showing Queen Victoria sitting in a dark room, speaking to William Gull: "But he is nonetheless of our flesh and our obligation is most severe… both to yourself and to that loyal Brotherhood which you represent."

"Queen Victoria should be a monster… I think the aristocracy are creatures."

Image of the white poppy on a green backing, the word "Peace" over its center.

"The best way to respect the victims of war is to work to prevent war in the present and future."

Do not forget to challenge war & militarism, not to glorify or normalize it. We must speak out & work toward nonviolent solutions actively, not merely stand silent for all the lives fed to war.

There's no such a thing as "personality types" to begin with; "personality typology" as used in hiring is *already* pseudoscience. If someone is talking about "facial big five" they're a charlatan, this has no more credibility than homeopathy.

There is an argument to be made how stereotypical men, by not being able to control their base instincts, vice-signalling, performative cruelty ('we're firing everyone but 10x devs!') and conformity ('we NEED to be an AI-first company!') ruined the workplace and produced nothing in the process.

The deficit is not an economic problem—it’s a political weapon Mark Carney’s new budget exposes how Canada’s political class weaponizes the deficit to protect elites and justify austerity. Despite alarmist rhetoric, Canada’s debt is modest and self-financed. The ...

Canada’s debt is modest, self-financed, and stable. Yet we are told to accept austerity as the “responsible” path forward. Deficit panic is really a strategy to limit what’s politically imaginable—universal services, public housing, and climate action.

A figure showing all ghg emissions rising

Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions rise again in 2024, up 2.3%.

This is our collective progress, 10 years after the Paris Agreement.

www.unep.org/resources/em...

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From Adam Curtis' "Shifty: Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century", an image of an Indian boy rolling a sewing machine on a stand down a rural road; titles across the bottom read: "The only thing that kept the fear at bay was their belief in the heroic myth of Britain."

From Adam Curtis' "Shifty: Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century", another image of an Indian boy rolling a sewing machine down a rural road, now looking back at the camera over his shoulder; titles across the bottom read: "When that belief faltered the fear came in."

"In reality, [British soldiers stationed in the British Raj] were frightened and alone, surrounded by a complex and chaotic world they couldn't understand."

Call a jerk an asshole, so much hassle.
Call an asshole a jerk, enh: it'll work.

Ford, leader of the provincial gov't, doing his best to be remembered as the worst mayor of the city of Toronto. What a jerk.

Sucks that the burden of those who (un/knowingly?) confuse discussion & opinion with competition & ranking first exhausts then extinguishes honest public discourse.

Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost “We survived, but it wiped out the library,” Internet Archive’s founder says.

The Internet Archive's "legal battles weren’t with creators or publishers so much as with large media companies that he thinks aren’t 'satisfied with the restriction you get from copyright.' 'They want that and more.'"

It will be very funny if nobody gets banned for insulting one of the main architects of modern conservatism when dozens of people did for defaming America's 38th most popular podcaster. It'll really show where postmodern conservatism is at as a movement.

Lucas Rizoli's Mo Space Lucas's Motivation: To help the 1 in 8 men affected by prostate cancer.

Folx, I'm asking for your help raising money for men's health this Movember. I've shaved off my beard & will be growing out a mustache all month.

Would appreciate any donations you can make to this cause. (Also appreciate help convincing my kids, yes, it's still me.)

movember.com/m/lucasrizoli

Close-up of a toothbrush handle where the names "Drs. Lam & Shearer" are printed.

The doctor excoriated her for her excessive woolgathering.

Using an ad-blocker used to feel like a filter for tap water, but nowadays is more like refusing to drink from a septic tank.

You cannot just Task-Manager out of boss-ware surveillance. Be careful what hardware you use and for what you use it.

A sneaky weekend drop of the new GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES, in which we spend 3 hours talking about a book that is 80 pages long! It's worth it, though, as few texts have been as impactful on how we talk about our present moment as Mark Fisher's CAPITALIST REALISM:
rangedtouch.com/2025/10/31/8...

Just wanted to clear the air with Affinity here.

Canva brought Affinity a while ago. Canva is riding the AI wave and is trying to compete with Adobe. So they are trying to integrate AI "tools" into affinity to win over those people who use AI, This can be TURNED OFF.

Not only is it "free" (and, yeah, I'm suspicious about that too), but it integrates pixel and vector and layout modes—and it's not Adobe.

"Affinity’s strategy is to minimize the impact [of "AI"] to its product… they’ll bury it behind a paywall that people can easily ignore; odds are, their bosses (the customers Canva really cares about) will still pay the cut."

Adapted from The Simpsons episode "Homey the Clown": Krustyburgler lays beaten on the ground, wheezing out "Please look at my reviews and articles."

Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva: Review by Jake Casella Brookins Dengue Boy, Michel Nieva (Astra House 9781662602658, $25.00, 224pp, hc) February 2025. Cover by Sophy Hollington. Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy, translated by Rahul Bery, is an exuberant, gore-spattere…

Read Nieva's "Dengue Boy", translated by Rahul Bery, a manic romp through far-future climato-biological chaos. It's gory and horrific in many ways, but as @casella.bsky.social sez, "what might read as depressing and upsetting is instead a bombastic, energetic ride."