Cynthia Graber

Thanks, and I'll let you know! I found a repair cafe happening here in Somerville on Sunday, so I'll start by bringing it there. Appreciate it!

Somerville Repair Cafe, Sun, Dec 7, 2025, 1:00 PM | Meetup The Cambridge Hackspace is hosting our repair cafe for the fall season! Come have your items repaired. Keep your things around longer and out of the landfill by having them

And through posting about this on FB, I found out that there are all sorts of cool fix-it/repair cafes, and as it happens there's one coming up this Sunday in Somerville, in case anyone else lives near me and has stuff they need repaired! www.meetup.com/cambridge-ha...

Anyone in Somerville/Boston area know about repairing smaller home appliances? I have a fantastic Cuisinart toaster-oven, but after 8-10yrs I'm now getting ErL error. Called cuisinart, no help. Looked up repair, it's all ovens/fridges. Any ideas on repair shops for smaller kitchen appliances? Tx!

His lab was humming with discovery. After one year under Trump, it’s almost silent. - The Boston Globe The disaster that struck John Quackenbush and his lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health began when the Trump administration started rapidly slashing funds that fueled research programs ...

I never reported on Quackenbush's lab, but I've reported on someone else modeling the transcriptome. This type of research is incredibly important as we try to deeply understand-and combat-diseases. This story is powerful, the loss is far bigger than just one lab. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/05/b...

What Do Aliens Eat? Food in Sci-Fi and Fantasy - Gastropod This episode, Gastropod is exploring the weird and wonderful world of food in science fiction and fantasy, from well-loved standards like Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings, to modern favorites like ...

I *LOVE* the Wayfarer series. So so much. When we had her on Gastropod for our sci-fi food episode (I worked so hard to make that happen!) (gastropod.com/what-do-alie..., I had to call her first for a quick soundcheck and I could get all my fangirling out of the way

Love it!

Oh funny! I def don't think my local radio station was particularly Italian-American (but I have to admit that I also turned off the radio once x-mas season started...)

Who knew! (Jews and other non-x-ians coming out of the woodwork...!)

Seven.

I admit it, I'm scrooge - this country created a commercial holiday from a religion that is not mine that lasts like two fucking months and is inescapable . But this xmas song list has me in *tears.*

Oh I'm so sorry you feel "ashamed" and are now saying you're going to step back from your other duties and *only* focus on your care for the young men and *women* at Harvard. (Harvard, I sure as hell hope your lawyers are already working on the legalities of firing him!)

This is a longshot bc I don't know how many Bos area folks I'm connected to here: I have some jewelry I inherited that I'm looking to sell. Anyone had any good experiences/have recommendations?

If there is, I haven't seen it, feel free to share and I can use that to forward! Or else please write it!

Now, I did not tell my friend to stop using ChatGPT for something easily searchable (and ignore the AI and click on the damn links!). But I was discussing w/colleague and we realized the media reported what Napster did to artists. There's not much about google ai/chatgpt/etc & media devastation. 3/

Seemingly unrelated, but yet related: there was a major loss of jobs at Eater. Because instead of searching for something about, say, food and getting an Eater site that would give them eyeballs and thus pageviews for ads, AI scrapes it and just gives people the info that other people worked for. 2/

Please someone write this story so I can forward to friends: what Google AI has done to smaller media websites, that is, Google Zero. Anecdote: was having someone over, said I'd made a green tomato chutney w/ last of my tomatoes, she said she asked ChatGPT and it recommended a couple of cheeses. 1/

Twinbrook Metro opened when I was almost 12, and I lived about two blocks away. I could take it by myself - it was glorious.

There were tiny chunks of pineapple in mushroom noodle dish at a snazzy Vietnamese resto last night, was delicious. Pineapple's great. (Haven't experienced pineapple pizza bc it comes w/ham and didn't eat that as a kid, and as an adult there aren't many well-sourced ham/pineapple pizzas to try)

Pineapple *in* dairy kugel. You haven't had fruit in a dairy noodle kugel? Like raisins? It's all good!

"They tried to kill us so don't ditch your identity/background/culture/religion" doesn't give you a lot to hang your identity on.

I would also love to add to this Holocaust angle of your thread by saying that teaching young Jewish only-sort-of-identified kids/teens *only* about the Holocaust, and not about, say, our rich traditions/history/culture, as a way to engender a Jewish identity will fail.

I love these and I share many of these opinions (so do I fit into this same niche?)

Love this for you (!) - but also I know I'm a Bostonian when I first read it as/think "yeah, taking the T (public transport) really does make someone hotter!"

I *am* wondering how it's all going to play out in voting. And personally I'd love it if someone were to propose a 25-story building or five in Magoun (right near me), a block away from the subway...

Wow I totally missed all the publishing of various flyers etc. Just looked some of that up...

Now I'm curious what the pre-voting meltdowns are about. Some things to vote on are making me think, and some candidates/issues are things I have strong opinions about, but...meltdowns? Which of the things on the ballot?

We visited the Klamath right when the dam came down (was incredibly moving to report gastropod.com/bringing-sal...), this story is both so exciting-fish made it past additional barriers to reach headwaters in just 1yr!-& depressing, w/ $millions for restoration now not showing up. Still, good news!

(and I didn't mean that in past tense, they all still do, no matter their age!)

If only they knew how many people get called Aunt/Auntie who have literally no blood ties! And in all sorts of communities! Shall I list all the kids/young adults who called me aunt/ie who have zero relationship to me?!

I did just literally laugh out loud. Maybe they weren't as loud about their holidays.