Cosmic Chambo

Deny impermanence and reject the camaraderie that arises from the inevitability of suffering. Deny connection and neutralize the compassion that eases suffering.

Everything is connected: nothing lasts: you are not alone. There is not an app for this.

Katie Wilson, Seattle's next mayor, emerged from the city's left-wing activist class and brings with her little experience in governing.

A teenager in Florida with a homeless parent wanted money for braces and ended up having sex for money with powerful men, setting off a chain of events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and help upend the political career of Representative Matt Gaetz.

NYT describing a progressive who just won an impressive upset election victory: she’s a windbag with no experience

NYT describing a disgraced conservative pedo: a wretched young woman ended up in his vicinity and ruined his life

Commentary on certain current events has me reminiscing over the time I went to the weed store and got a budtender who went on and on about "terpenes" and vape rigs and tinctures and how indica and sativa doesn't mean what I think and I know I'm old-fashioned but IT'S ALL WEED my guy.

I have never been good at finding a social media audience so sure yeah sour grapes whatever but lifetime subscriptions to newsletter services and infinite SaaS charges and the inevitable rot of all tech companies makes me grateful that my newsletter audience is small enough to be a large email list.

really a pretty embarrassing few fucking weeks for Bluesky content moderation and what passes for a comms team

Perhaps this isn't universal and is only a requirement for people living in areas with accelerationist right wing regional governments, so a fourth thing would be an appreciation for Bsky's eager compliance with right wing authorities.

This applies retroactively: no existing DMs, no future DMs.

Three things I 💙 about Blue Sky: No accountability for banning kind people for satirical criticism of the powerful; no accountability for tolerating cruel people encouraging actual violence against the vulnerable; and now no access to DMs or controversial news unless I upload a government-issued ID.

Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin's music – in collaboration and on their own – is a visceral immersion in the "you are not alone" concept at the foundation of Zen practice. Deny suffering and you avoid the camaraderie of acknowledging the inevitability of suffering, and the compassion that eases suffering.

the very bad streetlights where we live are so bright that we call em state troopers: when they shine through the window I'm reaching for my license and registration

"That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?"

– Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore

Stygian Bough: Volume II, by BELL WITCH & AERIAL RUIN 4 track album

if you would like to log off while maintaining a sense of drowning in endless waves of doom, I have some good news regarding Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin's STYGIAN BOUGH: VOLUME II

Basic light pollution diagram showing four different streetlight set ups ranging from more light pollution on the left to less light pollution on the right. The most pollution option, labelled "very bad" is a street lamp with a round uncovered bulb on top, making a sphere of light in the air. The next option, labelled "bad" has a tiny cap on top, that limits the upward pollution a bit. The "better" option is mostly uncovered on top, limiting pollution above the streetlight. The final option, labelled "best" has a full shroud overtop, limiting the light to only below the streetlight, where it is needed for pedestrians and vehicles.

Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics"

guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation

Not everybody has Jason Statham as The Beekeeper living in their barn, so the party that establishes a boring reliable government bureaucracy to prosecute scammers could wield power for generations.

I can help: Safeguarding Phones of Americans from Marketing Risk aka the S.P.A.M. Risk Act.

My friend is intermittently coherent but it's wild to witness the vulnerability inherent to having unmonitored access to a phone. If I hadn't been there – and been willing to physically remove the phone from his hand as he hollered "no no it's real!" – I have no idea where he would've ended up.

I recognized the AI scam operator voice from a similar situation earlier this week, the trap where you dial a common medical customer service number but get one digit off and suddenly there's a demon on the other end of the line and if you do the wrong thing the demon will ruin your life

a sick, banal dystopia: helping a friend in a nursing home settle some accounts and I realize I gave them the wrong phone number cuz I recognize the AI scammer voice but they swear it's a real person, won't let go of the phone, so I'm prying it out of their hands before they give up credit card info

What’s really going on with AI and jobs? Record-breaking layoff reports, Amazon's mass firings, and a slump in entry level employment. Is AI behind it all?

How is AI *really* impacting jobs?

Henley Chiu, the CTO of Revealera, a jobs data analysis firm, analyzed 180 million jobs listings in 2024 and 2025, in an effort to find out. Chiu found an:

-8% drop in all jobs postings
-~30% drop in art, photography, writing jobs
-22% drop in journalism jobs

Dahlia Rides the Firebird, by Iceburn from the album Asclepius

Been offline doing lentil and pulse hoarding and hanging out with a friend in the hospital, guessing it's been a slow news day? Prime time for some extremely niche content:

Iceburn is a jam band

iceburnsl.bandcamp.com/track/dahlia...

Man this is shocking. No I've never heard of dennis hastert or strom thurmond, why do you ask?

YouTube video by Marc Jacobs Dutch Rhythm And Steel Show Band - Down By The River (1974 Neil Young Cover Buddy Miles Inspired)

I don't know what happened to the playlist I did in my college radio days for Neil Young's birthday but this version of "Down by the River" is so fantastic.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IS_...

clap-stomp-ululate music > clap-stomp-hey music

Uncle: [puts on Neil Young LP]
Me: I love this song
Uncle: I see you may have regained some interest in guitar-based musics

When I first moved to Los Angeles in the late 90s and was working at an underground hip-hop and electronic dance music magazine I told my uncle that I was "no longer interested in guitar-based musics" and he torments me with it to this day in the style of "was the grink there?"

Hazlom, by Aeson Zervas 9 track album

That famous decision where a fellow USA gen x person who likes normal USA gen x music is doing nostalgia and then asks what you've been listening to and do you be normal and say "I still love Pixies as well" or do you be honest and say "I mostly listen to electro-chaabi street rave abstractions."

large 20-foot tall concrete lined sewer tunnel. in the distance three people stand with head lamps on their hard hats, looking toward the camera as they stand in ankle-deep water.

if you can’t see the aurora borealis tonight, here is a sewer tunnel which is a wonder in itself.

I received this email about Democrats caving to end the shutdown from one of the SNAP recipients I spoke to:

Besides the #aurora, the other thing that solar flares and CMEs do is cause the upper layers of the atmosphere to 'puff up' which then increases the risk of atmospheric drag for the space vermin, and that brings them down.

I hope it eats lots of Starlink satellites!

It's Tim Robbins which is hilarious to me, but if it's not your thing you'll know quickly!

The final moments of E5 could be described as "a mostly unexpected scene with Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Future that is pushing the limit for sex things you can show on HBO" from outta nowhere.

Have you seen episode five of The Chair Company yet?

Slar disc showing its hot, diffuse and turbulent atmosphere. Near the equatorial region on the right there is a dark heart shape.

There’s a heart-shaped feature in the Sun’s corona - seen in a recent SDO’s A193 filtered image, which captures the hot solar atmosphere.

❤️☀️

The Sun’s sending its love to Earth … cause nothing says love like an X-class flares and series of proton showers! 😅