Zelda Reader

Sugar is back! New music at sugarcopperblue.com PLUS May 2026 live shows in NYC and London. All the info is here!

A still from the film "Alien". One the left, Harry Dean Stanton plays Brett. On the right, Yaphet Kotto plays Parker. Brett is wearing a sort of green Hawaiian shirt with a white long-sleeved T shirt underneath and a baseball cap (which, hey, in 2122, at least Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps are still a thing). Parker wears a similar green'd t-shirt with a white short-sleeved button up vest or jacket and a blue head band. They are on the crew of a mining vessel which has picked up a distress signal. At a crew meeting about what to do, Parker and Brett's main concern, at this point in the story, is how they'll be compensated due to the change in plans. Which, after a lifetime of being screwed over by The Corporation, the labor which produces the capital, prior to being subsumed by the xenomorph, has got to flex its solidarity in order to get paid.

Happy Labor Day

mysterious sign in loring park about dorian the cat’s first annual birthday. no date or location given, but there are lots of activities planned and you should bring 3 gifts. “for more information, please read again.”

Per below, whenever I finish the first draft of a book, the last few hours of work, I put on Purple Rain & Daydream Nation to get me through it. And now…Side One of Purple Rain. See you on the other side!

A picture of a package of Marshmallow Peeps, but Photoshopped to say "Pepys." The peeps visible through the packaging are wearing curly old-style wigs. The package explains that it contains "10 diarists." Here's the deal: I only know two things about Samuel Pepys: 1. His name is pronounced like "peeps" 2. He was a famous diarist. That's the only motivation I needed to make this stupid thing as an Easter joke, and I will post it every year on Easter until long after the joke has worn off.

The reason for the season:

[“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”]

Ursula le Guin, on the accusation that fantasy is an escape from reality

🔊 TONIGHT at The Cedar:
DRONE NOT DRONES - The 10th 28-Hour Drone
Doors: 6:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$40 Day of Show - price for full 28 hours

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What looks to be a human figure crouched draped in a furry animal skin with large horns protruding from the head area

On St Knut’s Day, January 13th, Finns take to the streets dressed as “nuuttipukit” (draped in goat skins and horns) to procure beer and leftovers after Christmas. Photographs from 1928 of the folk tradition here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/n... #onthisday

There’s a small bookshop “adult scholastic book fair” at a local brewery

They vastly misunderstood the demand

Woodcut image in black and white of a white cat sitting on a wooden beam or table, against a black background. The cat is facing left and looks relaxed and content, its feet tucked in, its head lowered, its tail drawn in along its body.

Woodcut by M. C. Escher, 1919 (163 × 251 mm) #cats

Photograph shot from above, aka a bird's eye view, of an urban street with tram tracks, and three figures: a delivery man (perhaps for bread?0 on a bicycle, and a male and female couple walking arm in arm. The long shadows suggest it is early in the morning

One of the most unforgettable images capturing the vibrant promise of the new year, by the great Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy: 7 A.M. (New Year's Morning), c. 1930 www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

One thing I'm not sure everyone realizes is how much more *fun* it is to live in a walkable neighborhood. I know it's not realistic for everyone (all the more reason to make it so for more people), but to be in a spot that's dense enough to support bakeries, groceries, yarn shops, etc.--it rules.

This is all incredible but I had zero idea that the creator of Maus, which is how I learned about Auschwitz as an American kid, also created the Garbage Pail Kids???

A painting of four cats sitting by the warmth of a fireplace in a cozy interior, an armchair close by

A cozy scene of cats taking in the warmth of a fireplace by French painter Thomas Couture, who was born on this day in 1815 & was teacher of major modern artists including Édouard Manet compiegne-peintures.fr/notice/notic...

Sometimes trivia is just that: trivial. Some other times, though, it cracks the world open a bit, into something a little less disenchanted. Such is this trinket about my local stretch of the Mississippi River as it bends its way through St. Paul, and the giant from which it emerged.

As you might notice upon visiting the Twin Cities, the Mississippi’s valley can be rather narrow or strangely wide, depending on the part of town. (An informal survey of friends and colleagues revealed this is, in fact, quite often not noticed.)

To understand why, you might first look north and West, to the Red River Valley along the North Dakota border. The Red River flows north into Canada and, eventually, Hudson Bay, but “valley” is a real misnomer; locals believably claim this to be the flattest place on earth.

You also need to look to the past. Driving through the Red River Valley feels akin to being at sea, the earth and sky stretching to their fullest in all directions.* This is not entirely a coincidence; the land here is flat because it was once the bottom of a vast, shallow, ancient lake, Lake Agassiz, formed by melting glaciers. (*Or it feels depressingly dull. Mileage may vary)

Among Giants: A Brief Hydrological History of the Upper Midwest: https://streets.mn/2024/12/20/among-giants-a-brief-hydrological-history-of-the-upper-midwest/

Before he went all in on harassing trans ppl, he was bizarrely obsessed with YA authors. It was so upsetting to him that ppl wanted to get rid of racism in kids books. He brought armies of Nazi trolls down on random authors, just “asking questions” about “free speech”.

He’s ALWAYS BEEN like this.

Me: I'm feeling really Sapphic

You: Tell me more 😏

Me: ............... and if
......... [thy]me......
..........................
hands.......... [swan, or possibly an extinct species of gourd]
.........................s

Where's All the Good Garage Art in South Minneapolis? These Guys Know. - Racket Let's explore Minneapolis's art-filled alleys.

i love how many garage murals there are in south and i'm very happy people are out here photographing, documenting, and even mapping them!!! racketmn.com/wheres-all-t...

One annoying thing about historical research is looking up how long it took to get from A to B in the US by train in 1880 and then looking it up now and realizing it was faster in 1880.

A reminder for my journalism colleagues: Access to power is not a good, in and of itself. If you cannot tell the truth and retain access, choose truth. If you cannot be critical and retain access, choose critique. If you have to run bullshit gossip stories to retain access, choose 🖕🏻🖕🏻

A painting that shows a large room with a long, unbroken window at right; elements in the space include a large cylindrical machine - identified as a steam boiler - and a bat that is shown flying (or hanging in the air)

Today's mood: Steam Boiler with Bat, a 1928 painting by Carl Grossberg, German painter associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement

The death way or the life way? The high road of the warrior, or the river road? I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with compassion, in patience, in peace. The way of the warrior fully admits only the first of these, and wholly denies the last. The way of the water admits them all. The flow of a river is a model for me of courage that can keep me going — carry me through the bad places, the bad times. A courage that is compliant by choice and uses force only when compelled, always seeking the best way, the easiest way, but if not finding any easy way still, always, going on. — Ursula K Le Guin, from blog post 119 (on the 2016 election) https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/119-the-election-lao-tzu-a-cup-of-water

I found this today and it speaks deeply to me (as Ursula Le Guin usually does).

Screenshot of a title and abstract, reading: "Action at a Distance: Did physicist Thomas Young’s 1807 Lectures inspire some of the earliest examples of abstract art?" by Britt Lundgren; Abstract: Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is known to have been influenced by scientific developments at the turn of the 20th century. However, many of her paintings from 1914 to 1916 exhibit similarities to diagrams published much earlier in the English polymath Thomas Young’s 1807 Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts. Key elements and themes in af Klint’s The Dove, The Swan, Parsifal, and Altarpieces series suggest Young’s Lectures may have been a major source for her work. The author explores this idea and other parallels between the lives and legacies of the visionary scientist and abstract art pioneer.

Since we’re all desperate for a positive distraction today, I guess I’ll share some exciting news I’ve been sitting on for a few months… I made an accidental discovery in art history & after four years of researching and reworking, it’s finally getting published!
direct.mit.edu/leon/article...

Hot Bsky Tip:
Vett more before you click "follow all" on a starter pack. 😂 I read one funny post, saw a "funny people" pack that person made, and mass followed. Now I am unfollowing one-by-one a hundred people who all tell exactly the same kind of joke and RT each other compulsively.

An absolute banger every single time

Ed Yong quote from the linked YouTube video: “In every single piece I had a rule for myself that half the ppl I talked to had to be someone who I'd never talked to bf. There was a consistent problem throughout a lot of pandemic reporting where people would keep on going back to the same sources again and again and again and again which not only narrows the number of perspectives that you get but also makes you incredibly vulnerable if any one of those people happens to be full of shit."

I wish more journalists wld follow Ed Yong's approach here. I think he hits on a big problem in communicating the complexity of public health challenges: recycling of the same experts. So many bright ppl across a range of areas that the public needs to hear from. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddy5...

YouTube video by XOXO Festival Ed Yong, Journalist/Author - XOXO Festival (2024)

@edyong209.bsky.social's talk at XOXO is easily one of the best ones I have ever seen. Incredibly thoughtful, insightful, and well-worth your time: youtu.be/ddy5uMdzZB8?...

“I don't really worry about the young, whose excesses are confined to lecture halls and quadrangles, so much as I fear the old, whose tyrannies are legislative.”

I worry sometimes about not writing enough, that I waste too much time. Then I think about the lines “The limits of art cannot be delivered. There is no artist whose talent is fulfilled.”

Which sentiment was written by a gent named Ptahhotep.

In 2600 BC.

A tabby cat sits inside a cabinet amidst dozens of cat toys

Broke into the toy cabinet. #NoRegrets #Freedom