Thleen

Four-panel comic with captions “Xylophone” (title) and “Branson Reese” (creator). PANEL 1: a skeleton uses a pair of mallets to play music on its own ribs PANEL 2: a knock at the door; skeleton yells “Ah!” PANEL 3: Voice through the door: “Are you performing a xylophone cover of ‘Powerhouse’ by the Raymond Scott Quintette on your ribcage in there?” Skeleton: “N-n-no!” Voice: “Good! That’s the equivalent of masturbation to us!” PANEL 4: Voice: “I say ‘us’ because I’m also a skeleton. We’re all skeletons! It’s a world—“ Skeleton: “A world of skeletons! I know!” Voice: “A world of skeletons.”

So grateful to @bransonreese.bsky.social that as my husband and I watch this tv show whose characters keep reminding each other of obvious facts about their shared setting we can mark each occasion by yelling at the screen “A world of skeletons! I know!”

I grew up in Tennessee and now live abroad in a country whose dominant language has an extremely important formal/informal second-person distinction and without my bone-deep “ma’am”-ing instincts I truly don’t know how I’d have made it this far

“Lmao wtf” is just one syllable short of iambic pentameter, which I assume is the only thing that forced Milton to use other phrasing

Loving that the new Bridgerton season sticks to the series’ traditional directorial vision on which the protagonists act like they’re in a big-screen period piece, the secondary cast acts like they’re in a tv costume drama, and Eloise specifically acts like she’s in a Nickelodeon live-action sitcom

Yesterday I finally listened to the Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg Minneapolis songs, and tonight I find I’m re-listening to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Charlie on the MTA,” and I guess I think our moment’s artists could go a bit punchier with their earnestly topical neofolk ballads

I now have too, thank goodness! Some of my best friends, etc

Obviously the vibes-based anarchist is not a uniquely American problem, but I do think that, in healthier leftism ecosystems, there’s enough competition from other anarchist subspecies to keep the population to more sustainable levels

I also think it’s a particularly vibes-based anarchism that dominates—as an American it was a real political education to meet UK anarchists who seemed driven by a commitment to horizontal organizing as the most realistic realization of justice instead of a commitment to the hardest-sounding slogans

An orchestra onstage backlit by a giant screen, which features a pixel art illustration of a sunset over mountains and the legend “STARDEW VALLEY: SYMPHONY OF SEASONS”

Mama we made it, and by “it” I mean “the concert venue on time,” and by “we” I mean “myself and my husband and the entire female gaming population of Munich”

Almost exactly a year ago I bought tickets for the Munich performance of the Stardew Valley soundtrack orchestral concert series. That concert is tonight. To ensure that this will be truly a Munich experience, the city has thoughtfully scheduled a public transit strike for today as well

It sucks so bad !! I feel like this phenomenon gets skipped over en route to debating whether we can do right while believing we’re doing wrong—situations in which we know we’re doing right but it FEELS wrong are maybe less metaethically interesting but are at LEAST as important to our ethical lives

This is EXACTLY what I have always said, people are conflating our generation’s impressively but very differently brilliant interviewing minds !!

I have been watching—in fact WE have been watching! The rare series I like that doesn’t violate any of the absurd puritanical preferences that have kept my husband from enjoying so many of my other favorites (e.g. “no naked teen girls,” “no teen girls in underwear,” “no teen girls in just a towel,”

I’m imagining how it would feel to hear Chotiner say that sentence in the moment during the interview and then how it would feel to read that sentence written down in the New Yorker the next day, and it’s lucky for this guy that he seems psychologically incapable of embarrassment or I think he’d die

There’s sort of an imagined meme version of Chotiner who destroys interviewees by bamboozling them with detailed knowledge of obscure but damning facts about them. This completely misrepresents the far more interesting method by which he ACTUALLY destroys interviewees

I dreamed that I was talking to an actor who said “I was in that famous movie, ‘Mi Mamá,’” and I said “You mean ‘Y Tu Mamá También’?” and they said scornfully “No, that’s the sequel” and I felt like a real philistine for not even knowing it was a sequel

I’m learning today that Louise Perry and Louise Penny are different people and wow it has cleared up a LOT of confusion

On the one hand I get that referring to these guys by cute little epithets is “historically irresponsible” and “a gross simplification of complex legacies” and “an insidious perpetuation of centuries-old biases” but on the other hand just calling it “Bloody Mary Park” would remove ALL the confusion

This gave me a flashback to the day as a kid that I glanced at my best friend’s parents’ giant bookcase of Trek novels and saw that the author of my beloved “So You Want to Be a Wizard” series took up basically a full shelf

Like two years ago I was like “Okay I know there are multiple famous Queens Mary but which one was like—famously enemies with Queen Elizabeth I” and a short Wikipedia search later I was so fucking mad

English history is tricky because Becket is arguably the Thomas most famously killed by a King Henry and Henry VIII is definitely the King Henry most famous for killing a bunch of Thomases and, yet,

Second-biggest giveaway, after the fact that he has definitely never in his life gone this many sentences without using the first-person singular

As the wife of a man who gets a fresh pack of black t-shirts for Christmas every year, I hope you’ve explored going a bit businesslike (button-up over black t-shirt) or a bit outdoorsy (flannel over black t-shirt) or a bit sporty (Henley over black t-shirt) or a bit cozy (cable-knit sweater over bla

Ah you’re right of course, but this particular imprecision is my fault I think: YouGov asks about belief in God explicitly! I meant to note that this includes belief in non-Christian Gods—but committed the very error you describe by putting it in terms of “being religious” bsky.app/profile/kath...

Brits' beliefs about God(s) People have different beliefs about God(s). Which of the following comes closest to your view?

That too—tho if I’ve found the right poll (the piece doesn’t seem to link it?) it distinguishes “a God/Gods” from “some sort of spiritual greater power,” so I was mostly thinking of eg Judaism or Islam or Hinduism. But that distinction itself may have changed in meaning! yougov.co.uk/topics/socie...

A bit surprised that the article assumes belief in God = Christianity when as far as I can tell the YouGov poll explicitly does not? Totally out of my wheelhouse, but mightn’t for instance some immigrant demographics trend (1) younger and (2) more religious but NOT necessarily (3) more Christian?

I’m sorry about the sleep-inducing consequence but on the bright side you must be amazing at knowing which dates are exactly a week apart from each other

I don’t know if it’s the mistake Kristof is making, but I wonder if it contributes to (as @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social observes) the take’s periodic proliferation on here—ppl mistake features of the world under this regime that prove it’s authoritarian for features that prove no one is resisting it

This makes me realize a mistake in my own thinking: when I despairingly think “why is no one opposing this?” what I often mean is “why aren’t the opposition party or the media opposing this?”—but the latter is just part OF the authoritarianism, really; opposition thereto is necessarily elsewhere

So many brave people are able to see the evil that’s happening and be galvanized to fight it—without being paralyzed by the despair of knowing that so many other people will see the same evil and think it’s good actually. It’s so hard to be that first kind of person but I have to try