Autumn of the Shoggoths

Hell of an article to read trooping halfway across an airport terminal to get to a changed gate for a late Delta flight. Seriously, though, read this to better understand how our whole economy works.

MAJOR NEWS: @GavinNewsom signed SB 79, my bill allowing more housing near public transit — rail, subway, rapid bus.

It’s a huge step for housing in California. It’ll create more homes, strengthen our transit systems & reduce traffic & carbon emissions.

Thank you, Governor!

Fake story puts real Texas woman in Olive Garden breadsticks hell The lie just won't stop spreading.

The lie just won't stop spreading.

Large blue and white kyanite stone with information sign. Ask me if you need a better description & I can update.

Large blue and white kyanite stone with information sign. Ask me if you need a better description & I can update.

Came to Boston for work & a coworker recommended the Harvard Museum of Natural History because of my excitement about Mineral Cup. No tugtupite (& I confounded the wonderful old codger volunteer when I asked), but they had a couple lovely kyanite specimens and a great overall collection.

Nihilistic Password Security Questions What is the name of your least favorite child? In what year did you abandon your dreams? What is the maiden name of your father’s mistress? At what...

What is the name of your least favorite child?

In what year did you abandon your dreams?

What is the maiden name of your father's mistress?

Scientist on three-week off-grid hike finds out he's won the Nobel prize Dr Fred Ramsdell was "living his best life" offline when the Nobel committee tried to contact him.

Dr Ramsdell, whose phone had been on airplane mode, told the BBC's Newshour Programme that his first response when his wife said, "You've won the Nobel prize" was: "I did not."

To which Ms O'Neill replied that she had 200 text messages that suggested he had.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

YouTube video by Matthew Grenier Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres Skate to "The Sound of Silence" (No Audience Noise)

Have something beautiful: youtu.be/WOCuxsRnVTQ?...

"Who has not suffered in his time from wallpaper or other patterns in which certain ill-defined but awkward stripes would thrust themselves upon his attention?"

Wallpaper has seen a bit of a renaissance, but I - in my 40s - have spent very little time in wallpapered spaces. I imagine the suffering Mr. Day & his contemporaries growing up besieged by ill-considered chintz and toile, sympathizing with the madness induced by the (fictional?) yellow wallpaper.

"The artist's hand does not crawl aimlessly over the paper and trail behind it flowers of the imagination. There is scope in ornament for all the fancy of a fertile brain; but design is no mere overflow of a brimming imagination; it is cunningly built up on lines necessary to its consistency, laboriously, it might be said, were it not that to the artist such labour is delight. Whoever finds it irksome may be sure his bent is not in the direction of applied design."

It’s irksome that I don’t know enough about grammar technicalities to describe the specific ways this writing feels old, but I am fascinated.

"The word " pattern " is here used in a somewhat technical sense not, as the dictionary has it, to mean " a specimen " nor yet " a shape or model for imitation," but ornament and especially ornament in repetition. Pattern is, in fact, the natural outgrowth of repetition; and in every case the lines of its construction may be traced; they pronounce themselves, indeed, with geometric precision."

There were signs before, but this quote on pages 2-3 of the introduction was what made me say there’s no way this was published any time in the last 50 years.

For your enjoyment, I will share a few quotes from Pattern Design by Lewis F. Day.

Last year, I bought a bunch of books on pattern design, mostly for visual reference. I started reading the intro to this one and quickly began to wonder when it was written due to the indirect and roundabout style of writing. Turns out, this was a 1999 reprint of a 1960s expansion of a 1933 text.

YouTube video by Josman Josman - Un Zder, Un Thé (Clip Officiel)

Dude apparently listened / watched this music video 9 times before setting the fire. Honestly, it's kind of a banger, though I can't say it makes me want to set anything on fire. I hope Josman doesn't get any blame from this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Va9...

Uber driver charged with starting LA’s deadly Palisades Fire The suspect was arrested in Florida and is expected to be in federal court Wednesday.

Holy shit, the devastating LA fires were started by a person. My god. www.sfgate.com/la/article/p...

The future liberals want (genuinely; this is great!): www.sfgate.com/news/article...

Really enjoying this thread while finishing my last to do items before heading to the airport (not the one you work at). ✈️

One of the more incredible stories out of LA this year has been how a taco review blog became the best on-the-ground coverage of ICE raids in the city.

They do a dispatch every day, follow-up on the kidnapped people (which almost no media outlet has done), and fact-check government claims.

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

Just like real life - my coworkers and neighbors don't need a reason to be who they happen to be. I don't need to discover some big plot reason why some neighbors happen to be Black while others are white, we all just ... live here. We'd be extras in each other's movies.

We Californians have had such a serious downgrade in Senators in the last few years.

I read an interview once with a director who people were upset with for not hiring diverse casts, and he said the characters didn't have a reason to be diverse, and I've remained pretty upset about that remark. The default young white thin abled cishet -ness of it all is so depressing.

Save money, even just a little at a time. Build a habit of flossing. Take a ton of photos of yourself and your people, even if you think you look terrible.

Misread that as LinkedIn Park and I have the best idea for the worst idea for a band.

I’m no Newsom fanboy, but figuring out how to change the incentives of institutions considering capitulation is one of the big tasks of our moment.

My hematite runs cold
My memory has just been sold
Kyanite is a centerfold
Kyanite is a centerfold

(She can be so gneiss that way)

I campaigned hard for tugtupite this time around because the optical properties are amazing, but sad as I am to see that we lost, kyanite is one of my other favorites so it's not such a bad loss. Congrats to team kyanite and everyone who enjoyed #MinCup25! And huge thanks to @mineralcup.bsky.social.

Aah, true enough. I deal with bot form fill outs sometimes in my work, and it is indeed a very particular pattern.

I will admit that I campaigned for tugtupite at my workplace, which likely resulted in a few votes coming from our corporate VPN. Not ballot stuffing, I promise!

I mean, he's sending soldiers there as an occupying force because Portland has a pretty low density of GOP voters and donors. He can score points with his base for both sticking it to the hippies and "defending the country" and fuck up a bunch of leftists.

This thread is worth a careful read.