Nancy

The publishing news in question:

bsky.app/profile/emil...

In light of today's publishing news, I'd like to remind everyone, "do not feed me aioli, no matter what I say."

Ah!!! *KERMIT FLAIL*

I bet he’d even like himself in that movie.

Timeline cleanser 🐈

…but that doesn’t make any sense.

Thanks for an entertaining evening!

A screenshot from the Dimension 20 Fantasy High Sophomore Year episode “Blast from the Passed” featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan making noises with the closed captioning text reading “(growling with impressive realism)”

Even if closed captioning doesn’t always get it right, sometimes it gives you a perfectly cromulent description.

Impressive indeed, @dropout.tv

a man singing into a microphone with the words if i could turn back time below him Alt: Late ‘80s-era Cher singing, “If I could turn back time” in an appropriately smoky setting. (Probably from the music video or something.)

That was a good day (Richard’s difficulties notwithstanding).

For a short time, one of my groups of friends would preface things with “gonna lie,” and that was rather fun.

Like, “Gonna lie, but I’m happy with the amount of money in my bank account and certainly don’t need any more.”

I heard someone say this, and I like the metaphor:

Using AI to write a school paper is like bringing a forklift to the gym. The point is not that the weights need to be moved around.

War Child works in 14 countries to protect, educate, and stand up for children living through conflict - from Ukraine and Sudan to Gaza and the West Bank. Since 2006, War Child have been working in the occupied Palestinian territories to keep children safe and advocate for their rights. War Child is still operating in Gaza - delivering mental health support through play. But even their own staff are traumatised.

“Gaza is a bleeding silence, under a sky that forgets to turn blue. Children no longer ask for toys, they just ask for food. For bread. For safety." - Ibrahim, War Child staff member in Gaza Over 17,000 children killed 96% believe they will die "The games helped me forget the fear inside of me." "It's the first time someone helped me talk about my feelings while playing." "I was afraid to speak. But when everyone played, I felt safe." - Children taking part in War Child activities in Gaza

Continuing the alt text.

Our relationship with War Child goes back nearly twenty years now. We've always been in awe of them. They've changed so many lives and repaired so much damage in the world. But the work they're doing in Gaza at the moment is on a different level. We've felt just as helpless as everyone else watching what's going on there and so we asked War Child if they could give us a picture of what's happening on the ground - from their direct experience rather than through the lens of the media. It's important to understand that War Child have staff working in the field who are themselves Palestinian. They told us of the exhaustion of just trying to survive and find food. It's amazing how much War Child are still able to do given the situation.

During our phone call they explained how important it is to also think about the long term impact and how much work will need to be done in the future. For us, the bottom line is that whatever your political standpoint, race, religion - people all have the same basic needs. That is the very core of what humanity is the common needs that we share as a species. We've travelled all over the world with our music and if there's one thing we know it's that you find the same focus on family and community EVERYWHERE. Whatever our preconceived idea of a place is it's always wrong. We've experienced it over and over again. It's humbling, enlightening, heart-warming. We're sure others must experience the same thing. But to put it simply - we have a duty to each other, globally.

So together with War Child we have put together a series of posts that we hope will help in some small way to build more understanding about what is happening and what we can all do about it. If they resonate with you then we encourage you to share them. The more noise we make, the more pressure we put on our governments to act. Love, TTRJ

This @keaneofficial.bsky.social thread is important, so I'm also reposting it with alt text.

Help @warchilduk.bsky.social continue to show up for children in Gaza at www.warchild.org.uk

Help @warchilduk.bsky.social continue to show up for children in Gaza at www.warchild.org.uk

I’m honestly mad at myself for never clocking Sneakers as a Leverage ancestor. It’s so obvious! Yet I never made that link before now.

In what normal, sensible sense of how words work is a single phone call, without leaving a message, considered "several attempts" to make contact?

This meeting could have been an email.
This email could have been a passing fancy.
This job could have been a lifetime of wonder.

Okay, this is a delightfully charming little tale.

Right corner, next to the share button.

Oh, that sounds fun... and is my scheduled Saturday to work.

Darn it!

I get that. I used to be that way, but I trained myself by reading stuff on the socials while listening to music!

But for what it's worth, you can probably read the little stories about the songs -- at least for the bonus tracks -- during song intros.

Okay, now I am even more scandalized; you haven't finished the book!

You can do it, though; it's only, like, 15K words.

For the song parts, might I recommend listening to the song while reading the corresponding text? I think I did that both times I properly read through the book, and it was nice.

You mean you *haven't* memorized the book? I am scandalized. *Scandalized*, I say!

I mean, no, it's not -- Tim has said it was a different tree, the first walnut tree he knowingly saw -- but it's a nice connection nonetheless.

YouTube video by ALBERTO MIR LEVEL 7 BABYLON 5 OPENINGS SEASON 1 -5

The way Babylon 5 opening credits evolved with the show and set the tone for each season? Masterful.

(Obviously, spoilers abound, but youtu.be/_2lkRw3UQ-Q )

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

When people talk about joy and positive art as something shallow, I always think back to this quote from Ursula Le Guin:

I mean, I haven't set out to watch it, but my dad watched a lot of it, but from what I could tell... yeah.

Nothing of consequence, but I made this gif years ago, and it's the first time I've seen it used by someone who isn't me.

It's weirdly thrilling when that happens.

AI impoverishes us at every step of the process: - data centers pollute our environment - energy use drives up costs - content theft robs creators of income - the actual output is used to displace workers and depress wages - using it harms our mental health and impairs our competence - the flood of AI slop is damaging our sociopolitical landscape All in service of making a worse product - and world - to enrich a handful of already spectacularly wealthy people

While defending the luddite argument in Discord, I stumbled into this IMO succinct explanation for opposing generative AI:

At every step in the process, it impoverishes us.