John W Buaas

You will be visited by three spirits.

It’s #BQT #BookQuestionTime again:

What are the three best novels you’ve read whose titles are (or contain) the names of one or more characters within those novels?

As always, please feel free to include cover images!

Don Quixote
Beloved
Huckleberry Finn

Honorable mention:
The Death of Artemio Cruz

"there's a new serif in town"

I’m sure FIRE will be all over this

The city hall is packed. People are standing. I doubt this is fire code compliant lol.

Amazon’s new Alexa aims to detangle household chaos, like who fed the dog and the name of that restaurant everyone wanted to try | Fortune This is a “classic fight in my house,” said Panos Panay, SVP of devices and services at Amazon.

Constant surveillance and in return you don’t have to communicate with your family.

One of my cousins is dealing with stage four breast cancer and when she tried to tell a family member that the Trump cuts were a threat to her the response was "that's fake news."

A great thread.

This reminds me that years ago, there was a female airman based at McConnell AFB whose surname was Goddess.

me dressed up and exercising at the airport before my 8 hour flight

Inter-American Fund

The Franciscan (El Franciscano) http://www.moma.org/collection/works/62787

it's about priorities

people dying on the streets and families unable to afford a weeks shopping

or the english language used on a pack of biscuits?

I dunno . . . they look pretty non-binary to me.

"The Holy Roman Empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire," taxonomy edition.

I mean, the logistics of it all are quite apart from the very real, further intrusions of a certain version of Christian teaching into state spaces with captive audiences, but all these practical matters would seem to doom it to failure.

I have questions about how the state imagines this will work. Most school clubs have a faculty/staff sponsor. So, will principals or school districts appoint (or coerce) someone to be that sponsor, or will someone outside a school be assigned that role? And what if students just aren't interested?

These are the 17 Olmec heads that have been discovered to date. 10 from San Lorenzo, 4 La Venta, 2 Tres Zapotes and one from Cobata, the largest. The smallest weighs 6 tons and the largest 50 tons. Very possibly, these are representations of the faces of the Olmec rulers from these mentioned cities.

I can’t believe how much of the Trump era is about solving problems that *don’t* exist while making all the problems that *do* exist, worse.

There is no one who thinks the biggest problem with air travel right now is not having an area to do pull-ups.

Two word-cloud charts from the Yale Youth Poll showing how voters ages 18–34 answer “Who do you think each party is fighting for?” Republican Party cloud (red): Dominated by the words “rich,” “billionaires,” “corporate,” “wealthy,” and “Trump,” with other prominent terms including “donors,” “white,” “Christian,” “money,” “power,” and “control.” Class-based groups like workers or the middle class are largely absent. Democratic Party cloud (blue): Centered on “rights,” “immigrants,” “working class,” “middle class,” “healthcare,” “equality,” “women,” “LGBTQ,” and “minorities,” but also includes smaller references to elite influence such as “donors,” “corporate,” and “rich.” Survey of 3,426 registered voters conducted Oct 29–Nov 11, 2025, with an oversample among ages 18–34.

Interesting new data from the Yale Youth Poll that asked 18-34 year-olds: "Who do you think each party is fighting for?"

GOP → rich, wealthy, billionaires, corporate, donors, Trump

Democrats → working class, rights, immigrants, middle class—but donors, corporate, rich also show up.

YouTube video by Cocheton Philip Glass - Evening Song Act III Pt. 3 (Satyagraha)

Yes.

Here's my own "I didn't know stuff like this existed" moment: riding in the car, Mom driving, and somehow, someway we were listening to NPR, and whatever program it was, this came on.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHKU...

We Did It, Texas Dems, We Did It Candidates in every legislative, statewide, and federal race. Now it’s time to build power where it counts.

Texas Democrats just did something historic under the leadership of new state party chair @kendallscudder.bsky.social. We have filed a candidate in EVERY 2026 race.

U.S. Senate: 1 of 1
U.S. House: 38 of 38
State Senate: 15 of 15
State House: 150 of 150
State Board of Education: 8 of 8

. . . the truth/accuracy of which these things are still no less capable of determining.

At least during ChatGPT's first iteration, the adviso was that the info it had to access was current up to a few months prior to the date you gave it a prompt. I don't know if that's still the case w/ either it or Claude. And now, the Internet they trawl is now full of AI-generated responses . . .

(I fear, but--if I'm honest--also secretly desire, that I have within me only the capacity to make dumb jokes today.)

imo enjoy the crappy AI-generated McDonalds ad while you can, because before very long things will be much worse: the technology will be able to do stuff like that *well*.

Avocado-related knife injuries: Describing an epidemic of hand injury - PubMed Avocado-related knife injuries are a preventable cause of hand injury. The incidence has risen significantly in recent years, possibly due to an increased consumption of avocados in the United States. Education on safe avocado preparation techniques and public safety initiatives, such as warning lab …

I would urge the folks at Meta to proceed with caution:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31303536/

From 9 years ago, but we appear not to have learned this lesson:

"Twitter feed may be better for teenage intrigue than policy formulation."
--Ret. General Barry McCaffrey.

a man with a beard says now that 's a name i ve not heard in a long time ALT: a man with a beard says now that 's a name i ve not heard in a long time

Was just now reminded of Saul Bellow, and that leads me to ask if anyone still reads or teaches him.

"I'll burn down your house" - legally actionable, boring, common

"I told the trees about you" - legally acceptable, foreboding, unsettling, the plants know your name and hate you