There's way too much "luxury" and "elevated" nonsense out there. Give me a solid, stripped-down sandwich place with rolls of paper towels on the tables.

JKR explicitly said she considers anything Potter-related, even fan-made, endorsement of her politics. And every time you engage with this franchise, you signal to the industry that there's still money in it and they should keep pumping out content from full-cast audiobooks to book box partnerships.

hey @joshuajfriedman.com if there's one thing I might beg you to communicate internally - the (a?) core of bluesky users want opt-in instead of opt-out, because we don't trust social media corporations to ever do good thngs. It's a learned distrust, and it might not be fair, but it's there.

The Pickle Barrel has saved me. Egg sandwich. No one in here (lunch is their mainstay). No tourists. Normal.

Trying to just get breakfast in our over-gentrified small town is SENDING me this morning. If I didn't have plumbers in my house I'd be at home where I belong instead of wandering town looking for a plain egg that isn't $25

Yes this. RIP Michael, and John, and Burke, and my beloved Uncle Jack, and all those guys in my Manhattan neighborhood in 85-88

Shepherd@neolithicsheep.bsky.social · 12h ago

In 1986, contracting HIV meant you were going to die, usually slowly, painfully, and alone. Now it's a chronic illness like hypertension. In 1986, gay and lesbian couples couldn't have their relationships legally recognized and had to adopt elaborate legal workarounds.

Watching old videos of Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo and hoping the elusive Joseph Aboud Man Bag clip comes up.

Sorry to Pope Bob and my dead college bf who was a Veeck, but the Red Sox made a MEAL of the White Sox tonight!

Ooh. Went out with a girlfriend and saw ALL my most beloved now-grown children! Such a joy.

I know better to make plans when I've got a deadline because while I'm the least ADHD person in my family, I got the waiting mode problem in spades. Today has not been productive.

i think we can learn a lot from this actually. there's this growing take that we need to figure out how to welcome data centers or else they will be placed in low-income communities... but people can actually just be against something full stop, and that can also make standards better for everyone

Madison Condon@madisoncondon.bsky.social · 19h ago

the original use of NIMBY was actually people opposing nuclear and hazardous waste disposal sites in the 80s, it got turned into opposing housing much more recently

OK. Wasted the morning hunting down the rumors that confirmed my spidey sense and now time to let it all rest and get back to work.

LA County confirmed that SoCal Edison's unused transmission tower started the Eaton Fire, which destroyed much of Altadena. The tower had been dormant since the 70's, but was left up anyway. It energized in the high wind and sent molten metal into dry brush underneath. www.cnn.com/2026/08/04/u...

Southern California Edison equipment blamed for 2025 Eaton fire in Los Angeles | CNN

Sparks from an idle transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison caused the 2025 Eaton fire in the Los Angeles area that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and businesses, ...

cnn.com

Brutal from Reddit: "He died as he lived. Riding something he was too old for."

As Doris Lessing noted in one of her memoirs, sentimentality and violence are flip sides of the same coin.

If you show up to Bluesky without following anyone, you'll be treated to a series of posts about art, music, and dogs. If you show up to X without following anyone, you'll be bombarded with right-wing conspiracies and white supremacist slop. It's weird which one is seen as a "political bubble"

They're burying him as we type, but I never found Once "romantic". Thought it was just me because my Dad moved to Prague around that time, and started dating an 18 year old Czech girl. But turns out, my creep-o-meter was not broken at all. As always, thank you Neko for being a badass.

socmot@socmot.bsky.social · 3d ago

I despise Substack and have previously said I will never read it (and I don't). But I will break my rule just for this eally disturbing piece of writing by Neko Case, who was / is in a band, The New Pornographers, who were supported by The Frames in 2002. nekocase.substack.com/p/in-what-fu...

It's finally lovely and cool (though smoky) and now there's some droning engine noise on my block that's going to force me to close the windows and I am not best pleased.

The elderly wolf we caught on the game cams this winter was back last night. Don't know why he's all alone, but he was certainly trying to phone a friend out there from 3 am on.

A watershed piece. America will have have a very hard time becoming less imperialist as long as combat service is sentimentalized and fetishized, when it actually tends to turn men into broken, hateful people, and helps make things like like Trumpism happen. www.newyorker.com/news/the-pol...

The Complications of Graham Platner’s Veteran Identity

How much of Graham Platner’s behavior should be read through the lens of what combat did to him, and how much of it is simply who he is, independent of war?

newyorker.com

Is she sneaking Mitch's ashes out of the building?

Allison Gill@muellershewrote.com · 2d ago

Personally I would love to see Bluesky expand. It shouldn’t just be the app for leftists who can’t stand Matt Yglesias! It should also be the app for liberals who can’t stand Matt Yglesias. And apolitical folks who can’t stand Yglesias. And, yes, even conservatives who can’t stand Matt Yglesias!

I wonder if this latest B*sky discourse is why the vibes have been so rancid lately? Have they been trying to import more dickheads again? Because feels like another round of "what?! you don't want to DEBATE ME? chuds" have come onboard lately.

That "bubble" conversation going around is illustrative of the way that the rich, and the right wing, and the dickheads are never content just to pile up riches and ruin their own shit, they need to hunt down all the rest of us to ruin ours too.

Folks need to reject the premise that Bluesky is a bubble because there's a higher concentration of liberals and a low concentration of fascists. The bubble is a media ecosystem that's pushing fascism. You can see it everywhere on every platform. There's no shortage of bars welcoming nazis

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

As a former neuroscientist (who studied dopamine), I cannot endorse this enough.

Elizabeth Lopatto@lopatto.bsky.social · 2d ago

I see a lot of you talking about "dopamine" and I wish you'd go back to talking about your astrological signs because at least then you wouldn't be confusing yourself about a real thing

Genius.

Tara Haelle@tarahaelle.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is pretty awesome. From Threads, I believe.

I am once again begging garden blogger/posters to put their geographic location at the top of their bios.

i feel like more than 700 homes burning down in spokane should be a bigger news deal

All this Covid talk today -- not sure how to say this without sounding like a doomer, but that was just the shot over the bow. Climate change is going to bring more pandemics, the question is how are we going to prepare/handle them? Yelling at Fauci is not an actual plan, folks.