In The Brothers Karamazov, Dosteyevsky says that Hell is inability to love, people are just impossibly difficult to love, and the way around this is to realize that their defects are your fault.

They do stop, if you don't provoke them. It's just that if you ever say "That's as far as they go," they then go further.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown@enbrown.bsky.social · 3d ago

My 4-year/old just learned about the concept of infinity and is now throwing a tantrum over it. “It’s weird! I don’t like it. I just want numbers to stop!”

What if fertility rates are dropping because dogs have evolved into perfect nest parasites and are displacing children altogether?

I want to sit on the sofa, but am covered with sweat. I could turn on the ac, wait till it's cool, and wipe myself off, but that would be complicated and lengthy. Life is unbearably tragic.

Adam, in Paradise Lost. On the one hand, he condemned all of us to suffering and some of us to eternal damnation. On the other hand, his reasoning was "Nah, fuck it, I'm with her, damned or not." You don't have to do that, but it's not wrong.

Sophia_Nyx 🐰@sophianyx.bsky.social · last wk.

Name a villain who was actually right.

I regard babies crying inconsolably on airplanes as my representatives. I too would wail at the top of my lungs, but luckily don't have to, because the little guys have it covered. I can just stand back and let the artists work.

Surprisingly few people who eat meat because it is natural will accept being eaten because it is natural.

Just because you are good and deserve to be happy.

This is hilarious. Iran attacked Egypt, so the US attacked Iraq, so Iran attacked Jordan. It is slapstick comedy with high explosives. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07...

Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Begins New Wave of Attacks on Iran, Military Says

nytimes.com

Definietely Orlando Furioso. Orlando, the mightiest of the paladins, has gone mad for love, and is off leveling mountains and uprooting forests. This lets the Saracens further into Europe than is at all safe, and the Saracen hero Rodomonte gets into Paris and just about destroys it single-handed.

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · 2w ago

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

This question is not "Is this ai?" but rather "Could this be done with ai?" If it could, pass by. It is a waste of time.

Uncensored marmot content! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/s...

‘OnlyMarms’: Marmots Are on OnlyFans to Raise Money for Research (Gift Article)

A team of scientists uploaded videos of the squirrel-like rodents in the wild on the adult-content site OnlyFans to raise money amid government budget cuts.

nytimes.com

I am surely sorely surly. I am so surly that contemplating the phrase "surely sorely surly" does not console me. Contemplation of Shirley Sorley-Surly, Assistant Secretary for Prevarication, Evasion, and Obfuscation, helps hardly at all.

I think that on mornings when you drop your toothbrush so that it slides down one side of the sink, up the other, and leaps with a gay twirl into the toilet, you should be allowed to call in, not sick, but cursed by God and liable to draw down affliction on all nearby.

The narrator or narrators of whatever I am reading at the moment. That's what happens anyway, except for the part where other people hear. It it has to be just one, Proust's Marcel. He's a vile little shit, but has a great eye.

Nanoraptor@nanoraptor.danamania.com · 2w ago

You suddenly get a narrator describing your life and there’s no way to turn it off - everyone can hear it. While shopping, at work, at home, with friends - the voice narrating your every move goes on. Who do you hope is the voice of this narrator?

Day 4 after the knee replacement I was unhappy because the pain got harder to manage till I found that I had forgotten to take my morning meds with the adhd and pain pills, and, as a result, forgot to take my afternoon pain pills. I am too disorganized to make it as a drug addict.

If I read Greek myths right, gods are those immortals that listen to prayers. Titans and the Hundred-Handed aren't enough like humans to understand prayers. Aphrodite is almost a Titan, being born of Uranus's severed testicles and Oceanos. I suspect that she listens to desires, not prayers.

Folding a fitted sheet conceals squalor, disarray, and design errors by means of patting, smoothing, and tucking away, and is thus a perfect civilized act.

Knee replacement three days ago. Startling absence of pain today. I had one bad night, slept fine last night, and have negligible pain today. It's almost scary. I am a little scared that the pain is hiding in the closet and will jump out at me.

It is strange outdoors. There is visible smoke, and a smell of burning wood. The sun is a huge orange ball. Canada is on fire again. I feel bad, not for us, but for the forest animals. We are being slowly killed by our climate change denying neighbors, who are our fault. The animals are guiltless.

Charles Cushion. Fuck you say. That is a 19th-century member of Parliament. Probably a Whig.

kim@kimmymonte.bsky.social · 4w ago

your baseball pitcher name is your grandfather’s first name and the last thing you bought i’ll go first mine’s Dominic Sandals

One summer night the moon was full, and we started running toward it to try to catch it, and ran right out of our little bedroom community into parts of the adjacent city we had never seen before. The dog ran along with us. Little kids would get tired and fall out on lawns and get left behind.

Stretching to get ready for a knee replacement come Friday, and it captures the full absurdity of practice. The leg I am practicing on bears very little resemblance to the leg I will jave on Friday. Friday's leg will be swollen, painful, and cut. That is what I will be stretching on Friday.

I'm a manly manly man. I'm manly thru and thru. I'm a manly manly man. You would not think it true. I'm manly till my eyeballs. I'm manly till my toe. I cannot carry my balls. I'm such a virile Joe. - after (very far after) John Lennon

"There is also the story of a baby mermaid who coveted a little human girl's doll and stole it, but was rebuked by her mother and sent to give the girl her necklace of pearls to atone for the theft." -- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies

Every news source is saying the Pfizer building near-collapse calls office-to-residence conversion into question, when private companies hired by construction companies inspecting those companies' work is what's questionable. The city should inspect.

Life would be more pleasant if there were such a thing as a single piece of chocolate.

Reading about the rapid spread of tick-borne diseases, I got to wondering why there is no medicine that makes your blood poisonous to ticks, as there is for dogs. Come to find out there is, but it's in testing. www.wired.com/story/pill-k...

A Pill That Kills Ticks Is a Promising New Weapon Against Lyme Disease

Your pets can already eat a chewable tablet for tick prevention. Now, a pill that paralyzes and kills ticks has shown positive results in a small human trial.

wired.com

I found an A.S. Byatt novel I haven't read, one of the later ones that is barely disguised fantasy. I have that 12-year-old feeling again: "For a day or so, I am free. I have everything I need. You all just carry on without me."

Passing the flower stand, I see a bunch of spider mums, which alas, are less spidery or motherly than could be wished. They do, however, lead me to spontaneously invent Spidermum, guardian of playgrounds.