One of the great joys of my adult life has been realizing that I can just pick up a new skill every so often, take a fun little class in it weekly for a year or two, and simply enjoy meeting people and getting medium proficient and not attempting to become professional in it at all!

you can't smoke in the frickin' maternity ward anymore, I'd call that a win

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · yesterday

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

I'm weirdly finding that as I get older, it's easier to learn new skills, which is the opposite of what I thought was supposed to happen. I don't think we're giving enough credit to a lifetime of built skills. When new skills have overlap w/existing ones it greases the wheels for the new.

Gossip and talk of the dead is actually an unspoken feature of funerals. I think the saying should be “Live how you want to be remembered.”

There is no version of yourself you could become that would satisfy the people who hate you. So you might as well be who you are.

So exhausted already by the meme that the "tells" of gen AI writing are when something is structurally aping the way a decent professional writer writes, rather than when it's meaningless word salad. (You will take my em dashes, sets of three, and lack of typos from my cold, dead hands.)

Julia Serano@juliaserano.bsky.social · 4d ago

nothing shouts "I don't read much" more than when you equate em-dashes with AI. as Kat says here: 1) AI uses em-dashes BECAUSE AUTHORS USE THEM & AI IS TRAINED ON OUR WRITINGS! 2) "AI checkers" are complete bunk (just another AI bullshit machine), 3) this is not a "list of three" haha

Adhere to the silver rule: be a reflection. Treat people how they treat others. Those who are trying their best deserve kindness. Those who are bullies deserve punching in the face.

animal from the international network@animalonline.bsky.social · 5d ago

you should, in most aspects of life, be kind to people and willing to step up and apologize. but not with fascists, not with general ghouls, not with transphobes, not with racists, not with businesses, not with elites, not with anyone with a whiff of power or malevolence

My take is i wish people remembered theres a word for a "post-credit scene" and it's "stinger". Marvel movies have stingers.

Sprinkling around those sincere compliments like fairy dust is how how we improve society for everyone ✨

people often say "we don't deserve dogs," but you know what? kind, loving people do deserve dogs. it's the shitty people who don't.

An excellent old professor of mine added me on Facebook something like fifteen years ago, and it’s been great to get to know her a little better, but now she’s posting with dementia and it’s really hard to watch. It didn’t occur to me, at the dawn of the internet, that we would watch each other age

My day job is in tech. My appliances? All dumb as hell. My stove is just five knobs. It doesn't even have a clock in it. AND I PREFER IT THAT WAY.

Jon of The North@krauza.bsky.social · last wk.

I don't want a "Smart Fridge" that orders milk for me. I want a fridge that lasts 25 years and doesn't have a privacy policy that allows it to share my late-night snacking habits with my health insurance provider.

Out of all the cataclysms we suffer, pandemics alone deny us our most important coping mechanism: each other. To gather, to seek comfort in each other's company, becomes deadly--a vector of the disaster, rather than shelter from it. And yes, that very obviously fucks with you.

Ash B@bookofoak.bsky.social · last wk.

Pre-Covid, I always thought the 1918 flu memories were just overshadowed by WWI. But now, it’s clearly something about pandemics that just do things to collective memory. I don’t know whether this is unique to modernity but it‘s clear that humans react differently to this type of trauma.

you can go to the big local music festival after an eight year hiatus and your back is going to feel fine. you don’t have to worry about wearing your special shoes or watching how much you drink, it’s fine. and there won’t be kids there saying “this festival started when I was nine.” it’s all fine

Tolkien: In my book, I invented the One Ring as a cautionary tale. Tech Company: At long last, we have created the One Ring from the classic fantasy novel Don't Create the One Ring.

"winged eyeliner is so millennial" "ballet flats are so millennial" well I'm a millennial so. Im just gonna keep on keeping on

(to elaborate - removing something from the orbit of profit doesn't solve the question of how exactly you allocate resources)

"Why do we even have a fire department? Fires aren't a huge problem. If something catches on fire someone just comes and puts it out anyway" /s Normally I try not to post about American politics, but not caring enough about preventative measures is a universal political foible.

Kari Dru@karidru.bsky.social · 3w ago

This ultimately got so bad because the cdc stopped tracing several pathogens that aren't usually a major issue BECAUSE WE TRACED THEM. Trump's cdc is the villain of this piece and they're hoping we don't notice.

If only a dedicated group of scientists had warned us about the record heat, torrential flooding, continental scale wildfires, and apocalyptic orange skies

Write to your MPP and let them know how climate change is affecting you, your family, your capacity to work, your quality of life.

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ola.org

honestly wildfire smoke was not even on my climate change radar until a few years ago. endless heat waves? sure. evil ticks from texas that make you allergic to burgers? seems horrible, but okay. I just stepped outside and choked on air. this is really going to cut into my grilling schedule

unironically though i looked outside today and thought “wow today would be a great day to play STALKER 2” and then as i was talking to The Ninth in-game a storm system blew in with the same atmospheric lighting as we have today irl

bree 🇨🇦@goose.ski · 3w ago

what it’s like in toronto today

My friend: Wanna watch this movie with me? It's set during World War 2 and-- Me: No. Friend: No? But why? It looks good! Me: It's gonna make me mad seeing them get history wrong. Friend: They might get it right! Me: That woman has a stargazer lily in her hair. They weren't cultivated til 1974.

Your non toxic masculinity post of the evening

Is there any more relatable feeling in programming than "Well... I fixed it... but I don't like HOW."

Had to explain the owner of a bakery I once worked at. Couldn't remember the word "Francophile" so what came out of my mouth was "She's like a weeb but for France.... a oui-ouiaboo"

if the UI and UX suck or features people want to use aren’t there I promise you it’s not as good an alternative as you think most users just want to get things done on software that works well, and yelling at them about how they’re wrong to want what they want doesn’t actually help them or you

Mainstream Respectable opinion is that people joking about a bad person's death represents a culture of cruelty, but really it represents a culture of impunity. It's a coping mechanism for watching someone do evil their whole life and never seeing consequences

well okay so the english won against the norwegians but in only a few days theyll have to face the french. anyway thats quite enough about September 25th 1066, lets look at some football news

Don’t live your life so that when you die people say “oh I was hoping it’d be the other guy, but I’ll take it”