My favourite film actually is 'two unemployed actors go on holiday, discover the cottage is awful, and then come back again'. The real challenge would be to make it sound exciting.

Dan Hon@danhon.com · 2h ago

Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title: A chief technology officer is worried about keeping his spreadsheets private.

“How will we ever replace them?” FUND. THE. ARTS.

The best way to honor the two who have left us recently, imo, is to keep being as gay as possible

Live Aid. I think my mum did a sponsored walk (pushing me in my navy & red pushchair)

Black Aziz Anansi@blackazizanansi.blacksky.app · 4d ago

What's the first historic event that you remember?

Dolly Parton rose from poverty to stardom. She gave $500 to every student in her hometown who finished high school; she built hospitals & bald eagle preserves; her Imagination Library has gifted 300 million books to children. Roger Ebert met her and came away thinking she was a literal angel. RIP.

titties at half mast, everyone

with alt text. this is so beautiful 💕

Joel@itsjoels.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.

(1/2) Since I haven't seen anyone else mention this one... It was an open secret that Dolly Parton secretly funded a massive number of southern high school bands, most especially predominantly Black high schools. A marching band member in her youth, Dolly never forgot the joy that playing snare drum

Bo Thompson@gaudipern.bsky.social · 3d ago

(1/3) With Dolly Parton's passing, I want to put good words on the wind for her. Feel free to quote reply with your own. Dolly became the single largest donor for the Moderna COVID vaccine because of a chance encounter and friendship with a Vanderbilt researcher Dr. Naji Abumrad years earlier. She

After the first few times it's just not a big deal 🤷

Brandon Bird@brandonbird.bsky.social · 4d ago

the way of the future | patreon.com/lubchansky

“Attacks on LGBTQ+ health are a threat to all”: A new Lancet Editorial. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I learned the Bible the right way: looking up the passages referenced in nineteeth-century novels. Or Good Omens.

Jonathan Dresner@jondresner.bsky.social · last wk.

I learned the Bible the old fashioned way, by ignoring the sermon while I read the weekly portion. I learned the Gospels, which aren't part of my Bible, the other old fashioned way, listening to Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. Oh, and Linus quotes.

WHY am I rewatching American Vandal? When you're immersed in it, you barely notice amazing lines like 'He didn't know how they put the poop in the Vonnegut piniata!'

Make stuff. Do your hobbies. Geek out with your weird friends. Practice arts and crafts. Every society that ever burned to the ground left behind only the handicrafts, and every society saved from the brink was saved only by arts. Do not give up the joy of creating.

I spent most of that Tolkien biopic yelling and pointing at the screen. Actually very clever to choose the mock-medieval/ Tudor-pastiche villages of Port Sunlight & Thornton Hough as a cultural context for Tolkien himself

Brandon Bird@brandonbird.bsky.social · 2w ago

Recognizing a filming location in real life = cool Recognizing a location from your own life in a film = weird

I met Jason Arday in induction week in my first permanent academic job, at the University of Roehampton. We had been appointed during the same mass hiring, and spent a week together in more or less useless training sessions that felt like components of some kind of deranged summer camp. 1/

So embarrassing when people think the point of reading a novel is to know the plot, so a summary is just as good. The plot isn’t important, you rube. You absolute simpleton. The point of reading a novel is to find out what the characters are eating and start thinking about what you want for dinner.

This is so right on the systemic level. On a nearly unrelated, personal level, AI just isn't nearly as useful for nearly as many things as we're being told, and a lot of people do themselves and the development of their particular skills a disservice by depending on AI.

I don't think individual use of generative ai is inconsequential, but I do think that the correct approach to dealing with individual use is to strike at rj systemic issue. Otherwise, we're making the same mistakes as vegans — having a lifestyle battle over a systemic issue.

Same. But so much more... never driven a car. never owned a microwave or used one for myself never owned a dishwasher never used a tumble-drier never been ice-skating never been on a roller-coaster

John Self@john-self.bsky.social · 3w ago

What mundane token of modern life have you never done? I’ve never had a takeaway delivered.

Me, three seasons of the year.

Frog and Toad Bot@frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 3w ago

Toad walked up and down a few times. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head close to the ground and said loudly, “Now seeds, start growing!”

Exactly this. They’re not *new* ideas to me, they’re the same shit ideas the right wing press has been attempting to shove down my throat for decades. I’m not ignorant of them; I despise and reject them.

Karen K. Ho@karenho.bsky.social · 3w ago

it's always odd when "you should expose yourself to more diverse ideas" always means a certain kind of conservatism instead of like, Indigenous art, new fusion foods, math paradoxes, or the Dvorak keyboard layout

“Why are you banging your head against the wall?” asked Frog. “I hope that if I bang my head against the wall, it will help me to think of a story,” said Toad.

Bede's World! Bede's World! Party time! Venerable!

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude

I agree strongly with this -- in that difficult moment, the possibility of collective effort was conceivable. Not everybody felt it, but many did. I think the political class did not like this one bit.

Dave Andress@davidandress.bsky.social · 4w ago

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

Rejecting LLMs isn’t about rejecting their utility or failing to be aware of their power —it’s about rejecting that political project; born out of an awareness that any use of these machines at all promulgates that project and assembles me into adjacent responsibility for its commission.