* * * IMPORTANT * * *

What is Gonzo? We asked three biologists.

Plus, Muppet legend Dave Goelz on Gonzo's history and what he means to people.

popsci.com

A Brief History of Women Have Too Much Freedom 🧵

someone in the billionaire gc is like "no really guys i think it will be fine, it's not like the rest of us are banging chinese spies" and there are no emoji reactions and briefly, Everyone is typing

Ok folks, you’ve got six weeks to make “vector hammer” the word of 2026.

Erin McKean@emckean.bsky.social · 18h ago

There's been a favorable reaction to my suggestion to replace "AI agent" with "vector hammer" so I'm making a meme to push it along more

Another new (to me) word!

Pavel@spavel.bsky.social · 15h ago

NVidia's credit rating downgraded to "shonky"

I hate to be overcritical, AI-slop-providing site, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not convinced your picture of "Nelson Mandela Reading in Prison Cell" is 100% historically accurate.

MILESTONES IN AVIATION

Jess Miers 🦝@jmiers230.bsky.social · yesterday

Apparently the drone delivery companies aren't grounded. Which means for the first time in aviation history there are currently more burritos than planes in American airspace.

(Source unknown.)

I've made the scholarly discovery of a lifetime! The first edition of Boswell's Life, 1:55, quotes Johnson's Latin diploma. The text says he owns "the orignal." People have assumed it's a typo for "original," but I know better: BOSWELL TELLS US IN SO MANY WORDS THAT HE OWNS A MOOSE.

finally! the prophecy has come true: your email *cannot* find me. i am free

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 3d ago

oh no outlook is down no email for us, what will we do

Oh no. Cut off from work email. How terrible. I’m very upset.

Is Microsoft Outlook down? Thousands report email access issues in US

Thousands of reports said the Microsoft services were not working properly on Thursday afternoon.

newsweek.com

*Winnie the Pooh trying to hide his increasing disappointment as he reads more about the honeypot situation*

Look at the bright side: only 50% of his known affairs were with agents of hostile governments!

Jensen Huang Said to Have Had Relationship With Nvidia Executive Who Reports to Him

Mr. Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, is already facing scrutiny over an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who U.S. intelligence determined was a Chinese spy.

nytimes.com

Yeah, but are ANY professors really human when you get right down to it?

We did it!!! U! S! A! U! S! A! U! S! A!

This voluptuous squirrel feasting on found frosting is the future we all could have. We just have to will it enough.

I'm about to teach Haywood's "Fantomina" for the first time in more than a decade, I think.

So @petersokolowski.bsky.social's forthcoming book has had a glowing starred review on Kirkus for HOURS, but you haven't ordered your advance copy yet, have you? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?

BY DEFINITION | Kirkus Reviews

Everything you wanted to know about the dictionary but didn’t ask.

kirkusreviews.com

Why, yes, that IS a rusty nail on a chair in the corridor of the English department. Not sure what I expected.

Don’t crowd! Don’t push! Form a nice, orderly queue and submit your punchlines one at a time.

Shoot this into my veins

Just got my hands on the 39 CDs’ worth of Dylan’s 1976 tour. I expect to make it through the lot by mid-February. All work will just have to wait.

This one-paper-graded-every-other-day pace works well at this stage of my career.

I assume @nytpitchbot.bsky.social gets some kind of royalty payment each time an article like this appears.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · last wk.

In deep-red Texas, conservatives are trying to make sense of what just happened to their longtime Republican stronghold. We visited a men’s bible study as they gathered for the first time since the state flipped in the midterm election.

I think we can all agree that the crystal-clear lesson from Tuesday’s stunning election is that each of us has been 100% right about everything all along.

Can you imagine wandering a bookshop and seeing a book you’ve written on this cart? I don’t think I could ever recover.

Uber driver’s license plate looks like a particularly cruel exercise in paleography when you get to the chapter on minims.

6. To understand Trump's anality (what we might call, "the anality of evil") it's useful to return to a great but now forgotten thinker who applied Freudian insights to social/political analysis: Norman O. Brown, the author of Life Against Death (1959).

Read WHAT WE ARE SEEKING! It's about plants and animals and humans and aliens and AI and how they blur into each other at the edges. Also about queer survival in hostile cultures. Ebook & hardcover available now, or you can preorder the paperback coming out in May us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

What We Are Seeking

A New Yorker Best Book of 2026From Cameron Reed, the acclaimed author of The Fortunate Fall, comes a soaring novel of queer hope and transformation, perfect ...

us.macmillan.com

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · last wk.

You should welcome all the new people to Bluesky by TELLING US ALL ABOUT YOUR BOOK AND DONT FORGET A LINK SO WE CAN BUY IT. Bluesky, the app for books.

Coming Soon (not soon enough) & I think we finally have the official title… The Actual History of Actual Play: Why We Love Other People’s Roleplaying Games (MIT 2028) Sign up for preorder details: www.actualplaybook.com

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · last wk.

You should welcome all the new people to Bluesky by TELLING US ALL ABOUT YOUR BOOK AND DONT FORGET A LINK SO WE CAN BUY IT. Bluesky, the app for books.