doing yard work feels like playing as the Reapers in Mass Effect (not good)

hey everybody, Nietzsche here, I am going to have to take a step back from content creation because lately I've been noticing that our writing tools are also working on our thoughts. Getting a lot of dopamine hits from this Hansen Writing Ball, so I need to pause and reevaluate.

why is it that the conversation about atheism always centers on the fact that Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were jerks in 2007?

i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

watch any early season of Top Model. MAGA makes it easy to forget that the rest of the country has undergone a revolution of manners.

Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 14h ago

So this is basically one of the entry points to becoming a reactionary

petite-bourgeoisie implies the existence of boys' husky bourgeoisie

I can't be bothered when people start picking apart apologies on the internet. either what they did was bad enough that no apology will suffice or the act of apologizing is more important than the tiny rhetorical details. you either want to be reconciled or not — pick one.

Wilfred Bion won’t let you have your ball back.

Francois Hartog told me this section of Memories of Odysseus was actually about you.

Realizing that Levinas would have been useful for Speculative Whiteness

I think a lot of this militarized Sinophobia is top-down stuff, from Pentagon planners and their associated think-tanks, to justify the kind of military budgets they got used to in the Cold War.

the sign of the cuckold looked more like this, per Ruth Goodman. if you waggled your fingers, it was the "asses' ears" gesture, meaning "stupid." maybe that's how the bunny ears started, but I can't find a source proving it for certain.

The Ghost Monk@theghostmonk.bsky.social · last wk.

The habit of sticking up two fingers behind a guy's head during group photos has as its origin 'the horns of the cuckold' - an insult suggesting the man has an unfaithful wife and and is therefore unmanly. This 1815 #satire implies rampant cuckoldry among the supposedly genteel. #WyrdWednesday

Most of Delany's work, including his notorious DHALGREN. A lot of Alan Moore's work, including the novel of his I've read (VOICE OF THE FIRE). Olga Tokarczuk's (alas) THE BOOKS OF JACOB (trans. Jennifer Croft), DICTIONARY OF THE KHAZARS by Milorad Pavić (trans. Christina Pribićević-Zorić).

aaron boothby @ellipticalnight.bsky.social · yesterday

this is about gene wolfe and I am hijacking it to suggest sharing your own favourite texts that are so thick, so viscous

everyone still talks about the importance of critiquing Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, but I have never in my life met someone who is a big Laclau and Mouffe-head. it's like Fukuyama's End of History book in that way.

happy "There Will Come Soft Rains" day to all who celebrate

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · yesterday

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

Perhaps my favorite haunted house story of all time, and the one I go back to the most.

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · yesterday

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

perfection

D.D.B.Torres@ddbtorres.bsky.social · yesterday

a small goblin from the Misty Mountains -{ #art | #illustration | #fantasy }-

no, really, we're going to take the gloves off, this is it, we're taking the gloves off, now it's time to take the gloves off, ok, just you wait for the gloves, they're going off, watch out we're taking the gloves off, oh now we're out of ammo.

Sky Marchini@sky.skymarchini.net · yesterday

"US has used 'virtually all' PrSM and ATACM munitions" we are out of ammo www.reuters.com/world/us-has...

they want to humiliate you. it's not enough that you have to knuckle under. they need you to feel bad and resign yourself to this system. they won't even let you take out a loan to do something that might have value that can't be measured in money.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

DSA-affiliated candidate Alex Scheel has my vote for Washington's 10th congressional district.

Werner Herzog: "Nature here is vile and base... Of course, there's a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing; they just screech in pain."

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d ago

Trump: "Look at the blue cities. What do they have in common? They're all dirty. They're filthy dirty. Their streets are dirty. Their streets smell. Their storefronts are broken. Their trees are all gross. Everything about the place is dirty. It's really all of them."

I keep coming across two kinds of theologian: (i) Dietrich Angst is a pantheist who sought to prove that God and the universe are both dead. (ii) Fr. Normie emphasizes faith, hope, and charity in his response to Brother Regular, who focuses instead on hope, faith, and charity.

there goes my plan to run around in the yard with squirt guns...

Flyaway (she/her)@flyaway.bsky.social · 2d ago

The fires destroying a large area of Spokane and too many other places in the west and northwest US are causing very bad air quality. If you're in this area I hope you're safe from fire – but don't spend too much time outdoors.

if you want an example of a false need a la Marcuse, look no further than a guy who "needs" to quickly create a very specific bespoke image for a game that he made up for fun with his friends.

Gretchen Felker-Martin PRE ORDER CHIMERA 2.16.27 🍉@scumbelievable.bsky.social · 2d ago

"I'm entitled to whatever I want whenever I want it for any reason and I don't care what satisfying these urges does to me or the world" well okay dude, seems like there's something deeper going on here, but that's just my take

wikipedia portraits with swag: "Father Impatient," Greek antifascist resistance fighter

there are like 32 responses to this saying "he means he wants to bring NAZIS to the site." I don't want Bluesky to be twitter, and it actually has gotten better, but the same-iness is a problem. I want a site with a group of journalists, a group of comedians, a group of Brooklyn socialists, etc.

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."

I want to write an essay about sword and sorcery as the literature of combined and uneven development.

when you check the date and suddenly it's August

Obsession Movie Clip - Nice Date (2026)

YouTube video by Rotten Tomatoes Coming Soon

youtu.be

often it seems like AI writing slips past readers at first glance because we're trained to make meaning out of competently produced prose. you see an AI say, "he's as stubborn as a sawhorse," or whatever, and you create the connection, but then when you look closer it feels inapt if not nonsensical.

I think there's a whole posthuman / poststructuralist tendency that would be thrilled if an absolutely inhuman being produced literary language better than any biological homo sapiens but even someone ideologically primed in that can't find anything but kitsch in AI cultural production.