🎁: I've come to call Gen Z the "Columbus generation," they're endlessly "discovering" old things. This time it's house parties.

‘I’ve Hit My Limit’: Some New Yorkers Opt for Fun at Home to Save Money (Gift Article)

When wages are low and activities are pricey, the frugal find new ways of socializing.

nytimes.com

Particularly for Christian students starting religious studies: The character of "Satan," a single malevolent entity, doesn't appear in Hebrew Bible, because that concept didn't exist in the near east until at least a century after the Septuagint translation into Greek.

Ryan Cordell@ryancordell.org · last yr.

What’s something that’s a banal observation in your field, but which really blows students’ minds the 1st time they encounter it? I’ll go 1st—when we talk about how technological history gets narrated & I say "no human being has ever lived in a historical period—they’ve only lived in the present"

Trump's covert surveillance of anti-ICE protesters is much worse than we thought. I dug into this and found that DHS agents secretly spied on over a dozen meetings of left-leaning groups, all protected by First Amendment. The details are unnerving. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2144...

Trump’s Secret Police Spying on Americans? It’s Darker than We Knew.

Court papers reveal that the Department of Homeland Security’s covert surveillance of anti-ICE groups is much darker than it first appeared. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America.

newrepublic.com

Everything is explicit here. ICE has been openly designated as Trump's paramilitary army in his war on blue America. The centrality of violence to all this is not disguised in the least. ICE recruitment glorifies military-style operations in urban strongholds. 5/ (h/t @lioneltrolling.bsky.social)

Look, if I, a biologist, have to read about how cattle operations are required to handle "specified risk materials" (brains and spinal columns) to prevent the spread of mad cow, and also refinery operational reports and spill containment design engineering forms, I'm reading smut for fun. Fuck off.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 20h ago

I am indeed a professor. I read ugh, theory. I read a lot of history; articles and books. Its because the stuff I read for work is so dark, and intense that I need something to change the gears. So hell yes, I read absolutely trashy romance novels, and I read smut. We can do it all, I believe.

Not 100% sure but I believe it was Englische Lieder des Mittelalters/English Songs of the Middle Ages by Sequentia

The old internet@theoldinternet.bsky.social · 2d ago

44 years ago today, the first CD was produced. What is the first CD you owned?

Happy to report that typing swear words does indeed get rid of ads on Pinterest Also, chicken carcass soup is not as horrifying as it sounds

I hate when I get halfway through an email and I realize I’m reading something no one bothered to write

We have just witnessed an incredible A/B test showing how plagiarism allegations at Cambridge University play out depending on how racialized the subject of the allegations are and it says nothing good about our society or the state of "race relations". O'Reilly is still in post.

Plagiarising professor stays in post and threatens student journalists

More than twelve pages of an article published under O’Reilly's name had been lifted almost word for word from two essays by one of his students

varsity.co.uk

Until there are real, actual, physical consequences, this regime will continue to destroy lives unabated. Screaming "but it's a crime" doesn't matter to criminals. They know. They also know no one has stopped them yet.

Debt Collective 🟥@debtcollective.bsky.social · 20h ago

Secretary McMahon just publicly confirmed that she will reverse some student debt payment credit debtors had received toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This is essentially reinstating student loans—which is illegal.

But at least they’ve just been given some $20 million worth of electroshock torture gloves.

Spencer Ackerman@attackerman.bsky.social · 23h ago

ICE and CBP are full of rapists and child predators. A new report details it in horrific detail.

I wrote a thing for @newrepublic.com last year about how the secret to Zohran’s success was literally just “being normal,” and every day he just keeps turning up the “be a normal person” dial to 11 newrepublic.com/article/1979...

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · yesterday

Love how this dude discovered the cheat codes of "what if I listened to constituents" and "what if I modeled good behavior" and "maybe I behave like a normal person should." These are apparently dark secrets that have been hidden from other politicians.

From an essay on the 1970s I wrote a while back:

RE: The Atlantic, a few months after this issue a guy in El Paso went on a rampage targeting people he thought looked "Mexican"; he shot 45 and killed 23. when I read some journalists lines from his manifesto and Frum's essay and asked them who wrote which, they couldn't tell, I couldn't blame them

Hell, request my book be carried by as many libraries as possible! In Canada, authors receive funding on a yearly basis every time their book is checked out of a library! For small independent authors, it can be a better source of income than selling individual books, and it costs you nothing!

Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 4w ago

Someone said to me, "I'm sorry but I got your book from a library." Nobody should ever apologise for that. You read my book! That's brilliant! I grew up hanging out in libraries and the idea of a world without them fills me with dread. Without libraries, authors, like readers, will only suffer.

This is one of those arguments that sounds like slopulism but is actually, if anything, understated. 56% of Colorado river water goes to GROWING FEED FOR LIVESTOCK IN THE DESERT.

mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 2d ago

STOP GROWING FUCKING LETTUCE IN THE DESERT THIS IS ACTUALLY A VERY EASY PROBLEM TO SOLVE

Going through my photos looking for a couple to put on a wall to fill some space. This won't be one of them, but it would make a great poster nonetheless.

from German Barbiturat, which probably comes from the name Barbara plus the root we see in uric and urine. Yes: phenobarbital could be said to mean ‘a vision of Barbie’s piss’. Maury should feel grateful he just got the doll. 28/29

Oh, and phenobarbital? It’s from pheno- from Greek φαίνω phainō ‘come to light, manifest’ (as seen in epiphany and also, lightly changed, in Tiffany, which has exactly the same roots as theophany ‘manifestation of a deity’), plus barbital, which is from barbiturate, 27/29

Instead, Barbara is Latin for ‘foreign woman’ (‘foreign man’ is barbarus); the vector for its use as a name is Saint Barbara—who also, of course, gave her name to Santa Barbara, which is just a bit more than seventy miles up the California coast from Malibu. 16/29

“Malibu. Barbie. Café,” Jess said. “It looks like a Malibu Barbie playhouse,” Maury said. “Also, it looks exactly like several nightmares I have had.” 9/29

"Barbie doll," etymologically, could be said to mean "foreign woman, gift from God," but in a cute, affectionate way. I'll explain:

James Harbeck@sesquiotic.bsky.social · 3d ago

“How was your evening out on The Esplanade yesterday?” I asked Maury. I was sitting with him and Jess in Domus Logogustationis, and he was looking like he’d seen and done things he’d rather not have. “Rebarbative,” Maury said. 1/

Indécence ? Dinguerie totale ! youtu.be/iknNk_Esdl4?... Wendy a commis quelques duos avec Lemmy.

Plasmatics - Masterplan (Perkins Palace, June 17th, 1981)

YouTube video by Plasmatics

youtu.be

Charlie Angus@charlieangus104.bsky.social · 2d ago

Crash Kills Five were a great Toronto punk band. My band L'étranger played a gig with them once in a bizarre stunt gig - a "legal fundraiser" to free the Plasmatics when they were charged with public indecency. Singer Don Pyle has a great new autobiography. www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_qm...

Bet you didn't imagine the Well Actually Humorless Killjoy would be one of the first Bluesky jobs lost to A.I.

14 hours later and my mentions are still full of angry treatises about badly behaved cyclists. Bike lanes are not a reward for good cyclist behavior! They are infrastructure proven to make cities safer for ALL ROAD USERS. Whatever way cyclists have wronged you is irrelevant to the discussion!

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 3d ago

Every conversation about bike lanes is like: "Car crashes kill a huge number of people every day, including pedestrians, cyclists, & car occupants. Good bike infrastructure has been shown to make everyone safer (& doesn't increase congestion)." "But sometimes cyclists break rules & hit people!"

I’m here to chew gum and study grammar and I’m gumn’t

When I open YouTube in a browser on my phone (without being logged into an account), this is what I see. But yeah, that video I posted back in 2008 of my now-deceased cat is corrupting the community.

My appeal was denied, no YouTube account for me. 👎 All the notices say “channel” but since I wasn’t actively uploading or broadcasting, this is just a complete shut-down of my ability to access YouTube at all via my personal Google account.

Merrick Monroe 💜🖤@merrickmonroe.com · last wk.

I woke up to an email that my YT channel had been removed. I have had this account for nigh 20 years, same as my email, and I don’t even remember the last time I posted a video to it—whatever I posted was CERTAINLY not sexual. But, I’m a sex worker, so my existence goes against community standards.