For me the worst is when it offers to summarize the latest chats with friends. Um, no. I am talking to people I like. I want to read all 57 messages in this thread; that's the point. Even if I've been away for two weeks, AI doesn't know what I think the important bits are.

Helen Czerski@helenczerski.bsky.social · 5d ago

As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.

I have so many questions.

Sam King@samcking.bsky.social · last wk.

Today’s Italy update: we went in a church and there was a big inflatable bug

Large Francis Building, from @tkingfisher.com 's Daggerbound

@tkingfisher.com 's Large Francis Building

The whole thread is great, but this particular line is even funnier with no context

Seeadler@seeadler.bsky.social · 3w ago

Good news! Hurricanes don't have bones!

@tkingfisher.com , in the halcyon days of Twitter, I seem to remember you sometimes resharing posts from someone trying to grow blue beans. Do you know if he's still around and beaning? Our community garden has produced *spectacularly* blue beans by free cross-pollination this year.

I need everyone to appreciate this absolute CHONK of a bristlefly.

fuck yeah apocalypse sun is out, shining down on us in fearful red, and I can play the game "am I low energy today because of the heat wave, the wildfire smoke, maybe i caught covid and didn't notice, because I work too much, or is it because I ate uncooked vegetables and got a parasite"

Any time I come across an article about a weird form of organized crime I think of @ilyenasylph.bsky.social @niq.aeli.net and @rahaeli.bsky.social and how it would fit into their version of Gotham

Inside the Food Truck Mafia Wreaking Havoc Around the National Mall

Turf wars. Food and fire hazards. $15 ice-cream cones. How an organized network of unlicensed food trucks took over America's Front Lawn.

washingtonian.com

@tkingfisher.com thank you, the exciting new collection of phobias I'm acquiring is sincerely made up for by the phrase "patented caterpillar inflator".

Mis-overheard at work: "My thumbs are very confusing!"

Hey, my Christian, pals, can we not equate the Hebrew Scriptures to "the bad, angry god" please? Judaism has a long tradition of wrestling with those passages and is not generally in favor of war.

Rob DenBleyker@robdenbleyker.com · 5mo ago

the chicago pope is over on twitter being christlike and everyone's biblesplaining him in the replies lol

YESSSS

Professionally Nosy@professionallynosy.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Couldn’t have said it better.

Someone has written a kabbalist fantasy Western, and someone else has requested it, and that makes me very happy this morning. (Merkabah Rider, by Edward M. Erdelac. I can't speak to whether it's any good, and in particular I want to check how he handles Indigenous people, but it exists.)

Congratulations, you have discovered the happiest owl ☺️ all curses are now lifted

Please soothe your soul with this footage of an enraged muppet being treated at the wild muppet center.

My emotions are so weird right now. "Oh, I'm doing well! I'm actually really inspired by the resistance in Minnesota right now, and I'm doing real work in my own community and even finding some time to do some cooking and...

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

ARE YOU A NON-MINNESOTAN WHO WANTS IDEAS OF STUFF TO DO TO HELP MINNESOTA RESIST FASCIST TYRANNY? Have I got a blog post for you! With additional advice for how to get ready in case tyranny shows up at YOUR doorstep next! naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/h...

How To Help if You are Outside Minnesota

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you more or less understand the situation in Minnesota and I don’t have to explain it to you! That said, I do have a section of lo…

naomikritzer.com

Overheard in the office: "Technical Services is where furniture goes to die, [Department Head]!"

I've been using LibroFM for audiobooks and other than a bafflingly terrible search function, it's amazing. I love that they're doing this partnership!

Libro.fm@libro.fm · 10mo ago

Learn more and donate: blog.libro.fm/readers-givi...

Food Not Bombs got a donation of 10 crates of bananas becaise someone in the produce department made a mistake. LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY

Normally I have a limited amount of patience for art and design books that do unnecessarily art things with the layout or structure of their exhibition catalogs. But MOMA in 1968, you're doin' it right. This is an exhibition of machines in art, and it is bound in *steel*.

Ayep. Growing herbs is one thing that can actually save you money, since they're expensive, highly perishable, and usually sold in more of the herb than you actually want at once unless you have a large family. But that's if you have the budget to buy fresh herbs in the first place.

G. Willow Wilson@gwillow.me · 11mo ago

On Threads, the usual suspects are telling ppl about to lose SNAP benefits to just start a garden. As a gardener, I had to laugh. You need at LEAST an acre of land to feed a family of 4. Start-up costs are enormous. But yes, subsistence farming on the balcony of your rental apartment is the answer

Ditto. I give approximately 1/12th of a fuck about the White House as a historical object, but the utter hypocrisy of blowing up one of the major Rah Patriotism symbols while being the Rah Patriotism party is just...what. He is good at propaganda when he wants to be and this is the opposite.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 11mo ago

I can't really explain fully why this is the thing of all things that got my jaw on the floor but I guess it's such a literal symbol and also such a jaw dropping amount of money while small businesses are struggling to survive the tariffs Such a visible "go fuck yourself"

This book was signed, yearbook-style, by several dozen people involved in the Nürnberg war crimes tribunals. I have already found records for "Alice E. Lecht, Capt WAC (MB) (small but mighty)" and "Helen Ann Richardson, (the girl and "pest" next door in room #41)

The author of this biography of a certain terrible person clearly learned a fact and is now gleefully taking every chance to refer to his subject as a "failed chicken farmer from Bavaria".

"The name xenotime is written originally kenotime from the Greek words kenós (κενός) 'vain' and timē (τιμή) 'honor', akin to 'vainglory'. It was coined by French mineralogist François Sulpice Beudant as a rebuke of another scientist, Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius...