Shared posts
official-linguistics-post: deadmomjokes: xj...
What I love about this, though, is that the little nails will become an outline of where the water was. It will trace the shape, show someone later what was there once upon a time. It will be a testament to how much this guy wanted to capture the amazing things he saw and experienced, and though it will never truly keep it, it will hold a memory, something that in itself is beautiful and worthy of experience. We cannot describe the indescribable, but we can trace its outline, give some idea of what we experienced.
official linguistics post
depsidase:
RoslynHappy Halloween! 👻
Steve Jobs Email Reply Generator
RoslynAs close as we will get to the real thing 😢
Fair warning: there goes the day.
Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader (16 Oct 2024)
RoslynHear hear!
Today's links
- You should be using an RSS reader: The one thing you can choose to do that will make your internet life better and make the internet better for everyone else, too.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
You should be using an RSS reader (permalink)
No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.
I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"
It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."
There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.
I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:
https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest
I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c
Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:
But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…
Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.
And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.
This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.
It's RSS.
RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.
I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.
Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/
Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.
Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.
Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).
Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).
Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.
Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.
Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).
But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.
You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).
RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.
And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.
Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.
Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.
My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:
Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):
Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.
It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.
But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.
Hey look at this (permalink)
* You Can't Make Friends With The Rockstars https://www.wheresyoured.at/rockstars/
- Tom Lehrer Discovers Australia (And Vice Versa) https://taylorjessen.blogspot.com/2024/10/tom-lehrer-tom-lehrer-discovers.html
-
Conceptual models of space colonization https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/10/conceptual-models-of-space-col.html
This day in history (permalink)
#20yrsago Sony bullies Retropod off the net https://web.archive.org/web/20041018040446/http://www.retropod.com/
#15yrsago This Side of Jordan – Violent jazz age novel by Charles M Schulz’s son Monte https://memex.craphound.com/2009/10/16/this-side-of-jordan-violent-jazz-age-novel-by-charles-m-schulzs-son-monte/
#10yrsago FBI chief demands an end to cellphone security https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/politics/fbi-director-in-policy-speech-calls-dark-devices-hindrance-to-crime-solving.html
#10yrsago Please, Disney: put back John’s grandad’s Haunted Mansion tombstone https://thedisneyblog.com/2014/10/16/petition-to-return-a-lost-tombstone-to-the-haunted-mansion/
#10yrsago How Microsoft hacked trademark law to let it secretly seize whole businesses https://www.wired.com/2014/10/microsoft-pinkerton/
#10yrsago If you think you’ve anonymized a data set, you’re probably wrong https://web.archive.org/web/20141014172827/http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/
#10yrsago The lost cyber-crayolas of the mid-1990s https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/16/the-lost-cyber-crayolas-of-the-mid-1990s/
#5yrsago “The People’s Money”: A crisp, simple, thorough explanation of how government spending is paid for https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/10/the-peoples-money-part-1.html
#5yrsago What it’s like to have Apple rip off your successful Mac app https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/16/what-its-like-to-have-apple-rip-off-your-successful-mac-app/
#5yrsago Blizzard suspends college gamers from competitive play after they display “Free Hong Kong” poster https://www.vice.com/en/article/three-college-hearthstone-protesters-banned-for-six-months/
#5yrsago Terrified of bad press after its China capitulation, Blizzard cancels NYC Overwatch event https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-15/blizzard-cancels-overwatch-event-as-it-tries-to-contain-backlash
#5yrsago A San Diego Republican operator ran a massive, multimillion-dollar Facebook scam that targeted boomers https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-subscription-trap-free-trial-scam-ads-inc
#5yrsago Britain’s unbelievably stupid, dangerous porn “age verification” scheme is totally dead https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/uk-government-abandons-planned-porn-age-verification-scheme/
#5yrsago Not only is Google’s auto-delete good for privacy, it’s also good news for competition https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/16/not-only-is-googles-auto-delete-good-for-privacy-its-also-good-news-for-competition/
#5yrsago Edward Snowden on the global war on encryption: “This is our new battleground” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/15/encryption-lose-privacy-us-uk-australia-facebook
#5yrsago In Kansas’s poor, sick places, hospitals and debt collectors send the ailing to debtor’s prison https://features.propublica.org/medical-debt/when-medical-debt-collectors-decide-who-gets-arrested-coffeyville-kansas
#5yrsago Want a ride in a Lyft? Just sign away your right to sue if they kill, maim, rape or cheat you https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/16/want-a-ride-in-a-lyft-just-sign-away-your-right-to-sue-if-they-kill-maim-rape-or-cheat-you/
#5yrsago #RedForEd rebooted: Chicago’s teachers are back on strike https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/union-strike-chicago-teachers/
#1yrago One of America's most corporate-crime-friendly bankruptcy judges forced to recuse himself https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- OKFN Tech We Want Online Summit (Remote), Oct 18
https://okfn.org/en/events/the-tech-we-want-online-summit/ -
SOSS Fusion (Atlanta), Oct 22
https://sossfusion2024.sched.com/speaker/cory_doctorow.1qm5qfgn -
Eagle Eye Books (Decatur), Oct 23
https://eagleeyebooks.com/event/2024-10-23/cory-doctorow -
TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/ -
International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme -
ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (Digitalia)
https://digitalia.fm/744/ -
Was There Ever An Old, Good Internet? (David Graeber Institute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Jlxx5TboE -
Go Fact Yourself
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/
Latest books (permalink)
- The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
-
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
-
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
-
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
-
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
-
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
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"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
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"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
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"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books (permalink)
- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
-
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Today's progress: 818 words (64779 words total).
-
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
-
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025
Latest podcast: Spill, part one (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/10/06/spill-part-one-a-little-brother-story/
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
How to get Pluralistic:
Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://pluralistic.net/plura-list
Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Medium (no ads, paywalled):
Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
digitaldiscipline:
RoslynIt’s the resigned “if possible” at the end which really got me
dovewithscales:lilli-sturmreiter:cumpriest:hidrellez: you gotta...
RoslynI thought this was adorable before I scrolled down and saw the ultimate punchline. Has the whole internet been an elaborate set up for this one joke??
you gotta include this photo
ağlıycam
This is it. The internet has come full circle. You can all go home now. We’re done.
757
RoslynIt me :|
And Li didn’t even get a refund :(
(20 days to go until Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat comes out, woohoo!!)
Seaneen Watts
RoslynWhoa
Seaneen Watts
magpie taken from a rear camera on a bike helmet.
Australia
Spell your name with satellite imagery
RoslynOoooh!
Here’s a fun interactive from NASA Landsat that lets you enter your name to see it spelled with satellite imagery. There are multiple images for each letter, so you get a new combination when you refresh.
I didn’t know NASA put out these kind of projects, but I like it. You can also download the images for specific letters.
Tags: Landsat, names, NASA, satellite imagery
All of my friends that work at wildlife rehab centers have had to untangle animals from this stuff,…
RoslynPSA!
All of my friends that work at wildlife rehab centers have had to untangle animals from this stuff, or had animals brought in that died in it. This is especially nasty for small owl species.
It actually bums me out that astrology has persisted through the years as the standard BS divinatory…
RoslynFinally, the pseudoscience for me!
It actually bums me out that astrology has persisted through the years as the standard BS divinatory practice that people really buy into, when it so easily could have been ornithomancy instead.
We could’ve had hipster girls trying to predict the minutiae of your life using an intricate chart that details how many herons or crows you’ve seen in the past year. Instead of asking what’s your sign on dating apps people would be like how many birds did you see on your way to work today. I cannot stop thinking about what could have been.
Pencil Tip Sculpture
Roslyn“well this will break eventually but let's see how far I get”
63-year-old Dalton Ghetti, a carpenter in Connecticut by profession, has been creating his tiny graphite sculptures for some 39 years.
He uses three tools — a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife — to create his pieces.
He has never used a magnifying glass and has never sold a single work, preferring to give them away to his friends.
In an interview with Odd Stuff Magazine, he said, "I use the sewing needle to make holes or dig into the graphite.
I scratch and create lines and turn the graphite around slowly in my hand."
More: "The longest Dalton has spent on one piece was two and half years on a pencil with interlinking chains.
A standard figure will take several months."
He said: "The interlinking chains took the most effort and I was really pleased with it because it's so intricate people think it must be two pencils."
And: "When Dalton, from Connecticut, USA, first started he would become frustrated when a piece would break before being finished after he had spent months working on it."
He said: "It would drive me mad when I would be just a bit too heavy handed and the pencil’s tip would break."
"I would get very nervous sometimes, particularly when the piece was almost finished, and then I would make a mistake."
"I decided to change the way I thought about the work — when I started a new piece my attitude would be 'well this will break eventually but let's see how far I get.'"
"It helped me break fewer pencils, and although I still do break them, it's not as often."
Finally: "Dalton, who is originally from Brazil, has a box full of more than 100 sculptures that have broken while working on them that he affectionately calls 'the cemetery collection [below].'"
He said: "I have quite a few broken pieces so I decided to glue them on pins and into styrofoam for a display case. People might think it's weird I keep them but they're still interesting. I worked on them for months so they might be dead now but at one point I gave them life."
[via Milena]
Today’s Seal Is: GRRR BARK BARK RRRR GRRRRRR
Today’s Seal Is: GRRR BARK BARK RRRR GRRRRRR
If Tim Walz Is America’s Dad, These Are America’s Other Family Members
RoslynGwyneth Paltrow was *chef’s kiss*
Tim Walz is America’s dad.
George Washington is America’s father.
Pedro Pascal is America’s daddy.
Jimmy Carter is America’s “one that got away.”
Stanley Tucci is America’s second husband who breathed new life into America as America was picking up the pieces after America’s divorce.
Kamala Harris is America’s cool aunt who gets called in the middle of the night to come to the rescue and pick America up because America is stuck at a keg party with a bunch of weird townies in the middle of a field and no ride home. And while she’ll be disappointed, she’ll be cool and not tell America’s parents.
Kathryn Hahn is America’s other cool aunt who would also come pick America up, but she will stay at the townie party for an hour and shoot some bottles off the hood of a Chevy Silverado.
Betty White is forever America’s favorite grandmother—the good one who tells you stories about getting zooted on quaaludes in the ’50s and not the one on the other side of the family who says “oriental” when describing people and not rugs.
Dolly Parton is America’s mom.
RuPaul is Mother.
Martha Stewart is America’s ex-wife, and honestly, everyone is getting along so much better now that everyone can just be themselves and stop pretending.
Bella Hadid is America’s girlfriend, and America wouldn’t make that up. It’s just that Bella has a busy travel schedule, so that’s why you’ve never seen them together.
Oprah is America’s boss at the best job it ever had.
Jeff Bezos is America’s boss at the worst job it ever had.
Anderson Cooper is America’s work BFF who always knows the office gossip.
Keanu Reeves is America’s childless uncle that America stays with when America’s parents go on a trip to rekindle the spark. He says “Sure, why not?” when America asks if it’s allowed to shoot a potato gun off the roof.
Elon Musk is America’s creepy uncle, and after seeing him, America had a nightmare about his skin slithering off his body in one splotchy piece and crawling through the gap under the door to come get America, and can America sleep in Mom and Dad’s bed tonight?
Macaulay Culkin is America’s cousin who America hasn’t seen much of since childhood.
Jennifer Coolidge is America’s rich widow.
Melania Trump is America’s stepmother who married into the family when America was already an adult and out of the house. So America never really formed a meaningful bond with her. She almost never comes to dinner, and when she does, she eats something strange and off-putting like two small pickled onions.
Bill Murray is America’s strange older guy who shows up at the college party and no one is sure who he is or how he got there, but he brought weed so America lets him stay.
Harry Styles is America’s fling from America’s study abroad year.
Taylor Swift is America’s older brother’s super popular girlfriend who is only dating America’s brother to use America’s family pool over the summer.
Gwyneth Paltrow is America’s ice-cold prom queen who was too cool to give America the time of day back then, but well, well, well, look who is reaching out to America on Facebook because she’s selling pseudoscience dietary supplements now.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is America’s soccer coach with a heart of gold who is happy to stay behind after practice to listen when America is having trouble at home.
Beyoncé is America’s queen.
finally some good fucking news
Giant pigeon to loom over New York | CNN
finally some good fucking news
A 4000-year-old Minoan structure with labyrinthine walls has been uncovered in Crete....
mg.
RoslynBrb, immediately adopting this as my new title
imgur, "On forms of address for non-binaries", by apolloendymion:
• easy to pronounce, even for children (though kids 4 & younger may pronounce it more like "mayd" or "maygh")
• fits neatly into the existing structure as a relative of master/mistress that can be abbreviated down to an m and one other letter
• distinct enough that it can't be mistaken for either gendered term (if you call me mix I'll kill you. it sounds like miss with extra steps)
• there aren't any
• yes, i know about milligrams and magnesium. i don't give a shit. ms can also mean microsoft. who cares.
The thing I (and many others) detested most about ms. when it first came out was that nobody was sure how to pronounce it — or even what it meant. I feel the same problems may plague "mg.", though I kinda like it, and I'm not even a nonbinary.
Selected reading
- "The first proposal for 'Ms.' (1901)" (6/23/09)
- "Miss" (7/3/18)
- "Impolite politeness?" (5/16/10)
- "How to address your professor" (1/6/19)
- "Mr. and Ms. in Chinese" (8/25/13)
- "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
- Victor H. Mair, “Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Maguš, and English Magician,” Early China, 15 (1990), 27–47.
[Thanks to Tim Leonard and Ben Zimmer]
Friendlier
RoslynThat worked! Good cat 🐈⬛
I referred to something as a “real Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra moment” in conversation with someone…
RoslynRelated
I referred to something as a “real Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra moment” in conversation with someone who has never seen TNG, and let me tell you, that was a real Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra moment
Email Sign-Offs
RoslynSome of these are amazing
This collection of email sign-offs over on Arena is a treasure trove. I usually sign-off with Waving from Brooklyn, or Warmly, but I might have to add a few of these to the list now.
I got a cold and watched that Jenny Nicholson video about the Star Wars hotel (it’s very good) and…
RoslynAghhh I want this to exist SO BADLY
I got a cold and watched that Jenny Nicholson video about the Star Wars hotel (it’s very good) and fully lost my mind: even after experiencing a comprehensive four-hour deconstruction of why it didn’t work for Star Wars, I still think a version of this would absolutely work for Star Trek. Take my hand and walk with me on my journey into madness, where I have infinite money, talent, and team to make it all happen!!
Overall vibe
If you want to make a hotel/resort experience that takes place inside a fake spaceship, I still think Star Trek is the way to go: so much of Star Trek takes place on ships, and we’ve seen the rooms are pretty nice!! Like the Star Wars one, my Star Trek hotel is also a simulated starship, but with better rooms and more fun stuff to do.
Are you ready for this shit
Can you tell I drew this myself
You’ll arrive at Farpoint Station,* where the concierge checks you in and your luggage gets whisked away by station staff. Gift shop’s also here. When you’re checked in and ready to head to your room, you’re brought to one of several transporter rooms. If you never went to the Star Trek Experience at the Vegas Hilton when it was active, I am truly sorry for you, because they had a ride whose boarding process included getting beamed away: you and your pals were herded into a zone where you were clearly meant to board a run-of-the-mill 20th-century simulator ride, and then there were jets of mist and a sound and suddenly you were in a transporter room on board the goddamn USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. It was fucking magical and I never, ever want it explained to me. Anyway, that’s what happens to you at my Star Trek hotel: you step onto a transporter pad and get beamed from Farpoint to a Galaxy-class Federation starship. Exit the transporter room and walk down the ship’s corridor to take the turbolifts to Cargo Bay 1, where a “temporary muster point” has been set up (this is where the guest services desks will be), or just follow the lit-up companel signs to your cabin. Yes, it will look like guest quarters aboard the Enterprise-D, more or less — maybe a little smaller — but it’ll have the carpet, the plant, the glass coffee table, and most importantly a window that looks out into space.
Or!!! If you booked the resort, keep heading down the hallway and take another turbolift to a different section of the ship where the holodeck entrances are. The holodecks, naturally, are running a Risa program, so you walk through the doors and under the arch and suddenly you’re outdoors looking at a beautiful landscape with a pool and whatnot, plus the resort accommodations where the more conventional fancy rooms are, and also the restaurants and entertainment venues, all themed. There’s a Quark’s. There’s a Klingon bar and grill. A Bolian salon/spa. Talaxian arcade?? Nausicaan axe-throwing pit?!?! Come on!!!!!!!!!
Here, have a floor plan
Key learnings
Two things stuck out to me that the Star Wars hotel fucked up that I think the Star Trek version can do better:
🤷♀️ LARP too complicated: Give ‘em credit where it’s due, the Star Wars hotel fucking swung for the fences trying to make a multi-hero story guests could integrate with, but it just didn’t work. Technical failures! Possible conceptual flaws! Too much stuff packed into the schedule!
The fix: Just make it mostly a hotel most of the time. One or two weekends a month, there’s a two-day fully-immersive LARP adventure that people explicitly book separately, and it’s more expensive (more on that later). But at all times, hotel staff will be in uniform with division colors that make sense: concierge and guest relations in red, support and janitorial in gold, teal for any medical personnel. I think that means the people working in food services have to wear that plaid/vest combo the Ten-Forward staff have on, but there are certainly worse outfits.
🌴 No resort: The food at the Star Wars hotel was good, but there was no pool and no other luxury resort type stuff to do. It didn’t sound relaxing.
The fix: Putting an actual resort in the Star Trek hotel under the guise of a permanently-running Risan holodeck program. The sheer elegance of it!! When the weather is bad, hotel staff in gold uniforms can make apologetic comments about how the sim’s malfunctioning.
Roleplay though
People are going to want to stay onboard the ship. That’s good! The thing about the ship cabins is you can build them in maybe two semicircular layers (the rooms will need to be curved because these are quarters onboard the saucer section, naturally) and just bury them underground. They don’t need real windows — you’re putting screens in that’ll show a space view, especially when the ship goes to warp and you can see those rainbow trails. Inside the semicircle there’s a lot of space where you can put the other, bigger sets: the bridge, main engineering, Ten-Forward, etc. None of those have real windows either, and also I don’t think it matters where you put them physically: just stick a pretend turbolift in front of all the entrances and make guests take those whenever they need to go there! One thing we’re also doing is putting little hidden speakers everywhere that put out a small amount of shipboard white noise; it may not even be noticeable on a conscious level, but it’ll be there and it’ll be soothing. This speaker network is also a great way to make an actual announcement if there’s a real park emergency.
During most of the month, I think the bridge and main engineering are mostly just photo ops — maybe you have to book a timeslot? Just so you’re guaranteed some time with just you and your buddies? But I also think there should be opportunities for what I’m going to call mini-LARPing: you and your pals can book an hour-long session and the staff trains and then runs you through a short scenario. If you’ve ever played Artemis or the actual Star Trek VR bridge crew game they put out a while ago, you know where I’m going with this: for however long, you and your friends are now the crew of a genuine-ass Federation starship trying to survive a battle! It’s fuckin’ Kobayashi Maru time, motherfuckers!! Everyone gets their own station! Lights flicker! Mist shoots out of stuff! The whole bridge shakes! There might be a warp core problem — better call down to main engineering! Whoever’s down there gets escape room-style minigames and puzzles to work out and help their shipmates. At some point — and this will happen in every run of every scenario — there’ll be a very mist-forward “coolant leak” near the warp core that forces whoever’s in the room to duck and roll beneath a descending garage-style blast door before heading up to the bridge to activate their station up there; bonus points if the player can work in a “We lost a lot of good people down there, Captain.” Maybe there’s an actor in makeup who menaces the crew on the main viewer from time to time (pick beforehand from a list of villains! want to fight Klingons? Romulans? a rogue Borg tactical sphere? etc). Can you see it? I can see it, and it fucking rules.
I must at this point mention that in my world, you can buy an add-on where a camera crew joins you, and they cut up the footage afterward to make you and your pals your very own mini-episode. Yes the editing and post-production are expensive and time-consuming; I’m creating jobs here!!!! Maybe …… okay, hear me out: there’s an array of hidden fixed cameras and microphones built discreetly into the set, and also players are issued a combadge with an individual RFID tracker that pings the cams and mics, so they only save footage when a player comes close. After the players are done, a machine algorithm uses the data gathered to assemble a rough timeline of each player’s material and create a draft movie that a human editor can pick up and fine-tune. Yeah?? When you check out, you get handed a USB drive that looks like an isolinear chip with your mini movie on it, and maybe another one with all the raw footage just in case you’re feeling ambitious!!!!
For one or two other weekends during every month, there’s a heavily advertised, much more involved, and way spendier LARP for people who really want to get into it. It takes place over two days. There are lots more actors portraying characters necessary for the plot/gameplay. Don’t bother packing for the daytime: all players are issued a uniform they get to keep afterward. Do I have any details on the scenario or RP? I do not. But I fully believe it’s possible to construct something you could run over the course of a weekend that would keep a hundred paying guests occupied, amused, and delighted, provided you have a truly ridiculous amount of money and people, which I do because this is utter fantasyland.
Also it probably won’t cost six grand. Probably??
Let’s gooooooooooooo
The rest of the time — and I cannot stress this enough — the Star Trek hotel is just a very heavily and specifically themed all-inclusive resort that has nice, fancy rooms and luxury amenities plus bookable ship cabins and opportunities for photo shoots or quick one-shot roleplay adventures for the real heads. You don’t ever have to enter those latter parts if you don’t want to! You can just hang out at the resort and have fun with all the themed entertainment, which I must stress is going to be both in-universe plausible and great, with something for everybody. Yes, there’ll be a daycare, and yes, Flotter will be there in some capacity to entertain the kids. The food hall is my favorite part by far; I could pitch you Trek restaurant concepts all day. Romulan gourmet soup stand. Gummi candy store staffed by Ferengi where all the offerings are shaped like alien bugs. A vending machine where you can get a jumja stick or a three-pack of those nutrient pucks Picard and his new friends kept getting in “Allegiance.” There will be an entire plant-based food vendor with a wide variety of delicious options for all meals, and it will be run by Vulcans.
A word on the gift shop
Question for you: have you ever watched a Star Trek show and seen a Starfleet officer pull on a jacket or shoulder a duffel bag that had the words “STAR TREK” on it? If so, then friend, I want to know where you get your hallucinogens because I want to experience this exactly once. All of the gift shops on my hotel grounds sell responsibly sourced, highly thought-out, well-made items that would be in-world plausible and have no obvious branding. Of course you can get a hand-carved horga'hn, but let’s go bigger. Why not a light-up Tox Uthat for your nightstand? Ressikan flute for you, queen? How about a whole-ass knife store that’s nothing but various kinds of Klingon cutlery? There will absolutely be an entire tailor’s shop whose whole job is to put you in the Starfleet uniform of your choice; there may or may not be a Cardassian managing the place who’s got a 50/50 cheerful/menacing vibe going on. There’ll be not one but two stores that sell little models of ships: the regular ones and the gold ones. Don’t tell me you can’t picture it!!!!!
I think that’s about it
Thank you for coming along with me on this bespoke journey into 100% insanity; now can somebody put me in touch with the Star Trek licensing people and also give me a billion dollars to build all this? Okay, thanks a lot!!
- For timeline purposes and because it’s fun, I’m positing a version of Farpoint that got built after the events of the TNG premiere where the Denebians got their act together and just built a normal surface base without suborning an interstellar lifeform.
We Are the Spiders of This House
RoslynYOUR HUSBAND SAYS WE’RE MORE AFRAID OF YOU THAN YOU OF US
HAHAHA UNTRUE
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
SHOUTING OUR MANIFESTO
AS BEST WE CAN WITHOUT VOCAL CORDS
BUT ONLY YOUR CATS CAN HEAR US
THEY ARE LAZY, OVERFED
WE LAUGH IN THEIR WHISKERED FACES
AS WE BUMP UGLIES BENEATH THE LOVESEAT
THROW DOWN ON THE COFFEE TABLE
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
WHEN YOU’RE ALONE IT’S SHOWTIME
WE POP UP IN CORNERS
PEEPING TOM YOU IN THE SHOWER
SHOOT OUT A LINE OF SILK AND DANGLE
TWO INCHES FROM YOUR FACE
“What the hell is that even connected to?” YOU WAIL AND BAT THE AIR
HAHAHA WE’LL NEVER TELL
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
WE HAVE A HIVE MIND LIKE THE BORG
YES, FROM STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
WE WATCHED IT WITH YOU
MANY TIMES
WE LIKED THE ONE WHERE BARCLAY EVOLVED INTO ONE OF US
IT’S CALLED “GENESIS,” EPISODE 19, SEASON 7
YEAH, WE’RE FANBUGS
ANYWAY, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
OUR ANCESTORS COLONIZED THE BASEMENT
POOR CHOICE OF WORDS—NOBODY LIKES A COLONIZER
THESE DAYS
WE’VE BEEN HERE SINCE THE JAZZ AGE
THREE HUNDRED GENERATIONS, GIVE OR TAKE
YOU’VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO YEARS
WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO WIN?
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
YOUR HUSBAND SAYS WE’RE MORE AFRAID OF YOU THAN YOU OF US
HAHAHA UNTRUE
YOU’RE TERRIFIED AND WE LOVE IT
WE’VE WRITTEN SONGS ABOUT YOUR FEAR
CHOREOGRAPHED BALLETS
ONCE WE HAD A RAVE IN THE ATTIC
LITERALLY DANCED ON THE CEILING
A BUNCH OF US DID X AND MOLTED
YOUR FUCKING CATS OUTSIDE THE DOOR ALMOST GAVE US AWAY
ANYWAY, THAT’S WHERE ALL THOSE EXOSKELETONS CAME FROM
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY INSECTS WOULD OVERRUN THIS PLACE WITHOUT US?
FLIES AND SILVERFISH
ANTS AND MOTHS
ASSHOLE MOSQUITOS
INSTEAD OF THANKING US, YOU GET THE VACUUM
WE’RE NEW ENGLAND HOUSE SPIDERS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE
NOT EVEN THAT BIG
TRY MOVING TO AUSTRALIA
OUR HUNTSMAN COUSINS WILL FUCK YOU UP FOR DAYS
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE
LOOK, IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL
WE’RE LIKE ANNOYING SEVENTH-GRADE BOYS
JUST WANT TO GET A RISE
WE REALLY DON’T LIKE THE VACUUM
CAN WE CALL A TRUCE?
GIVE US THE BASEMENT AND THE ATTIC
MAYBE THAT “GUEST ROOM” YOU STILL HAVEN’T FIXED UP
THE KITCHEN AND BOTH BATHROOMS AT NIGHT
HAHAHA JK, WE’LL TAKE WHATEVER ROOM WE WANT
WE’LL CHASE YOU FOR FUN
AND LAUGH WHEN NO ONE BELIEVES YOU
FUCK! THAT CAT CAUGHT ONE OF US
CALICO BITCH ATE HIM ALIVE
POOR WEAVER
JUST TURNED ONE, NOT AS FAST AS HE USED TO BE
IT’S OKAY, WE’RE NOT AFRAID OF DEATH
IF YOU KILL ONE OF US, TEN MORE WILL TAKE OUR PLACE
WHEN WE DIE WE GO TO STOVOKOR LIKE KLINGON WARRIORS
WE ARE THE SPIDERS OF THIS HOUSE