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brainwane

@brainwane.bsky.social

48 followers 14 following 64 posts

Sumana Harihareswara. New York City woman who reads scifi, improves open source software, and does stand-up comedy.

harihareswara.net ; also @brainwane@social.coop on Mastodon.

brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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Sympathies! I had a similar problem with a borrowed bit of intellectual tooling. An activist developed the phrase "inessential weirdness" to describe a particular kind of barrier that's offputting to newcomers. I used it for a while but have stopped.

harihareswara.net/posts/2024/a...

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brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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@dsquareddigest.bsky.social

"After all, the policy wasn’t their fault — a classic Dan Davies-style accountability sink, where one can never track down who is responsible for a given decision."

itself.blog/2024/06/15/w... in case you hadn't seen this yet

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Adam Kotsko 's avatar Adam Kotsko @adamkotsko.bsky.social
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"Capitalism was never a good system -- I've been on record in favor of its abolition my entire adult life -- but it at least used to be minimally *legibile* to the general public. Now, nothing really makes sense to anyone but high-level investors..."

itself.blog/2024/06/15/w...

4 replies 16 reposts 44 likes

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Courtney Milan's avatar Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com
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Doing things--finding your team, finding your community--is magical. The feeling of helplessness is there to remind you to find your tiny corner of the world where you have that, where you can pitch in and do something.

2 replies 47 reposts 229 likes

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James Davis Nicoll's avatar James Davis Nicoll @jdnicoll.bsky.social
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Anyone here happen to know who Joanna Russ' literary executor is? Or better yet, is actually said executor?

5 replies 12 reposts 18 likes

brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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Anecdata: I caught COVID, for the 1st time, 2 weeks ago. I believe I caught it either while masked (N95) indoors or while unmasked outdoors in New York City.

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Katie Mack's avatar Katie Mack @astrokatie.com
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Just FYI we’re entering a summer Covid wave right now (especially western regions in the US); you can see it in the CDC wastewater plot here (and anecdotally a bunch of my friends are suddenly testing positive). www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVI...

38 replies 586 reposts 1009 likes

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Jana H-S (they/she)'s avatar Jana H-S (they/she) @jana-aych-ess.bsky.social
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I think there should be a holiday where we make the favorite foods of the people who we wish were here to share them with us. we set a place for them at the table. we send them a picture, if we can. we think about distance. we think about the point at which distance breaks. we think about each other

1 replies 1 reposts 23 likes

brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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This one hit me like if John Darnielle had come in to guest collaborate on one of the songs on Lonely Avenue very much appreciated, thank you

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden's avatar Patrick Nielsen Hayden @pnh.bsky.social
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Teresa and I have been teaching ourselves to cook various Italian dishes we’re fond of, and it’s amazing how often the best results come from just grabbing the ingredient in question and mushing it up in both fists.

3 replies 2 reposts 21 likes

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John Rogers's avatar John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social
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I'll add "and your non-alcoholic beer that's not a goddam IPA I mean they were a plague on the industry even with alcohol content but NOW?" recommendation also, please.

23 replies 4 reposts 64 likes

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Kelly Barnhill 's avatar Kelly Barnhill @kellybarnhill.bsky.social
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Twincy friends, I have asked this before on this forum but I'm asking again: I have a loved one with Ehlers-Danlos who is really struggling with joint pain. Does anyone know of any physical therapists in the Mpls area who are skilled in EDS and hypermobility management?

6 replies 3 reposts 3 likes

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Beezchurger and Flies with a Dr. Pepper's avatar Beezchurger and Flies with a Dr. Pepper @keffy.bsky.social
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things I never thought I'd have to post in a class msg board: "Is there a download or version of the lectures without ads? They're disruptive and some of them can't be skipped. I'm finding it difficult when a lecture gets disrupted by 30 seconds of unavoidable advertising for a Pixar movie."

2 replies 1 reposts 6 likes

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Steen Comer's avatar Steen Comer @mediapathic.bsky.social
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Fellow writers: I find I have weaknesses in my writing around pacing and, related but distinct, keeping tension. Do you have any particular exercises, analyses, or tools around this you do? I know a lot of this is about scale so I’m not going to get “sword drills but for tension” like I want, but…

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Tim Clare's avatar Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social
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Like we have this bizarre cultural norm where it would be rude to say 'it is time for you to go now'. That would be a line in a very tense emotional standoff scene in a drama. We're supposed to infer that we've outstayed our welcome through things like being asked what we have planned for tomorrow.

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brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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Recently I got on the subway and noticed one of those pronounced unequal population densities in my car. Bunch of people over here conspicuously keeping away from a guy over there.

The rest of this thread is on Mastodon social.coop/@brainwane/1...

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brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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My friend made amtrack.live and it's neat!

If you take Amtrak and want info on train status/delays, it's annoying that the official Amtrak website is slow to load & doesn't have train status perma-URLs to bookmark/share. railrat.net is pretty good but has ads. amtrack.live is faster & has no ads.

1 replies 2 reposts 5 likes

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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As someone who has said many idiotic things over the years, a genre of social media remark I hate is "X once said <idiotic thing> so you can safely ignore anything X says (or ever has)". Literally everyone has said idiotic things, even you.

1 replies 4 reposts 19 likes

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Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian's avatar Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian @riversidewings.bsky.social
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What are some grants, I suppose arts grants, for a #JapaneseHistory podcaster with a PhD who's approaching the 100-episode milestone and wanting to improve the quality of her operation? I am unaffiliated with an academic institution and thus my usual knowledge of grant sources is unreliable.

2 replies 13 reposts 16 likes

brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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is it my imagination or did a nearly identical iterative back-and-forth happen in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister?

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Melissa Gira Grant's avatar Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com
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Media historians among us: when did it become conventional for all the Supreme Court’s business to be considered a singular beat?

1 replies 4 reposts 14 likes

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Colin McMillen's avatar Colin McMillen @mcmillen.dev
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excuse me, but the fact that you trademarked "The Party of Principle™️" sure sounds like you're using the state's monopoly on violence to coercively restrict the speech acts i am allowed to make

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Kristen A. (she/her)'s avatar Kristen A. (she/her) @estellechauvelin.bsky.social
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I always heard the story about the person from one of the headquarters hotels at a city where the American Library Association holds conferences (which one unspecified) that said how much they like us because we're fairly calm, we drink a lot, and we go to our meetings so they can clean the rooms.

3 replies 2 reposts 40 likes

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Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures's avatar Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures @glasgow2024.bsky.social
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We are incredibly excited to announce that our Hugo Packet is now available! Everyone with a WSFS membership will have received an email with instructions on how to access this! (1/6)

2 replies 28 reposts 40 likes

brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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Today at #PyConUS we are holding an Open Space to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Python library Beautiful Soup! Join us in:

Room 315
1:45-2:30pm

for the party, featuring zines and lightning talks, and say hi to the maintainer, Leonard! #PyCon #PyCon2024 #PyConUS2024

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Viable Paradise's avatar Viable Paradise @viableparadise.bsky.social
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Workshop applications close May 15! If you want to improve your writing and join our worldwide community of writers, send us your best work! viableparadise.com

0 replies 22 reposts 19 likes

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Steen Comer's avatar Steen Comer @mediapathic.bsky.social
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Open discussion: in what way is Cosmic Horror in writing affected by the shift away from a commonly held worldview that we live in an essentially moral universe? (please boost for variety of opinion).

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Steen Comer's avatar Steen Comer @mediapathic.bsky.social
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I wish there was a way to get social media points for not saying things.

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David Forbes's avatar David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social
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Hey y'all. Pretty close to making sure I have enough to pay the bills while I keep fighting some really ugly union-busting.

Challenge to my illegal firing's winding its way through the labor board but I have to stay housed while it does. www.gofundme.com/f/help-david... #Helpsky #mutualaid

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Steen Comer's avatar Steen Comer @mediapathic.bsky.social
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Any fellow writers got any inspirational or informative texts on how to better understand tension and stakes? I seem to have some difficulty there with the piece at hand.

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David Forbes's avatar David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social
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I'm holding a poll on what my next major piece should be.

* A look at medieval urban revolt
* Warning signs/lessons from the first fascist coup in Wilmington, 1898
* How far-right sci-fi gave us a false idea of apocalypse survival

Subscribe (for any amount) to vote: www.patreon.com/DavidForbes

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Steen Comer's avatar Steen Comer @mediapathic.bsky.social
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I just thought of a great use for machine learning. Point it at a social media feed and have it use sentiment analysis to filter out all the posts that will either make me feel smugly satisfied with myself for belonging to an ingroup or pointlessly insulted for belonging to an outgroup.

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brainwane's avatar brainwane @brainwane.bsky.social
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I enjoyed this so much I posted a recommendation to MetaFilter www.metafilter.com/203492/Not-p... and commenters there are richly enjoying it as well. "I found myself pausing and thinking about what the alien was interpreting, and how it was making mistakes, and how fragile any communication is."

1 replies 1 reposts 4 likes

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David Forbes's avatar David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social
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Hey y'all, I'm trying to raise enough to stay housed and pay the bills as I continue to fight being illegally fired for union activity. I'm in the home stretch and getting closer.

Anything helps, including sharing this: www.gofundme.com/f/help-david...

0 replies 23 reposts 13 likes