Hello friends,

As usual, I’ve mixed the fun with the depressing stuff.

Urban pranks abound

Around town, some of these bus stop sign boxes are empty, and the stop number is scrawled on the plexiglass in sharpie. So I made my own sign. They are intended to duplicate the official look, with correct QR code and other info, with a small addition.

I had attached my homemade signs, printed on waterproof paper, with painter’s tape, so as not to leave a mess. A Trimet employee later took my sign off and installed it inside the box! Made my day.

A co-worker suggested exceptions could be made for Emotional Support Tauntauns, which seems like something Portland could get behind.

Also unofficial:

Waiting room of doom

Like many smart internet ideas, LinkedIn was pretty good when it started up, and it was pretty good for a while. Now it has the worse qualities of other social media, while also subjecting us to exhausting work-related self promotion. “So thrilled to be here at OMNI 2025 with my colleagues from FIRSTSource Media, and to finally meet the folks responsible for {who cares}…”

LinkedIn is a waiting room of doom.

It’s not a network. It’s a holding pattern for the white-collar workers who helped build the modern world—only to find themselves without a future in it. Two hundred and twenty million people have signaled they want out. That’s not a platform—it’s a collapse with

Raw challenges and raw punk rock out of Olympia, Washington

I thoroughly enjoyed Kathleen Hanna’s memoir of her days as bandleader for Le Tigre and Bikini Kill. I’m not really into the music, but the story and the journey is fascinating.

"It was a lot of work writing this book. I'm not gonna say it was easy. I was a mess": Bikini Kill/Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna announces 'raw and insightful' memoir Rebel Girl | Louder

Bikini Kill / Le Tigre icon Kathleen Hanna to publish Rebel Girl memoir next year

A nice breakdown of social media's pitfalls

A y’all know, I started this newsletter during the pandemic, because I was exhausted with Facebook, and since then, of course, it’s only gotten worse. As an exception, I think Reddit is still useful despite its flaws, though the signal-to-noise ratio is still pretty poor. But it’s very helpful for hobbies and local questions and issues.

I really appreciate this author’s sober and accessible analysis of social media platforms.

As an example, imagine two people on Twitter say that they hate onions, along with anyone that associates with onions. As people respond to these tweets, the original onion haters keep doubling down and arguing with the people engaging with them, driving more engagement. 

A reporter for a newspaper sees the drama, and decides to write an article called “Many people are hating onions in 202X” (referencing just the two tweeters as “many”), which drives more engagement. 

Now other people write, in response, articles such as “Onions shouldn’t be hated in 202X” , “Why onion hating might be right”, and more. Sides are taken, and the whole thing magnifies to 100x what was the original “real” story. 

Apparent AI-cloned voices of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been lampooning the tech CEOs in California crosswalks

Love it, love it, love it!

Simulated Musk, Zuckerberg voices are speaking from hacked crosswalk buttons | The Verge

“Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a Cybertruck, I promise.”

Business Cards: An Homage to Magic: The Gathering

Strategic execution. Hostile takeovers. Post-mortems. Your career is a battlefield. Welcome, colleague, to Business Cards: an homage to Magic: The Gathering.

This poem seems sadly relevant, again

“Revenge” by Elisa Chavez

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.
I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table…

Read more…

Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times

Over nearly 18 years, the man, Tim Friede, 57, injected himself with more than 650 carefully calibrated, escalating doses of venom to build his immunity to 16 deadly snake species. He also allowed the snakes — mostly one at a time, but sometimes two, as in the video — to sink their sharp fangs into him about 200 times.

NY Times guest link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/health/snakes-universal-antivenom-tim-friede.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EE8.o-Tq.UkEhKUq-B64B&smid=em-share

Cross-cultural pollination, or the Jewish roots of a classic funk tune

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the motif from Parliment-Funkadelic’s “Flashlight” was borrowed from music heard at a Bar Mitzvah. This documentary, A History of Funk Music and Black Liberation of the 1970s is great, too. I love about the PBS YouTube channel’s near total lack of clickbait. Instead of everything going to eleven, titles just describe what the video is about. You know, like we did in the Olden Days.

Further along…if you dance to “Flashlight” at a Bar Mitzvah, do you create some kind of inception or singularity? Try it!

Watch at time 39:16.

A quote about the Dumpster Fire (still my favorite metaphor for the moment)

…There are a whole lot of people who, when offered the opportunity to not be shitty, to be kind, to make a little space for someone else, will instead gleefully be a little bit shitty, be a little bit cruel, to take up just a little more space, just because for them the world is a zero sum game; if you don't take, you don't get. You're a wolf, or you're a sheep. You step on people, or you get stepped on.

There are a LOT of people like this, because almost all children are born that way, and have to be loved out of it, to become better than literal babies. But parents who grew up this way are unlikely to have kids who get past it. So there are a LOT OF PEOPLE LIKE THIS, and it takes multiple generations to significantly shift levels of commensality. And it's really fucking hard to be more commensal when billionaires are driving us into ever higher levels of completely unnecessary resource scarcity.

I'm telling you, the only solutions are kinetic and targeted.

— https://www.metafilter.com/208642/NO-CUTS-TO-MEDICAID#8719082

Causes of Autism

Let me caveat this by reminding you that I have no expertise in this area. I am just a guy who reads things. But amidst the increase in the number of children found to be on the autism spectrum, I was reminded of something I read many years ago that might explain one of the causes. This is an academic article, so it’s not easy reading. Just the title “Prenatal Exposure to Diethylstilbestrol and Multigenerational Psychiatric Disorders: An Informative Family” may cause glazed eyes and drooling. Note: diethylstilbestrol is also known as DES.

The takeaway is relatively straightforward — it’s likely that some drugs taken by women who later give birth have an effect two generations down. That is, they affect the embryos of the children these women give birth to (their grandchildren). Of course, it’s probably a bit more complicated than that, but this is the idea. I remember reading, but can’t confirm, that the FDA did not warn users of the drug(s) in question because they had no impact on the person taking them, nor on their offspring. It’s the offspring’s offspring that are affected. I’m sure this is not the only factor in autism, but it’s worth nothing among the current hysteria/blaming it on vaccines (which is traced back to a discredited study from 1998.)

The Alabama landline that keeps ringing

I spent the better part of two days and nights listening to students answer questions at the Foy desk, where phones have been ringing since 1953, when James E. Foy, Auburn’s then dean of students, opened the line as a resource for students and then as a service to the public. For just as long, students who sit there have been answering any question asked of them—or at least tried their best.

Oxford American | The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing

At Auburn University, students at the Foy Information Desk have been answering questions for more than 70 years.

Thanks to our sponsor (not really, but you get the idea)

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Don’t delay — it’s not like authoritarianism will go away on it’s own.

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Novel word

Polybanderous (adjective): a musician who participates in multiple bands. See also polybandery.
Hat tip to @Aidann for this one.

Closing quote

“Trying to fight against capitalism is suicidal, either as individuals or as a society. But turning a blind eye is dangerous as well. We’re not going to get rid of capitalism. But we can’t fully trust it, either.”
— Brian Whetten