Below are posts associated with the “photo” type.


I know I shouldn’t back crowdfunding campaigns just because they touch on two of my favorite things (Franco-Belgian comics and the public domain), but this is going to be hard to resist.

a “recommended project” from a Kickstarter email called “The Big Lie” and with the description “As he just enters public domain, the Belgian reporter embarks on a journey to the unknown…”


It turns out I find “associated with PRC = inherently good” just as annoying as “comes from China = inherently bad.”

a screenshot of a 404 Media article showing the text “the fact that DeepSeek comes from China, a perceived adversary to the Unites States/the West is making hawks and xenophobes, and tankies foam at the mouth.”


For what it’s worth, Calvin and Hobbes reruns also get me this morning.

Calvin and Hobbes are standing in the snow. Calvin says “Some days you hey up and you already know that things aren’t going to go well. They’re the type of days when you should just give in, put your pajamas back on, make some hot chocolate, and read comic books in bed with the covers up until the world looks more encouraging.


Well, at least some of today’s comic strip characters also have a “non-traditional instruction” day.

Comic strip characters are talking over walkie talkie (or, as the French say for some unfathomable reason, « talkie-walkie »). A voice over the radio asks what everyone is doing today. One character responds “probably just play video games.” Another points out that they have an online class and asks if anyone is going to attend. The others all say no.


I recently started to read select newspaper comics to bring some fun into my morning, but this one is going to haunt me for a while.

A plumber has just installed a toilet and is informing its owner that ‘There’s no handle; you need to download the FlushMe app.’


Kiddo did lots of fuse bead art with cousins over Thanksgiving. When I complained that the train in the instruction manual was out of the 19th century and that kids’ stuff never acknowledges awesome modern trains, she improvised this high speed beauty for me.

A high speed train made out of perler beads. It kind of looks more like an American mail truck, but I like the idea of a world where the USPS operates high speed rail, so I’m not complaining.


This semester, I have learned that: 1) if I have building toys on my desk, I will turn them into a robot, and 2) if I have a robot on my desk, I will fiddle with it during Zoom meetings.

a robot figure made out of small waffle building blocks


This is a friendly reminder that DRM sucks and that corporations have perverted the digital technologies that should make things easier for libraries and their patrons into ways to squeeze more money out of us while giving us less control.

A ‘hoopla content update’ from a library I used to belong to reading ‘Although it is free for members to use, Capitol Area District Libraries is charged a fee od up to $3.99 for every hoopla checkout. With CADL members checking out more than 19,000 hoopla items each month, costs add up quickly.’


Today’s bike commute getup. One more distant colleague didn’t know who I was until I spoke to her. Other folks who see me more often could recognize me by my helmet alone. 🚲

A man (me!) in a bike helmet, balaclava, sunglasses, a second face covering, and bright-colored jacket. Not pictured: layers of clothes underneath the jacket and a nice new pair of fleece-lines pants.


Reorganizing folders in my RSS/Mastodon/Bluesky client is making me curious about how emoji get alphabetized.

A series of folders, all with the same base name but different emojis afterward. What makes them appear in that order?


J’ai une petite collection d’aimaintins au travail qui me donne de la joie, même si la plupart serait incompréhensible à mes collègues.

des aimantins des trains français et suisses parmi d’autres trucs de nerd


Whenever I put this shirt on for a November jog, I wonder what the Venn diagram is between those who believe gender is biological and immutable and those who believe we have to show one turkey jogger with lipstick, eyelashes, and a pearl necklace so that we know she’s a woman.

Two turkeys on a Thanksgiving 5k commemorative shirt. One turkey has ‘feminine’ eyelashes and is wearing lipstick and a pearl necklace for the race.


Nancy is giving me the courage to finally confess that I do not really like the sweet-potatoes-slathered-in-marshmallows dish.

A Nancy comic where Esther is confronting Nancy on the existence of the ‘marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes’ dish—and on Nancy’s insistence on using a thin layer of sweet potato as a vehicle for a crap ton of marshmallow.


I love having a co-author who can provide the theoretical framing to turn my weird data from a dark corner of the internet into an interesting argument.

Screenshot of a paragraph from a special issue abstract where my co-author and I argue that Mormon groups on Gab illustrate how both Mormonism and the far-right platform rely on balancing the familiar and the strange to be successful.


Have people ever used Snopes as a verb, à la Google? Or is this just the best throwaway detail in a science fiction short story ever?

screenshot from a short story reading ‘I know this is probably an urban legend but I don’t want to snope it and find out’


Love these digs at Twitter in the Kickstarter video for Mike Masnick’s new card game.

picture of a playing card with a stylized Z labeled ‘The Hellsite’ and listing features like ‘Toxic Boss,’ ‘Inflated Metrics,’ and ‘Bot Armies’


Currently feeling some Chidi Anagonye levels of nihilism about grading.

Chidi from The Good Place mixing marshmallow Peeps into a pot of chili and singing a song about it.


Love me a creative rickroll, so I’m glad my brother sent me this right after I got my image posting workflow working.

There once was a singer of old, Who then broke away from the fold, He won’t give you up, He won’t let you down, In a word you’ve been limerick-rolled


It’s been messy, but pretty sure I’ve finally figured out how to post images to my website (and from there to social media) from my phone.

the sickos meme from The Onion