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Amanda Watson

@amndw2.bsky.social

1.1K followers 570 following 1.5K posts

Librarian, literature geek, knitter, opera fan, book history person. Writing a book about commonplace books and poetry readers. Opinions here are my own. She/her/hers. Queer and furious. 🏳️‍🌈

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 17d

All right! I think I've sorted out the feed issues. Here's the link to the new and improved #pleasingterror feed for our October M.R. James ghost story reading club: bsky.app/profile/amnd...

And the reading schedule is below. Join us for some antiquarian horrors next month! 😱📖🐋🛖💐💯🪵🌰🪛🪞🚀

A Pleasing Terror - October 2025

docs.google.com

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 4h

I think my favorite might be the Colonel almost telling the boy to pitch a rock through the window if he sees the figure again, but stopping himself just in time: "Another time, like a brave English boy, you just throw a stone -- well, no, not that exactly..."

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 9h

I don't think "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" was one of the stories MRJ read out loud to his friends, but I still like to imagine the expressions on their faces as they listened to an entire opening paragraph in Latin. #pleasingterror

Reposted by Amanda Watson

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 10h

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 10h

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a source

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a person familiar with the matter.

bloom.bg

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 11h

I once bought something at a certain chain drugstore and had to click through a survey question that asked: Was the employee I interacted with smiling?

I was so horrified that I never went to that store again, and if I could find the person responsible for the survey, I'd egg their house every day.

Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 12h

This also places unreasonable, unlivable pressure on service workers, as does being surveilled on social media. People are not at their best at every moment. They get terse, they don’t smile, they act rushed. They might even be slightly impatient or impolite! None of this requires tattling.

Amos Posner @amosposner.bsky.social · 12h

I think businesses asking people to rate every single experience has furthered this damage. We shouldn't have this many opinions about this many things, and we certainly shouldn't expect other busy people to care if we do.

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 17h

Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's librettist for Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni. He also taught Italian at what would later become Columbia University and established the first opera house in NYC (and the US).

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 20h

The more I look at this, the more ridiculous it gets.

K2S0'Hara, but pumpkin spice flavored @oharawe.bsky.social · Aug 21

wake up babe, new key signatures just dropped.

[Adding an AI policy to my syllabus this semester, and wanted an illustration so I went to ChatGPT. Now I'm really considering just making the policy, "If you'd like me to give you grades based on stuff like this, knock yourself out"]

ChatGPT's diagram of the Circle of Fifths. Many wrong key names (including two Bs, and the enharmonic pair C-sharp, G-flat, and 100% incorrect key signatures, mostly mixing flats, sharps, and the occasional double sharp)

Reposted by Amanda Watson

Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 1d

It’s impossible to overstate how much “abolish ice” is the normie position now here in chicago — just countless random moms at toddler soccer on a park district field asking me where I bought my anti-ice t-shirt. average people don’t like our neighborhoods being terrorized.

laura olin @lauraolin.bsky.social · 1d

A friend ran the Chicago marathon today and said he couldn’t count the number of FUCK ICE signs along the way.

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Reposted by Amanda Watson

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote about a new Nazi party that seeks to criminalize all human virtue, and how that means that human virtue is the greatest weapon against the new Nazi project.

www.the-reframe.com/the-crime-of...

The Crime of Human Virtue

Sometimes it really is as simple as good vs. evil. This is one of those times. Human virtue is our great crime against the fascist project; it's also our great weapon against it.

www.the-reframe.com

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 1d

"wait, are they counting that tiny sliver of a bridge as a bridge??"

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 1d

All too true (though I would also add "passed away after a long battle with multi-factor authentication")

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 1d

In what turned out to be a multi-day parental tech support project, we got my mom's email account recovered, a few favorite sites bookmarked, and then my aunt and I figured out how to connect her printer. My reward will be reading @kjcharleswriter.com's new novel on the train home.

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Reposted by Amanda Watson

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 3d

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 3d

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

I want psychologists to study the impact of the current regime on our executive functioning, and then -- in addition to all the criminal trials that the authoritarian fascists deserve -- I want a massive class-action lawsuit against them for the theft of our ability to focus.

Laura Jedeed @laurajedeed.bsky.social · 2d

This year, I've had so many productivity issues. Whole days lost, deadlines completely blown I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with me

Yeah, so for the last 48 hours I decided to tune out the news and concentrate on an article and surprise surprise: it was the fascism this whole time

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

Quite possibly “get a poet to be your librettist” is a lesson more opera composers should take to heart!

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

That too! It feels like this story looks ahead to later weird fiction in that regard. Reminds me a bit of Robert Aickman.

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

“Oh Whistle” is maybe my favorite James story. Something about the vivid sense of place combined with the escalating series of manifestations leading up to the final reveal of the ghost, which is described so unnervingly. 😱

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

I will be in book deadline mode all month but will drop in for the 🐋 shenanigans whenever I can!

Jacob Harris @jacobharr.is · 2d

Alright, the people have spoken, let’s bring THE MONTH OF DICK read-along of Moby Dick back on January 1, 2026!

We still need to work out some logistics (new feed? new emoji?), but it will happen!

But get ready! Get that fancy edition, stockpile your memes, start your whale dimensions tattoo… 🐋

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Reposted by Amanda Watson

Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 2d

A remarkable, much-needed political ad, and also read @katelynburns.com on her reaction to it: www.patreon.com/posts/you-ha...

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

"Gothamist...asked Schiffmann if he’d like to join us as we spoke to passers-by about the posters and his product. But he repeatedly declined and asked that we not identify him...'I'm just tired of talking to New Yorkers,' Schiffmann said. 'It’s just such a ordeal, I just don't want to do it.'"
🤣🤣🤣

The guy behind those ‘Friend’ ads in the subways is tired of talking to New Yorkers

New Yorkers are taking note and even scribbling their own graffiti on the ads. Avi Schiffmann, 22, says that's the point — but doesn't feel like talking to them.

gothamist.com

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Reposted by Amanda Watson

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 3d

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 2d

“It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.” MRJ invented Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film nearly a century before Monty Python? 😱

Frame from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” showing what looks like an illuminated manuscript with an illustration of “the aptly named Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-film,” with a picture of a medieval knight with a baby’s face.

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Reposted by Amanda Watson

Nikkolas Smith @4nikkolas.bsky.social · 3d

after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US.
𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕.
𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 3d

Update: the right password has been found in a list of old passwords, and it may be working now?? But not before I ran into a stupid Microsoft bug that I had to search Reddit for a workaround for.

Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 3d

I am casting a curse on the entire bloodline of the person who invented multi-factor authentication. Also the entire bloodline of everyone in charge of both Microsoft and Google.

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 3d

Current status: trying to help my mom set up a new computer. It won't let her do anything without a password for a Microsoft account she doesn't remember making. Email verification is out b/c she's mislaid her current Gmail password. Text verification is out b/c she doesn't have a cell phone. 🤬🤬🤬

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