Author | Lightnews

Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 1m

You know what that means: Amazon.

I haven't bought anything from Amazon since February and before that I hadn't bought anything since July 2024. I am trying to avoid giving that asshole any of my money.

Also, good god, have they made the shopping experience worse in every way or what?

Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 5m

So it turns out that the UMe versions of a lot of Zappa albums -- which are almost always superior remasters -- are not always available directly from UMe, which mostly concentrates on selling collectable vinyl, which, fuck that noise, I want something I can actually play every night.

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Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 2h

thank you for all the support; the statement from our union is now live here with some more reporting.

now that this is public I can confirm that the majority of today’s layoffs were women of color. there are no longer any Black women working at Teen Vogue.

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Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 1h

I'd post a photo of my long-ago ex done up as Adam Ant for my come-as-your-favorite-idol-of-the-opposite-sex high school graduation party but I feel that might be an invasion of her privacy

Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 1h

All the tracks on STRIP are about sex, mind you, so it's a little tricky sorting out which is hottest.

I almost wrote "a little hard" there and decided not to give y'all the opportunity.

Here, have a bonus track.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1P_...

Amazon

YouTube video by Adam Ant - Topic

www.youtube.com

Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 1h

Everybody's talking up Adam Ant today (happy birthday, Mr. Goddard!) so here's the hottest track on STRIP -- and no, it's not the title track, and it wasn't a hit, so it might be new to you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPn8...

Navel To Neck

YouTube video by Adam Ant - Topic

www.youtube.com

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Night of the Abigail @popeguilty.bsky.social · 5h

WORLD-HISTORIC ACTS OF STOVE-TOUCHING IMMINENT

Raw Story @rawstory.com · 7h

Transportation chief Sean Duffy threatened to ground all U.S. flights amid the ongoing shutdown, warning "we'll shut the whole airspace down."

Trump official threatens to ground all flights before Thanksgiving in shutdown standoff

Transportation chief Sean Duffy threatened to ground all U.S. flights amid the ongoing shutdown, warning "we'll shut the whole airspace down." As the stalemate drags into the second month, it's adding more potential risk to the aviation system and putting a further strain on air traffic control staf...

bit.ly

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born miserable @bornmiserable.bsky.social · 5h

Teen Vogue has had more guts to dissect and expose the truth when so many veteran media outlets have bent their knees to a criminal despot and his regime and this news is absolutely appalling and unacceptable

Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 5h

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

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Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 3h

One by one the truth-tellers get fired.

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Alex Winter @alexwinter.com · 4h

Some of the very best and most important political journalism of late has come from Lex and the team at Teen Vogue. Follow them all wherever they go.

Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 5h

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

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Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 4h

I've convinced my database to store an e-acute as \xE9, which is UTF-8. The problem is, one of the downstream systems wants to see it as \xC3\xA9, which is ... also UTF-8?

So I have to encode the string as UTF-8 when it was ALREADY SUPPOSED TO BE UTF-8 IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE.

-- head throbs --

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Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 4h

Ah, nothing like a day spent wrangling extended character translation for giving one a splitting headache.

I'm gradually tearing out a lot of old crap and Doing It Right, but urgh. Part of the problem is even after a lot of time and research, unicode handling just doesn't fucking make any sense.

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Cass @cassmarshall.bsky.social · 6h

i owe so many video game designers an apology

Perry Areolar @perryodontal.bsky.social · 7h

the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre"

www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...

according to the liberation newspaper, documents dating back to a 2014 inspection by the French National Agency for the Security of Computer Systems reported a staggering detail: "the password of the louvre's video surveillance server was simply " louvre. "

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James Bennett @ubernostrum.bsky.social · 20h

Your occasional reminder that test audiences for “Good Night, and Good Luck” said the actor playing Senator McCarthy was too over-the-top trying to make him into an obvious villain.

It wasn’t an actor. The film used real archival footage of the real Joseph McCarthy.

Cameron @cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 22h

i'm reminded of that one anecdote where focus groups straight up didn't believe Romney's actual policy positions were real because they were too austere

i think a similar thing is happening for media people who live in denial of what the American right is all about, it's not just Twitter edgelords

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 22h

a genuine problem is that a lot of this stuff is just completely alien to the mass media elite

like who else besides weirdos like me take time to analyze what the intellectual righties are saying

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Aquilegia Hybrida @eccentricflower.com · 7h

I would laugh except I also kind of want to cry
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...

Hi, It’s Me, Wikipedia, and I Am Ready for Your Apology

“Wikipedia, the constantly changing knowledge base created by a global free-for-all of anonymous users, now stands as the leading force for the dum...

www.mcsweeneys.net

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 10h

I have a different view, I find Bluesky much more congenial than Twitter and I'm having a lot more fun here than I was on Twitter at the end.

BUT

I am MUCH more protective of my peace here than I was there, and being protective of that peace is work. Worth it for me, might be less so for others.

Paul Duane 🥔 @paulduane.bsky.social · 10h

I've been on Bluesky for almost two & a half years now.
Initially, I jokingly compared it to methadone, as against the heroin of prime period Twitter.
Now I don't think it's a joke.
Bluesky is methadone; not as fun or useful as Twitter was when it worked, but just as addictive & just as bad for you.

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Dr. Damien P. Williams! Look over here! … It's All For You! @wolvendamien.bsky.social · 19h

God.damn

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 21h

Congratulations, Andrew Cuomo!

I know how hard you worked for this.

Red Trump-style graphic with images of Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo.

At the top it says, "I'm going to pick [Cuomo]." - Donald Trump, 60 Minutes Interview, 11-2-25

Then beneath it

TRUMP ENDORSES CUOMO

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 9h

Reminder to all that scam sites will fake author testimonials with fact-free "AI" drivel. Also, I will never ever ever give a testimonial to any "global reader community" so if you see one from me, you will know it's utterly full of shit. Fuck these scammers for preying on people's hopes.

I'm not going to post the driveling AI text here, but know a) I did not endorse this scam, b) I never wrote a historical fiction novel and the text claims, c) I would not be excited about getting a dozen "reviews" on Amazon, not the least because my most recent work (the one pictured here, 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years) has over 3300 actual rankings/reviews on Amazon and over 4,000 on Goodreads. Seriously, now.

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Foone @foone.bsky.social · 9h

I should make a version of ublock that replaces every ad with a playable copy of Doom

Jon Bois @jonbois.bsky.social · 10h

i don't click on new york post articles but i can't honestly say it's because of any principled stand. it's because it has so many ads that if you let it all load the page weight is around 2 gigs. you could load one article claiming that sidewalks are bad or you could run about 500 copies of doom

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egg price watcher @bluser12.bsky.social · 20h

Zohran is stone cold man. Putting out an ad in Arabic after all the Islamophobic shit that’s been thrown his way? Pure swag.

Dems don’t need to copy his politics or even necessarily his campaign strategy, they need to learn how to grow a fucking spine.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 2d

أنا اسمي زهران ممدان وعم رشّح حالي لأكون العمدة الجديد في مدينة نيويورك

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Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 10h

Good morning.
I don't know who did this, but I love you.

An abandoned building by the beach where a window overlooks the sea. The water through the window resembles a painting, so someone has scrawled Free Rothko on the wall.

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Xander Lenc @xlenc.bsky.social · 1d

I'm getting a lot of responses from blue wave accounts talking about Trump. Frankly, that is already a known threat. What I'm trying to raise the alarm about here are the NYT, The Atlantic, and other reactionary news outlets that still carry legitimacy in liberal urban circles for some reason.

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Xander Lenc @xlenc.bsky.social · 1d

NYC is going to have the world's biggest media-manufactured crime panic in history the second Mamdani is elected. They aren't even going to wait until he is inaugurated. Whether or not you like the guy, you need to start preparing now for the fire hose of disinformation that is about to activate.

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nattie winters @utilitylimb.bsky.social · 3d

i’m a thin-skinned libertarian cryptofascist who melts down at the slightest whiff of criticism from the user base of my website. time to add a ‘dislike post’ button and take a big sip of coffee,

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 3d

Bloomberg has dropped $5 million against Zohran in these last days of the race, making him the single largest donor. Personally I wish he'd just settle for having successfully bought a 3rd term and do something else with his money www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Michael R. Bloomberg, the city’s billionaire former mayor, gave $3.5 million this week to For Our City, a super PAC trying to stop Zohran Mamdani. That was on top of another $1.5 million Bloomberg gave to a different anti-Mamdani group, and his endorsement of Andrew Cuomo. The former mayor is now unquestionably the single largest donor in the race.

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