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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 2h

Hadn’t clocked how much all the inflatables and furries would make this feel like a Flaming Lips show. 😺

Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 2h

Hundreds of shitlibs [lauditory] and others out on a beautiful afternoon in Towson, MD. I give the park capacity another half hour or before the crowd starts spilling into The Shops at Kennilworth’s parking lot; hee hee.

A bunch of excellent protesters under a beautiful sky.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 20h

An interesting an hopeful thread about the lion from Chicago.

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

Okay! This is going to take a while so I had to finish some stuff first, but: Why Da Pope Fucking Up Opus Dei Is A Huge Fucking Deal: a thread

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

Gimme an hour or two and then I'll explain why this is a "holy fucking shit" moment!

Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 20h

A White Sox idealist perhaps (though, hey, they did grab a World Series in '05), but also an Alderman realist. Broad shoulders in every back room, but only one Gothic cathedral -- and it ain't all that as such things go, especially in an otherwise architecturally spectacular city.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 5d

yes

Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 5d

I've read The Atlantic since 1979 or so. It's never been anywhere near my favorite. But it's tended to have its moments. I just finally bothered to actually read the Flanagan piece. Astonishingly, it was far worse than I was already imaginging. I think the time for a conscious uncoupling is upn me.

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 6d

Ratio me. Please. It's a badge of honor. If you don't like a link, go follow some chicken-heart who needs the approval of the thought-police. Caitlin Flanagan of @theatlantic.com is a tremendous writer and this piece is an excellent read. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss

The new editor in chief of CBS News triumphs over her critics.

www.theatlantic.com

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 5d

Silly rabbit, we're 40 years past VAX centralization. Doomer on. We'll just be over here fighting our way out of this bullshit. All-around nice guys don' throw in the towel when the fight is so far from over.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 5d

The arc of history is long and bends slowly from Neil Young to Decembrists.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 5d

Boomers had Neil Young.

Xers on down have Decembrists.

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 5d

the inflatable costume thing is an extremely smart tactic

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 5d

my father (a retired white engineer who has been in oklahoma for 40 years) is my weathervane for what normal people who just watch the news periodically think, and he was like “so, they want to call the guard out on a bunch of kids wearing frog suits? is that true?”, the admin is losing the PR war

Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 7d

Taking Back Pepe.
Because What Would Kermit Do?

Nathan Kalmoe (he/him) @nathankalmoe.bsky.social · 7d

Weird random meme-y shit (laudatory) like this is how it might eventually be called The Great Frog Resistance, where everyone wears a frog pin, & remembrance events in 50 years begin with reverent croaks. Just from some dude's choice of a frog for a costume. Humans are weird.

Adam Selzer @adamchicago.bsky.social · 8d

The frogs have landed in Chicago!

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Reposted by Mark Tough

Heather @alainnfocail.bsky.social · 7d

Hey Baltimore City: HIRE ACTUAL ARTISTS TO DESIGN YOUR STICKER WRAP THINGIES. THIS AI UNCANNY VALLEY BULLSHIT IS BAD.

An AI “Oriole” player. He looks like he has jaw implants.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 8d

Sadly, you'll be fine.

Ruefully yours,
Baltimore

Reposted by Mark Tough

D. J. Hicks @danhicks.bsky.social · 8d

*sighs in philosopher of science*

Looking for confirmatory evidence is an entirely normal part of science. The primary problem here is the eugenics and the fascism, not the lies to children about "the scientific method."

One Bluesky account is quoting another. Inner post has a video of RFK Jr., some person I don't recognize (Tylenol and autism guy, maybe?), Marco Rubio (I think), and Trump. Post text: "RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: 'It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."

Outer post text: "We're doing studies to prove it (* not how studies work)"

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 10d

I am generally honest to a fault. But that is exactly the kind of situation where I'd be like, "DUDE! I saw a kid lose an arm RIGHT THERE two years ago!!!!" Hyperbole in the service of safety is my friend.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 10d

My home county back in Iowa, Jasper, became home to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge 20ish years ago. Suddenly Bison! No one's died yet, but there have been some near misses, I think.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 11d

COOKING pasta is preferable. Required? Not necessarily.

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 11d

What foods do you love that you fully acknowledge make you a pervert for loving them?

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 12d

And while we Baltimore City dwellers are often wont to draw a hard line around the city proper, both of my top-shelf national follows residing in metro Balto are N/NE countyfolk and I happily big-tent the metro to include them (the other for me being @figgityfigs.bsky.social)!

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 12d

1. All of this, entirely.

2. Baltimore represent.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 13d

... And like I said: I built it and I know it worked well and even I still think it was audacious. But I'm still sad that Excel mission creep and pivot tables/etc. have chased RDBMSs almost entirely out of the prosumer app space. Those were good times.

Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 13d

... dozen client pcs throughout the facility. This sounds just as ridiculous to me as it does to you. And yet: it worked very well. And I know that they used it for years. All for less than the cost of a new car. I guess I can now safely conclude that that code and schema of mine is put to rest. ...

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 13d

... for outbound merch that worked just fine. But I was told it was crap for returns and especially returns of medicine, which had more estoric tracking requirements. So we talked and I built them a returns database for the whole warehouse in Access. Yep, Access. Data on a server with a few ...

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 13d

Thirty years ago, when I was teaching coding and DB stuff in Balto metro community colleges, I stumbled via Harford CC into a little-yet-big gig to help Rite Aid. Their 1.2mil sq ft warehouse outside Aberdeen, which I believe serviced the eastern third of the US, had a mini-computer system ...

CNN @cnn.com · 13d

Rite Aid, once one of America’s biggest pharmacy chains, shuttered its remaining 89 stores this week after filing for bankruptcy in May for the second time in less than two years. https://cnn.it/3KUZkfl

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 14d

There but for the grace of Zeus go I. Just lending a hand. And those are world class kittehs there.

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Mark Tough @marktough.bsky.social · 14d

Ok, so multi-pet pix with New Album Just Dropped vibes are a whole genre. But these two, these two are specifically, precisely, and completely channeling William and Jim Reid on the release of the Jesus and Mary Chain's landmark debut, Psychocandy.

[surrogate alt text: two badass Tuxedo cats)

Bill, ffs @billjustbill.bsky.social · 14d

Important update

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Reposted by Mark Tough

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 16d

🎵I wanna resist enclosure like common people🎵

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