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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · 2d

Ooh, another nice linguistic coinage tonight from the middle schooler — "more sneakily" is "sneakilier".

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · 4d

Glad to see no "surge" this weekend, but also disgusted by the framing, on multiple levels.

www.berkeleyside.org/2025/10/23/t...

Trump says federal agents 'will not surge San Francisco'

In a Truth Social post, the president said calls with San Francisco’s mayor and some tech titans convinced him to wait, for now.

www.berkeleyside.org

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · 13d

Sometimes stating the question answers the question.

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · 13d

Philosophical conversation with the 7 y/o today — why, indeed, ARE farts funny?

"They're just smelly things that have noises and come from your butt! And why are butts funny, bro? All they are is like an oval with a crack in it that shoots out poop [pause] that's kinda funny."

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · 28d

Interesting innovation in phrasal verb usage from the 9 y/o: "this make sures that..."

I've heard similar things from the 11 y/o too but have forgotten to jot them down.

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Sep 10

Interesting Gen Alpha linguistic usage from the middle-schooler today. Apparently "AFK" can apply to being absorbed in work for a couple hours—even if that work is *at a laptop*, literally *at a keyboard*.

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Sep 5

Very interesting interactive map of indigenous territories, treaties, and languages:
native-land.ca. The choices of what to include in Asia, Africa, and Europe are quite interesting. I wonder if future versions will have more Siberian representation (e.g., Tungusic?)

Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land

Native Land is a resource to learn more about Indigenous territories, languages, lands, and ways of life. We welcome you to our site.

native-land.ca

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Aug 25

I started learning Turkish many years ago with high-minded ideas about using it in my research.

15+ years later, I'm rocking out to this fun ditty about partying with Dracula, hooking up with Frankenstein's wife, and becoming a vampire.

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

Drakula'nın Daveti

YouTube video by Sokak Köpekleri - Topic

www.youtube.com

1

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Aug 19

Good response: smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/psychology...

Psychology is ok

A response to Adam Mastroianni

smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Aug 19

By far the best part of watching Oakland A's games now is listening to the back-and-forth between the announcers, esp. how Dallas Braden tries to politely conceal what seems to be genuine dislike and WTF responses toward Chris Caray's random comments.

Reposted by Sandstone Violin

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Aug 19

Feel like one political party kidnapping an opponent should be bigger news

MSNBC @msnbc.com · Aug 19

NEW:

“I’ve had enough…I’m refusing to back down.”

Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier speaks to MSNBC from the Texas State Capitol. She is stuck there after the Texas GOP required police surveillance as condition for release. She is refusing to sign a waiver for the law enforcement escort.

190 3.5K 10K

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Aug 19

Thoroughly enjoyed
@mastroianni.bsky.social's post on the woeful state of academic psychology, esp. the critique of "pick a noun and study it" (I often edit research along those lines, in nursing). Not sure I share the optimism re: boredom's effects, though.

tinyurl.com/5akw8b3h

I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is

The plane crashed and nobody checked the bodies

www.experimental-history.com

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Aug 9

Watching Jurassic Park with the 9 y/o, and I had never noticed before the thread of "whether to have kids" discourse, or remembered that the cool, black-leather chaos theory guy apparently has 3 kids and is a big fan of both kids and divorce 😂.

1

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 17

This online presentation of the Genji poems is one of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time! Not just that the "poems are online", but so much thought and care has clearly gone into the presentation and interface. genjipoems.org

genjipoems.org

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 15

Today's work-related reminder that someone's always having a worse day (and of the importance of flared devices) — apparently there's at least one documented case of a heart attack resulting from the stress induced by a self-inserted glass bottle getting stuck in the rectum.

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 11

Never imagined a word-for-word theatrical adaptation of a short story could be so good. I was stunned by Word for Word's adaptation of "Annunciation" www.zspace.org/annunciation.

One vividly played character in particular was a delightful reminder of someone from my past, too.

Annunciation by Lauren Groff — Z Space

Word for Word and Z Space present: ANNUNCIATION BY LAUREN GROFF Directed by Joel Mullennix June 18 through July 13 in Z Below Award winning author, Lauren Groff, brings us a tale of a young w...

www.zspace.org

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 9

Plans for bacterial-driven biomanufacturing on Mars!

Super cool. Back when I was a 30-year-old career-changing premed (before those plans fell through too), I low-key fell in love with microbiology, and this reminds me of why.

pioneerlabs.substack.com/p/our-first-...

Our first target microbe for Mars, and how we chose it 🏗️

Goal: push the limits of science AND be practically useful

pioneerlabs.substack.com

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 8

A little bit of Goethe today, reflecting on how our entire built landscape is a sort of fossilization of human stories and passion. #poetry

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 8

www.persuasion.community/p/how-to-kno...

How to Know When the Frog Has Boiled

Autocracy in America won’t unfold the way you expect.

www.persuasion.community

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 8

"Competitive authoritarianism" is a great phrase. Also an excellent point re: people's assumptions about transition states — there's never going to be a day where we wake up to the announcement, "NOW HEAR THIS, IT'S AUTHORITARIANISM TIME," and waiting for such an announcement is a fool's errand.

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jul 7

A first in a paper I've edited: "Statistical analyses were conducted using ChatGPT 4o." 🤔🤔🤔🤔

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jun 25

Mamdani & the impact of his campaign/election remind me a lot of Obama, maybe not least because I lived in Chicago (and was in my early 20s) when Obama became prominent. Multiple parallels come to mind, and I'm surprised I haven't seen more people note the similarity.

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jun 20

The Kino adaptation is amazing, but I think I'm even more delighted by their adaptation of Гражданская оборона's "колхозный панк" ("collective-farm punk"), which I adored back 20 years ago when I was young.

Анархист

YouTube video by Дореволюціонный совѣтчикъ - Topic

www.youtube.com

1

Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jun 20

This group doing 19th-century adaptations of major Russian rock songs is the most delightful thing I've found in ages:

"Городъ в огне как при Бонапартѣ..."

"Метаморфозъ, алчемъ метаморфозъ..."

Absolute genius.

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

Дореволюцiонный Совѣтчикъ - Метаморфозъ

YouTube video by Дореволюцiонный Совѣтчикъ

www.youtube.com

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Sandstone Violin @sandstoneviolin.bsky.social · Jun 2

Excellent thread about a fascinating paper. 🙏 to @philipcball.bsky.social for the post! The overwhelming mechanistic complexity of regulation should be better-known, especially when it comes to bio-futurist discourse.

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · May 31

It's an interesting phenomenon that some of the deepest questions about how life works have become what looks like impossibly obscure molecular biology stuck right at the back of Nature, which will never get covered by the science media. Like this. /1
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

DNA-guided transcription factor interactions extend human gene regulatory code - Nature

A large-scale analysis of DNA-bound transcription factors (TFs) shows how the presence of DNA markedly affects the landscape of TF interactions, and identifies composite motifs that are recognized by ...

www.nature.com