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chiselerneil.bsky.social
ChiselerNeil
@chiselerneil.bsky.social
61 followers 69 following 810 posts
You've never heard of me, and if you say you have, I've got only one question: Who gave you this address, mom?

He/him.
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chiselerneil.bsky.social
I'm Mark Twain, and I approve this message.
Mark Twain with a shoulder-mounted kitten.
November 22, 2025 at 3:22 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Heads up, website maintainers...
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): I don't know if it was deliberately timed in the hopes of hitting sites who'd taken down Cloudflare protection after today's outage, but my site's forms got hit this afternoon with one of the larger injection/DOS spam attacks I've seen in a while. About 20,000 submissions in spurts over the course of about 2 hours, fortunately nearly all flagged by my existing spam filters. Other site maintainers might want to be on the watch for similar attacks.
November 18, 2025 at 10:25 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#ElectionDay2025
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): Among other things, today's election in many US states is a stress test for democracy, as it handles challenges likely to increase in next year's Congressional elections. Multilingual hotlines for election protection are listed here: https://866ourvote.org/ Spotlight PA has a guide to voters' rights in PA, and how to respond to challenges: https://www.pennlive.com/elections/2025/10/pa-election-2025-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-election-day-voting-rights.html The Brennan Center has an overview of laws against intimidation of voters and election workers: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-laws-against-intimidation-voters-and-election-workers Go vote!
November 4, 2025 at 1:48 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
"Obama's indoor basketball court. The basement of Comet Ping Pong. The fulfillment of my hopes and dreams."

"Things that don't actually exist?"

(DING)
The set of the $25,000 Pyramid.
October 24, 2025 at 7:25 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Continue anyway. (Handlettered using a micro-line pen on the back of an index card. Messy but satisfying, like most of the fun things in life.)
October 11, 2025 at 4:06 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#ACLS #Academia
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): "The White House is dressing up its compact as a reasonable corrective to what it views as problems in campus culture. Let no one be deceived. This proposal imposes government censorship on academia. It is anti-American, and it weakens our democracy by devaluing academic expertise.... No institution that is committed to the free pursuit of knowledge should submit to the degradation of autonomy and academic freedom contained in it." The ACLS on Trump's "Compact" offer: https://www.acls.org/news/acls-statement-r
October 7, 2025 at 1:59 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
AI at its peak
From the original Lost In Space, Will Robinson and Robot.
October 4, 2025 at 9:26 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#AcademicFreedom #HigherEd #USPol
John Mark Ockerbloom @JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social Dartmouth College rejects Trump's "compact" proposal: https://www.wcax.com/2025/10/04/dartmouth-college-president-rejects-trump-administration-funding-deal/?outputType=amp This is particularly notable since the proposal cites Dartmouth's "Principles of Institutional Restraint" as a model for what they want universities to agree to. But it's one thing to govern yourself by your own standards, and another to bind yourself to someone else's. Thus their president says "We will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves". #AcademicFreedom #HigherEd #USPol
October 4, 2025 at 3:36 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Really taken a shine to Fontaine Fox in recent years.
Fontaine Fox cartoon from November 27, 1919: "Mother sent Little Albert along with the Powerful Katrinka to return the dining chairs she borrowed from a neighbor this Thanksgiving, and on the way over Little Albert invented a new game called 'Observation Tower'." (Albert is teetering at the top of a very unstable stack of chairs holding a telescope, which Katrinka is carrying the whole mess on a path with one hand.)
October 4, 2025 at 3:31 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): The ADL took down its glossary of extremism after Trump-aligned figures objected to its description of Turning Point USA: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/adl-deletes-extremism-database-after-receiving-backlash-for-including-charlie-kirks-turning-point-usa/ The Wayback Machine has a partial copy of the glossary, at least for now. It doesn't look like they crawled everything (and the search doesn't work): https://web.archive.org/web/20250403100909/https://extremismterms.adl.org/search The ADL's description of TPUSA elsewhere has also changed significantly. Compare present version: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa with a December version: https://web.archive.org/web/2025012119
October 2, 2025 at 7:16 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
September 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
If you're a Wikipedia editor (and your edit history ticks off all the participation boxes), they make a bundle of library logins available and jstor is one of them.

I've kind of bungled the last one recently, but it wouldn't be a carrot if there wasn't a stick somewhere.
Meet these criteria for automatic access : 500+ edits 6+ months editing 10+ edits in the last 30 days No active blocks
September 29, 2025 at 1:57 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Link in reply
John Mark Ockerbloom @JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social There's a fairly large Amish population in southeastern Pennsylvania. Genetic epidemiologist Braxton Mitchell has worked with them for 30 years, and confirms that, contrary to what some federal officials are now claiming, there are autistic Amish. But there haven't been good systematic studies that can tell us whether autistic Amish are more or less common than autistic people in the wider US population. More from the Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.com/health/amish-autism-rates-research-lancaster-pennsylvania-20250923.html
September 25, 2025 at 2:23 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
My "I was promised a RAPTURE today" mood.
A two panel cartoon in Spanish by Argentinian cartoonist Quino. A bald-headed man on a cliff proclaims "GOD! WHAT IS LIFE?" The second panel shows a bird flying away from the man after dropping an "answer" on his head.
September 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Posted that last one before I knew there was an end-times alert going around, so maybe keep this one handy too.
#Peanuts #BeOfGoodCheer
Peanuts strip from June 20, 1980: Noted playground theologian Linus van Pelt is sitting in a camp assembly with Charlie Brown and late 70s addition Eudora. It was previously established that the counselors were laying end-times theology on the kids, which freaked out Peppermint Patty. Linus raises his hand. LINUS: May I ask a question, sir? I don't really wish to interrupt... CHARLIE BROWN (sensing where this is going): I think I'll leave... LINUS: I also don't wish to be rude...just a matter of curiosity sir... (We now see that everyone but Linus has left.) LINUS: Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?
September 22, 2025 at 2:58 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#BeOfGoodCheer #TheSunIsShiningInAustralia
A legitimate Peanuts comic strip from June 13, 1980 (look it up if you don't believe me). Peppermint Patty and Marcie are lying in bed at what for them has been a deeply unsettling summer camp. Patty's eyes are open much wider than usual. Patty: "I can't sleep for worrying what that speaker said, Marcie! I'm scared! What if the world comes to an end tonight, Marcie?" Marcie: "I promise there'll be a tomorrow, sir... In fact, it's already tomorrow in Australia!" Patty (rolling over, still rattled): "He said we're in the last days, Marcie!" Marcie: "Go to sleep, sir... The sun is shining in Australia..."
September 19, 2025 at 9:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
There isn't a day where this one's not appropriate somewhere.
Spider Man in conversation with a mutant who apparently is a pterodactyl (you know the one; sing along if you know the words): "You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into DINOSAURS? But with tech like that, you could cure CANCER!" "But I don't WANT to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs."
September 19, 2025 at 7:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
The gutting of the CDC requires states to step up, and the ones that actually do deserve notice.
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): Today's press release announcing the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. "The group’s shared goal is to protect the health, safety and well-being of all residents by providing information based on science, data, and evidence, while working to ensure equitable access to vaccines, medications and services." https://www.mass.gov/news/several-northeastern-states-and-americas-largest-city-announce-the-northeast-public-health-collaborative. It includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the NYC health department.
September 19, 2025 at 3:55 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/jmar...
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): I've now listed the report on The Online Books Page, cataloged here: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp106838. I've also created a listing for the journal in which it appeared, noting and linking to the removed article: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=nijjournal I'll be happy to hear about, and link to, other articles that have been deleted from government online serials. I do not know if any earlier NIJ Journal articles were also memory-holed, but the listing I link to above also links to scans of print issues up to 2009.
September 17, 2025 at 1:06 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Links in the replies...
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): The US Dept. of Justice's NIJ Journal #285 included "What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism" which notes that far-right attacks "outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism". As 404 Media reports (https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/ ) the DOJ has removed it. It's not just deleted from the site, but also from the issue table of contents: https://nij.ojp.gov/nij-journal/nij-journal-issue-285-domestic-radicalization-violent-extremism-and-terrorism But the cover image reveals it was there: https://nij.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh171/files/images/2024-07/nij-journal-285-thumbnail.jpg And it's on Wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/2025091116
September 17, 2025 at 1:04 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerb...
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): While I don't know how favorable (or not) the terms were to the parties in question I have to say I'm relieved it's over. As far as I could tell, there were a relatively small number of old recordings at issue compared to all the ones that have been published, and the ones at issue should be preservable digitally (possibly with some limited listening rights) even if they're not openly free across the entire Internet.
September 15, 2025 at 11:44 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): The #copyright suit of music publishers and labels against the #InternetArchive appears to be over, as the parties announce a settlement: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/UMG-v-Internet-Archive-Joint-Notice-of-Settlement-9-15-25.pdf. No details of the settlement were given, though I imagine it will be reflected at least in part in public availability of sound recordings at archive.org, and possibly in future IA financial statements. Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica gives some context: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20
September 15, 2025 at 11:42 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Oh, it was also the Biblical King David story, but nothing in the storytelling approach screamed "BIBLE". And every once in awhile, characters heightened the mood by breaking out in iambic pentameter.

You really should've been there.
September 13, 2025 at 12:02 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Safe assumption that I'm the only one who's going to answer "Kings."
September 12, 2025 at 11:57 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
I think you're on to something.
Panel from a 1997 Peanuts comic strip: Charlie Brown, with enthusiasm: As soon as a child is born, he or she should be issued a dog and a banjo... (Snoopy is standing next to him, ears sticking straight up in surprise (or alarm).)
September 12, 2025 at 11:01 PM