T.X. Watson

Seriously. Some of the smartest people in the world are working to make online gambling as addictive as possible. You aren’t immune.

“In the crusade to make everything social, Google ended up destroying one of the few genuinely social things it had ever made: the RSS-feed aggregator Google Reader.”

had this pulled up for my freelancing guide how topical indeed

@gillianlynndaniels.bsky.social on the intimacy of cannibalism

New video! Took like two weeks to make, turns out it's exhausting to make a video explaining why I don't give a fuck about something I don't give a fuck about. youtu.be/bCS-bB8mqCM

New video up: academics are all blackmailing each other (metaphorically) youtu.be/IjSjpnL2dY8

To be clear, "ignored local zoning" here means, "this land is not part of the city of Vancouver or subject to its jurisdiction," so the Squamish nation can write its own zoning laws. But yes, this is awesome, and the buildings built so far are the coolest looking things in the Lower Mainland.

Topical.

some jokes write themselves

🎶 Well, the word got around, they said, "This kid is insane, man" Took up a collection just to send him to the mainland "Get your education, don't forget from whence you came, and The world's gonna know your name, what's your name, man?"

I

watched the fifth element this weekend and i keep coming back to the fact that the most perfect supreme being in the universe doesn’t touch up her roots… much to think about

New YouTube video up! With apologies to @kjhealy.co youtu.be/KY4v594UoCo

There's a reason we use a word for 'illusion' to describe certain jobs—there's a difference between what you see and what's there. & To @scalzi.com's point, in this sense every job has a glamour—though they're not all prettier than the jobs they glamorize.

In general we need to see more things as ends unto themselves and fewer things as mere means to ends.

New video this morning! Taking bets on whether next week I can get back to posting on Mondays like I'd planned to youtu.be/CAIVJRFcc6E

Not only is this "Atomic" bullshit from ASU precisely and exactly the wrong way to go about using "AI" to develop course materials, it is in fact a culmination of many of my nightmare scenarios.

Oh this bill sounds amazing. Please spread the word and call your reps to tell them to VOTE YES for HR 4678 💜 this would be a huge anti-censorship win.

New video! youtu.be/Wc8P6R4NwBA

Hey I made another video youtu.be/Vh2RH1wtq7k?...

Gender should literally just be a common thing that people *should* examine in order to have a fullness of life, even if nothing massively changes. It should be as common as developing a fashion style or a music taste. Deconstruction of societal imprint, no matter how “far” you go, is freedom.

This is a valid point: whenever you see this sort of high-pressure sales tactic turned on a technology, you can be CERTAIN that it's a fake—actually useful new tech sells itself! And don't underestimate the effectiveness of FOMO as a tool in the hands of a con artist.

I made a video essay for an independent study. It has been a Process. I have a headache. youtu.be/nNbvhyVP8Sg

That money could’ve ended homelessness in the US, or established UBI for every American, student loan erasure, or supercharged every creative industry in existence to pay artists better, instead of, yknow, blowing it on dead malls full of Elegy of Emptiness statues for rich people I hate it here

meta-discursive comment: the incentives of social media where making an incorrect naive prediction is seen as much more embarrassing than making an incorrect cynical one are very bad.

STOP CALLING IT AN IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN! TAKING CITIZENSHIP FROM EXTREMELY VETTED NATURALIZED CITIZENS IS NOT A CRACKDOWN! IT'S BETRAYAL.

A famous guy I was a fan of sent an email during the pandemic just being like "hey I like your show, great job" and it meant a ton to me. So ever since I've tried to reach out whenever I really like something and just tell the people who made it "I really like this, thanks for making it!"

I’m not Becoming The Joker, Britain is Becoming Gotham

evergreen

This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.

My forthcoming book on K-pop fandom looks at how parasocial relationships in K-pop today can be viewed as asymmetrical relationships -- never entirely one-way, but in many cases, two-way, asymmetric-yet-mutual attachments 💞

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..." https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

Hi Olivia, we usually never publish in anything other than Dutch (well, Flemish, as is mentioned in the comments). But... we did just create an English version of the piece! You can read (and share it) here: apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

early 21st century americans were so modest that they would regularly censor their own feet in video and artistic depictions, and it was considered improper to expose your feet in public — dismissed with cries of "put those grippers away"

Fan Studies question: does anyone know the exact origin of the term "headcanon"? I know it comes from fic around 2007, but can't find anything more specific than that.

Sold a bunch of shares of ownership in my immortal soul recently, getting them packed up to ship now

The AI bubble is JK Rowling's fault

actually our AI programs are like people so its racist to say you don't like them. anyway would you like to buy one

shit what if i am cringe but also not free