Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, holidays, language, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, Sunset on April 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Censorship [is] wildly popular among…those who believe the most terrifying fact of the world is that others beside themselves have free will.
– “Ship of Fools”
[In contrast with the] cost…[of] second-rate, weeks-old grocery store eggs…two hours of literally shoveling shit twice a year…begins to seem like a good bargain indeed. – “Diary #665”
“Nonprofit” merely refers to the organization; those who run it often make plenty of profit. – “Schadenfreude (#1425)”
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging on March 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been around the block more times than you’ve masturbated, and if you think you can trick me into doing your homework, you need to be slapped harder than I’m willing to give you for what you can afford. – “Not Last Night”
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging, Bluesky, internet, Twitter on March 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
A few months after I started using Bluesky, I wrote: “…the only reason I’m still on Twitter is that Bluesky simply isn’t big enough yet to provide all the content I need to keep this blog going.” But it was difficult to figure out exactly how I’d know when the time had come, because it’s actually rather difficult to compare the sites. Because Twitter uses algorithms to hide a lot of my posts, artificially boost the reach of garbage and advertisements, and freeze the follower counts of people it wants to silence, there’s no real apples-to-apples comparison with Bluesky, which does none of those things. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, my follower count there had been frozen at roughly 18,500 for several years; since then it has slowly dwindled to about 16,500 as people abandon the declining platform. But even when my follower count at Bluesky was a small fraction of that, I routinely noticed that most posts on Bluesky would get double or triple-digit levels of engagement while the exact same post on Twitter got single-digit levels. And that’s not the only indicator; in November of 2024 Twitter changed some kind of code so it was no longer possible to embed tweets on my website, so at that time my monthly selection switched entirely over to Bluesky.
About two years ago I decided that when my Bluesky follower count reached half of my Twitter follower count, it would probably be time to leave Twitter for good. As of this writing my count is 7900, and by the time you read this it will likely have hit 8000; judging by past performance I’m likely to hit my trigger-point of 8200 by the beginning of summer. My posts there routinely get more reach than they’ve had on Twitter in the past decade, and the average quality of the responses is dramatically higher; furthermore, most of the people I used to be interested in reading on Twitter have now moved to Bluesky, so I no longer need to sift through Twitter for content. Accordingly, once I hit 8200 I’ll be largely stepping away from Twitter. I plan to mute everyone there who is also on Bluesky because like me, most of those folks cross-post everything, and while I will still check my account so as to reply to messages, I’ll no longer make original posts there. All good things must come to an end, and Twitter has been dying for years now. But at least we have a decent replacement.
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, Words, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, fascism, language, law, politicians, psychology, Sunset, Twitter on March 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
There really isn’t an excuse for repeated attempts at social engineering that aren’t even tied to some kind of grift, pork, or fascist collaboration.
– “In the Dark”
Being able to look out a window and see grass and trees and animals…is so much better for my mental and spiritual health then being subjected to a “view” which consists of nothing but concrete, glass, and automobiles.
– “Diary #664”
“Innocence” is merely a fanciful euphemism for “ignorance”. – “Tweetenstein”
For me, no sorrow is ever experienced in isolation; new tears falling into the pool immediately cause it to overflow, and then it’s impossible to tell how much of my anguish is due to the proximate source of the grief, and how much is old pain which has never been fully resolved. – “Pool of Tears“
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged advertising, Aladdin’s Satellite, animals, artificial stupidity, Barbie, blogging, Bluesky, censorship, cops, cosmetic surgery, dirty, Facebook, games, hysteria, imaginative fiction, Iran, language, New York, Not To Be Taken Internally, politicians, prisons, propaganda, psychology, racism, Twitter, video, yellow journalism on March 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »
So many people still feel the need to wait for some business entity to temporarily carry a show they want to see, typically polluted with commercials, when home video has existed in one form or another for over 40 years and most shows can be permanently purchased for the price of a decent meal.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-15T18:02:27.299Z
Trump really does believe what he sees in movies.Here we see him attempting the Jedi mind trick.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-17T03:04:37.228Z
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" – Upton Sinclair
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-17T19:00:27.452Z
People who do not eat chips could be ‘left behind’, says Frito-Lay’s CEO
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-18T19:55:52.543Z
Funniest thing I've seen this week.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-20T08:52:14.194Z
It's garbage. It's shit. It's noise. It's paint hurled at a canvas. It's an overflowing toilet. It's hated by anyone who knows anything about art. It enriches fascists. It ignores consent and good taste. It's stupid. It's bad. It's a disease. It's random. It reeks. It's unwelcome. It's everywhere.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-21T18:50:08.193Z
Over a decade ago, I was warning young women not to let random people who aren't doctors inject filth into their butts.Now I'm warning young men not to hit themselves in the face with hammers.Really, y'all, plastic surgery is not something you can learn by watching YouTube videos.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T18:24:12.301Z
In traditional scholarship, caring about what other educated people thought about one's ideas was called "peer review", and it was considered intrinsic to the process.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T18:39:40.974Z
Concentration camps. Go on, you can type the words if you try. I believe in you. Just keep repeating the mantra, "I have a backbone, I have a backbone, I have a backbone", and you should be able to either type the words or just copy paste from here: "concentration camps".
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T17:54:59.340Z
Stolen. The word you're looking for is "stolen", not "taken away"; that is a term reserved for parents disciplining their own children, ie "she took away his bb gun until he stopped shooting cats". The term for strangers permanently taking others' possessions is "stealing". They STOLE the crayons.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T17:56:06.044Z
Do history classes in New York teach students about William the Acquirer and the Acquisitions of Genghis Khan?
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-27T18:20:18.610Z
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGK…
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T17:52:47.390Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T19:35:46.602Z
Those of you who weren't adults at the time of the Gulf War may not remember that it, more than any other event, created the 24-hour news cycle which has bedeviled the US ever since. It turned CNN from a low-rating sideline into a high-rating main event, and gave us the nauseating term "scud stud".
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-02T17:39:49.401Z
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-03T18:01:27.024Z
Honestly, I don't know how you young gals put up with this. In my day (points with cane) all we had to worry about beside cops and bad clients was the puritanical old woman whom the publisher of the Yellow Pages (Barry Co IIRC) allowed to ban certain words in escort service ads.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T08:21:33.548Z
Trump replaces Barbie with Mr. Potato Head.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-05T20:02:33.887Z
Challenge for those who aren't religious fanatics: explain to those who *are* that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that the burden of proof is NOT on those demanding such evidence.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T17:31:04.244Z
This is called a "win-win" scenario.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-08T17:44:05.190Z
If they simply phrased the headline truthfully as "women are falling in love with a fantasy of romance", people would recognize that this is nothing new.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T17:41:07.413Z
How quaint. Those of us who still play real old-fashioned D&D are going to start looking like people who bake all of their own bread instead of buying Wonder Bread.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T17:00:58.084Z
There's illiteracy, and then there's *functional* illiteracy, and then there's…whatever this is.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-11T03:40:34.394Z
People who are terminally online habitually type out bizarre, unpronounceable sequences of letters and symbols which attest to how little of their lives are spent actually speaking to normal people in real life.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-11T19:07:51.122Z
Future history students will refuse to believe it when their professors tell them that one of the factors that precipitated the 21st-century dark age was gambling fanatics intentionally falsifying records for profit. Having taught history, I can hear the adolescent voices already: "That's stupid!"
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-13T17:28:41.148Z
On Bluesky this morning, I'm seeing the usual mixture of political & aesthetic posts.On Twitter, I'm being attacked by incensed Millennials apparently unable to comprehend why a 60-year-old woman who neither has kids nor watches TV doesn't know about a gimmick kid food first sold in the late '90s.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-14T18:22:27.167Z
"Police shoot black man in the back."There, FIFY.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-15T17:24:47.878Z
Boo hoo hoo, his diaper is wet and nobody wants to play with him.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-16T02:40:56.057Z
I think @ryanlcooper.com called it correctly: Trump will go down as one of the Great Idiots of History.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-17T17:24:50.126Z
Deep respect for Tony Moore.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-18T17:14:20.090Z
So THIS is where Big Balls went.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-19T17:41:07.379Z
Après moi, le déluge.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T18:08:32.460Z
People idolize flawed human beings, creating statues of them as though they were pharaohs & literally putting them up on pedestals, only to tear them down again as soon as the flawed human is found to have been flawed.We could save so much time and energy by simply not setting up humans as gods.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-21T07:47:25.342Z
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged activism, animals, blogging, cops, holidays, Lack of Evidence, language, law, politicians, psychology, video on March 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The surest way to lose my cooperation is to accompany the demand with a phrase like “you must”, “you are required to”, “it’s the law”, etc. – “Off the Green”
Some of life’s greatest pleasures are pleasant precisely because they’re so ephemeral; if rainbows were always a feature of the sky, few would ever bother to look up at them in wonderment and appreciation.
– “Diary #663”
Baby-step reforms…are mostly intended to distract activists and hush timid human rights campaigners. – “Lack of Evidence (#1421)”
[Trump] wants to make the US status as the world’s cop official, complete with the cop power to terrorize whoever he likes on a whim without anything resembling consequences. – “Client Kingdoms”
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged blogging, consensual crime, cops, Creepy Coppers, ethics, Grace, language, Leaving the 20th Century, libraries, Prohibition (alcohol), propaganda, psychology, yellow journalism on March 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The first prohibitionist laws date to the late 19th century, but it was in the 20th that the concept…penetrated the minds of the general public so thoroughly that most took it for granted that for governments to tell people what they could consume, what they could own, and even what thoughts they could have…was not only normal, but desirable. – “Leaving the 20th Century”
If you find an article interesting, infuriating, or whatever, you can follow the thread of references back through similar articles, often for years, while marveling at the obsessive lengths and depths to which my librarian’s brain will go to impose order on chaos. – “Rabbit Hole”
Copsucking reporters waste considerable space quoting boss pigs oinking about how typical and representative cops aren’t really typical or representative. – “Creepy Coppers (#1418)”
I have never broken a promise to [Grace] in the past and I’m not going to start now merely because she’s not in a position to remind me. – “Diary 766“
Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged All-Purpose Excuse, blogging, cops, fantasy, hysteria, imaginative fiction, language, politicians, propaganda, rescue industry on March 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »
“Make The Empire Great Again!” is not a new idea. – “Blake’s 5”
When governments are allowed to be arbiters of fact…they wrongly label as “disinformation” facts which those in power find inconvenient. – “Disinformation About Disinformation”
Though politicians and profiteers still use “sex trafficking” as a handy excuse for tyranny, other excuses have become more fashionable and at least the endless stories about idiots with taped mouths parading around to “raise awareness” of cops’ wanking fantasies have largely dried up. – “Four Times Four“
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged blogging on February 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Had the LGBT “community” devoted its energies to securing the basic rights of all sexual minorities instead of wasting them in trying to force Christian fundamentalists to bake fucking overpriced cakes for their fucking bourgeois weddings, we’d be well on the way to decriminalization by now. – “The Big Table”
Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged blogging, consensual crime, dirty, ethics, language, law, neofeminism, propaganda, psychology on February 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Accept no source as an absolute authority, especially when they demand you should. – “No Absolute Truths”
Many criminals are entrepreneurs; it’s just that their business happens to be illegal. – “Midwinter Tweets”
It’s always rather funny when a fanatical devotee of fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist feminism (they’re hard to tell apart) tries to attack me on some post from over a decade ago, and the best they can come up with is “You’re a whore!” And I’m like, “Yes, and?” – “Tweets for the Tweet”
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