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Just Another Apocryphal Mess

@apocryphalmess.bsky.social

never promised 'em anything less * formerly of cohost dot org * old disabled queer tech guy * so very, very tired * dog dad of @beanzo.bsky.social

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

as a teenager, I encountered Savage Henry #7, "Breakfast On The Altar", at random in a local comic shop I had no context for it: it concluded an arc featuring characters and a world that were entirely new to me it completely destroyed everything I thought I understood about the medium of comics

a photo of the cover of the comic book "Savage Henry" by creator Matt Howarth. it is issue #7 from 1988, with the subtitle "Last Rites" (which deliberately does not match the actual title of the issue, "Breakfast On The Altasr"). the cover features a spiky-haired woman in a dress and an overcoat; she is opening the overcoat to reveal a nuclear explosion. in the background there is an electric guitar hanging upside down from the ceiling, with a bullet hole in it

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

the nazi CSAM site doesn't want you looking at it unless you login first, so they can algorithmically show you more nazi shit cybernews.com/tech/musks-x...

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

you can tell a lot about how a company is run by who they choose to fire

a LinkedIn post by Kevin LaChapelle,former Xbox Platform Vice President at Microsoft. which reads:

"I will add my name to the list of people who were laid off today at Xbox. This ends my 37 years at Microsoft. I have worked in many different parts of the company, and I will say my fondest memories are of leading the team of very talented engineers who built the Xbox Backward Compatibility program. Sitting in the auditorium when Phil announced the program at E3 2015 was incredible. The audience's reaction was unbelievable. I followed that with leading the team who created our Cloud Gaming product. I am a firm believer that all entertainment will eventually become streamed to you wherever you are. I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward and I wish the team nothing but success.

I will say that one person truly made a lasting impact on me while in Xbox and I want to thank Kareem Choudhry for being the best manager I had at Microsoft and ultimately someone I am happy to say is a good friend."

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I can look at my partner's cutting machine and think, "you may be a temperamental and finicky little mechanism, Cricut Maker 3, but you're not a fucking LLM, so I'm cutting you some slack"

A screenshot of two tumblr posts:

from "ratbastarddotfuck": you have to forgive the printer because it's one of the most machine-ass machines we interact with on a day to day basis. that thing says kerchunk. hardly anything says kerchunk these days. you can't get mad at her when she kerchunks up a little.

from "digitalsymbiote": Crazy that tech has gotten so bad that we're doing printer forgiveness now

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

this thread is important context for anyone who might want to applaud Kent for quitting that said, it does appear that the cracks between the various breeds of fascists in this administration are starting to widen, re:

a bluesky post by @ceej.online that reads: "we appear to have four competing fascist movements jockeying for control: blood & soil nazism under miller and hegseth, darwinian ecofascism from rfk, technofascism under vance and musk, and one Big Wet Hitler who understands the true animating core of the american volk is a deep love for shopping"

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

a screenshot of one of the giant authoritarian displays of Wallace Breen from Half-Life 2

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

a four-page short from the 1991 Dark Horse reprint of Jamie Hewlett‘s original “Tank Girl” comics, sharing today for no particular reason

these four pages from “Tank Girl”, republished in 1991, have the eponymous main character given an emergency mission to deliver a shipment of medical supplies to keep Paul Hogan, now the 90-year-old and decrepit president of Australia, from shitting himself. she fails, he does, it makes the news, etc

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

"Pay Attention" (Bruce Nauman, 1973, lithograph)

the lithograph "Pay Attention" by Bruce Nauman, the words "PAY ATTENTION MOTHER FUCKERS" rendered in rough but straight-lined sans-serif capitals, but reversed as if seen in a mirror, underlined and with the word "ATTENTION" breaking down into scratchy noise

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Czesław Miłosz, “This World”

a poem that reads: "It appears that it was all a misunderstanding. /
What was only a trial run was taken seriously. /
The rivers will return to their beginnings. /
The wind will cease in its turning about. /
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots. /
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror- /
They are children again. /
The dead will wake up, not comprehending. /
Till everything that happened has unhappened. /
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who suffered much."

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

“BY YOUR RESPONSE TO DANGER” (Jenny Holzer, 1980 - 1982, red paint and white enamel on metal) www.pafa.org/museum/colle...

a photo of the art piece "BY YOUR RESPONSE TO DANGER" by Jenny Holzer, which reads, in red all-caps sans serif text on a white background: "BY YOUR RESPONSE TO DANGER IT IS EASY TO TELL HOW YOU HAVE LIVED AND WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO YOU. YOU SHOW WHETHER YOU WANT TO STAY ALIVE, WHETHER YOU THINK YOU DESERVE TO, AND WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IT'S ANY GOOD TO ACT."

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

something to keep in mind tonight:

a Tumblr post by "nitewrighter" that reads: "Me: | don't get it. I thought | was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now? -- The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances. -- Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW. -- Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM."

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

some months ago I was helping my mother clean up her house, and I found a Playboy from 1984, before my parents split up, on top of a closet shelf he wasn't into those kind of women, but after browsing it, and looking at the books on my shelf that I inherited from him, i figured out why he had it:

a photo of the cover of a Playboy magazine from September 1984

a photo of the table of contents from the Playboy in the previous photo, with a listing for the short story "Julius Caesar and the Werewolf" by author John Gardner

a photo of a page from the Playboy in the first photo, container a block of text that reads: 'John Gardner had just begun to make minor revisions in this story for PLAYBOY when he was killed in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982. It is published here exactly as Gardner originally wrote it, and although it stands on its own, one fact that may help readers is that Caesar's "falling sickness was epilepsy, an illness whose symptoms can resemble the convulsions suffered by the werewolf. Gardner dedicated the story "to liz."'

a photo of two paperback books, "Grendel" and "The Wreckage of Agathon" by author John Gardner

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

a series of Mastodon posts by @Richard_Littler@mastodon.social, in response to a screenshot of the infamous "you can read >100 books per day by asking chatgpt to summarize them for you" tweet:

Pretty sure all these #AI guys have utterly misconstrued what art is. They think it's just information/data, but it's not: it's a process; it's a manifestation of interwoven conscious & unconscious thoughts that have ripened in a human mind, sometimes for decades. And the result is an interaction with another human mind, a dialogue. 1/3

These AI guys have mistaken a photo of a meal in a restaurant menu for the meal itself. They tell themselves it looks just like the real thing, so it must be the real thing, but in the end they'll starve to death. No protein, no carbs, no vitamins, no nutrients, nothing. 2/3

Imagine there's a once-in-a-lifetime walk that takes you through the greatest, most dramatic scenery in the world. You leave from Point A and walk your way back around to Point A.

The ChatGPT guy above might as well say: "Pro tip: You can go on that great walk by never leaving Point A" 3/3

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

the final paragraphs of _Invisible Cities_, Italo Calvino, 1972 all that gets me through the day sometimes, is the understanding that I am making someone else endure, giving them space, and that they maybe feel the same way about me

A photo of a page from Italo Calvino's novel "Invisible Cities", which reads:

He said: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

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Just Another Apocryphal Mess @apocryphalmess.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

back to job hunting I hope that this company appreciates my bravery and willingness to make salary demands

a screenshot from a LinkedIn job application, where the question "What are your salary expectations?" has been configured as a Yes/No question, currently answered "Yes"

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