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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

Mixed up my first batch of manuscript gesso, from the recipe in Patricia Lovett's book on medieval illumination. #calligraphy #humanArt #artistsOfMastodon

A collection of 9 limpet shells upturned on some wet paper towels. Six have a pink goo inside.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

Scrolling AO3: smut smut *smutty* smut smut - A thoughtful meta-dialogue between the main character and the creator, working through possible alternatives to the tragic canon ending, until MC realizes it had to be thus, could never have been any different smut smut cannibalism smut smut smut

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

Another slide for the week 7 - syntactic parsing lecture in my Intro to Psycholinguistics class...

infosec.exchange

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

Guys, you know if you have leftover pie crust dough, you can roll it out, cut it into strips, brush it with milk and sprinkle with cinnamon + brown sugar, and then bake at ~400 for ~10 minutes, for a wee snack with your second cup of Satiurday coffee, right? Just checking.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

frantically scrolling libro.fm for my next audiobook...

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Overheard on campus today: 'You can survive any type of fall; it's just a matter of how well you convert your vertical to horizontal momentum at the bottom.' File under: 'Why teenagers think they're immortal', volume XIXX.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

Percival was hogging the bathroom this morning, and we had teeth to brush, so out the window with him.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

I've been teaching this class for years and years now! I have everything prepared for the first day tomorrow. Lecture slides are updated. Handouts are printed! It's all ready! I've done this so many times! Why am I nervous? #academicChatter

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

Some of my colleagues are beginning to feel the last-week-before-teaching-starts pressure and getting into very polite arguments on Teams chat over the meaning of 'references' vs. 'bibliography'. #academicChatter

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

Ten years on, I have decided to watch the Night Manager. I say. It's very good, isn't it?

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Reposted by Ergative Absolutive

Jérôme Petazzoni @jpetazzo.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

If you like science fiction: StoryBundle is currently offering the "2026 Space Opera Sisterhood Bundle". For $30 (or more if you feel generous) you'll get 15 DRM-free ebooks. You can see the details of the bundle (and buy it) here: storybundle.com/space I am a huge fan of StoryBundle […]

hachyderm.io

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

I solved a problem at work this week and I feel very, very smug about it. I should not have had to solve it. IT should have solved it, because IT created it. But IT was incapable of solving it --- in fact, IT insisted that the solution I found did not exist --- but IT was wrong, and I solved it […]

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

Discovered Eustace was looking to help himself to an evening snack, which is not a pleasant surprise when one is pantsless fresh out of the shower, so out the window with him.

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

A 300-million-year-old tree species declared extinct in the wild in the 1990s now numbers around 10,000 mature trees. China’s cliff cypress survives almost entirely in and around Chongqing’s Xuebaoshan reserve, the product of two decades of seed-banking and propagation work that just won an […]

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

@NicoleJLeBoeuf Which font appeals to you? I can probably find you a (free!) exemplar if I know what you're looking for. I have many, many calligraphy resources at my disposal.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

Behold an innovation in academic publishing that, astonishingly, is an IMPROVEMENT, not an abomination. Instead of marking up proofs and sending them back, I am allowed to make direct edits to the publisher's source file in LaTeX. Is this genuinely new, or have I just been publishing in old […]

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

I so much do not want to be updating reading lists and course Moodles in preparation for the new semester that I deep-cleaned my dishwasher. And did laundry. ANd took out the recycling. #academicChatter

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

I have been asked to provide some samples of my calligraphy for my calligraphy guild's website. The requester knows me well enough to specify, 'nothing controversial, no swearing . . . ' Hah, nothing controversial. Kindness is controversial these days. I […] [Original post on wandering.shop]

Two pages of foundational calligraphy, with the following text:

My Invisible Horse and the Speed of Human Decency

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Matthew Olzmann

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart
before the horse,” which is curious
because I don’t have a horse.
Is this some new advancement in public shaming—
repeatedly drawing one’s attention
to that which one is currently not, and never
has been, in possession of?
If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,
then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position
in relation to the cart, but I can’t
do that because all I have is the cart.
One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes
precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one
invisible horse, which does not pull,
does not haul, does not in any fashion
budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy
up the hill or down the road.
I’m not asking for much. A more tender world
with less hatred strutting the streets.
Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence
against civilians. Wind through the trees.
Water under the bridge. Kindness.
LOL, says the world. These things take time, says
the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot
be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.
Then, together, they say, The cart!
They say, The horse!
They say, Haven’t we told you already?
So my invisible horse remains
standing where it previously stood:
between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,
between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,
between the status quo and The Great Filter,
and I can see that it’s not his fault—being
invisible and not existing—
how he’s the product of both my imagination
and society’s failure of imagination.
Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.
How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.
How I say I want to believe in him,
speaking softly into his missing ear.

White copperplate calligraphy on red paper:

Hail, Pterry, full of rage, the muse is with thee. Blessed art thou among authors, and blessed is the fruit of thy brain, Discworld.

Hail Pterry, Father of Great A'Tuin, who channeled rage into compassion blessed are thy words.

Text by @ultragotha.bsky.social‬

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

Behold, she is done! This is, without a doubt, the most complex project I've ever undertaken, and I'm very proud of myself for seeing it through to the end. #humanArt #noAI #artistsofMastodon #IslamicGeometricart

Panel composed of large tesselating stars, hexagons, and bow-tie shapes, each filled with symmetrically twining white biomorphic designs on a dark blue background. The outlines of the shapes are also in dark blue channels, and the border around the panel is dark blue with a little picket-fence type design running along it in white.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

Pictures, for posterity. Original item on the left -- a bit stiff, doesn't work terribly well, but it's clear how it's *supposed* to work. Ebay item on the right. It's so ridiculously, risibly bad I can't even get mad at it. I'm grateful for the laugh.

Side-by-side comparison of two snail-shapped dotted-line ruling pens. On the left is an actual device, which is clearly engineered to work. On the right is the fake device, with a HILARIOUSLY not-a-ruling-pen tip connected to some various bars via bolts. There is absolutely no way this thing will draw any lines at all, let alone dotted ones. The pen tip is not a pen, and the gear at the back does not engage with the pen arm.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

RE: wandering.shop/@ergative/1171555983… To anyone who was interested, these turned out to be an absolute scam. These things are just bolted plates that mimic the shape of the component parts of the original, but do not actually work in the slightest. Ignore the geared dotting […]

wandering.shop

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

But if rejecting JKR is (partly) justified by her books being bad, then we are implicitly accepting the corollary: if they were good, we should not reject her. That's the same rhetoric that argues we should tolerate assholes because they are geniuses. And we all know that one is specious […]

wandering.shop

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

Criticising the text invites counterarguments about the text: 'But it has good qualities too' or 'it's meaningful to me, how dare you imply that I was a bad child for liking it' or 'taste is subjective, don't judge me for what I like', etc.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

I'm seeing a lot of discourse around the new Harry Potter series, and much of it is built not only on condemning JKR's behaviour, but also criticising the text itself. I'd like to suggest that the second half -- the criticism of the text -- is not relevant and even a distraction.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

"there are some really exciting innovations in the pre-dosed laundry detergent space . . .'' This is your sign to stop scrolling youtube shorts and do literally anything else.

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Arturo Serrano @carturo222.ohai.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Before tonight, I was the only Colombian to ever win a Hugo. As of tonight, I am the only Colombian with two Hugos.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

I will report back on how they work when they arrive. Given how cheap they are, I'm entirely willing to gamble that they will be usable.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

RE: wandering.shop/@ergative/1171555983… These are on aliexpress now too. A bunch of them have 1-star reviews, reporting indignantly that they look nothing like the picture. I have bought two of them which, as far as I can tell from the most realistic-looking images, have two […]

wandering.shop

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

Other than modern Hebrew, I don't know of any dead language that's been successfully revitalized. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes that Siraya can keep it up. #linguistics news.mongabay.com/2026/08/siraya-la…

news.mongabay.com

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Horatio: So Milo Yiannopoulos goes to 't. Hamlet: Why, man, he did make love to this employment. He is not near my conscience. His defeat Does by his own insinuation grow. ’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensèd points Of mighty opposites.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Progress! You have to understand that these take ages to paint. I spent two hours last night doing just one of those hexagons. #humanart #islamicgeometricart

Partially painted panel of blue and white Uzbek biomorphic decoration (white vinework on blue background), laid out in a geometric grid of stars and hexagons and bowtie shapes. The central star, four partial stars in the corners, and two complete hexagons along the long midline have been fully painted. Four half-hexagons at the edges and all the bowties and partial bowties have their designs outline, but remain unpainted.

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Reposted by Ergative Absolutive

Elen Le Foll 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 @elenlefoll.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

🚨 The deadline for abstract submission for the Second Workshop on Replication in the Language Sciences (sites.google.com/view/worela2) taking place on 8–9 July 2027 in Cologne has been extended to 15 September 2026 (final extension). 🚨 We invite […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

WoRela 2 Website
8-9 July 2027
Photo of nightscape of Cologne with the cathedral
University of Cologne, Germany
Building cumulative knowledge in the language sciences through
reproducible, robust, and replicable research findings
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

Hey, @thisismyglasgow , do you have any photographs of that gorgeous white art-deco building right across from the Argyle St exit of St Enoch subway station? I've tried to photograph it many times from my phone, but I don't have the right lens or something […] [Original post on wandering.shop]

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

These ebay ads for this snail-shaped ruling pen dotted-line drawer are hilarious. Clearly ai-generated by a model that has absolutely no idea how they're supposed to be used. I'm debating buying one anyway, because I've never seen these available for purchase outside of wildly expensive vintage […]

wandering.shop

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

Work in progress of my Uzbek ceramics-inspired panel. Designs taken from Dr Esra Almahal's excellent book on Islamic biomorphic patterns. Materials are gouache on hot-press watercolour paper. #humanart #islamicgeometricart

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

@jrhawley That must have been a very fine Supplementary Figure 2. I am impressed.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

Yes, I COULD just whip up a quick placeholder figure in paint or powerpoint and plop a screenshot in my document draft. OR --- and bear with me here --- I could spend an hour coding it up in tikz, because my brain is shot from drafting this all day and I can't write words any more. #academicChatter

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

Welp, just sent an all-staff email about the importance of getting feedback to students in a timely manner, and unfortunately typed (and sent) 'feedy speedback' without noticing. Naturally, a colleague immediately noticed. I guess I'm glad they're reading what I send! #academicChatter

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

Just clicked off a youtube video (that had already been feeling fairly AI-ish in its script) at the line, 'Now, I don't have the math skills to work this out, but ChatGPT tells me . ..'

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

@toddhorowitz hell, I'll JOIN the octopus league if they'll have me!

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

A very hearty greeting to the two gentlemen sitting by me on the train this morning, both of whom sported very fine octopus tattoos on their left hands. They showed no signs of being acquainted; they simply shared a morning commute and excellent taste in personal adornment.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

I had to send Archibald after Reggie this morning. I imagine Archie'd have preferred to finish scuttling among the coffee filters in the kitchen sink to get his dose of caffeine before heading home, but frankly it's basic manners to know when party hours are over and take yourself off in good time.

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Ergative Absolutive @ergative.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 16/08/2026

I regret to announce that as of about 1am this morning, British House Spider season has begun. I'm afraid I had to evict Reginald out the window, but I have no doubt that his leggy chums will emerge from the walls before too long. I'll make sure to reunite the lads in short order.

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2026

The world is closing in on trachoma, the leading infectious cause of blindness. Seven more countries have eliminated it in the past year, including Egypt, Australia and El Salvador, taking the total to 32. The number of people needing antibiotics and hygiene programmes has halved in a decade […]

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