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Melanie

@melanine.bsky.social
307 followers 337 following 350 posts

I don’t tend to say much but enjoy the “discourse” Grower of flowers, corgi wrangler, new found love for power tools (renovating..). Work in software.

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Reposted by Melanie
Elyon113 @elyon113.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Your power bill has tripled and you can't afford new PC parts just to create this.
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"fart" @jonhendren.com · 21/12/2025
ohhhhhhh hell yeah its the fuckin solstice !!!!! fuck the equinox its #solstice the god damn #Solstice ‼️‼️
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Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Hell with it, I'm just going to post the whole thing here via screencap and alt text. It's Kaleb Horton, man, his writing always deserves the second read, especially since it could have just easily been lost forever like so much else. Read it, share it.
A look at forgotten Hollywood landmarks
By Kaleb Horton 

Let's say you come in from down south, and you're looking for an unsung movie landmark.

So you fly in to LAX, rent a car, blow right past Hollywood, leave Los Angeles county heading north, go over the Grapevine, gape at the monumental hills and, wow, there really is a Smokey Bear Road, then you turn off the air conditioner when the sign tells you. Once you come down the grade too fast and see the world's loneliest Denny's, you're well on your way to what you're looking for – the middle of nowhere.

You're going to Kern County to find the spot where Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of the greatest scenes in movie history, the crop duster sequence from "North by Northwest." It takes place in Indiana, of course, but the Indiana road sign and the imported corn field can't deceive this Bakersfield native. The parched and desolate heat of the scene feels too much like Kern County.

The scene people know off-hand — Cary Grant running from an airplane — isn't why "North by Northwest" is a classic. The film's greatness, as was often the case for Hitchcock, lies in its build-up, its suspense, its mood. The plane moment is almost anticlimax. It is those five minutes before Grant's desperate escape that constitute a mathematically perfect suspense scene. So expert is Hitchcock's hand that he creates suspense, a slow burning dread, with no camera tricks and no music in broad daylight.Grant's character is a prototypical James Bond. His perfect suit, fast wit, high-alcohol tolerance and effortless charisma have got him out of every predicament so far. In the city, among people, he has powers. Take him away from people, put him nowhere, and he's just like us — totally helpless. He has no powers: His suit is no good out here; his million-dollar tailoring and perfect haircut is just vanity now. No amount of pretending can provide escape. Here, is the one place where he can die, and he gets by on the grace of God. All he can do is wait for what's coming.

So when you seek the lost landmark of this scene, you're looking for an idea as much as a place. You're on Highway 99 now, going 30 miles north of Bakersfield, looking for an unassuming patch of dirt that carries spiritual weight. The scene was filmed neart Garces Highway to the west of Delano. You'll think there's a handy exit for it. There's not. You'll probably get lost in Delano, counting on a connection. You're at once a million miles from Hollywood and a hundred miles away. It's lonely. The horizon sprawls forever like there's nothing past it. There are broken down trucks on the side of the road, plumes of smoke from faraway fires. You'll find Garces eventually.

You'll pass a bar called Rosy's Place, abandoned houses, an oil field, a prison, a cemetery, a sign that says "we clean headstones," and a whole lot of gold-on-brown punctuated by an occasional trailer or car going faster than you. You're looking for where Garces meets Corcoran Road. That's where this "North by Northwest" scene was filmed. You'll get a vague idea where it is but you'll never be exactly sure, since there's little impetus for clear signage 10 miles from a prison. Maybe Corcoran Road is unlabeled. Besides, that Indiana sign and the prop cornfield haven't been there in 56 years.If you're anything like me, you'll lose the light and call it a day, unsatisfied with the route you took. You return to I-5 northbound. From the 5, you'll meet Route 46, and go through a place called Lost Hills, then back in to the location from Corcoran Road instead. That's how Hitchcock probably did it. More intuitive.

Still in the middle of nowhere, but on your way to Corcoran Road, you're right next to another Hollywood landmark: Blackwells Corner, James Dean's last stop. It's a glorified Texaco, and gas is 50 cents a gallon more than it should be. They sell Jelly Bellys and '50s kitsch artifacts — plates with Marilyn Monroe's face on them, and so forth. They really figured out how to cash in on death. You don't want to stop here.

But I stopped. I asked the kid at the Blackwells Corner counter how to get to Corcoran Road. He gave me a look that said "there's no reason to go there," and then wearily told me where to go anyway. I was about 8 miles from the destination.

Going there is a meditative experience. You're not just going to the middle of nowhere. You're going to the perfect nowhere. Going alone, in the hypnotic heat of the Central Calfiornia Valley, you might even forget what year it is. There is no reason to believe the road would be so well preserved for half a century, intimately tied to the career of an actor born in Bristol 111 years ago, but it has been.There's an abandoned house. A barn with a cross on it. But almost nothing has changed in 56 years. At some point new lines were added on the road. There's overgrowth where there didn't used to be overgrowth. A couple discarded Budweiser cans from who knows when, but mostly it's identical. This is the same sleepy loneliness that Alfred Hitchcock used to make great art in 1959. And that may sound dull, but tranquility is the point. You stand on that dirt and there's no distraction from what's in your soul. It's an inner destination, not an outer one.

I told my grandma about it when I got back to Bakersfield. She told me her Uncle Harold thought it was the prettiest road in America. And she showed me a picture of a Corcoran grade school class posing in the dirt with Grant and Hitchcock. It's just a field trip picture. The kids are fidgeting, many with arms folded, some shielding their eyes from the sun, all with obedient smiles. They'd all be in their sixties now, but they'd remember where this road is.

It emphasized the ugliness of James Dean's last stop becoming a place to sell T-shirts. It's about what we preserve, and what we don't, and what we remember, and what we don't. It's easy to find shrines to morbidity and hard to find meaningful places. For those, you have to go looking.
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Plastic Duck is your new manager @billionhighways.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
I found it!!!
Corgi sitting by a pond looking pensive, text reads “I enjoying mysekf by the lake, but then I remembered instances of regret in my life, and pain I have caused others”
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Tim Baxter @timinclimate.naruresearch.com.au · 30/08/2025
This piece is so good that I feel weird and kind of gross for both discovering it four days after the fact and sharing it after midnight. But anyway this is an exceptionally affecting piece of writing and @roycerk2.bsky.social is a very good journalist. But you all already knew that. Didn't you?
drilled.media
“There Was So Much Death.” A Toxic Algal Bloom Is Ravaging Australia’s Southern Coast—Warming Waters Are to Blame.
Three ingredients are required for an algal bloom to get going – temperature, the right conditions and food. South Australia had all the preconditions necessary, thanks to climate change.
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
US, can you guys stay in bed today? Take it easy and just chill? I’d like to wake up tomorrow and find out nothing happened overnight. Slow news day!
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
The news is too much. Here’s this guy living his best life
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
The new Haim track is an absolute bop
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Shirokuma Cafe Bot 🐻‍❄️🐼🐧 @shirokumascreen.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
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Stephanie Convery @gingerandhoney.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
When RMIT decided to junk a rare, $160k weaving loom, a group of artists, teachers and students united to rescue it. The story of this loom felt like a snapshot of everything that’s wrong with how we treat arts and crafts in tertiary education, so I wrote this: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
A new room for a doomed loom – and the battle to save Australia’s slowly dying crafts
When a rare weaving device was destined for the skip, a collective of artists, teachers and students united to rescue it. They bemoan how university course changes are replacing deep skills with compe...
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Just re-upping this today as it’s on my mind. Evan having this issue in a work context!!
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
SO GOOD
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Did someone grab a still of the abc with Dutton walking past a screen saying “SIGNIFICANT DEFEAT”? Satisfying
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Golly gosh this is fun. Ta ta Dutton!
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Lolllll Peter Dick thanks Antony
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IYKYK 🌮 @nisslbody.blacksky.app · 25/04/2025
I feel like AI is dividing the professional workforce into two categories; people who heavily rely on AI, and people who are good at their jobs.
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vidyarrrr @vidyarajan.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
trans bathroom this trans bathroom that .... these ppl are so obsessed with turning the world into the toilet that is their own mind. let ppl shit in peace and do literally anything else with ur time on earth u absolute broken terf ghouls.
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
“Medication records from pharmacy chains, lab testing and genomics data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers will all be linked together, he said.” Nightmare fuel.
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Like a warm, cozy 2000 blanket. Is this millennial nostalgia?
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Why would you ever invest in a US company when any day the insider-trading president could decide to publicly shoot the economy in the face or publicly declare he will for the moment put the gun away. Also, he increases tariffs but all the US news joyfully says he has removed tariffs.
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
I don’t know if it helps anyone, but I took my little doggy to the park for a run and to the lake to watch ducks. She’s just the best.
Merle the corgi on a bench watching what’s going on at the lakeMerle the corgi running to the cameraMerle the corgi on her favourite stone wall
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
I was wondering why a small renovation task that failed was eating me more than expected.. oh yes, collapse of the global economy due to a golfing orange fuckwit. Massacre of Gazans by Israel. I have wine, given up on tasks today.
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Kathryn Brightbill ✒️ @kebrightbill.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Part of how we ended up here is that it's not just conservatives who don't understand how manufacturing and supply chains work. Almost nobody in this country does. They didn't understand that Trump would crash the economy because they didn't understand that we can't move manufacturing back quickly.
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Angry @angrystaffer.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Ok it’s all too much today. Off to play fallout4 in pjs.
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
There will always be a lag in real time translation even if computers continue to get faster and faster. Sentence structure is to blame. Beautiful to look at though.
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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
I didn’t leave twitter to avoid being exposed to ideas I don’t like, I left it to avoid the people who have those ideas. They’re all stupid, disgusting hogs!
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Patrick Marlborough @cormacmccafe.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
I do kinda think it is a bit rich for the ABC to report on this after firing a journalist for posting facts to her Instagram stories
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
This is pure comedy aside from the fact that absolute idiots are being passed as data wizards 🫠
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Shirokuma Cafe Bot 🐻‍❄️🐼🐧 @shirokumascreen.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.id.au · 12/03/2025
Immigration powers should not be used as sticks to enforce codes of behaviour and deportation should not ever be a punishment, however, if you touch a baby wombat in this country you should be booted, Simpsons style
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Bec Shaw @brocklesnitch.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
It’s not a unique thought but if you want to read a related version of this that is free, here is one www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl
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wolf pupy @wolfpupy.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
it is ridiculous that they expect you to get all your witching done in an hour.
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Mondo Mascots @mondomascots.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Kumamon today at the City Cultural Exchange Festival in Bunkyo.
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Lukas @lukasdrawsart.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Saw this behind the scenes news piece on Space Ghost and it is incredible that it was entirely done using analog tech and nothing digital. The idea of reusing 30 year old animation in this context was a first too. They basically created a whole new animation process from scratch for the show.
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Captain Quoll @kudelka.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Any political party or independent who doesn’t put looking after the environment as the main priority (and this includes photo ops hugging koalas) should be regarded with deep and abiding suspicion.
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Tom @tomgj.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
He tried . . .
Two headlines, the first reads

"Man in serious condition after house falls on him"

The second reads

"One man can stop housing crash"
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
The horrors are a lot this week, so here’s my sweet girl getting chin scratches #corgisky
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
I miss @darthbluesky.bsky.social
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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 04/03/2025
reskeet if you like trains or mulching billionaires
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Confused Brits Cause Severe Damage At The Donald Trump Propaganda Factory - defector.com/confused-bri...
defector.com
Confused Brits Cause Severe Damage At The Donald Trump Propaganda Factory | Defector
There are reasons to envy people who work in conservative media and reasons to pity them, but there’s an element of abstraction to that ecosystem and its native bog critters that makes either response...
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Of course, rahaeli has the answer!
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
I’ve seen this hit Australian accounts too, FYI It really is time to get rid of it, isn’t it?
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It's The Big Iron, Charlie Brown @big-iron.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Honor his memory by doing something strange, unraveling a riddle within yourself, and working on your favorite projects.
David Lynch in sunglasses saying "i hope you all are having a lot of fun working on your favorite projects"
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Sneaky!!
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Torturing @unrieslingable.bsky.social with Bing
Bing Crosby White Christmas & Other Favourites on vinyl
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Melanie @melanine.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
We really can’t have nice things, can we?
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