Sign in

Billness as Metaphor

@tripleblip.bsky.social
1.5K followers 981 following 1.7K posts

Busting out my brains for the word. 1/3 of the podcast An Embarrassment of Prog. Asst. to The Amazing Sargasso. Editing things @WSJBooks. Opinions dumb, and my own.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026
Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵
Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.
19596023538
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Getting ready for beautiful darkness youtu.be/9llmjBUZLps?...
youtu.be
Sandy Denny / Late November
YouTube video by Melancholy Rose
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Let’s keep the witch’s promise youtu.be/1qfMzljObgA?...
youtu.be
The Witch's Promise
YouTube video by Jethro Tull - Topic
110
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Its Reynardine season again youtu.be/YfiXv9ZI4Jo?...
youtu.be
Reynardine
YouTube video by The John Renbourn Group - Topic
110
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
log̷o, reanimated dad @loxophile.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Spirit Halloween taking a long, hungry look at the Kennedy Center
0275
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Seems at odds with the original intent of the place
Cut off photo of the Petit Trianon at Versailles with banner text reading "The Palace of Versailles Respects Your Privacy"
010
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I worked for several years in one of the drugstore chains that was later gobbled up by CVS. There were music tapes that the managers were supposed to rotate but never did, so one season the same 15 or so songs played endlessly. And now I feel weepy over Sting’s “Fortress Around Your Heart”
002
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
One of the greatest!
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The social plague of our time
020
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Lego Chums Dirigible when?!!!
020
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Adrian Weckler @adrianweckler.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
If you're shopping on Google, its AI Mode (which it now boosts when you use Google) is showing you more expensive (by 21%) options for the exact same listing, a new survey claims. i.e. you're seeing more expensive vendors in the AI Mode. www.independent.ie/business/tec...
independent.ie
Adrian Weckler: Analysis of Google listings shows AI is making shopping 22pc dearer
Plus, will you be running out to get the new €500 Dyson toothbrush?
34830
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It’s almost as if continue to run an enormous city’s transit system on an ancient technology was a problematic idea (also: ugh, sorry)
010
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
No no, because I just saw this. And so glad I did.
100
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
A friend of mine was a producer on this and we saw an early version. Really beautiful!
000
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
It's Abby. Yep @itsabbyyep.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Me: Time to quiet my mind with meditation— My Mind: Remember in 7th grade when you made a joke so dorky nobody laughed so you said it again
1039752
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The rare phenomenon of one of the most warm-hearted examples of a genre being among its enduring glories. Leaves of Grass shit.
020
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
If you need a break from terribleness, me and the prog rock podcast boys went to the happiest place on earth: 1971’s THE YES ALBUM podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...
podcasts.apple.com
S2: Episode 8: Shining Flying Purple Podcast
Podcast Episode · An Embarrassment of Prog · September 1 · 1h 19m
130
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
also like i keep banging on about this but what USAID was doing was in many cases the first-dollar interventions, done at scale-- literally the best possible conversion rate from American resources into human welfare. there isn't another set of interventions that are just as good
320116
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Thread 🧵
02812
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I remember this. Absolutely bonkers
000
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 28/08/2026
Hate the petard, but man, do I love the hoist
2930172
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The very specific and transitory bond that emerges when you and a stranger both go into emergency mode descending the stairs to try to catch a doors-are-closing subway and one of puts a largely symbolic hand in the doorframe until both of you are on.
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How is this nakedly racist campaign against an entire people not a national scandal? How inured have we become?
001
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
RMJ @rmccarthyjames.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Levels of “Bitch what the fuck” are getting dangerously high
071
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I prefer the term Mountain Orcas www.wsj.com/lifestyle/tr...
wsj.com
Marmots Are Terrorizing California Hikers and Stealing Their Shoes
The cute but destructive rodents are criminal masterminds, easily circumventing humans’ meager defenses.
031
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I will say that absorbing all the various reviews and advertisements on the 1970s arts pages adjacent to reviews of the actual Public Theater shows was one of the more valuable things I studied in the 1990s and I now regret leaving it behind for more desiccated grad-school work.
130
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I may be off with the phrasing. Or even with the attribution to the Times. I’ll try to look it up later.
110
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
…including of course the coverage of the (1973?) Shakespeare in the Park production of “As You Like It.” It’s possible that there was no use of “Mr. Loaf” but there was certainly an arch-sounding reference to a young singer who “calls himself Meat Loaf” playing Amiens.
120
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
In the dark backward of time I had a part-time gig helping prepare the press archive of the Public Theater for a grant funded transfer to microfiche (or microfilm, I forget). Read through nearly every page of NYC print theater coverage they had…
100
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Yes yes yes
010
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Jesse Hawken @jessehawken.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Dolly Parton making a naughty joke with a safe sex message on network tv during the AIDS crisis, she was an ally youtu.be/DAB1BohKAB4
youtu.be
Dolly (ABC, 1988) - Dolly Parton tells a naughty joke!
YouTube video by Life in Analog
225157
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
-The Sting -Buckaroo Banzai -Casablanca -Persuasion -Dazed and Confused
040
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Honestly now would be an amazing time for all of us to donate what we can to her flagship charity, The Imagination Library. imaginationlibrary.com
imaginationlibrary.com
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.
11247726
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 25/08/2026
[Exit Queen.]
2063894011010
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Seen yesterday at the Morgan Library. A little inspiration for Monday.
Slightly off-center photo of the female knight of swords from the Sforza-Visconti tarot
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
There’s not another film with a soundtrack like this—incredible pastiche (“Hot One”), cover versions that threaten the original (“H2B”), classics given a fresh spotlight (“Make Me Smile”)…hit me like a drug in the theater.
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Next Met Gala to honor cornices
020
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Not a band exactly but
010
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
One more because I can’t not: Swordfishtrombones Rain Dogs Frank’s Wild Years
141
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I thought about this exact trio earlier
100
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Fables/pageant/document is a hell of an answer
010
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
The Yes Album Fragile Close to the Edge
120
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 01/08/2026
There's a lot in this thread & its multiple & various reply/quote offshoots that i disagree with, & am exhausted by, but i want to focus on 1 that i keep trying to press on: Let's stipulate LLMs *Can* do grad- & even expert-level math & we should prep for a revolution in the field… So what then?…
214049
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 01/08/2026
There is a certain level of obtuseness in (some) "AI" apologists when they flounce up to point out what "AI" is good for in science, etc, while eliding the fact that almost none of that use is driving the current market capitalization, environmental degradation and resource hogging of the field
411177193
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
The way my imagination is works is that I fantasize about proposing a book on Selling England by the Pound and some implacable authority then demands that I do one on Invisible Touch
000
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Next Met Gala to Honor IKEA Hadeland
100
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Next Met Gala to Honor Encyclopedia Brown
120
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
When Browne hits he hits
020
Reposted by Billness as Metaphor
Adam Chalmers @adamchalmers.com · 28/07/2026
Neuromancer is chillingly relevant today because it asks: what if a guy would rather Die than stop Going Online
81139296
Billness as Metaphor @tripleblip.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I agree: watch this and listen to this unconscionable violation of peoples’ lives. Don’t miss the CEO having the gall to say that if you don’t like it they’ll just buy your house. This, by the way, is all for bitcoin mining. It’s monstrous that this is being allowed to happen.
041