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bethbethbeth.bsky.social
bethbethbeth
@bethbethbeth.bsky.social
460 followers 360 following 1.7K posts
Academic. Media enthusiast. Fan of SF/F, Marvel, libraries, and baseball. Loves dogs & polar bears. She/Her. #BLM
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bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Without downloading any new pics describe your gender
A smiling axolotl
November 13, 2025 at 6:13 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
I guessed incorrectly about whether the snow would stick.
A look out a front window that shows the snow is definitely sticking to our lawn, bushes, and trees (but not the street in front of our house, so far)
November 9, 2025 at 9:55 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
As luck would have it, I'd already written the grades for my 8-week classes in a notebook, because as soon as I hit refresh on my Canvas gradebook pages, I discovered AWS rules the world.

(AWS does not rule our grade submission system, however; grades have been successfully submitted!)
Cartoonish image of a rocket tipped over slightly with two bots trying to repair it. Caption: Canvas is experiencing issues due to an ongoing AWS incident. (also, why is Bezos trying to keep me from accessing my students' grades?)
October 20, 2025 at 3:03 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
I'd just turned ten the month before. If I'd known what threesomes were at that point, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have been my first threesome movie. As it was, though. the poster below hung on my bedroom wall for years, and I was in love with Sundance.

RIP, Robert Redford
Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid and Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy in the 1969 American Western (*ahem*) 'buddy movie." Both are wearing hats and are looking hot.
September 16, 2025 at 7:38 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Yep

Read via @42sms1701.bsky.social (re-posted to add alt text)
Behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill-fitting suit: the sleaze of a conman, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a Klansman, the sexism of a back-alley creep, the ignorance of a bar-stool drunk, and the greed of a hedge-fund ghoul—all spray-painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a county fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn't but has always been—arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed exalted as ambition, and corruption worshiped like gospel. It is America's shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spite, it doesn't just lose its soul—it shits out this bloated obscenity and calls it a leader.
August 30, 2025 at 7:19 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
An ironic item amongst the "freebie" book section at Worldcon.
At an angle on a black metal book shelf at Worldcon Seattle: Trigger Warning, by Neil Gaiman. Oddly enough (/s), nobody has taken it.
August 15, 2025 at 5:56 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Want to help support @pbs.org and get a fun, limited run (2 weeks only) officially sanctioned shirt (% of $ goes to PBS)? If so...check out this PBS is Punk t-shirt:

twocrowcollective.com

(note: image of distressed version of shirt: twocrowcollective.com/cdn/shop/fil...)
(Distressed) Image of spike-haired white head profile (with two shadow heads behind). Heads have big circular eyes, earring and/or ear (:D), and studded collar, with the words PBS IS PUNK below. Other versions available on the main Two Crows site.
July 12, 2025 at 4:03 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Not quite the same thing, but even further back (1960), Lincoln was known as "Honest Abe"

"Honest Abe taking them on the half shell" (photo credit: Library of Congress)
A pro-Lincoln satirical editorial cartoon (1960): Lincoln ponders the miniature figures of northern and southern Democratic nominees Stephen A. Douglas (left) and John C. Breckinridge (right).
June 29, 2025 at 3:19 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Note: Law & Order was still 8 years in the future in 1982, but if you want to see what Waterston looked like around that time, here's a shot of him with Haing S. Ngor, who played fellow-journalist (and interpreter) Dith Pran in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields.
Sam Waterston & Haing S. Ngor, in the movie The Killing Fields
June 13, 2025 at 6:21 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Thunderbolts! - thumbs up.

First cybertruck seen in the wild - thumbs down.
Cybertruck in a parking lot, without showing the shameful license plate.
May 4, 2025 at 6:14 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
The Daily Bugle continues to have its finger on the pulse of the modern world.

(2012 image: David Aja in his and Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comic)
Part of a comic book panel from writer Matt Fraction's and artist David Aja's Hawkeye. The image shows a headline from the Marvel universe's NY newspaper the Daily Bugle: Everything Awful: Oh God Somebody Do Something
April 18, 2025 at 1:52 AM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
RIP to the 'King of the 1980's mini-series,' Richard Chamberlain. Pictured below, images from Shogun, The Bourne Identity (way more faithful to the book than Damon's movie), and The Thorn Birds.

www.npr.org/2025/03/30/g...
Photo of Richard Chamberlain, Yoko Shimada and Toshiro Mifune (all in costume) on set in the 1980 mini-series 'Shogun (based on James Clavell's novel), filmed entirely in Japan Photo of Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith in the two-part mini-series The Bourne Identity (1988), from Robert Ludlum's novel Photo of Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward in The Thorn Birds (1983), based on Colleen McCullough's best-selling novel
March 30, 2025 at 11:11 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Attn "centrist" Dems who might vote to censure Rep. Al Green, i.e., the only Dem with a spine at the SOTU (bsky.app/profile/crai...): why not go back in time and censure the only "inappropriate" man to not give the N*zi salute at a 1936 rally with Hitler in attendance.

(notes about man in alt text)
Black and white photo of a crowd of Germans giving the Nazi salute to Hitler at a ship christening rally. One lone man - circled in red - stands with his arms crossed. Note: the one man is usually said to be August Landmesser, who'd actually been a member of the Nazi party from 1931 on before falling in love with a Jewish woman and getting engaged to her.
March 6, 2025 at 2:51 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Repost this with the very first album you bought with your own money.
Image of a [much-used] cover of Carole King's 1971 record album Tapestry. King is sitting in a room with high windows in front of a window on a sunny day. Her below-shoulder-length hair is catching the sun, she's barefoot and wearing a casual sweater and bell-bottom blue jeans. Her left knee is bent (foot resting on the window bench) and there's a tapestry of some sort in her lap. A cat sits on a pillow a few feet in front of her, facing the camera. The words Carole King Tapestry are printed on the upper left corner of the image. (note: the titles and lyrics of all the songs were printed on the back of the album. I had learned all the lyrics by the end of the first day I owned the album and played the album probably 25 times that first weekend
February 25, 2025 at 9:04 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
It's never the wrong time for Woody Guthrie's guitar to tell us what's up.

Photo credit to Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and the Sun (1943)
Black and white photo of singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie in March 1943 with his guitar labeled "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."
February 9, 2025 at 1:45 AM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Unlike you, I get my news from a reliable source...
Black and white still from the 1960s sitcom, Mr Ed (i.e., the talking horse): Wilbur and Mr Ed, behind microphones on a lectern.
January 10, 2025 at 3:35 AM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
I used to read all the time, but then G died, the pandemic hit, lock-down set in, and I moved halfway across the country. I had no focus; it was all I could do to watch tv & in 2022 - apart from books I taught in class - I read only 4 books all year.

In 2024? I read 142 books. The reader is back!
Black and White photo of Mrs. Peter Vanderwaart (who apparently had no first name of her own) surrounded by books donated during the Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor District Library Victory Book campaign, February 1943
January 3, 2025 at 4:40 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
On the final night of Hanukkah...
Green menorah with multi-colored candles, sitting on a baking tray covered with tin foil. Fully lit for the last night of Hanukkah.
January 1, 2025 at 11:46 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
First night of Hanukkah menorah, with a combo dinner (roast beef for X-mas and latkes for Hanukkah).
Green menorah on a circular mirror, with the first night's candle lit plus the "helper candle) Round dinner plate with roast beef ( for Christmas) and latkes ( for Hanukkah)
December 26, 2024 at 12:30 AM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Amongst my X-mas / Hanukkah gifts from B was this lovely coffee mug from @effinbirds.com (...appropriate for all teaching seasons)
White coffee mug with drawing of a vulture and the caption: "Did you even read the Fucking Syllabus?"
December 25, 2024 at 1:28 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
I was going to do that "4 favorite characters from 4 series" thing, then this happened...
Bruce Horak as Hemmer in ST: Strange New Worlds Jeffrey Combs as Shran in Star Trek Enterprise Tilda Swinton as...Tilda Swinton Christopher Heyerdahl as "Todd" the Wraith in Star Gate: Atlantis
December 15, 2024 at 10:24 AM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
It's a great photo, and it used to be the norm.

Here's a Vikings game from my childhood when I was ten in 1969)

[Photo credit to St Paul Pioneer Press]
Black and white photo of Minnesota Vikings playing the SF 49ers in a LOT of snow, while coach Bud Grant looks on.
November 22, 2024 at 7:21 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Two days ago, the temperature was almost 70F.

Today...not so much.
A section of our snowy front yard, with a partially-rolled-up-by-the-wind pride flag as the only dash of bright color on the white backdrop.
November 21, 2024 at 9:26 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
An excerpt from "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury (1952)
Screenshot: Excerpt from "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury (1952) "Unbelievable." Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. "A real Time Machine." He shook his head. "Makes you think. If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be here now, running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He'll make a fine President of the United States." "Yes," said the man behind the desk. "We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the worst kind of dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492..."
November 6, 2024 at 6:03 PM
bethbethbeth.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#Books #BookSky #BookChallenge

(1)
Cover of the book Suzuki Beane (Suzuki - a little beatnik child - is pictured with shaggy mid-length hair, a sweatshirt, and rolled up dungarees)
October 6, 2024 at 12:26 PM