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fred-decker.bsky.social
@fred-decker.bsky.social
120 followers 78 following 1.3K posts
Freelance writer, interested in almost everything (but I repeat myself). Was the kid who read encyclopedias for fun, now am the grownup who reads academic papers and follows smart people online.
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fred-decker.bsky.social
Found and shared on FB by my daughter. It's pretty accurate, at least here on the East Coast.

...though as far as that goes, there are probably enough of us in the rest of (English-speaking) Canada to make it near-universal.
A square graphic, with maple-leaf designs in the corners, and a "Proudly Canadian" logo at the bottom. Text reads: Canadian language 101: The other day = Could be yesterday or 1998 Yeah, no = no Yeah, no, fer sure = Yes Oh, it's going = *desperate cry for help* Watch out for deer = I love you
January 9, 2026 at 1:34 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
I went the other way and did deviled quail eggs for NYE with my longtime childhood friend, his wife, and his mother (my "mom #3). They're little and cute, so you aren't bloated after eating a half-dozen. Speaking hypothetically, of course. :P
A rectangular, Christmas-themed tray filled with tiny deviled quail eggs, each garnished with a small sprig of fresh dill.
January 4, 2026 at 11:46 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
I like his attitude (screw the ol' cease-and-desist, just go straight to occult retribution).
Screencap of a Dec. 29th, 2025 Facebook post by author and self-described "sweary historian" James fell. The text of the post reads My next book, titled "Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots: A History of Humanity," won't be out for at least a year, but I want people to know this fact about it right now: The attached image is headed Author's Note, and it reads: At no point was so-called "artificial intelligence" technology used in the creation of this book. If you steal my work to train your plagiarism software, I shall host a seance to summon the evil spirit of my Scottish grandmother, and sic her on your thieving ass. I'll call my lawyer too, but I'd be more worried about the grandma.
December 30, 2025 at 10:41 AM
fred-decker.bsky.social
I was run off my feet all month, this year, and only got mine boxed up for delivery/mail last night.

So I scaled back to just decorated sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, Linzers, zimmtsternen, vanillekipfeln (sp?) and a few others. Rough math says 16 dozen or thereabouts (not all shown).
multiple kinds of Christmas cookies on cooling racks, ready to pack up, on a Grinch/Christmas-themed tablecloth
December 27, 2025 at 5:18 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
I seldom have to deal with this crap, because I use Ubuntu at home and Windows only on my travel laptop, but still.
A post by Twitter user Gareth Halfacree, which reads: "Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do: *show my installed programs *search my local files *provide access to system settings. Here is a list of things I do *not* want the Start Menu to do: *show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure *show tabloid headlines *show programs I *don't* have installed *search the web via Bing *show adverts(!) *attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM. Thanks."
December 26, 2025 at 2:04 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Something sweet to take you into the weekend.
Photo of a butterscotch-colored juvenile Flemish Giant rabbit, wearing a Christmas-themed collar around its neck, booping noses with a grey and white half-grown kitten, on a large bed spread with a Christmas-themed coverlet.
December 19, 2025 at 8:56 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Product listing: TEMUssolini (TM)

Made for the Caucasian person who's "dictator-curious," but not quite ready to commit to a real strongman.

Sounds persuasively threatening, but it's loaded with safety features:

* Limited memory and processing power
* "Safe word" function: Will roll over and /
A recent official portrait of Donald Trump, scowling for the camera in the manner of Mussolini, with his characteristic and much-mocked bronzer toned down to something resembling a normal skin tone.
December 15, 2025 at 2:59 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Hump day kitten post. Both Billy (darker) and Millie (lighter) are getting a bit tired of having the camera on them so much. :)
Male kitten Billy, with a white chest and mottled dark-colored fur, reclining in a grey cat bed and looking at the camera with a slightly testy expression. Female kitten Millie, with a white chest and mottled grey fur, looking up at the camera from inside a white plastic dollar-store basket, where she was interrupted while playing with a red reusable shopping bag.
December 10, 2025 at 12:13 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
LOL This morning my daughter sent me this, and it made me think of you and your playlists. Not that you strike me as a "Today's Light Rock Hits" kind of guy, but just, you know... broadly speaking.
Quote-post of social media user (sorry, don't recognize the site by its icons) tmurrayart, saying "If people were telepathic there'd be that one guy who just thinks of music 24/7 so people can tune in and listen. 'Thanks for tuning in to Ted's Head, Here are Today's Light Rock Hits'." The quote post, by user zovsko, says "Can't stop thinking about this comment."
December 7, 2025 at 12:06 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
This is a screencap of an exchange on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The Lake Superior account posted "This lake vehemently stands with women having the right to choose. User Tom Fitton replied: "Water is wet and abortion kills a human being." To which, the Lake Superior account replies: "Thomas, not even your first talking point is correct. Water is not wet, what water touches is wet. I'm confident I have a lot more experience in making things wet than you do." User Ron Sullivan quote-posted the entire exchange, commenting "Lake Superior hasn't wrecked anyone like this since the Edmund Fitzgerald."
December 2, 2025 at 10:29 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Ngl, I kinda like this one.
Screen cap of an post from the former Twitter. User Kaijuno writes: "Whenever I get a scam text, I post their number on Craigslist selling absurdly cheap tickets to whatever enormous pop star is touring. Their phone explodes." Beneath is a screen cap of a scam text (the "your package is being due to an unpaid fee" scam), followed by a plaintive "What have you done?"). Beneath this, user Evilwizard posted a comment, consisting solely of the hashtag #practical curses for the modern age.
December 2, 2025 at 11:48 AM
fred-decker.bsky.social
My daughter shared this one the other day, and I thought "Yup, that's pretty much how a lot of days go..."
A post by Twitter user (I refuse to call it X, because fuck Elon) "divergentcoachkelly," which reads "ADHD is knowing exactly what you need to do, then watching yourself not do it like you're a scientist observing a very dumb experiment."
November 28, 2025 at 2:42 AM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Yup. My home and native land, folks. :P
A post on Facebook from an account called "Maritime Happenings" (coastal Canadian provinces Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are collectively known as "The Maritimes"). The caption reads "Nova Scotia Highway 107 this morning." The image is of a grey pickup truck on a main highway, with a massive 98-inch TV in its bed, newly purchased in its box. There appears to be a bungee cord across the back of the opened tailgate to keep the TV from sliding backwards, but there's also a man sitting in the truck's bed to hold onto the TV and keep it stable. His face has been concealed behind a clown-face emoji, for privacy reasons.
November 15, 2025 at 1:22 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse. Meet Millie and Billy, the newest additions to our menagerie.
Two small kittens (6-7 weeks) in a still-warm bed just vacated by the humans. Both have fur in mottled patterns, with white on their chest and belly. Billy, the male, has dark fur and is in the foreground, rolling over with his head turned to the camera and eyes almost closed. Millie, the female, is light grey mottled iwth white, and is asleep and half-concealed behind him. Millie, the grey female kitten, asleep on the top level of a cat tree. She was suddenly overtaken by a Garfield-style "nap attack" in the midst of her afternoon's play.
November 13, 2025 at 3:14 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
My great-grandfather's regimental tobacco pouch, ca. 1917. The 219th would never fight as a unit, as it turned out; the men were instead parceled out to other regiments as reinforcements.
A small pouch in brown leather, with the crest of the 219th Overseas Highland Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, raised in Nova Scotia in 1917. The crest is a rondel with the unit's number in the middle, and a crown at the top, superimposed on a red maple leaf. A banner underneath bears a motto in Scots Gaelic; "Siol na fear fearail," which translates as "Breed of manly men."
November 12, 2025 at 1:02 AM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Newsom's social media team had that covered.
Spoofing Trump's cheap-ass "The Oval Office" signage, Gov. Newsom's social media accounts released this image of the sign replaced by a dollar store-ish "Live, Laugh, LOSE" sign.
November 6, 2025 at 11:08 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
It's baby quail time again! First hatch from the new incubator. Forty-ish to date, and many more still in the incubator in various stages of hatching.
Newly-hatched baby quail, with a pattern of dark down on its back and wings, with pale down on its belly and yellow around its eyes, shown in the poster's hand for scale (they're tiny, and could sit comfortably in a teaspoon if they'd only hold still). Overhead view of nine new-hatched baby quail exploring their new cage, and more specifically a mound of food. Their down is in multiple colors, with most in striped light and dark brown, three in dark down, and one in yellow down with a dark spot on its head. One small new-hatched quail, striped in dark- and light-brown down with a pale belly, eyeballing a stray bit of food on the paper towel in front of him. Behind him is the dark-grey brooder (a metal platform with adjustable-height legs, to provide warmth for the babies in lieu of a mama bird) with a few siblings barely visible in its shadow.
November 3, 2025 at 3:59 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
How about if I think about adverbs every time I see this box?
Image is of a box of Chapman's "Li'l Lolly" brand chocolate ice pops, a sort of Canadian Popsicle.
October 4, 2025 at 9:06 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
"Amusing juxtapositions" dept:

(Pretty sure it'll take longer than that)
Screen cap of a post from Kathryn Cramer asking "Bari Weiss considered as a head of lettuce: how long until her new 'role' blows up?" The next skeet in the poster's feed is by user "open mike eagle," responding to his own earlier post about upcoming live dates, with "Less than two weeks."
October 3, 2025 at 10:57 AM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse. Taken in the gardens at my mom's nursing home a few days ago.
An orange-and-black butterfly feeding at a bed of asters, in bright early-autumn sunshine.
October 2, 2025 at 12:11 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Shared by my daughter on FB. I'll put it here as well for her, my GF, and everyone else who struggles with their mobility.
Post from another site (Tumblr?) by user zetablarian: "Something to add to the long list of things I wish able bodied people wouldn't do: Please don't wrap decorations on the railings of stairways. It's a common practice for the winter holidays, and a museum I visited today had fake autumn leaves wrapped around the metal railings running down their very steep steps. Here's the thing: I can't safely go down steps without relying heavily on the handrail. This is ESPECIALLY true when the weather is cold and icy. If there's clutter between my hand and the rail, I'm way more likely to slip and fall. Please save your festive decor for the architecture that isn't vital to the mobility of others."
September 26, 2025 at 12:13 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Screenshot from Twitter. User Stephen Greene writes "Pachinko by @minjinlee11 was a incredible book. The uncredited english translator really captured all the nuances of the native hangul." User Min Jin Lee replies: "Thank you. It was written originally in English by an American. Me. I was credited as the author."
September 20, 2025 at 3:51 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
Found on FB:
From user Olivia Smith, on Twitter: "I always love it when people say 'baby steps!' to imply they're being tentative, when actually baby steps are a great unbalanced, wholehearted, enthusiastic lurch into the unknown."
September 18, 2025 at 2:03 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
My father was briefly fascinated by Grey Owl after seeing a documentary on TV, so I gave him this book that I'd found in a thrift store. I reclaimed it after he passed away.

It's a sympathetic and lightly fictionalized biography by a personal friend (details in Alt text).
The title page of the 1951 edition of "Half-Breed: The Story of Grey Owl," written by Lovat Dickson and published in London by Peter Davies Ltd. In his prefatory note, the author says "Half-Breed is a biography7 of Grey Owl only in the sense that it presents in chronological order the facts of his life as far as they are known. (...) To make, as near as I could with my limited powers, a living picture of Grey Owl, I have aimed to present not a transcription but a dramatization of his life. I have not introduced any event which has not foundation in fact, but I have in some particulars, in order to round out my picture, dramatized the event by the use of dialogue and description."
September 18, 2025 at 12:21 PM
fred-decker.bsky.social
If you're wondering what it is on the ground near our front steps, at the end of that video, our grandson built a "Ninja Warrior obstacle course" for the birds from various things he'd scavenged from around the yard.

Because ninja chickens are totally a thing.
The "Ninja Warrior" course the OP's grandson constructed for their chickens. Component parts include (but aren't limited to) pieces of the torn-out swimming pool and its deck, a small overturned sled, a quail cage, scrap lumber, a tote, a 5-gallon bucket, an unused rabbit nest box, two laundry baskets, and a floor-standing playset he'd used as a toddler.
September 9, 2025 at 4:02 PM