Potempkin Village Idiot
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ixak.bsky.social
Potempkin Village Idiot
@ixak.bsky.social
1K followers 1.6K following 2.5K posts
Baltimore climate dad anthropologist fighting existential terror w/ existential counter-terrorism. The soft underbelly of the cutting edge. Working on resilience, local governance, urban gardening, tool repair, fermentation.
https://medium.com/@ixak
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ixak.bsky.social
It's in the 30s and 40s all week at night, and yet the raspberry bush in the community garden is still pumping out phenomenal berries.
A dozen freshly picked beautifully ripe raspberries.
November 15, 2025 at 7:18 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Image of Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni sitting in a prison cell together in the movie "Down by Law"
November 15, 2025 at 2:15 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Currently torn between either pronouncing females like tamales, or pronouncing tamales like females.
Quark from the show Deep Space 9 saying the word "Females..." but the letters f and e have been overwritten by the letters t and a respectively. A picture of a "Tamales" sign at a tamale stand.
November 14, 2025 at 7:24 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Here's something someone said to me today that made me cry my eyes out
Text message that says, "your kids are the only counter-evidence that this isn't the worst online."
November 14, 2025 at 3:16 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Show me a hot person with a gun again.
November 14, 2025 at 2:32 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Wouldn't bet on it.
A drawing of the DC comic character Etrigan the Demon.
November 10, 2025 at 1:50 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Me, to my kids: "No! We're not buying a bunch of half-priced post-Halloween candy. You have too much candy already!"

Also me: "Yes. We need this."
A bag of Halloween gumballs made to look like eyeballs.
November 9, 2025 at 5:54 PM
ixak.bsky.social
A boy and a dog walk side by side
November 9, 2025 at 2:05 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Just introduced my 4 year old to the nog.
He's a fan.
A pint of eggnog in the fridge.
November 9, 2025 at 1:15 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Radical.
King radical, a recurring villain from the web comic Dr McNinja smashes through the Mayor's large plate glass window in City Hall wearing rollerblades and a purple crown while saying, "I'd like to apply for a building permit."
November 4, 2025 at 11:13 AM
ixak.bsky.social
When I was in third and fourth grade my friends and I used to draw incredibly violent comics and index card flip books. My son is clearly continuing the tradition, albeit with a much greater level of artistic skill and talent than I had.
I'm sorry. I try to be really good about alt text, but I'm really kind of at a loss as to how to really successfully describe this 15 panel comic page except to say that it's sprunki characters undergoing a rather graphic episode of axe violence. 15 panel comic drawn by a 9-year-old depicting graphic bloody sprunki violence.
November 2, 2025 at 10:22 PM
ixak.bsky.social
It's my 16th anniversary! In 2009 we held a costume-optional Halloween wedding in a weird tiny little chapel in Leaken Park, with the reception at a nearby creepy old mansion.
A variety of wedding-goers, one dressed as a zombie, one as an orthodox bishop. Next to them, a couple stands dressed as though for a Venetian Carnival - the man wears all black with a tricorn hat and a venetian batua mask, while the woman wears a long flowered dress and a feathered domino mask. A man in a gorilla suit waits to enter the chapel where the wedding will be held. A slightly disturbed-looking child stands next to him. A luchador mask-wearing man in a suit and tie stands in front of a tiny wooden Russian Orthodox chapel. An old stone mansion with the side porch illuminated by a single string of Christmas lights.
October 31, 2025 at 1:27 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Made ratatouille. It looked fantastic. Tasted even better. Forgot to take a picture before it was mostly gone.
Casserole dish half-full of leftover ratatouille. Thinly sliced layers of zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and tomato.
October 30, 2025 at 10:05 PM
ixak.bsky.social
As they taught me in Sunday school, the inverted maple leaf represents the overturning of the proper order of things:
Carnal desire triumphant over reason. The material world triumphant over the spiritual world.
Evil triumphant over good.
Canadian baseball triumphant over American baseball.
A child's craft project - A wooden cutout of a maple leaf roughly painted purple and hung stem-up on the wall.
October 30, 2025 at 4:22 PM
ixak.bsky.social
You want some unbridled joy? Here's my four-year-old son last night at the lantern parade absolutely losing his shit to the sound of an approaching Baltimore City School drumline
October 26, 2025 at 11:39 PM
ixak.bsky.social
It's St. Crispin's Day!!!
A picture of the dog Crispin's Crispian from the book "Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself". The dog is smoking a corncob pipe and reciting King Henry's "Band of Brothers" from William Shakespeare's play Henry V, saying: "And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother."
October 25, 2025 at 6:11 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Crazy that it's been in the 40s and 50s at night for the past two weeks, but the raspberry bush keeps pushing out berries.
A handful of raspberries. A branch from a raspberry bush, heavy with raspberries.
October 25, 2025 at 4:03 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Sexy Dr. McNinja punching a ghost
A skeet from lacey @byelacey.bsky.social that says “your halloween costume is "sexy" + the last thing you google searched” “this year i'll be going as "sexy bus schedule".
October 25, 2025 at 2:32 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Variation on the "shaking my head the whole time" tweet/meme that says, "Reading SCUM Manifesto and shaking my head the whole time so the people on the bus know I disagree with it"
October 25, 2025 at 2:08 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Four panel cartoon depicting Vlad the impaler as he discovers marshmallows. He stares intently at the marshmallow, inserts the skewer, and looking at the result says, "well these are fucking great"
October 24, 2025 at 6:23 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Started keeping a journal in the early days of COVID. Just finished #14.
A stack of 14 journals.
October 23, 2025 at 8:06 PM
ixak.bsky.social
I'm a huge fan of the cowboy corgi, which is an Australian Cattle Dog/Corgi cross, and just looks like a Heeler with shorter legs and bigger ears.
Cowboy Corgi - a Australian cattle dog crosses with a corgi.
October 23, 2025 at 12:28 AM
ixak.bsky.social
Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Kenny Rossmore from the 2013 American comedy film "We're the Millers" says "You guys are getting Best of Times?" (Instead of "You guys are getting paid?")
October 22, 2025 at 1:38 PM
ixak.bsky.social
October 20, 2025 at 9:53 PM
ixak.bsky.social
Oh, baby, those little roses are so sweet! Can you buy me one?
A box of "love roses" - small fake flowers in glass tubes that are intended to be discarded so that the glass tube can be used to smoke crack.
October 18, 2025 at 9:37 PM