Katherine Crighton
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katherinecrighton.bsky.social
Katherine Crighton
@katherinecrighton.bsky.social
life goal: infamous recluse. sometimes I write things, too • a Sibling on the @NoStoryIsSacred podcast • experimental archaeology from the Scientific Revolution • interactive media & game design • katherinecrighton.com • they/them (basically bees)
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
I'm in the current issue of Analog. I managed to negotiate to a contract I was willing to sign. Naively, I thought that established writers giving this feedback would eventually make a dent.

It hasn't. I don't know that it will. I just wrote to Trevor withdrawing a story I'd sold to him.
Did you read my post from last week about how contract woes caused me to withdraw an accepted story from F&SF, ending my 54-year quest to be published in that magazine? But wait (as the saying goes) — there's more! Scroll down at the link for an update. www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/20...
A dream denied: My 54-year quest to publish a short story in F&SF ‹ Scott Edelman
www.scottedelman.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
I've always been annoyed by the assumptions people made about the victims at Pompeii based on where they were found, their position or connection to others.
Making up relationships, assuming genders, etc.
Nice to see that dealt with by science;
www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
Pompeii victims aren't who we thought they were, DNA analysis reveals
An ancient-DNA analysis of victims in Pompeii who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption reveals some unusual relations between the people who died together.
www.livescience.com
November 15, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Heads up #mediastudies: If you use YouTube as a resource for early recorded media (e.g., recordings of broadcast TV, home videos, early digital uploads, etc.), they're rolling out *automatic* upscaling with AI.
blog.youtube/news-and-eve...
5 new features to help creators shine on TV screens
Learn how YouTube is transforming the TV experience for creators & their viewers with 5 new features that boost content quality, engagement & shopping.
blog.youtube
October 30, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.
October 30, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
important update to the stupid fucking stupid youtube shit!!!
This is incorrect.

1. The opt-out for creators is channel-wide, not per-video. It's available in YouTube Studio right now.
2. The low-res versions aren't going away. YouTube will automatically generate multiple upscaled copies, but you can still choose to view the 144p/240p versions if you want.
October 29, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
🧵Thread of cafes, restaurants, bars, bagel joints, etc offering free meals to SNAP recipients, for those who might need it, & so those who don't can give 'em their business.

If you know of such offers in your area & don't see them here, please tell us in @'s.

Here's one! toastedseattle.com
October 29, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
As a reminder:

On BW&R, we have a resource list of publications where scholars can pitch their op-eds, essays, reviews, excerpts, and more! If you run such a site/podcast/blog/publication and accept pitches, please let me know so I can add you to the list!

blackwhiteandread.com/pitchables/
October 29, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
Always check the original scans, never just lazily scrape the transcription data if there's a photo image to check. Doing it right takes ages but the overall quality of your dataset will be so much better.
October 29, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
Louis-Léopold Boilly, A trompe-l'oeil with a cat and a wooden log through a canvas, and a fish hanging from the stretcher, oil on canvas, 33½ x 37¾ in. (85 x 96 cm.) (formerly Christie's)
October 29, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
quick psa: if you use GDrive, go into Settings -> Manage Apps and make sure the Gemini AI horseshit is turned off.
Just got a heads-up about it elsewhere, and sure enough, Gemini had been turned back on without my permission
October 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
I collect inspirational footnotes and share them from time to time:
October 26, 2025 at 12:28 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
notice the general mood of the timeline? how everyone is in a good mood and there’s a lot less misery and dooming? how there’s a lot of “we’re going to beat these assholes”?

anyway that’s why these events are important
October 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
Y’all here is a fun fact: Portland has a brand new volunteer organization called “operation inflation” that allows people to borrow inflatable costumes for protests. They just started a couple weeks ago and have like a 160 costume library (and counting because people keep donating).
OPERATION INFLATION
www.operationinflation.com
October 18, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.
Not a shitpost: #NoKings is feel-good performative activism for comfortable mostly upper and upper middle class white folks and that’s good, actually. Millions of people in the streets protesting a fascist regime is good. It is good for the normie baseline to be massive displays of public dissent.
October 19, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
BTW I printed these. Three plates filled with these is a LOT of fucking whistles, and you set it up to print overnight and wake up to a big old plateful.

makerworld.com/en/models/11...
Micro Whistle - The Smallest 3D Whistle by ACstudio MakerWorld: Download Free 3D Models
Boost MePer il fischietto più piccolo da stampare in 3D42MM DI PURA POTENZA!!!Piccolo nelle dimensioni, gigante nell’efficacia!Minuscolo fischietto, il più piccolo mai progettato per la stampa 3D, sol...
makerworld.com
October 19, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
📣 Call for Contributors: Edited Volume - The Medieval in Museums
@archumanities.bsky.social 🖼️📜

🗓️ Abstract deadline: 3 Nov 2025 (17:00 GMT) ⏰

Full #CfP: bit.ly/CfPMiM
October 2, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
On the way home from the barn I heard a This American Life piece by a guy who had an AI clone of himself call his friends to have conversations and I would just like to state now that if anyone ever does this to me, we will no longer be friends. WTF is this world where we outsource all interaction?
October 11, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
V. excited to have found a child's diary from 1789, covering the period he & his family fled the French Revolution

... So far it has mostly been 'I am very annoyed about running away!', accompanied with detailed blow by blow accounts of his tutor's unfortunate bouts of diarrhoea #18c
a man sitting in a chair with a hulu logo on the bottom
ALT: a man sitting in a chair with a hulu logo on the bottom
media.tenor.com
October 8, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
They did give me a nightmare scenario addition:

"The larger the datacenter, the larger the battery backup it needs, which we also only have recently started addressing in the code."

And added "So, yeah, I guess we're waiting for a Triangle Shirtwaist Fire for datacenters."
October 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
The Ig Nobel is incredible , one year an Indian guy won it for calculating the average surface area of an elephant and during his acceptance they had an elephant hold up a sign with the surface area of the scientist on it, they do showbiz better than the Oscars
Video: a Japanese scientist was attacked by flies while giving the acceptance speech for his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research paper that proved painting Zebra-like stripes on cows led to a decrease in biting fly attacks.
October 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Normal advertising: Please prereg for my MFA capstone and justify my crying in a Denny's as I write about the unbearable beauty of humanity across time, thx
wp.wpi.edu/apothecaryca...
Book a Timeslot | An Apothecary Dreams
wp.wpi.edu
October 5, 2025 at 4:08 AM
Based on a lot of the sotto voce posting happening in my timeline, I'm looking at this thread I wrote (up and down) months ago, about genAI defenders and a possible reason for that defensiveness, and... Welp.
And as such, the way we talk about genAI as a tool *has* to have more thought put into it. Calling its output "bullshit" or "slop" is, well, accurate-- BUT it's too late for the people who've already put genAI into the "also people" bucket. It just pings a protective/defensive instinct.
October 5, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Katherine Crighton
Were you at #Readercon this year? Did you see--or pop a message into--The 500-Year Time Capsule? Book an entry time to see the final collection for it, at my capstone installation "An Apothecary Dreams": wp.wpi.edu/apothecaryca...
October 4, 2025 at 6:46 PM