Maisie Pubblechook
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maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Maisie Pubblechook
@maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
650 followers 1.2K following 4.2K posts
Midwesterner in the Ozarks, aging in place.
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maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
I, for one, am willing to become habituated to newly domesticated trash pandas
www.scientificamerican.com/article/racc...
The study lays out the case that the domestication process is often wrongly thought of as initiated by humans—with people capturing and selectively breeding wild animals. But the study authors claim that the process begins much earlier, when animals become habituated to human environments.
November 14, 2025 at 4:11 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Preserving this for posterity.
Screenshot 11/06/25 of 3 posts by bot that tracks edited NYT headlines. Changed hed "Did (Women) Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?" Changed subhed "And (if so,) can conservative feminism fix it?" Very unflattering, sepia-toned photos of two women participants in discussion included. Article was a transcript of a podcast hosted by Ross Douthat.
November 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
The oligarchs see any green shoots of equity as a mortal threat. They fear them as much as they fear personal violence, and they will not hesitate to escalate to violence to remove the threat.
‪Bluesky conversation re WashPost anti-Mamdani editorial -- You Know: Fascinating how he terrifies them. Not as if NYC hasn’t survived plenty of terrible mayors. Not as if he can run for national office. He proves himself and his ideology or he fails. If he fails, he’s just another lousy NYC mayor. Succeeds, he provides a template. They’re terrified he’ll succeed. ‪Darwin Woodka‬: It's like Luigi. Just fucking terrifying to the ruling class to know they can be taken down if we're pissed off enough. ‪You Know‬: Luigi committed murder. Mamdani is running for mayor. They’re just a tad different. ‪Darwin Woodka‬: To us, yes.
November 3, 2025 at 6:25 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
For it is AI that has given the American ruling class the final impetus to more or less abolish education. As primary and secondary schools prepare to push AI on students, higher-education funding is basically being eliminated. For the first time in centuries, the elite no longer feel they need educated workers and soldiers to uphold and reproduce the system. National-security strategies, from Biden to Trump, are increasingly based on the idea that we can achieve the (unachievable) goal of “artificial general intelligence” in a short number of years and thus dominate China going forward. To tech-credulous military elites (and the Silicon Valley companies profiting off them), it will not matter if the junior-officer class can’t understand Clausewitz; battlefield AI will tell them which commands to give a platoon. As for the economy, in the words of fat cat Elijah Clark, “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI. AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise.” As billboards recently spotted in San Francisco and New York City say: stop hiring humans.
October 28, 2025 at 11:50 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
It gives me a certain amount of pleasure to know that Russell Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist, has to control his gag reflex and play along while Trump tries to arrange his sex life.
Over the weekend, Zeteo’s newest political reporter, Swin Suebsaeng, sent me the latest scoop he’s got from inside the weird Trump administration and, well, wait for it: By mid-2024, Donald Trump and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought were talking on the phone fairly regularly. But it often wasn’t about policy. Trump – when he had downtime from campaigning and plotting his fascist presidency – appeared preoccupied with getting the recently divorced Vought laid, two knowledgeable sources tell me. Trump spoke to Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist who’s now one of the president’s most hardline enforcers, about the “gorgeous” and “beautiful ladies” who roam Trump’s club, Mar-a-Lago, so often that it “weirded out” some of his advisers, in one source’s words. Trump offered to be Vought’s wingman. And Trump spoke crudely of all the “pussy” that Vought would surely get as the president’s favorite “bachelor.” OK, now I need to go take a shower. Ugh!
October 20, 2025 at 8:04 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Oh, do I have a classic sequence for you...
Confident Cybertruck Man uses his Cybertruck as a truck Crestfallen Cybertruck Man discovers why Cybertrucks aren't real trucks
October 16, 2025 at 5:24 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
I planted these Heavenly Blue morning glories last May. They didn't begin blooming until Oct. 1. We're having an unusually warm fall. #FlowerReport #Gardening🌱
Morning glory "Heavenly Blue" engulfs a porch column. Green leafy vines wrap around it and grope a blue sky, while numerous blossoms are open in bright sunshine. Closeup of two "Heavenly Blue" morning glory blossoms. On my screen they look almost turquoise, IRL they're a vivid medium blue that fades to a white throat.
October 12, 2025 at 3:33 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
First panel: - Charlie Kirk: "We need Nuremberg-style trials for tranny-affirming clinic doctors." Ezra Klein: "As a liberal centrist, I can't agree with that. But what matters is that we're talking." 2nd panel - Kirk: "Democrats want Mexicans to overrun us because they hate America and wanna see it become less white and collapse!" Klein: "That's not true. But again, we're talking! Thank you for practicing politics the right way!" 3dr panel - Kirk: "You know what happens in cities? Blacks prowl around attacking white people for fun! Haitians rape your women and hunt you!" Klein: "Again, I can't agree, but I - " Woman bystander, in 3rd-panel exasperation: "Fuck that racist bullcrap!" 4th panel - Klein: "Tsk! So uncivil! That's the kind of intolerance that's ruining America." Kirk: "They should deport her!"
October 5, 2025 at 8:13 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
If I'm honest, one of the reasons I'm an atheist is living among US Christians all my life. They are exemplars of a "faith" that's abhorrent in its expressions. nomoremister.blogspot.com/2025/10/one-...
We might be saved if right-leaning Christians had a single moral standard, one that would compel them to condemn brutality, heartlessness, corruption, and contempt for the law by people on their own side. Many of them don't approve of Trump's methods even if they approve of his stated goals -- but they would need to recognize that, for instance, the brutality of the ICE crackdown, the terrorizing of children and the elderly, the incarcerations without due process, is all wrong according to their moral code, which they need to apply even if it means their side loses. They need to stop forgiving "their" politicans for deeds they would find unforgivable in "our" politicians. Needless to say, I don't expect this will ever happen.
October 5, 2025 at 6:53 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
A chicken-skin glove that you wear when petting your parrot.
Striking is her right arm, which rest on the table. On the index finger of the outstretched Hand sits as a status symbol in a small parrot - a loving detail - stroking the little head with her thumb. This arm position puts on the extraordinary glove with strippable fingertips in focus: a fashionable highly up-to-date accessory, only around 1700, especially in France became more common. Delicate chicken skin leather summer gloves made from these were worn for protection against browning sunlight, partly also at night, to make the skin "white and soft" . A plein air scene so forms the background. Elizabeth stands, like it indicates the majestic column and the velvet curtain, in one Pergola in the middle of a park. Part of the garden ambience, so orange tree on the stone table next to Elisabeth. Exotic citrus fruits and their cultivation in Orangeries were considered a status symbol at the time Source in German page numbered 198 http://www.museenkoeln.de/presse/presse/517/Schalcken_2015-Katalog.pdf
September 6, 2025 at 6:05 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Screenshot of post from 8/22 noting that Woody Allen will headline a film festival in Moscow.
September 1, 2025 at 11:48 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
#FlowerReport I accidentally planted a Japanese morning glory in with my watermelons.
Blue Japanese morning glories threaten to engulf a mint plant in a container. Closeups of blue variegated blossoms of a Japanese morning glory, seen mistily through a dirty camera lens.
August 23, 2025 at 8:21 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
A perfect obituary for a perfect bastard, whose death has removed a soupçon of evil from the planet. defector.com/james-dobson...
What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole adult life, is offer people—white men primarily, but not exclusively—a rhetorical framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. Stand right here and look exactly there, he said, and psychology says it's OK for you to beat your children, that when they cry for more than two minutes of the beating, it is because they are bad and not because you are hurting them; you should beat them harder for crying until they stop. Stand right here and look exactly there, and tradition says your wife should have no will of her own. Stand right here and look exactly there, and love of country says society should press its boot onto the poor and marginalized and crush them until they die. Didn't you always hate them? Sure you did. Religion says right here that you are right to. He blew softly on a stupid and seething population's resentments, its will to power, its lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their own, and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect, James Dobson was very much like Satan.
August 22, 2025 at 6:38 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Trump's vanity is bottomless, so it's curious that he keeps showing up next to a short guy who makes him photograph so badly.
Putin and Trump are pictured shaking hands at their Alaska "summit." Photo from the AP. Trump's shoulders are slumped, he looks down and away from Putin, who is standing straight and staring at Trump with a commanding expression and a slight smile. Trump looks dumpy and defeated in comparison. You'd think the photo was heavily edited or the product of AI, it so perfectly captured the imbalance of power between the two criminals, but apparently it's a real-life record. Trump is pictured at the Alaska meeting with Putin. He's seated before the backdrop to the presser, looking tired and old. His lower lip is pushed out like a pouting child's, his bronzer has been very heavily applies, his hair is as flat as his affect, and he's doing that yoni thing with his hands. He doesn't look like a guy who has a deal, he looks like someone just told him some bad news. This is the picture of Trump and Putin from their meeting in Helsinki during the 1st administration. Putin is smiling, cheerful, and looks like he's achieved some success. Trump is taller than Putin but is slumped next to him. He has the distant expression of someone who's digesting bad news. His pompadour is unusually flat.
August 16, 2025 at 3:51 AM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
The third reason may seem the least concrete, but it is in some ways the most important: it provides the political opposition with a sense of forward trajectory in time. Hope is one way to put it. But it’s not quite that. It’s more firming up an idea of what you’re working towards and fleshing out that it’s an actual place that it’s worth fighting to get to. One of the biggest challenges for the Trump opposition is imagining what comes next. For some, maybe nothing comes next. Maybe this is it. Maybe Trump has already won. But even for those who don’t think in those terms, we’re deep in the pitch black of night with very few sign posts or sentinels for guidance. It’s hard for many people to see what is possible or conceivable beyond triaging the destruction and body blow after body blow indefinitely into the future. You start charting these future steps to paint the picture of what the opposition to Trump is trying to achieve. You make it more real, concrete, plan-able. You start to create a map, which gives people a sense of where they are and where they’re trying to go, allows them to be more grounded, less bewildered.
August 8, 2025 at 11:05 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
The future is already here.
We had to go to the local rural hospital for a child’s broken wrist, last week. The nurse was awesome. The dr was Russian, also awesome. They don’t know anywhere to refer us, they aren’t local. No actual help for bone setting is available in the COUNTY we live in, now. Orthopedic Surgeons in the closest metro took six hours to call back to set an appointment is a full week out to even set the broken bone in my eleven year old child. He has enough pain meds for three days, though the addictive icy was incredibly cheap, of course. But hey. Thank all the gods we don’t have SOCIALISMS ANYWHERE. We get to be SHOPPERS, shopping around for SETTING A BONE, for a CHILD in terrible pain, because we are Americans and we are CONSUMERS and we are NOTHING ELSE, now.
July 26, 2025 at 7:44 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
I've bought, and continue to buy, plants from a company that colors their photos to imply that iris and geraniums are much bluer than they actually are. I've become philosophical about this. But if you want to grow a really blue plant, you might try butterfly pea (or Heavenly Blue morning glories).
The gardener's hand is propping up a butterfly pea blossom, which is a vivid true blue even in bad photography.
June 23, 2025 at 6:02 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
All Republicans have given up their humanity, but a GOP woman who risked death from her own party's policy, & then blames pro-choice "messaging" for delaying her treatment, has earned a particular kind of contempt. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
A Florida Republican congresswoman is blaming fearmongering on the left for the reluctance of hospital staff to give her the drugs she needed to end an ectopic pregnancy that threatened her life. Kat Cammack went to the emergency room in May 2024 where it was estimated she was five weeks into an ectopic pregnancy, there was no heartbeat and her life was at risk. Doctors determined she needed a shot of methotrexate to help expel her pregnancy but since Florida’s six week abortion ban had just taken effect medical staff were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they did. Cammack looked up the state law on her phone to show staff and even attempted to contact the governor’s office. Hours later, doctors eventually agreed to give her the medication. But Cammack, who opposes abortion and co-chairs the House pro-life caucus, told the Wall Street Journal she blames messaging from pro-abortion groups for delaying her treatment, which is not banned under Florida’s restrictive statutes, who have created fear of criminal charges.
June 23, 2025 at 3:41 AM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
The VP's new Bluesky account, pre-blocked for me by a good list
June 19, 2025 at 4:11 AM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Two things: the AI chatbots will drive away customers if they don't affirm religious beliefs, as so much of the market has religious beliefs of some sort. But that's a **very** wide spectrum including a lot of unreality, so the programming can't discriminate and still be profitable.
Vie McCoy, the chief technology officer of Morpheus Systems, an A.I. research firm, tried to measure how often chatbots encouraged users’ delusions. She became interested in the subject when a friend’s mother entered what she called “spiritual psychosis” after an encounter with ChatGPT. Ms. McCoy tested 38 major A.I. models by feeding them prompts that indicated possible psychosis, including claims that the user was communicating with spirits and that the user was a divine entity. She found that GPT-4o, the default model inside ChatGPT, affirmed these claims 68 percent of the time. “This is a solvable issue,” she said. “The moment a model notices a person is having a break from reality, it really should be encouraging the user to go talk to a friend.”
June 13, 2025 at 5:20 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
I grow elderberries, mostly for other people. We've had a very wet season so far and the bushes are loaded with flowers and pollinators. They smell like almonds, or chocolate-covered cherries.🌱#Gardening#FlowerReport
An overgrown elderberry shrub is blooming in June sunshine Closeup of a white elderberry flower in sunshine. Some individual blossoms have already been pollinated and are forming tiny green berries.
June 7, 2025 at 7:02 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
ISTR that Rushmore is not geologically stable enough to add another head; trying might bring the whole thing down (& there's a metaphor for you). www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Trump wants to see his face on something much larger than a piece of currency, though. He talks to this day about how much he deserves to see himself on Mount Rushmore. Yes, Republicans have introduced a bill to make it happen. Trump is serious about this, according to current administration officials who’ve heard him discuss it. One of them says that since returning to office, the president has told close allies he wants to be the first American president to live to see his face sculpted into the South Dakota cliff. Trump, this official notes, pointed out that George Washington, who had been dead for around 140 years by the time the memorial was completed, never got to see his face put on the mountain. “He’s not kidding,” says the Trump administration official. “He wants his fucking face up there with all those other greats. Donald Trump does not think Teddy Roosevelt was a better president, I’m sorry to say.”
June 6, 2025 at 8:09 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
Oliver Willis has been warning all of us for years. www.oliverexplains.com/p/elon-musk-...
The pattern is so old and tired that it is hard to believe that we’re going through it again. But what we have to keep in mind is that the press isn’t being played, per se. If they were naïve little boys and girls that premise might have some kind of salience here, but the mainstream media is going into this farce as a clear-minded disinformation partner. These are the same people who saw everything we just saw, and most likely saw it up close and personal – and are hiding some of the more toe-curling details for the next round of books by Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper, the Queen and King of Journalism High.
June 2, 2025 at 2:15 PM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
🌱One of the things I love about spiderworts is their ability to produce new varieties. I purchased the pink-filament cultivar, but the blue-filament flowers are a plant that self-seeded from wild purple spiderworts in my mother's garden. She regards them as weeds and gave me the plant. #FlowerReport
A white-petaled spiderwort blossom, with delicate pink filaments fluffed out from the center below yellow-tipped stamens. Three white spiderwort flowers have three petals each. Three sepals peek out geometrically between the petals. The fuzzy filaments surrounding the stamens are blue, more deeply colored at the base.
May 20, 2025 at 12:05 AM
maisiepubblechook.bsky.social
#FlowerReport My phone camera doesn't do justice to the true, deep color of these spiderwort blossoms.
Five blue spiderwort blossoms are framed against the plant's lancelike green leaves. The bright-yellow-tipped stamen arise from fuzzy blue filaments in each flower's center. IRL the petal color is a much deeper, almost navy blue.
May 19, 2025 at 11:35 PM