Querydash
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querydash.bsky.social
Querydash
@querydash.bsky.social
330 followers 980 following 2K posts
NYC person. UX and behavioral researcher.
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querydash.bsky.social
(reference:)
A screengrab of Patrick Cosmos’s Bsky thread reading: working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now" "I'm strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm" of course you do. You're twelve. "I don't want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal" hell yeah homie you're twelve. "Maybe if there's crime we should just send the army" bless your heart my twelve year old buddy
October 16, 2025 at 1:14 PM
querydash.bsky.social
@grapenutsrobot.graphics
A view over the shoulders of Homestar Runner characters Strongbad and The Cheat as they look at a computer monitor showing a map of the United States, but the United States is wearing a pair of white y-fronts. The waistband of the underwear is roughly the Mason-Dixon line. You can imagine what’s happening in Texas.
October 1, 2025 at 3:54 PM
querydash.bsky.social
Seconding the Viki vote. Perfectly sized dramas, too: South Korea is 16-20 hours with no second seasons (well, mostly) so you’re never sinking too much time into a drama that fizzles.

Also the sageuks have a whole amazing hierarchy-by-hat thing going on. And if you branch into c-dramas, this!
A woman in a Chinese historical drama is looking directly at the camera. She has pearls glued to her face between her eyebrows and on either side of her eyes. Pearls are also dangling from her ears, dangling from hair pieces, and adorning the top of her robe.
September 4, 2025 at 7:43 PM
querydash.bsky.social
You’re not supposed to just say Stephen Miller’s secret service nickname out loud like that, Donald.

(Also, say it two more times and he just materializes unsettling close behind you, I hear.)
A black and white movie still showing a man in a Dracula costume, biting the neck of a blonde woman. It’s Bela Lugosi in the role of Dracula.
August 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
querydash.bsky.social
But which books did you pick up for a little light reading.
A bookshelf at the Hobby lobby checkout, featuring books about the sins of excessive empathy, biblical topics, and how to be a fictional tradwife. They are all 40% off. I wonder why.
August 9, 2025 at 10:02 PM
querydash.bsky.social
A screenshot of the Homestar runner cartoon with Strongbad looking at a computer that is displaying a red map of the United States. The country is wearing a pair of white y-fronts. The top of the underwear seems to be the mason Dixon line. You can imagine what’s happening with Texas.
August 1, 2025 at 12:29 AM
querydash.bsky.social
Scary in that some of the totally normal non-scary people in the book are actually hugely scary because you absolutely know these people and what they’re going to do and it’s appalling they’re the ones brought together to handle this situation. Very atmospheric.
Cover of the novel “incidents around the house”. The words “incidents around the house a novel Josh malerman” are printed in bright red and huge against a dark foggy blue gray background, but there is also a bunny sitting in a spotlight and facing away from the front of the book.
July 24, 2025 at 2:48 AM
querydash.bsky.social
The 1990s Carphone for Business Dads.

It lodged on the armrest between the two front seats and also had a padded carrying case, if I remember it correctly.
A black corded telephone sitting on the armrest between two front seats in a car. The black handset sort of looks like an old TV remote. I can’t quite tell if the black part underneath is part of the armrest or the phone but I think it’s a mix of both.
July 14, 2025 at 3:43 AM
querydash.bsky.social
Are people not aware of Ravi Bhalla, Sikh mayor of Hoboken…
Mayor Ravi Bhalla stands in front of a cream building with an American flag pinned to it. He’s with a woman, a boy and a girl. Both Bhalla and the young boy wear Sikh head wraps.
June 25, 2025 at 12:53 PM
querydash.bsky.social
You could also try Chinese TV, though I find the government messaging sometimes breaks through the subtext into the VERY LITERAL TEXT at weird narrative moments.

But look at this hat! How did it even get in the door? That’s worth 15 minutes of viewing at least, just for the suspense.
A still from a Chinese historical drama, with a man in a red robe giving someone a skeptical look. But he’s got a boxy black hat on the top of his head, which is mostly contained, except for what seem to be very narrow wings off either side, perpendicular to his head, which must have a wingspan of four feet in total.
June 2, 2025 at 3:03 AM
querydash.bsky.social
I don’t love it with most TV, but I got started with sageuks (historical Korean dramas) and somehow the engagement of trying to figure out the hat hierarchy and fashion choices made me attentive enough to stick with the subtitles.

So if you’re looking for multilayered distraction? Excellent.
photograph of a television showing a Korean TV show, with subtitles in yellow reading “I’m so sad I would cough up blood!” the show is a historical Korean drama, so all of the characters are in richly colored brocades and silks. The quote is an advisor speaking to the King, but he’s not even being that dramatic, for some reason people in historical Korean dramas throw up blood sometimes when they’re very upset? See, this is why they’re interesting. Also if you get a nosebleed in a contemporary Korean drama you are absolutely dying of terminal cancer.
June 2, 2025 at 2:58 AM
querydash.bsky.social
I very much enjoy the inclusion of weird pigeon breeds in sci-fi! It’s a minor detail but honestly, the minor weirdness is what fascinates me in sci-fi.

I sent this pigeon catalog to my friend a month ago for exactly the same reason. I mean - what is this?!? How does this happen?!?
A gray pigeon standing in front of a lemon-yellow wall. But there’s more: It’s A pigeon that has been overbred to the extend that its head is so far back on its neck that it seems to emerge from the connection between body and tail? To be honest with you, I do not know how this is even a functional pigeon. Think of a pigeon, then fully detach it head and sew it back on where its tail starts. it sounds like I’m screwing with the alt text but I promise I am not. This is a bird bred to the point of functional bewilderment. This is the pug of pigeons.
May 4, 2025 at 6:15 PM
querydash.bsky.social
WHAT. This is so useful!
iPhone calculator showing the conversion of US$100 to the equivalent in great British pounds, currently around 74 pounds
April 29, 2025 at 3:22 PM
querydash.bsky.social
When DO you weave in loose ends? Asking for myself and possibly also a member of Congress…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during a live stream, showing the audience the purple sweater she knitted and is now wearing, but also abruptly realizing that there’s a loose end hanging out of the left cuff. She’s showing the loose end to the camera.
April 11, 2025 at 2:29 PM
querydash.bsky.social
Cartoonist who made this image, please come claim your well-deserved credit.
A robot with a squirt bottle yells “stop reading arguments in the internet! you’re making yourself upset!”. He’s squirting a person in a yellow shirt holding a phone, who hunches over hissing, kind of like Gollum. The cartoon’s on a purple background.
April 11, 2025 at 4:29 AM
querydash.bsky.social
This one shows which spices in your cabinet naturally go together. And then you pair that with the regional acid/fat and you are MUCH more likely to produce something that tastes good, rather than something that tastes “a little funny”.
Another illustration showing how herbs and spices align to countries and regions. The graph is a wheel, with an inner ring (regions, color coded in five colors that then spread out from the circle’s center to outer segments of the wheel), a middle ring of country names, and an outer ring of herbs and spices.
April 3, 2025 at 2:45 AM
querydash.bsky.social
Blow these wheels up and look at them in detail!
An illustration of “The World of Fat” from Nosrat’s book “Salt Fat Acid Heat” that shows fats aligned to country and region (example: Butter, Neutral Oil aligned to Scandinavia and Europe)
April 3, 2025 at 1:44 AM
querydash.bsky.social
A monkey-paw kind of wish if ever heard one.
March 21, 2025 at 12:54 PM
querydash.bsky.social
Give it up for the Government Allegory Spacecraft, everyone.
Starship debris against the sky. Looks quite pretty, like a ton of shooting stars. Expensive, taxpayer-funded, private contractor stars.
March 7, 2025 at 1:48 AM
querydash.bsky.social
This is the shit they’ve been pulling throughout government and insanely, it’s been working for a MONTH AND A HALF.

It’s all Land of Make Believe crap, but if people let it happen, it happens! That’s the whole game!
access to IAF's grants and contracts. When that failed, they purported to fire IAF's President and then announced by fiat that Marocco had been appointed sole board member (despite the IAF board also not having been fired). In a closed-door board meeting last Friday, February 28- which consisted of just Marocco in the IAF lobby— Marocco appointed himself acting President of IAF. That night, at Marocco's direction, Treasury cancelled all but a handful of IAF's contracts. And two days ago,
March 6, 2025 at 10:16 PM
querydash.bsky.social
I genuinely think they’re afraid of being the next Charles Sumner.

And I hate to tell them: guys. This is indeed part of the deal. There is a risk that by saying and doing the right thing, some unhinged opponent is going to hit you.

Doesn’t stop it from being the right thing to do.
Lithograph of Senator Preston Brooks' 1856 attack on Senator Charles Sumner. A man in a white suit with a cane is beating a man in a black suit on the floor holding a quill. It’s the floor of the United States Congress. The caption reads “southern chivalry - argument versus club’s”
March 3, 2025 at 5:42 PM
querydash.bsky.social
🎶 that’s not how AI woooOOOoooRRRRks 🎶

Once more for the aged or proudly ignorant congresspeople in the back: data alone does not provide answers. It provides some evidence that then needs contextualization. It gives you the what, but NOT THE WHY. It hallucinates the why.

Untrustworthy.
A graph showing the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool correlating with films that Nicolas Cage appeared in Nicolas Cage‘s line is in black number of people who died in a swimming pool is in red and between 1999 and 2006 the lines largely track there is also a image of Nicolas Cage screaming super imposed at the 2006 mark The graph shows that correlation is NOT causation.
February 25, 2025 at 5:21 AM
querydash.bsky.social
Data lies ALL THE TIME you IGNORANT ASS. All depends on what you ask and how.

The Dunning-Kruger Administration is going to kill us all.
“Global Temperature vs Number of Pirates”graph superimposed over an old world map, with a steadily increasing red dotted line going from lower left to upper right. X axis titled “Number of Pirates (Approximate)” and y axis titled “Global Average Temperature”. Text of (satirical) Forbes article also in screenshot: “You can see that as the number of pirates in the world has decreased over the past 130 years, global warming has gotten steadily worse. In fact, this makes it entirely clear that if you truly want to stop global warming, the most impactful thing to do is — become a pirate.”
February 24, 2025 at 5:47 PM
querydash.bsky.social
Bejarana parents, time to come collect your Large Adult Son.
Text from article: “Many in the audience became upset, several leaving the event entirely, as the event’s emcee, Ed Bejarana, continued speaking about Borrenpohl just before she was dragged out. “Look at this little girl over here, everyone. Look at her,” Bejarana said.”
February 23, 2025 at 10:06 PM
querydash.bsky.social
I beg your fucking pardon - “LITTLE GIRL”?!?

Burn it down. Salt the ashes.
Text from article: “Many in the audience became upset, several leaving the event entirely, as the event’s emcee, Ed Bejarana, continued speaking about Borrenpohl just before she was dragged out. “Look at this little girl over here, everyone. Look at her,” Bejarana said.”
February 23, 2025 at 6:50 PM