Monkeytime
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tmorman.bsky.social
Monkeytime
@tmorman.bsky.social
630 followers 440 following 1.5K posts
queer, easily distracted
Baltimore, MD, earth
the anti-trans folks are coming for you next
smart horror movies make me happy
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tmorman.bsky.social
Interesting Vanity Fair interview with Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, who as you know just covered up what he says was a drunken Marine skull-and-bones tattoo he swears he didn't know was associated with Nazis: www.vanityfair.com/news/story/g... (unpaywalled: archive.is/LDjNj)
"I grew up a little punk rock kid on the Dead Kennedys and the Dropkick Murphys. Hating Nazis has been something I have been into since I was about 12."
October 22, 2025 at 7:54 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
"Most newspapers refused to cover 'immoral' events full of queer people, one sent reporters and photographers: The Baltimore Afro-American...the original pictures were found by the AFRO Archives, meaning you’ll be some of the first people in 90 years to see the queens in all their glamour & glory."
Colorful flyer for a free event this coming Thursday Oct 16th at Club Car in Baltimore: "Tales From the Pansy Craze: The Drag Balls of Jazz-Era West Baltimore". The talk will be followed by "an evening of drag with Stealya Manz and some of Baltimore's most talented queens!" Behind the words is a black-and-white archival photo of posing Black drag queens.
October 13, 2025 at 10:12 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
So relatable lol
“Because he’s so smart, he got to the point where he knew that taking out the camera meant that he was going to do something and he was really excited about that,” Fischer said, adding that when “we were shooting a subjective shot where it’s his perspective, he’s not in the shot, we had to close the door because he would try to come in and stand in front of the camera.”
October 4, 2025 at 12:50 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Whaddaya know, an egg wash on top of an apple pie really does make it look better. The apples came courtesy of the apple trees in Carroll Park near the old Montgomery Ward building. This is the 4th pie I've made with fruit foraged from those trees, so don't tell anyone about them, ok?
Pic of a freshly baked apple pie cooling on a rack; it's shiny from the egg wash I brushed on the top crust before baking.
September 15, 2025 at 2:17 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
I need to send this part to all the middle-of-the-road Jews I know.
Today, Jewish students don’t face quotas or phrenology. But Hillel’s posture leaves Jews dependent on temporary special privileges granted by an authoritarian regime. My people are deemed useful as an excuse for cracking down on other groups. For now. Being made into a pet minority is never a good long-term solution for my people; indeed, that status is often followed by final solutions. When the white supremacists in power decide to leave us hanging in the wind, we will be hated by the Nazis for our very nature, and treated as scapegoats by the anti-fascists because we were given a privileged position in the regime. It’s a grim future to imagine, but one we are rapidly careening toward.
August 29, 2025 at 2:07 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Don't know much about the guy beyond this op-ed, so apologies to locals if he's also a jerk, but I did like the cute story about replacing the 34 portraits of the all-white previous mayors with pictures of 20 Oklahoma City kids representing the broad spectrum of the actual city population:
On the day I took office in 2018, we respectfully relocated those pictures of the former mayors. In their place now hang 20 images of Oklahoma City kids. By gender and ethnicity, they are demographically representative of the kids of Oklahoma City. They gaze down on us and remind us that the decisions we make in that room will affect them most of all. And hopefully, all the kids of Oklahoma City, regardless of race or gender, will increasingly believe that they can grow up to sit at the head of that conference room table, or any other table in America’s 20th-largest city.
August 20, 2025 at 5:11 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Hey, queer Baltimore: one of the free books in Pratt Library's summer giveaway this year is Torrey Peters' brand-new "Stag Dance". It's great. Not every branch has it but I saw it today at the Canton & Highlandtown branches and at Orleans St last week. Just show your library card to get a free copy.
A copy of Torrey Peters' new hardback story collection "Stag Dance" stands in front of a stack of the same book on a shelf. The cover is an illustration of two male deer with antlers fighting. One is lunging with its antlers and the other is turning its head with its tongue hanging out and looks scared. It has a pink ribbon tied to one antler. The author's name and the title are in bold pink block letters.
August 12, 2025 at 2:39 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Challenge: post your last photo taken in DC to show what a hell-hole it is
Duke Ellington statue with Duke sitting at a piano whose keys turn into a swirl of musical notes curving above his head. A crowd of folks is behind him under the shade of a green tree
August 12, 2025 at 1:06 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
popular.info/p/why-you-mi...
Text screenshot: The murder rate also plummeted 14.9 percent in 2024, which is "the fastest drop in murder ever recorded." After spiking during the pandemic, the murder rate in the United States is now below pre-pandemic levels. The current murder rate of five per 100,000 Americans was last achieved in 2015. It is about 50 percent lower than the peak in the early 1980s. The FBI report is major news about the historic decline of crime in America. But, for some media outlets, it was barely worth mentioning.
August 7, 2025 at 11:32 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
(Yes, the term "hadal ecosystem" does indeed derive from "Hades")

/fin
Photo of deep-sea creatures, BBC caption reads: "The white, spiky creatures are called Macellicephaloides grandicirra. Here they are photographed in dense colonies of tube worms that can be up to 30cm in length"
August 2, 2025 at 1:08 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
4. We've studied and been amazed by chemosynthetic creatures thriving around superheated hydrothermal vents, but haven't really examined creatures like these that live along "cold seeps", where gasses like methane and hydrogen sulfide ooze from the seafloor at near-freezing temperatures. Very cool.
A composite image from the research paper linked at the start of the thread, showing 8 pictures of various forms of underwater life found at the bottom of deep ocean trenches, including tubular worms, clams, and beds of white microbes, with captions like "Clam Bed", "Blue Marsh," "Cotton Field" and "Icy River"
August 2, 2025 at 12:50 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
3. I love this picture of Mengran Du, the Chinese scientist who led the team that just reported a new, strikingly exuberant ecosystem deep beneath the ocean.
Closeup of a very happy smiling woman
August 2, 2025 at 12:39 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
“You can have a city that has a 98 percent vaccination rate but have a community in that city that has a 60 percent rate. I think the fear is that we have more of those now.” archive.is/QhIRe (non-paywalled)
Screenshot of NYT headline and subhead: Childhood Vaccination Rates Have Dropped Again, C.D.C. Data Shows The new report paints a sobering picture of immunizations as infectious diseases like measles surge across the United States.
August 1, 2025 at 3:41 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
The way Seville is using water to cool itself is kinda amazing:
Text screenshot: We are at the Cartuja Qanat development, a council project overseen by the University of Seville, that is channelling the city’s Moorish past to help solve its modern ills. Qanats became widespread in the Middle East because of their effectiveness in diverting rainwater from higher altitudes to semi-arid land, where it could be used to irrigate crops or provide drinking water for animals. “We’re using the ancient Persian qanat idea to create a 21st-century version,” says María de la Paz Montero Gutiérrez, a researcher on the project. Seville’s modern qanats snake through buildings and energy infrastructure, where their metal surfaces emit cold air that has been found to lower ambient temperatures by between 8c and 9c. The ducts converge at what was once the site of Seville’s 1992 World Expo. Montero Gutiérrez says that councils from across Spain have come to the city to learn more. There are plans to expand the qanat system across the river and into Seville’s city centre. Another project that aims to increase Seville’s water supply and harness its potential for temperature regulation is the Life Watercool scheme. This EU-funded project creates channels that collect, store and pump water run-off into public spaces. It is leading the transformation of Seville’s Cruz Roja Avenue in the city centre from a traffic-choked thoroughfare into a shaded pedestrian zone dotted with water features designed to provide respite for citizens and visitors during the sweltering summer months.
July 24, 2025 at 12:06 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Some surprising health concerns in France (1st image), and some neat green strategies (2nd image), like designing buildings to better allow ventilation and installing shutters that block sunlight that might reduce the need for installing new air conditioning units everywhere. Good article.
Text screenshot: The prospect of U.S.-style air conditioning sends shivers through some Europeans. In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called “thermal shock,” resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest. That would be news to Americans who expect indoor temperatures to be cooled to around 75 degrees even when it is near 100 outside. text screenshot: French officials want to expand geothermal heating and cooling systems to avoid the need for traditional air conditioning. Such systems circulate water from deep underground, removing heat from buildings into the ground in the summer and putting it back in the winter. The process is much more efficient than normal air conditioning and avoids sending heat into the air. The upfront investment, however, is significant and possibly prohibitive for installation in buildings that are more than a century old and common in Europe’s old-world capitals.
July 23, 2025 at 11:59 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Here's the AI's idea of "Guy Clark". There are no words.....
Screenshot of a fake song listed on singer Guy Clark's Spotify page with a crappy AI-generated image of a kneeling young guy in t-shirt and ripped jeans singing into a microphone; he looks nothing like the real Guy Clark, who died in 2016 at age 74.
July 21, 2025 at 9:15 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Jesus, Spotify is allowing AI slop companies to post fake songs to the official account pages of artists like Guy Clark without the page's permission. It's so obnoxious and should not be possible for anyone to do this, and could easily be fixed. 2nd image from here: www.reddit.com/r/OutlawCoun...
Text screenshot: There’s a copyright mark at the bottom of the Spotify page for the AI-generated “Together” from a company called Syntax Error. I couldn’t find any information about a music distribution company by that name, but searching Spotify, I found that the same copyright mark appears on a page for another AI-generated song by Grammy winning country singer-songwriter Guy Clark, “Happened To You,” who died in 2016. That song was uploaded to Spotify last week as well, and also features an AI-generated image of a singer that looks nothing like Clark. Screenshot of a fake song listed on singer Guy Clark's page with a crappy AI-generated image of a kneeling young guy in t-shirt and ripped jeans singing into a microphone; he looks nothing like the real Guy Clark, who died in 2016 at age 74.
July 21, 2025 at 9:11 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
Awesome outdoor house music dance party happening at Wyman Dell til 8pm today, #Baltimore peeps. Music and crowd vibe are kicking in and syncing up right now, with some fab dancing, no lie
Folks sitting in chairs under tents in a beautiful green field Folks dancing in a field in front of a DJ on a stage
July 19, 2025 at 10:13 PM
tmorman.bsky.social
This is where I post from
Screenshot from the 1969 movie "Mr. Freedom" with bizarrely costumed red, white and blue characters in an industrial room with a blue floor and a red wall with the word "FREEDOM" in big letters
July 19, 2025 at 3:09 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
One of the folks tasked with choosing audio accompaniment is former BSO conductor Marin Alsop, to give an idea of the range. Pharoah Sanders, Florence Price, Mos Def, Sidney Bechet, original compositions by local musicians, brilliant folks I'd never heard of like Virginia Rodrigues, all so fab.
Abstract orange, red and yellow shapes like a "W" and an upside-down "U" against a blue background with small white and pink shapes around them A collage of a human body made up of black, white and gray patterns, only one arm of the person is visible Very colorful and busy cartoonish collage of a Black family gathered around a table fr a crab feast.
July 19, 2025 at 2:23 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Bmore folks: there is an absolutely fantastic art exhibit at the Eubie Blake Jazz Center right now that will blow your mind. It's a group show of Black artists; each work is paired with music selections chosen by local musicians you can hear via headphones.
Painting of the head and naked torso of a beautiful Black man; his head is tilted back and his arms are crossed in a ballet-like pose. One hand is covered in painted flowers. Jacob Lawrence painting of the revolt on the slave ship Amistad. Colorful and violent image of very stylized Black figures in green wrestling with white figures in blue with curved, mostly vertical lines representing ship ropes adding energy to the scene. Painting of a green falling woman with no detail inside her outline in front of a crowd of black shadows of people with raised arms against a red background. Paintingbof and orange man with no detail inside his outline bending over backwards with his arms flung out in front of a crowd of people in black shadow with their arms raised.
July 19, 2025 at 1:58 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
The Hunter Thompson musical was a lot of fun - hilarious, poignant, with catchy songs that had the audience cheering. Ralph Steadman got his own number, and the grotesqueness of his art was conveyed in a neat way. The acting was excellent, with HST and Nixon both standouts. It had puppets, too.
A view of the stage set for the Hunter Thompson musical at Signature Theater in Arlington VA just before the show began, looking like a living room with a bar, and the back wall covered in posters and drawings
July 15, 2025 at 2:10 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Also saw these plants in the woods covered in what looked like plastic wrap. Of course it was spiderwebs but that first impression felt like being on another planet. Very cool.
A continuous layer of shimmering spiderwebs covers the tops of some plants on a forest floor; the webs look like plastic Saran Wrap
July 15, 2025 at 2:00 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Went to see the Hunter S. Thompson musical in Arlington VA yesterday; tossed my bike in the car to hit the Four Mile Run and Mt Vernon Trails while I was down there. Nice bike infrastructure and a sweet ride along the Potomac with a side stroll on Teddy Roosevelt Island. The play was fab too.
The Theodore Roosevelt Moument seen from a distance; 4 tall trees and lots of green leaves are reflected in a pool of water, with a statue in front of a slab of rock behind the trees Huge bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt with his right arm raised as if he's giving a speech, with his name and the dates 1858 and 1919 carved on the pedestal below Large stone bowl sits in a circular poopp of water with stone steps and a carved vertical stone slab behind it; the water looks deep green because it's reflecting the green leaves around it Carved words on a tall rectangular stone slab say: NATURE THERE IS DELIGHT IN THE HARD LIFE OF THE OPEN THERE ARE NO WORDS THAT CAN TELL THE HIDDEN SPIRIT OF THE WILDERNESS, THAT CAN REVEAL ITS MYSTERY ITS MELANCHOLY AND ITS CHARM THE NATION BEHAVES WELL IF IT TREATS THE NATURAL RESOURCES AS ASSETS WHICH IT MUST TURN OVER TO THE NEXT GENERATION INCREASED AND NOT IMPAIRED IN VALUE CONSERVATION MEANS DEVELOPMENT AS MUCH AS IT DOES PROTECTION
July 15, 2025 at 1:54 AM
tmorman.bsky.social
Details:
Screenshot: Zimbabwe, Africa’s top producer of lithium, a key electric-vehicle battery component, says it plans to ban exports of the raw mineral in 2027. Already its government has been pressuring mining companies to build processing plants there, creating 5,000 new jobs and increasing export earnings from the mineral to $600 million in 2023, from $70 million in 2022, according to the mines ministry. Text screenshot: Export restrictions, however, sometimes backfire. When Zimbabwe initially announced a ban on the export of unprocessed ore in 2022, mineral smuggling across the country’s porous borders soared. Many small-scale miners, struggling to keep afloat, started selling stockpiled ore to bigger Chinese players at giveaway prices. Zimbabwe, which says it loses $1.8 billion every year to mineral smuggling, eased the ban after a few months.
July 9, 2025 at 8:10 PM