McKinley Valentine

@dcarterruff @elonmusk @JessePeltan well, not YOUR son. The son of the guy whose joke you stole

@elonmusk @JessePeltan My son, 7, has discovered “deez nuts” jokes and it’s all he says now. Everything is deez nuts. He simply can’t stop. I asked him where he heard that joke. He made me promise that if he told me, he wouldn’t get in trouble. I agreed. So he leans in and whispers, “deez nuts.”

My son, Saxon, is so based that he would just order milk when we went to dinner in LA. This would always stun the waitstaff, as they had never heard anyone actually order milk! He also unironically ordered a cheeseburger at a very uptight sushi restaurant that doesn’t even allow you to order supplemental soy sauce. When the waiter recovered from this request to reply that they don’t have cheeseburgers, Saxon said “Fine, I will have a hamburger.”

@marlaseraphine @crazy_stephen_i @elonmusk @JessePeltan autistic people are capable of learning what kind of food they serve at sushi restaurants

@crazy_stephen_i @elonmusk @JessePeltan No, it’s the opposite. It’s extremely literal. Autism is closely associated with rigid food selectivity (extreme pickiness.)

@TheTyroneBrooks @JamesAllenMaxey i got the kind of "show don't tell" advice OP is describing, and it killed my writing for a couple of years until I decided to pull out some of my favourite books and really looked at their sentences: SO much telling. Anyway I'm just saying it's not a straw man, it really happens

@JamesAllenMaxey Introspection and character motivation/internal dialogue are completely different. They can be abused as a tell, not show, but are not inherently that. Particularly from the main POV character.

"Show, don't tell," is advice that knocked the breath out of American literature. It's good advice against a specific sort of literary sin where the author turns fiction into an essay, but it's been taken to the extreme that any hints of interiority or direct description of thoughts and emotions are suspect. But telling is the superpower of a novel! Too many authors, agents, and publishers seem to think novels are just unfilmed movies, and should follow the beats and convention of that medium. Novels are uniquely suited to convey the inner life, whether calm or turbulent. They are the medium where a character can watch the steam rising from a cup of tea and find himself undertaking a ten thousand word struggle against his own beliefs, and it's more gripping than a thousand car chases. To toss away this unique feature of novels is a kneecapping of the art form.

@Lexiconjurer1 @girldrawsghosts it's not even that - he's worried he won't pass his background check to join ICE because of his in-laws' immigration status

@girldrawsghosts Jesus, these people are the worst. Imagine being put in this situation and your response is, "Damn, I gotta deport my wife's parents now. What a bummer."

so there’s a subreddit for ice agents to post about How It’s Going let’s check in shall we?

@Chrispythegull @drvyom I've lived in America, and I found the service everywhere uncomfortably sycophantic. I'm sure you don't demand it, but that's because you receive it automatically.

@drvyom I think you just wanted to use big words because you heard them before. Never has there ever been one single, solitary American soul who's ever demanded "sycophantic genuflection" from a restaurant server.

Counterpoint: Service in Australian restaurants is delightful if you aren't a yank expecting sycophantic genuflection from a minimum wage earner. And that's without tipping.

@substack Hi! You've locked me out of my account (unless I give you my biometric data) even though I'm age 40. So, I don't actually own my mailing list or anything I've written on Substack, because I can't access it How do we fix this? (without me giving you my passport&face)

@AusLawyerLondon @Peter_Fitz We don't feel hypocritical or called out by that accusation. We think it's morally healthy to feel differently about anti-genocidal vs pro-genocidal speech

@AusLawyerLondon @Peter_Fitz You have to understand that, for someone who opposes Israel's actions in Gaza (that is, the majority of Australia), your comment reads like this: "it's interesting that criticism of genocide doesn't bother you, but support for genocide does".

Jane said it with more eloquence than I could muster. I'm out, too. With extra love for the fine Festival Director, Dr Louise Adler.

I haven't actively used twitter in ~a year, but I get email notifications for DMs which I check. For the past few days tho I've been added to dozens of crypto scam conversations every day. So it turned out there was still another big drop in service for twitter to take

@Brocklesnitch okay, so this is hell behaviour to me, but I read an interview with people who do this, and it turns out they're golden-ruling! They like it when other people watch/listen to stuff without headphones, because they like background tv shows etc. They don't know people hate it!

Someone on this two hour bus to Brisbane is watching things on their phone with no headphones and I believe they should be publicly shamed

@cmkosemen This response is pretty common when an abuser gets outed, but i think it's a risky framing. We should stay very open to the possibility that art that we love, art that is truly excellent, can be made by abusers too. You can't always tell

@SmarterQueue please note that twitter suppresses the reach of any tweet with the word "bluesky in it" - classic example of why i left - so don't think the lack of replies to your tweet indicates a lack of interest

@SmarterQueue I used to use Smarter Queue but cancelled my account because twitter is useless for marketing now. I would sign up again if you added bluesky (I found this tweet by googling to check if you had)

But what does everyone think of BlueSky?

@hscotthiggins <3

"You have everything you need to take the next step forward, by definition: if you think you don’t, you’ve misidentified the next step." @mckinleaf!!! the whippet, rampant! thewhippet.org/181-much-bette…

@statto + I don't really get a kick out of debate for debate's sake. I thought you were being hyperbolic in the teardown of the article, but you weren't (that is, it's your sincerely held opinion, you weren't just getting carried away) and I'm not that heavily invested in convincing you!

@statto I think PEOPLE should, I don't think WE should, since I don't work in a relevant field (ie my opinion has little/no impact on action) and your view is within the realm of possible outcomes - I think it's less likely, but I won't say "you're wrong" because you could be right

Clearly I disagree with this article: we haven’t reached ‘peak longevity’ (see this thread: x.com/statto/status/…), it wouldn’t be good news if we had (imagine saying that in 1870 or something if longevity advances had stagnated for a few years—thankfully, they didn’t), and…

@statto Climate change is also increasing instances of heart disease, and likelihood of heart disease being fatal. I'm counting that as a climate-change-shortened life expectancy, but maybe you're counting it just as heart disease

@statto I have! and also a lot of climate scientists speaking off-record that the IPCC reports are wildly optimistic. But I won't debate "exact level of grimness"; there's a broad scope of reasonable positions to hold in that zone

@statto I agree more broadly - our leaders' failure to act on climate isn't because they're funnelling too much money into longevity research OR healthcare, it's because they don't want to. It's nevertheless true that climate change is the bigger threat to future human life on earth

@statto I think you're off-base here. We're currently on course for widespread famine, heat deaths, floods, etc. That's not in the stats, and probably won't be in your or my lifetime, but it's completely reasonable to point to it as the thing that will cut the most lives short in future