Taylor Jessen

I work in Corporate IT and I was interested today to overhear someone on the phone mention how everyone was worried that OpenAI's product had recently "gone rogue". As a department secretary I'm delighted not to have to invest any emotional energy in an industry myth propagated by the terminally irresponsible people who run OpenAI, who are even now trying to shift that irresponsibility onto their product, so that somehow IT will go to jail, not THEM 😂 https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/#llms-are-fake@pluralistic@mamot.fr

In last night's dream I was watching a documentary about three college students who decided to get a severed head and keep it in their dorm room

Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements (2011) earns my undying respect because it's a rock documentary in which a) no member of the band speaks b) no song by the band is played c) no album cover is shown d) all the interviews look terrible Now streaming on the Criterion Channel, and viewable in full on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtP_gMDq91Y 🤘

@pluralistic@mamot.fr Have you seen Alan Pakula's film "Rollover" (1981)? Greatest ever econopocalypse flick. The drama isn't hugely compelling (Jane Fonda is on fire, but Kris Kristofferson is a sleeping pill), but the last ten minutes will make your jaw drop. Would make a killer double feature with "Margin Call" (2011). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtzLCmMV_l0

From Insta, our legend Dusti Cunningham captures me and my new friend at Outlaw, The Eagle L.A., 6/6/2026 #IdahoStateMuseum #OregonTrail #DontDieOfDysentery

I'm photographing old scrapbooks, I mean right back to the start, my age zero to age 22 archive. It's fun and painful but always useful. Today, for instance, I realized that at age 54 I still have never really gotten over no longer being in school. In school, you work your ass off, you earn your grades, you finish, you get a standard vacation. Nobody gives me good grades anymore, and I never get vacation unless I take it. "So go buy some self-esteem," you say. Well we'll discuss that later😉

Dear raccoons having a gang war on my street last night: forgive me friends, but you do sound like the world's angriest mob of squeaky toys

If pizza delivery ever enshittifies, porn as we know it will be over

If you're feeling trapped by nature, the trick is to use nature against nature and simply grow another arm #AISolutionsForBetterLiving

"Grandpa, are you an acid burnout?" "I hate that word." "Burnout?" "'Are'."

7/18/2026: the "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" spiderweb, The Eagle, L.A.

@GavCortland@woof.group @James@woof.group @thickurt@woof.group Hands Across And Under the Belt and Down and Rummaging

Frankly algorithmic marketing is getting a little out of control when I start listening to Saccharine Trust's "Surviving You, Always" album for the first time on YouTube and literally ten minutes later the Standard store emails me to say SST is reissuing it on vinyl. If all it takes is some AI noticing my interest for a deluxe reissue to pop into thin air, I'll listen to all the Firesign Theatre albums in a row and save myself a year's work

This movie has been released on home video in dozens of countries in at least 6 formats since the 1980s, and I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the 4K release (based on a 2012 restoration in 8K) is the FIRST TIME that we've ever seen what Daud sees, the eight-pixel-high "elongated pinhead of black" that confirms that, yes, something's coming, Lawrence and Gasim aren't dead, and "for some men nothing is written unless they write it".

@lukefbecker@woof.group @thickurt@woof.group The Grand Tetons are calling to you. SUPPLICATE YOURSELF UNTO THEM 🌄 #FormerIdahoan

@furryskin@woof.group My New Zealand trip planning proceeds forthwith. I'm interested in your opinion about what jumps to mind when you try to think of a thing that is the greatest goddamned thing in the country of New Zealand that no one should miss, else they would be very sad

@qburns@mas.to OH FUCK YES, I am all over this. 😂 When I heard about this I literally couldn't believe it was true, and won't until it actually happens. I've spent the last 20 years knowing it was impossible, like that one thing you really want that you know you'll never get. Such a gift of madness to we who can really appreciate it!

Neil Tennant, born on this day in 1954. #PetShopBoys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJUU274KTd0

@James@woof.group @thickurt@woof.group I dunno, there are dozens of UK residents that I'd like to have sex with at some point, no reason for me to close that open door 😆 #HandsAcrossTheAtlantic

@lukefbecker@woof.group Clearly we must meet so I can congratulate you in person

@James@woof.group That angst is a side effect of breathing, I'm afraid! As long as your brain's alive it will keep throwing doubt and panic at you, as an unfortunate side effect of millions of years of our species being about five minutes away from death at all times. They're like scary newspaper clippings mailed to us from well-meaning grandparents. Do what I do and read them once, realize "Wow, that's...not helpful," and throw them out. And happy birthday kiddo 😆

@gairdeachas@mastodon.social just looking at it has decreased mine

I just finished the first item on the Shirtless Pedro Pascal Book Club reading list and it's quite good. Thanks shirtless Pedro Pascal #OlgaTokarczuk #DriveYourPlowOverTheBonesOfTheDead

Did you know?™ If a police car's lights are on, but no one is inside, it is legal for a hot air balloon to carry it away. ©2026 Universal Feature Syndicate

@ytetic@4bear.com @furryskin@woof.group I'd do it, if it'd help. And if I could film it, and make it video #1 on my Onlyfans.

@James@woof.group My only, very unhelpful, comment on all this is that I use Insta but never on my phone, only on my PC's browser, where I can block the ads. I have a deep and implacable hatred of smart devices and will never leverage it as a source of fun. I'd have more fun wrapped in bacon at the bottom of the Mandalay Bay shark tank. At least there some Great White wouldn't be eating my leg while simultaneously trying to sell me a prosthetic

@GavCortland@woof.group wait actually you should be my prey NO WAIT FORGET I SAID IT 😂

@GavCortland@woof.group Omigosh...was this bear adult-size?...was there a bear parent anywhere nearby?...I have all the wrong instincts about wild animals, whom I wish to make my friends. It sounds like you did just the right thing. 🙏

@gairdeachas@mastodon.social Sometime in the last two weeks of August I shall be driving, I'm sure, 80 miles on surface streets in the greater Seattle area in under three days. DM me for tips on helping the budget crunch defeat YOU!

@thickurt@woof.group #BigBoi 😍

There's a 12-shot sequence where Daud, who'd be well-advised to get off the Nefud before it kills him, looks up and peers at the far horizon when he sees...something. There are 11 shots from his point of view between the moment of "Wait...what?" and the confirmation that it is, in fact, Lawrence, who's got the missing Gasim clinging to him, riding his camel toward salvation. In the script, what he sees is described as an "elongated pinhead of black elevated into the blue above the horizon."

Pont Neuf / Pont Blanc

@greymusclebear@mastodon.hypnoguys.com #2 I think!

@gairdeachas@mastodon.social @ibwatson@mstdn.party Must ask, did you wade out into Lake Washington? If so were you wearing water shoes? I ventured out there shoeless last time and boy did it murder my feet.

On the occasion of the house of reps passing a bill making Daylight Savings Time permanent, I must pause to note that they've made possible the greatest "stopped-clock-right-twice-a-day" joke in the history of the American political system

Andy Zax, in a memorial post on Bluesky for writer Kaleb Horton, linked to a 2017 piece Horton wrote for MTV News when they asked him to take Tr^#p's media bias quiz. Horton's anarchist response becomes a container for a story about a related anarchist response, and it's brilliant: https://web.archive.org/web/20180225122751/http://www.mtv.com/news/2985631/basket-of-accountables/

In the middle of the first half of the film, Lawrence puts his entire mission in jeopardy when, after crossing the Nefud desert—the Sun's Anvil—he risks his life to go back to rescue Gasim, one of his company of raiders, who has fallen off his camel in the night and whom they all presume will be dead from exposure by mid-day. One of Lawrence's manservants, Daud, has decided to wait at the edge of the Nefud, even as the other raiders continue west, in case Lawrence succeeds.

All I got

Going to the gay bars in my beard and kaftan is the greatest-ever conversation starter. Last night at the Eagle, a very beautiful Black gentleman with a salt-and-pepper beard: "Jesus!" "My son." "You must be all-knowing." "Naturally, my son, I am omnipotent." "Then you know today is my birthday!" "Of course my son. Today, you turn 28." I think he didn't stop cackling for ten seconds. Pretty sure the dude would have gone home with me that instant if I'd asked

Michael Cimino's "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974) is making me pine damnably for Idaho. Glad I'll be there a month from now

New Weirdos "I Want You (I Want Him Too)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFSSqQpj_-g

@mlupica@c.im Don't let that SCARE you, let that FREE you

82-year-old Firehead wrote in tonight to say he got turned on to Firesign in 1970 before he went to Florida in the USAF...in Miami none of the record shops knew who Firesign was, so he ordered their albums, and within a month was having Firesign listening parties with his college friends. "I introduced Florida to FT!" And he probably did. The takeaway: If you're wondering if dudes in their eighties know what downloads &/or Bandcamp is, the answer is Oh My Yes😁