I have read this post from the Bluesky CEO like twenty times now trying to make heads or tails of it:

So we built a protocol where you always have the right to leave. If you don’t trust us, or don’t like our decisions, you deserve the right to choose an alternative.

What I am trying to figure out is what kind of protocol they might have built that I did not have the right to leave.

It is a sunny day but not super-hot, so I have hauled this Smith-Corona I got a few weeks ago out on the deck for some basic cleaning.

It is very good condition, but someone used a bunch of oil on it at some point, so now the inner workings have a bunch of bunked-up dust on them. The mineral spirits and Simple Green seem to be doing the trick, but it is going to take some time.

🔗 The Joy of Ex-Lib Books – Jamie Todd Rubin:

Among my favorite types of books in my collection are ex-lib books—or as I like to think of them, retired library books. I received one in the mail recently, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling by Thomas Hager, and handling it reminded me of why I love this form of book.

For one thing, they are generally hefty. I don’t know if the books sold to libraries are manufactured to be more durable than the average book, but they feel durable. Quite a few of the Isaac Asimov books I’ve collected over the years are ex-lib books and they all have that same heft to them.

One of my favorite aspects of this Alien: Earth show is how it treats corporations and their leaders.

For decades, we have gotten sci-fi dystopias in which mega-corporations rule the world, but they have always tended to be depicted as these soulless but hyper-efficient engines of commerce and profit run by evil, calculating supergeniuses.

In this show, though, while the corporations are soulless and extremely powerful, they are depicted as kind of a mess, run on the whim of insanely wealthy idiots and assholes making all sorts of foolish decisions and catastrophic mistakes. That seems a lot more relatable and realistic to me.