Mambolica, PhD-on-Hold

Oh, come ON.

A vertical landscape photo that follows the curving shore of a pebbly beach on the south shoreline of Grand Cayman. The shore has some structures in the distance, but is mostly natural, with many broken shells and dried sea grass gathered in striations. Greenery grows close to the edge of the beach, and one stereotypical, but utterly picturesque, palm tree gracefully arches over the sand toward the water. The water is very blue, the sky above a paler, but still bright blue that is scattered with small, fluffy grey and white clouds. Long shadows stretch along the beach into the distance, the sun setting behind the photographer whose shadowy silhouette is faintly visible among the other shadows running away on the sand.

You guys, I wish I was still on Grand Cayman.

Thank you for sharing this! A little treasure of a church.

It's almost like the Prize wasnt based on meaningful and genuine criteria...

I'm sure they already have a loophole handy.

It's the untangling that really affects labour costs.

This entire list is AWESOME.

That's frigging exhausting.

In the space of "We're going to pivot to AI!" Firefox has become a crashy laggy mess. We've been in a committed relationship for over a decade but now I'm checking out the butts of other browsers from across the bar.

Storytime: one of my most beloved RPG original characters of all time was named Rhyl. I started dating a Welshman and he told me that my character was far and a way more interesting than the town.

A photograph of layers of dirty snow melting away from the wet, mucky sidewalk, revealing a strip of last year's lawn. No one wants to touch this grass. It's cold and the ground is still mostly frozen. March in (most of) Canada is not a delight.

I went for a walk, but respectfully, I will wait a while before touching grass.

You don't become a real estate tycoon/slum lord kingpin in 1970s/80s New York without learning to play the mafia game.

Thank you. I've spent most of my degree flailing, but I'm too close to failing out for non-completion to let additional flailing jeopardize everything. I love research and learning and teaching, but struggle to complete things. I need to make the transition back as gentle as possible.

The thought of returning from my leave of absence in a month and a half is causing me undue stress. I'm going to ask to have the leave extended through the end of the school year.

Our grass is still mostly covered, but where it isn't, it's kinda frozen and glurpy. But I will leave the house today.

Wow!

'If you use ChatGPT, you are using a system shaped by Sam Altman and OpenAI’s board. If you use Gemini, you are encountering decisions made inside Google under Demis Hassabis and Sundar Pichai. If you use Claude, it reflects choices made by Dario Amodei and Anthropic'. 2/3

Hello Gaius my old friend

Sometimes the stream (pun intended) is too crowded and they disable the doorbell, but you can always watch!

There Are 47,635 Epstein Files Offline for Review, DOJ Says Among the unreleased documents are a woman’s unverified allegations against President Trump.

While we all watch Iran…

Oh yeah. I mostly liked his ideas, but every series would get progressively worse. The Mode series was the last thing I remember reading except one thing that came after and, as a highly aware 19 or 20 year old, I found really disagreeable. That was it.

That's the kind of dream I have!

Who were the evil people? I just read this to my friends and we all need to know!

I was born in the 70s and yeah. I did really love Piers Anthony, for a while, the Mode series especially, which I now realise was deeeeeeply problematic, but as an outsider, depressed teenage girl, it resonated. But boy oh boy, not now!

Boyd Archaeological Field School TRCA offers the only course in Canada that enables high school students to earn credits while participating in real archaeological fieldwork.

Send your high schooler to a summer residential credit course where they will actually get to try their hand at basket-weaving:

@dieworkwear.bsky.social probably has some thoughts on this portrait. I mean, I sure as hell do, and I am not an expert in menswear.

I couldn't stand McCaffrey. As a teenaged girl, I found her sexist at best, as she undermined her strong female characters with romantic bullshit that made it clear, at least to me, that strong women had to be dominated by stronger men.

If you're arrested in Illinois protesting Trump's illegal war against Iran, I can represent you pro bono. Email me at sheryl@weikallaw.com. As always, I will take as many cases as I can.

This photo shows a light turquoise coloured Blue Iguana resting in some leaf and forest detritus. He's facing the camera but has his head turned slightly to the viewer's left to be in partial profile. He has fat jowls with pointy scales and looks satisfied. His name is Leon and he lives at the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park on Grand Cayman.

This is a slightly out of focus photo looking up into a recess in a limestone cave ceiling. In the recess are at least three brown fruit bats.

Today, we visited the Botanic Park and Blue Iguana conservation site and "Leon" the blue iguana is now my boyfriend. I don't make the rules.

We also went to the Cayman Crystal Caves and, sure, the caves were cool, but there was a colony of fruit bats!

Same.

Siiiiiigh