Annemarie Cancienne

@cancienne.bsky.social

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Art, nature, writing woes. Sometimes funny, often intentionally. New Yorker by birth, Londoner by practice.

Story ‘Nothing Compared to You’ out in the Book of Witty Women : https://bit.ly/3Q72ug0

Posts Replies Media

This sounds wonderful. Urban climate resilience. Plus, I’d like to imagine someone squeezes out those sponges when the storm’s done. A satisfying city-wide squoosh.

Montreal's sponge parks, designed in a way to deviate as much rain water as possible away from the sewers, have saved a bunch of areas from flooding due to Beryl's rainfall. So you get really nice parks in a major city, with a bonus against flooding. They're making more of them now and I love it

Montreal sponge parks soak up the stormmontreal.ctvnews.ca After over 100 millimetres of rain pummelled Montreal Wednesday evening, some Montreal streets saw less flooding, and sponge parks played a big part in soaking up the precipitation.

YOUR CHOICE: wonky line spacing and typos, or Hell. I. Choose. Hell.

I’ve had emails this week from an admin asst named Alec Baldwin and a tutor named Brendan Gleason and the film industry is in bad shape, huh?

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how it feels to live in america

That the one thing Reform voters ranked as a ‘force for good’ is The Internet really says something.

Look how Reform voters’ views are far away from everyone else. Lib Dem and Labour virtually the same.

It’s that cautious-hope feeling, like you get after a toxic relationship. “Why aren’t you treating me like shit?” “Because…I don’t want to?” “Huh”

Looking at the surprise expert appointments, and hoping it’s a good sign. I suppose it’s harder to simply employ clueless but clubbable numpties to sort things out if you didn’t go to school with them. Have to cast the net wider.

I feel like the Blyth and Sunderland communities are missing a trick by continuing to vote. The triumph of running in and opening box after empty box.

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This is where I have a small, boring bit of advice, from my time managing a customer contact centre for a central government department: write letters to your MP asking them to raise issues with secretaries of state; make the letters unique, not copy-and-paste campaigns; be direct, not cranky.

So how do we stand up and make a government take notice? Writing to your MP? I mean… It’s nice when they reply but it feels ineffectual. Mass mobilisation? Cool story bro, but unlikely. No revolts please, we’re British. How do we become the prick it’s hard to kick against? I’ve no idea. -11

Lauren Laverne playing a stream of ‘get all generations onto the dance floor at this big, jolly wedding’ music is exactly the vibe to send me to the polling station. All sunshine as the Tories crumble to dust.

Zooming in reveals that these ads were paid for by Alan. Alan Mabbutt.

Labour will starve puppies and kittens and tax adults who are still children and great-grandparents before they become great-grandparents. One day (mercifully or disappointingly depending on your tolerance for rank insanity) of this to go folks.

A great read on the Supreme Court’s decision to create an American King. The options now seem to be: expand the courts, and/or invite the Dutch to take over the executive branch. (A double power move by the Dems, given the natural height advantage of the Dutch)

My article for @newrepublic “The Supreme Court has effectively ruled that 250 years of U.S. history under a republic is enough.” newrepublic.com/article/1833...

The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a Kingnewrepublic.com The conservative justices have ignored history altogether and created a shocking new precedent: The president is above the law.

Fun!

Pollsters are simulating political surveys with AI because nobody answers the phone: ash.harvard.edu/articles/usi... "The big difference between humans and AI agents is that the AI agents always pick up the phone..."

Using AI for Political Polling – Ash Centerash.harvard.edu

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Every time I see "AI" being crammed into another consumer product I think of how in the 50s we put radium in suppositories because "the atom" was the snakeoil hype of the moment

Why do squats punish you by making you too sore to do more squats? What’s the squats’ game plan? Do squats not want you to do squats? Do squats want to keep all the squats to themselves?

Nothing fired the imagination in my little kid brain quite like Richard Scarry. I shrank myself down and lived a full life in those drawings. Probably as one of the sausage eating pigs.

Richard Scarry, my first favorite author. #BornOnThisDay

A sliver of raw onion made its way into my tea. I both don’t like it, as well as don’t dislike it so much that I’ll stop drinking.

Recently re-watched Pride, thanks to @gralefrit.bsky.social’s podcast. I’d forgotten how moving it was and embarrassed myself by crying in front of my teens. This is a lovely thread adding to that story. So having a quick cry in the kitchen before the teens wake and ‘Haha’ at me like Nelson Muntz

In 1994 the Pet Shop Boys were invited to perform 'Go West' at the Brit Awards. They agreed and brought with them 3 separate choirs of miners. Some of those miners had marched with the gay and lesbian members of LGSM in the 1980s. It is one of the great, near-lost music moments vimeo.com/293437684

Pet Shop Boys • Go West (Live At Brit Awards) • 1994vimeo.com Pet Shop Boys выступают вживую на Брит Эвордс 1994 с шахтерским хором.

This reads like me winging a foreign language without actually knowing how to conjugate verbs.

READING: Donald Trump, May 31, 2024 You have a civic duty to spend time reading—or watching—this. Half an hour (or 12 minutes, if you can absorb video at triple speed) of your life watching. 5000 divided-by-your-wpm reading speed reading... < braddelong.substack.com/p/reading-do... > 2024-05-31 Fr

READING: Donald Trump, May 31, 2024braddelong.substack.com You have a civic duty to spend time reading—or watching—this. Half an hour (or 12 minutes, if you can absorb video at triple speed) of your life watching. 5000 divided-by-your-wpm reading speed...

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If a new government is like the birth of a new baby - a time of joy, of hope - then this exiting Tory gov’t has been the painful delivery where you tear and shit yourself.

“We didn’t use Scarlett Johansson’s voice. We used a different actor whose name we can’t tell you because she goes to another school.”

NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn obtained this statement from Scarlett Johansson regarding OpenAI's ChatGPT voice that sounds like her role from the 2013 movie "Her"

MovieSky! My family’s movie month theme is: Movies with brave and excellent doggos that aren’t *just* about doggos We’ve watched Love and Monsters so far and have 3 wks to go. Most searches turn up films like Paw-Some Hotel 2 which is a nope. I have two teens so can embrace most genres. Ideas?

I keep hearing that the New Yorker story on Lucy Letby is blocked in the UK but…I read it? On the New Yorker website. Without using an incognito browser. Is having ‘Place of birth: New York City’ on my official docs the modern equivalent of ‘I am a Roman citizen’?

MP uses parliamentary privilege to ask why Lucy Letby story blocked in UKwww.theguardian.com David Davis says block on accessing New Yorker’s 13,000-word article ‘seems in defiance of open justice’

‘The most common causes of writer’s block “reported by approximately 42% of writers were physiological, such as life stress, general anxiety, depression, and burnout”. ‘ Yes. Also - SOAPBOX: however much these are human-condition probs, they can also sharper and sticker among marginalised writers.

I'd always assumed that writer's block was largely caused by procrastination and perfectionism, but in one survey of pro and semipro writers, the most common causes were physiological. Find out more about the causes of writer's block and some proven solutions: suwca.substack.com/p/the-four-c...

The four causes of writer’s block and what to do about themsuwca.substack.com What does science have to tell us about writer's block?

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My God, this is the best poem I've read in months. "When My Daughter Tells Me I was Never Punk," by Jessica Walsh. (Sorry the alt text doesn't go all the way to the end, but you can find the poem online.)

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if you see an orca heading for a yacht, no you didn’t

An unknown number of orcas have sunk a sailing yacht after ramming it in the Strait of Gibraltar, a new attack in what has become a trend in the past four years

Orcas sink sailing yacht in Strait of Gibraltarwww.nbcnews.com Passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before water started seeping into the ship.

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I don’t know why everyone stayed up to take photos of the Northern Lights when a simple AI generated art prompt could have made your house look like it’s in Iceland, and it would only cost unimaginable environmental damage and the soul of mankind. You could have got an early night.

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Once pined a Jedi named Yoda That inclined his way of speaking To titter his friends Which bitter made him And his limericks rhymed none of #StarWarsDay