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Dawn of the Paul Riddell

@kyloboomhauer.bsky.social

990 followers 1.1K following 3.4K posts

Former carnivorous plant gallery owner, recovering writer, custodian and chef to Parker the lynx-point Siamese. New project: St. Remedius Medical College. http://www.stremedius.com “…one of Dallas’s best eccentrics.” - Dallas Observer

www.stremedius.com

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · Aug 13

New Perennial introduction, now Substack-free:
1989-2002: Angry young essayist for a range of now-forgotten magazines and weekly newspapers.
2008-2023: Owner/operator of Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery.
2024-Present: Trying this writing thing again. www.stremedius.com

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cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 1h

I genuinely cannot express how vital it is that you train yourself to recognize AI-generated images and videos for your own good because none of this is going away and many, many people are counting on you to fall for their shit

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Josh Fruhlinger @jfruh.bsky.social · 13m

there's a years ago tweet that basically said that anyone writing TV or movies by definition managed to land their extremely-hard-to-get dream job and it colors how they think about work and jobs and wish fulfillment in the stuff they write, and i think about it a lot

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 2m

(I wish I were kidding about the Dallas Opera: Expo Park had to stage parking lot guards during Opera days because of the number of Highland Park scum who would refuse to pay for parking and would instead park horizontally behind 4 or 5 Expo Park customers. We once turned over a Cadillac.)

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 7m

I definitely see that with job interviews: make the mistake of listing "writer"? Oh, the number of HR drones who see that and ask either "So why do you need a job?" or "You'll just be leaving us, right?", based solely on perceptions of writers from TV and movies.

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 10m

My most sincere sympathies. My greatest sympathies, though, are for the folks in Exposition Park: I lived there in the early 1990s, and the only larger accumulation of entitled idiots flooding the area than the Texas/OU game came with each Dallas Opera presentation.

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 13m

Minds were not involved in this. I'm reminded of scenes in "Brave New World."

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 14m

I've been a chart junkie since I was 5 (I almost bought a Brother electronic typewriter 40 years ago, with my JCPenney discount, because it automatically generated different graphs and charts), and now I want, I NEED, a chart quilt, probably of SETI@Home data.

How To Read This Chart @howtoreadthisch.art · 26m

The first edition of the new newsletter is out! Check it out IF YOU DARE (halloween)
www.howtoreadthisch.art/the-glorious...

The glorious return of How To Read This Chart

Chapter 1 So, uh, what have you been up to? The last time anyone received an issue of "How To Read This Chart," President Trump hadn't yet deployed the military to D.C., the Mets were only a game-and...

www.howtoreadthisch.art

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 22m

Sympathies: I used to get those with carnivorous plants, too, especially from those who thought (seriously, it turned out) that "Day of the Triffids" was a documentary...

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 24m

For those who missed it last night, St. Remedius Radio is live at the I-20 Road Rage vehicle race; for those going to the Cotton Bowl, the streets of downtown Dallas are flowing with barely used beer, and kayaking and water-skiing have already started... stremedius.com/2025/10/10/s...

St. Remedius Radio: “An Excess of Riches”

October Sun Brings Autumn Fun (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Getty Images via Unsplash+ (From the weekly newspaper Creative Onanism, available online and from…

stremedius.com

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David Allsopp @doublehelix.bsky.social · 4h

"The new species was given the name Damarchus inazuma, in recognition of the rare gynandromorph.

The species is named after Inazuma, a character from the Japanese manga ‘One Piece,’ known for the ability to change sex between male and female."

www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc... #Spiders

Half Male-Half Female Spider Discovered In Thailand Is New To Science

Not only is this species new to science, but this remarkable individual is the first record of a rare biological phenomenon in this previously unknown species.

www.forbes.com

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Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 8h

I hereby declare war on premature Christmassing.

Any shop caught doing this before 1st December must be shut down and turned into affordable housing.

Choose sanity. Vote Binface.

(Photo dated 9th October 2025)

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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 1d

How A Publisher Almost Killed The Book I Waited My Whole Life To Write: a thread

My novel Villager came out in 2022. It was published by Unbound, who had little marketing/sales power. But I was excited & proud, since I worked so f-ing hard on it.

Here's an extract: www.tom-cox.com/the-village-...

our cat Charles with Villager, shortly after it was published

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 1h

Whenever you hear a tech CEO spinning out *absolute fucking nonsense* using star trek language, some of what you're hearing is a screeching positive feedback loop between him and the crackpots he's spending all of his time listening to.

Some of whom he literally created.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 2h

What's interesting is that:

These retired engineers turned crackpot, have lots of free time.

So do tech CEO's, who between doing Eyes Wide Shut shit with Epstein absorbed some scientific vocabulary from their engineers.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 2h

bsky.app/profile/pook...

Retired engineers, people who left careers that were science adjacent and suddenly have lots of free time, for generations these were the guys who end up having grand unified theories they gibber about.

Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · Jan 1

The physics crackpot video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lP...

physics crackpots: a 'theory'

YouTube video by Angela Collier

www.youtube.com

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 2h

Think about how for decades, one of the ingredients of a crackpot was: retired engineer.

Retired engineers, for *generations* have been a fertile ground for crackpot theories in everything.

They get that golden watch and bam, incoherent manifesto about quantum archeology inbound.

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 1h

Can confirm: when I worked for Frito-Lay in 2000, I had an acquaintance who thought Frito-brand beef jerky was vegetarian.

Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 1h

...

fortune.com/2025/10/10/p...

Lay's drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes | Fortune

New bags—matte-ified and designed to look like wood planks (like a potato crate)—will hold the chips with revamped ingredient lists.

fortune.com

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 1h

a man in a skull and crossbones shirt says " that 's it man game over man game over "

ALT: a man in a skull and crossbones shirt says " that 's it man game over man game over "

media.tenor.com

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 1h

“Seven meters…SIX.”
“That can’t be, that’s inside the room!”
“It’s readin’ right, man! LOOK!”

Privates Hudson and Vasquez (Bill Paxton and Jeanette Goldstein) in the 1986 film “Aliens”

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 2h

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

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Nerine Dorman @nerinedorman.bsky.social · 1h

Every time I go to the nursery I look for one succulent plant that needs rescuing. This particular supplier pots up Lithops species in pine bark which is ☠️☠️☠️. So I've potted up in garden soil and loads of river sand, and here's hoping we can rescue.

A fat plant that resembles a bottom set against stones.

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 1h

I have to hand it to Chicken-Fried Davros. He’s making me nostalgic for Bill Clements and Rick Perry, and lower than that I can’t get.

Chron.com @chron.com · 2h

🪧 Texans are taking aim at their own brands.

After Gov. Greg Abbott sent hundreds of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois and Oregon, a new “Governor Abbott Boycott” has taken off online: bit.ly/46X7Odj

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 13h

Full sun. They also HAVE to go dormant, as they collect sunlight all winter while slowing growth. Keeping them inside will disrupt that, as they will stay more active in higher temperatures.

Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 14h

Purple pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea), common butterworts (Pinguicula vulgaris), and round sundews (Drosera rotundifolia) are native and relatively common in bogs in both peninsulas. I used to live in Michigan as a kid, and saw S. purpurea in Ossineke and near Wellston. Flytraps, though…

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Dawn of the Paul Riddell @kyloboomhauer.bsky.social · 14h

And then there are the North American species (we had a surprisingly mild summer in Dallas this year, so my remaining Sarracenia leucophylla are just exploding this fall before they go into winter dormancy)…

A clutch of Sarracenia leucophylla, commonly known as “white pitcher plants,” rising toward the camera.