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chiselerneil.bsky.social
ChiselerNeil
@chiselerneil.bsky.social
67 followers 69 following 850 posts
You've never heard of me, and if you say you have, I've got only one question: Who gave you this address, mom?

He/him.
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chiselerneil.bsky.social
The links haven't gone live just yet, but give them a little more time. While you're waiting, make yourself a cookie.

Oh, pardon me, make yourself a COOKY.

babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=co...
Cover of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book, with a photograph of dozens of the baked goods that can be found inside. I thought for sure that the one dead center on the cover was a mutant gingerbread man, but maybe not.
January 1, 2026 at 3:45 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Pete Hamill goes into detail of what Sinatra's parents were up against as part of a pre-WW1 wave of (to steal Miller's snotty phrase) "infinity migrants" from Europe...a wave that included, oddly enough, Miller's grandparents and great-grandparents.

Frankie knew the cost. Steven? I'm not so sure.
"Growing up, I would hear the stories," he said to me once. "Things that happened, because you were Italian...I don't mean it was the ONLY thing people talked about. That would be a lie. But the stories were there. The warnings, the prejudice. You heard about it at home, in the barbershop, on the corner. You never heard about it in school. But it was there. Later, I heard the same kind of things from my Jewish friends, how THEY learned about the ways they would get in trouble. Always the same old shit." --Sinatra quoted in Pete Hamill's "Why Sinatra Matters" (p. 38)
December 27, 2025 at 5:10 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
A Frank Sinatra quote is floating around in response to Steven Miller showing his asshole ignorance yet again, but you've been on the socials too long and have been burned too many times to not be suspicious.

So let me be your friend today. The quote's legit, and I have receipts.
“Of course, it mean something to me to be the son of immigrants," Sinatra said to me once. "How could it not? How the hell could it not? I grew up for a few years thinking I was just another American kid. Then I discovered at—what? five? six?—I discovered that some people thought I was a dago. A wop. A guinea." An angry pause. 'You know, like I didn't have a fucking NAME." An angrier pause. "That's why years later, when Harry [James] wanted me to change my name, I said no way, baby. The name is Sinatra. Frank fucking Sinatra.” --Frank Sinatra as quoted in Pete Hamill's "Why Sinatra Matters" (1998), pp. 37-8.
December 27, 2025 at 4:27 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
(Blow me down.)
Elzie Segar drawing of Popeye dressed as Santa Claus, illustrated for a 1935 King Features promotional booklet.
December 25, 2025 at 11:18 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
There are people who do politically aggravating things for naïvely well-meaning reasons, and then there are guys like brilliant cartoonist/terrible human being Al Capp, who flipped from Kennedy liberal to conservative speaker in the 1960s because his true alignment was with $10s and $20s.
Tom Sawyer, onetime Li'l Abner ghost artist, on Al Capp in the 1960s (excerpted by the News from ME blog): "Al Capp turned out to be one very entertaining guy. As expected, major funny, brilliantly politically aware, and commercially, brilliant. This last evidenced, especially, in that Al, a lifelong Liberal, and JFK fan, who lived in Cambridge and socialized with the Kennedys, the Schlesingers and others of the Best and the Brightest, had discovered that on the lecture-circuit at that time there was no longer any money in being a Leftie. So Al Capp became, arbitrarily, an articulate and of course witty spokesperson for the far-Right. He never believed a word of what he said, but the demand for his services as a speaker increased dramatically, and his fees jumped from $3,000 to $10,000."
December 21, 2025 at 7:39 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
After Grace Slick helped us count to 10, she generously left the rest of the numbers to other good performers.
Cartoon spies revealing the numbers 1 to 10 from inside their trench coats
December 21, 2025 at 3:27 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Charles Schulz's work always spoke to me when I was growing up, but this summer camp sequence talks to me in a different way these days.
(A genuine Peanuts strip from July 14, 1986)
(Sally, Linus and Snoopy are sitting in straight-back chairs listening to an off-panel speaker. This storyline is about the kids getting packed off to a survival camp, which is why they're dressed in camouflage fatigues.) SALLY: "What's he saying now?" LINUS: "The same thing he said yesterday. He says there are people out there who want to destroy our way of life..." SALLY: "I don't trust him." LINUS: "Really? Why is that?" SALLY: "I don't trust anybody!"
December 16, 2025 at 3:45 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
I'm Mark Twain, and I approve this message.
Mark Twain with a shoulder-mounted kitten.
November 22, 2025 at 3:22 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Heads up, website maintainers...
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): I don't know if it was deliberately timed in the hopes of hitting sites who'd taken down Cloudflare protection after today's outage, but my site's forms got hit this afternoon with one of the larger injection/DOS spam attacks I've seen in a while. About 20,000 submissions in spurts over the course of about 2 hours, fortunately nearly all flagged by my existing spam filters. Other site maintainers might want to be on the watch for similar attacks.
November 18, 2025 at 10:25 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#ElectionDay2025
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): Among other things, today's election in many US states is a stress test for democracy, as it handles challenges likely to increase in next year's Congressional elections. Multilingual hotlines for election protection are listed here: https://866ourvote.org/ Spotlight PA has a guide to voters' rights in PA, and how to respond to challenges: https://www.pennlive.com/elections/2025/10/pa-election-2025-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-election-day-voting-rights.html The Brennan Center has an overview of laws against intimidation of voters and election workers: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-laws-against-intimidation-voters-and-election-workers Go vote!
November 4, 2025 at 1:48 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
"Obama's indoor basketball court. The basement of Comet Ping Pong. The fulfillment of my hopes and dreams."

"Things that don't actually exist?"

(DING)
The set of the $25,000 Pyramid.
October 24, 2025 at 7:25 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Continue anyway. (Handlettered using a micro-line pen on the back of an index card. Messy but satisfying, like most of the fun things in life.)
October 11, 2025 at 4:06 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#ACLS #Academia
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): "The White House is dressing up its compact as a reasonable corrective to what it views as problems in campus culture. Let no one be deceived. This proposal imposes government censorship on academia. It is anti-American, and it weakens our democracy by devaluing academic expertise.... No institution that is committed to the free pursuit of knowledge should submit to the degradation of autonomy and academic freedom contained in it." The ACLS on Trump's "Compact" offer: https://www.acls.org/news/acls-statement-r
October 7, 2025 at 1:59 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
AI at its peak
From the original Lost In Space, Will Robinson and Robot.
October 4, 2025 at 9:26 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#AcademicFreedom #HigherEd #USPol
John Mark Ockerbloom @JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social Dartmouth College rejects Trump's "compact" proposal: https://www.wcax.com/2025/10/04/dartmouth-college-president-rejects-trump-administration-funding-deal/?outputType=amp This is particularly notable since the proposal cites Dartmouth's "Principles of Institutional Restraint" as a model for what they want universities to agree to. But it's one thing to govern yourself by your own standards, and another to bind yourself to someone else's. Thus their president says "We will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves". #AcademicFreedom #HigherEd #USPol
October 4, 2025 at 3:36 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Really taken a shine to Fontaine Fox in recent years.
Fontaine Fox cartoon from November 27, 1919: "Mother sent Little Albert along with the Powerful Katrinka to return the dining chairs she borrowed from a neighbor this Thanksgiving, and on the way over Little Albert invented a new game called 'Observation Tower'." (Albert is teetering at the top of a very unstable stack of chairs holding a telescope, which Katrinka is carrying the whole mess on a path with one hand.)
October 4, 2025 at 3:31 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): The ADL took down its glossary of extremism after Trump-aligned figures objected to its description of Turning Point USA: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/adl-deletes-extremism-database-after-receiving-backlash-for-including-charlie-kirks-turning-point-usa/ The Wayback Machine has a partial copy of the glossary, at least for now. It doesn't look like they crawled everything (and the search doesn't work): https://web.archive.org/web/20250403100909/https://extremismterms.adl.org/search The ADL's description of TPUSA elsewhere has also changed significantly. Compare present version: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa with a December version: https://web.archive.org/web/2025012119
October 2, 2025 at 7:16 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
September 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
If you're a Wikipedia editor (and your edit history ticks off all the participation boxes), they make a bundle of library logins available and jstor is one of them.

I've kind of bungled the last one recently, but it wouldn't be a carrot if there wasn't a stick somewhere.
Meet these criteria for automatic access : 500+ edits 6+ months editing 10+ edits in the last 30 days No active blocks
September 29, 2025 at 1:57 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Link in reply
John Mark Ockerbloom @JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social There's a fairly large Amish population in southeastern Pennsylvania. Genetic epidemiologist Braxton Mitchell has worked with them for 30 years, and confirms that, contrary to what some federal officials are now claiming, there are autistic Amish. But there haven't been good systematic studies that can tell us whether autistic Amish are more or less common than autistic people in the wider US population. More from the Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.com/health/amish-autism-rates-research-lancaster-pennsylvania-20250923.html
September 25, 2025 at 2:23 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
My "I was promised a RAPTURE today" mood.
A two panel cartoon in Spanish by Argentinian cartoonist Quino. A bald-headed man on a cliff proclaims "GOD! WHAT IS LIFE?" The second panel shows a bird flying away from the man after dropping an "answer" on his head.
September 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
Posted that last one before I knew there was an end-times alert going around, so maybe keep this one handy too.
#Peanuts #BeOfGoodCheer
Peanuts strip from June 20, 1980: Noted playground theologian Linus van Pelt is sitting in a camp assembly with Charlie Brown and late 70s addition Eudora. It was previously established that the counselors were laying end-times theology on the kids, which freaked out Peppermint Patty. Linus raises his hand. LINUS: May I ask a question, sir? I don't really wish to interrupt... CHARLIE BROWN (sensing where this is going): I think I'll leave... LINUS: I also don't wish to be rude...just a matter of curiosity sir... (We now see that everyone but Linus has left.) LINUS: Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?
September 22, 2025 at 2:58 AM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
#BeOfGoodCheer #TheSunIsShiningInAustralia
A legitimate Peanuts comic strip from June 13, 1980 (look it up if you don't believe me). Peppermint Patty and Marcie are lying in bed at what for them has been a deeply unsettling summer camp. Patty's eyes are open much wider than usual. Patty: "I can't sleep for worrying what that speaker said, Marcie! I'm scared! What if the world comes to an end tonight, Marcie?" Marcie: "I promise there'll be a tomorrow, sir... In fact, it's already tomorrow in Australia!" Patty (rolling over, still rattled): "He said we're in the last days, Marcie!" Marcie: "Go to sleep, sir... The sun is shining in Australia..."
September 19, 2025 at 9:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
There isn't a day where this one's not appropriate somewhere.
Spider Man in conversation with a mutant who apparently is a pterodactyl (you know the one; sing along if you know the words): "You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into DINOSAURS? But with tech like that, you could cure CANCER!" "But I don't WANT to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs."
September 19, 2025 at 7:41 PM
chiselerneil.bsky.social
The gutting of the CDC requires states to step up, and the ones that actually do deserve notice.
John Mark Ockerbloom (@JMarkOckerbloom@mastodon.social): Today's press release announcing the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. "The group’s shared goal is to protect the health, safety and well-being of all residents by providing information based on science, data, and evidence, while working to ensure equitable access to vaccines, medications and services." https://www.mass.gov/news/several-northeastern-states-and-americas-largest-city-announce-the-northeast-public-health-collaborative. It includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the NYC health department.
September 19, 2025 at 3:55 AM