Jason R. Merrill
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jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Jason R. Merrill
@jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
830 followers 890 following 170 posts
Curator at Blackbird Finery. Bowties, cufflinks, antique sodas.

https://jasonrmerrill.carrd.co/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
akufta.bsky.social
Attention #artists! Stop guessing your hourly rate. If you need $2,760/mo to survive, but you only do "deep work" for 20 hours a week... Charging $25/hr means you are slowly going bankrupt. Here is the math. 🧵
November 26, 2025 at 8:23 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Atlanta! The last vending event of the year for me. Winter Underland, Nov 29 from 6 to 10:30PM. Bringing all the antique & vintage cufflinks/accessories I can fit in my booth along with some other items that normally don't make it out of storage.

timetravel.events/winter-under...
A flyer for the "Winter Underland" event: subtitled "A Dark Holiday Market". Online tickets $8. Tickets at door $10. 12 and under FREE November 29, 2025, 6pm to 10:30pm Food Trucks, Performances, Charity Gift wrapping, Artists. IAM Local Lodge 709, 1032 South Marietta Pkwy SE, Marietta GA 30060
November 24, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
wyrdscience.bsky.social
it hasn't helped sell any mags but it appears our nonsense on here has just pushed our account over 5K 'followers', so let's embrace that as some kind of achievement!

Like & repost this to be in with a chance to win every in-print issue of Wyrd Science & a t-shirt of your choice*
the covers of Wyrd Science issues 3-7 laid out on a gradient landscape next to the caption WIN THE LOT!
November 3, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
glider.bsky.social
Here's the thing: most violence against both women/girls and men/boys is done by men, mostly men they know. It's not strangers or immigrants, it's men. And until men stop being violent on a whim, develop better self control, or are made to stop, they won't stop.
October 7, 2025 at 8:13 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Next show: CONjuration in Atlanta! More details forthcoming but I will be both vending and doing panels. Currently working on my "Fizzy Potion Classes" (antique soda fountain demos).

www.conjurationcon.com
CONjuration – Atlanta's immersive fantasy event full of magic, fandom, and fun!
www.conjurationcon.com
October 2, 2025 at 3:49 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Great summation of why AI isn't going to give you what you want in the end.

🧵
andrewhickey.500songs.com Andrew Hickey @andrewhickey.500songs.com · Oct 2
There's a thread going round by a mutual I sort of want to jump off here, but not dunk on, about genAI "art" and how some people with good ideas might be able to use the tech to make decent work in limited forms like sketch comedy where the idea is everything.
And that's true, *but*...
October 2, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
merriam-webster.com
We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.
October 1, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
kellylink.bsky.social
With alt text:
@charlierosesmith3807 As a gen Z American, here's my two cents on the take that our generation can't handle delayed gratification: we've watched the promise of "delayed gratification" fail Gen X and Millennials repeatedly in real time because we've had access to the internet since childhood. In elementary and middle school, I watched in real time on TV and online as Gen X had their entire life savings wiped out by the 2008-2009 depression, and as a teenager and college kid I've seen Millennials get absolutely shafted by jobs and degrees that went in promising them stable lives and then repeatedly ripped the rug out from under them, leaving millennials with no solid career progression or economic betterment to show after over a decade of consistent effort. Even outside of the internet, I've watched my grandfather, who was a computer programmer at IBM in the 60s, have his pension retroactively canceled after being a pensioner for decades, and I've watched this man in his 80s who's had two heart attacks have to go back to work 4 days of the week as an Uber driver to make ends meet, after he spent three decades of his life in a high paid office job that promised him healthcare and pension and the entire American dream. I don't have it in me to put up with the same shit. Maybe it's bratty and short sighted, but l've watched enough people older than me have enough of their decades of life ripped from them with the false promises of later rewards, so to my mind saying "this will pay off for you in the future" means you're not actually planning on paying out, you're hoping you can take advantage of my patience and goodwill. Pay me my rewards now, or I'll assume you'll never intend to actually reward me.
September 4, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
huber-digital.bsky.social
Are you teaching a rare MS or out of print book? Why not make a digital edition of it, or even better, ask your students to collaborate!

Our training course is free and the edition can be published #OA in the digital editions platform #PRISMS:

www.prisms.digital/training/

#DSE #DH #TEI #XML
Merton's Bestiary: A Digital Edition, edited and transcoded by Sebastian Dows-Miller. Merton College Library, Oxford, MS 249.
September 4, 2025 at 1:59 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Our youngest fur kid, Plum. Named after PG Wodehouse. #proofofcat
A black cat named Plum with his tongue almost fully extended caught mid-lick. His yellow eyes stare almost accusingly at the camera for intruding upon his grooming. That or he's hungry again.
August 26, 2025 at 2:16 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
Where to find me at Dragon Con! More detail in Alt text.
Jason Merrill's Dragon Con 2025 schedule Title: Vintage Travel Accessories with Blackbird Finery Time: Sat 11:30 am Location: Augusta Courtland Grand (Length:1 Hour) Title: Weird Facts & Stories Hiding Behind Our Tea Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Macon Courtland Grand (Length:1 Hour) Title: The Temporal Formal: Belle Epoque Time: Sun 10:00 pm Location: Grand Ballroom Courtland Grand (Length:2.5 Hours)
August 26, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
amybrown.xyz
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.
August 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
animeherald.com
The Evolution of Abridged Anime Part 1 – An Artist Collective & The Arrest of Mr. Macek - Borealis Capps examines the origins of the Abridged Anime parodies format. In this first piece, she dives into the classical fandub parodies that formed the bedrock from which the format was built decades later
The Evolution of Abridged Anime Part 1 - An Artist Collective & The Arrest of Mr. Macek
While the concept of comedic fandubs of anime isn’t exactly new, the way anime fandom interacts with them is changing in a major way, thanks to TikTok and
hera.fyi
July 31, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
ucanrpam.bsky.social
Farmers complained — in words that echo today's headlines — that Mexican laborers did the jobs that Americans didn't want to do. This farmworker story by @gustavoarellano.bsky.social is timely again
www.npr.org/sections/the...
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers
In 1964, a program that brought migrant Mexican laborers to the U.S. ended. So the U.S. recruited American students to pick crops instead. When they saw their living conditions, strikes ensued.
www.npr.org
July 12, 2025 at 5:13 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
I will be presenting "100 years of Pop Culture Sodas" 11am Sat June 19th at ATL Comic Con (in Auditorium C102).

Who was the "Merry Widow"?
What do "Fluffy Ruffles" & "Foxy Grandpa" have in common?
And the big question: What do their namesake sodas taste like?

Hope to see you there!
July 12, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
bencollins.bsky.social
Also talked about The Onion being inefficient on purpose.

www.status.news/p/the-onion-...
What has it been like shifting from reporter to media executive, managing a staff instead of filing stories yourself? And do you write any of the jokes at The Onion? Or are you strictly managing the business? The Onion’s process is deeply, beautifully inefficient. Every day, our writers take 150 headlines into a physical writers room in Chicago and whittle them down to maybe one or two. These people throw away the funniest sentence I will ever write in my life six times by noon every weekday. The point of taking over this place was to preserve this process, which I learned this week is almost assuredly more rigorous than The New York Times. That’s why I don’t touch any of it. I just try to get more people to pay attention to the output, and get our work into different mediums and new places. We brought back the paper, reinvested in the Onion News Network, bought a full page ad in The Times for something they were going to write anyway. The role is to make the world-class work they’re already doing seep into everyday American life more frequently, and that’s working. You actually can do this, you know. You can just try to highlight the beauty of things you like and not try to vampirically extract value at every step. If people get one thing out of this whole Q&A, I hope it’s that. You do not have to make an A.I. version of your own employees that operate at 1.5x speed but produce purely iterative garbage, especially in media and journalism. People don’t actually want that shit. Make a good, human thing and people will bend over backwards to support you. This is a valid way to run a company.
July 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
badsquiddogames.bsky.social
Could you help us out? It's been one of the quietest months in a decade, and partly I believe it's because people don't know we exist! Hi! I'm Annie! I run Bad Squiddo Games! We hand sculpt & hand cast 28mm scale models of women, critters, scenics & occasionally a man!

www.badsquiddogames.com
advert for Bad Squiddo Games showing Annie (me!), an artwork of a Pulp explorer by maritn whitmore, a shieldmaiden, soviet spotter, vampire queen and jeanne de clisson on a horse.
July 7, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
anneserling.bsky.social
June 14, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
radadventures.bsky.social
We thoroughly enjoyed the excellent presentation from @jasonrmerrill.bsky.social of #BlackbirdFinery about 19th century soda fountains at #221Bcon and really appreciated the fun recipes that were shared that we'll make for our next #SherlockHolmes marathon. 🐝🥤🔎
April 18, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
matociquala.bsky.social
I miss her so much, but the work is on the rest of us now.

@ursulakleguin.com at the 2014 National Book Awards. "I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9N...
Ursula Le Guin
YouTube video by National Book
www.youtube.com
March 24, 2025 at 12:02 PM
jasonrmerrill.bsky.social
February 24, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
dimhorizonstudio.bsky.social
For all those attending #Conpossible2025 / @conpossible.bsky.social this upcoming weekend, we'll be bringing back one of our favorite photo booth builds for portraits across the weekend!

Be sure to come by, get your photo, and say Hi.

2-7pm Friday
10a-7pm Saturday
10a-4pm Sunday
February 4, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
zaelyna.bsky.social
AM updates across LA county now four major fires. Latest human and animal shelter details in-thread:

#PalisadesFire #EatonFire #HurstFire #WoodleyFire #CAwx
January 8, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Jason R. Merrill
docseuss.bsky.social
new article. it's about what cozy and wholesome games are, why shitty people like them, and why I really liked I Was A Teenage Exocolonist.

docseuss.medium.com/i-was-a-teen...
i was a teenage exocolonist (and so can you)
I’ve realized that I’m much better at discussing broad ranging theory than individual games, just because it’s easier to find ten games…
docseuss.medium.com
December 16, 2024 at 7:23 AM