That's Done: I CANCELLED AUDIBLE

I've been an #Audiobook listener for 20+ years, mostly because I'm in the car a lot and having kids kills your brain for reading at night. I had over 500 books in my #Audible library but it's time to go.

Doing business with #JeffBezos has just become too unpalatable. That and @pluralistic has taught me to reject DRM and he helped me find https://Libro.fm - I signed up for a membership and have already bought and pre-ordered 6 new books over there.

1/4

"Two sexes," they say. "Any others are unnatural"

MUSHROOMS: but we have 17,000 sexes. Whoops sorry just discovered another one. Make that 17,001.

"The female of the species," they proclaim, "is the one that carries the fetus to term. Males can't get pregnant. It's unnatural."

SEAHORSES: but our males do.

"It's so simple," they declare, a little nervously, "If you were born with a penis, you're a male. Boom."

SPOTTED HYENA: but our females have penises.

"If you were born with a vaginal canal, you're a girl," they scream. "If you weren't, you aren't. End of story."

TURTLES: but our males are. and they can even breathe through them.

"Biological sex can't be changed," they shriek, self-righteously."That's just science".

CLOWNFISH: but we do it all the time

"You can pretend to be a gender you weren't born as, they gasp, assuring themselves that surely this time they will emerge victorious, "animals can't just up and change their chromosomes. That's common sense."

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS: but we can. explosive chromosomal macroevolution is literally a part of our lifecycle.

"But chromosomes determine biologi-"

BEARDED DRAGONS: ours are determined by the weather

"But the Bible says male and female he made th-"

BLUEHEADED WRASSE: all of us are born female

"But you can't just wake up one day and deci-"

GROUPER (MALE): we literally do.

"But gender isn't flui-"

GROUPER (MALE): sometimes we change back

"But you can't just pick what gender you're going to be on any given day!" They shriek, "It doesn't work that way!!"

GROUPER (FEMALE): ahem

🚗 Sinds de invoering van 3️⃣0️⃣ km/u zijn er flink minder ongelukken in onze stad. Dit blijkt uit de evaluatie na een jaar.

➡️ https://www.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/nieuwsoverzicht/minder-ongelukken-meer-veiligheid/

AGI gebouwd op alleen taalmodellen? Dat kan niet, zo betoog ik vandaag in NRC. De geschreven taal waarop ze getraind zijn mist 'ehm' en 'huh' en 'ja....', de smeerolie van de taal, aldus @dingemansemark

En, er is zoveel meer dan taal! Niet voor niks kan je als mens zeggen: "Daar zijn geen woorden voor" en toch begrepen worden.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/06/19/agi-niet-alle-taal-staat-in-tekst-a4897603

The Absolute Best Transportation for Cities

I love trams. They're my absolute favourite form of transportation within cities. But the benefits of trams go beyond transportation, and I actually think that trams make urban places fundamentally better.

 Nebula First

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