Spoon River Anthology is taught in a lot of US high schools, but they should teach the annotated version because it's full of gossip. “Julia Miller” is based on Masters’ early sweetheart—in life, happily married to an older man, but he turns her into a miserable pregnant woman who commits suicide.

In a demonstration of how personality can subtly shape choices, yesterday my (cheerful, positive) friend and I discovered that we'd both recently read biographies of Alma Mahler. He chose one called Passionate Spirit. I chose one titled Malevolent Muse.

A few things I've learnt from writing >4,000 word pieces: - They tend to be more popular than my short pieces! - They're more definitive - like reference material, not a hot take. - Not everyone will reach the end, and that's okay. - Write so that the people who do find it incredibly satisfying.

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

"Anthropologist Haneul Jang, who has worked with the BaYaka for over a decade, describes how marriages happen: an enamored adolescent couple will simply walk off into the forest and a few days later, they return and build a hut": worksinprogress.co/issue/marria...

Since moving, J and I have been having escalating fights over his inability to plan, culminating in him sending me a google doc of plans that includes this:

Is the top middle image "an image with a car"?

For @thecut.com, I wrote about the time I spent two weeks in the hospital waiting for my second kid to be born, and what happened to my mind while I was there

Going through vacation photos, found this from the Franz Kafka Museum. Welcome, Franz.

I've had this on my "to-read" since @ruthgraham.bsky.social raved about it years and years ago (her review here: slate.com/culture/2017...). It's extraordinary, perfect mix of psychologically insightful plus dramatic plus existential.

If you want to understand open adoption, it makes sense to start with birth parents—yet studies of them are few. 2+ yrs ago, I began talking w/ birth mothers to try to understand what living in an open adoption is like for them, and what rights or options they might have if challenges were to arise.

I have an essay in the latest @kenyonreview.bsky.social. It circles questions I've been asking for almost ten years now: how should a medical diagnosis shape the past? When does biology require reconciliation? And what does it mean to be emotionally fair? kenyonreview.org/piece/disease-disposition/

IVF automation in Mexico City: "Over the past three years, babies have been conceived — and at least 20 of them have been born — through clinical trials that involve automation with little to no human intervention." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Seeing ice cream cones during their spawning runs really takes your breath away. They’ll only do this once in their entire lives.

At an Italian restaurant in Westchester and the waiter says to me: “Has anyone told you you look like…” I brace myself. “…Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices?”

"Merging two of America’s most iconic snacks, was a deeply complex undertaking, requiring cloak-and-dagger tactics reminiscent of the Manhattan Project." www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Perhaps everything is easier said than done, but I do believe that if I were the most notorious traitor in CIA history, I would have tried harder to cover my tracks. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

Years ago, my dad gave me a hard drive and said, somewhat morbidly, "in case I die, I want you to have these family photos." I finally opened it and it's 80% photos of him at ping pong tournaments.

Truly, unintended consequences for everything.

AI systems could become conscious one day. What if they hate their lives? Is it our duty to make sure they're happy? To make sure Claude is always enjoying spiritual bliss? What could that even mean for an AI? My new piece: www.vox.com/future-perfe...

I do like this Muriel Rukeyser poem, but have less sympathy each time I remember she wrote it in the 60s. "Various devices"? I'll show you various devices! www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/...

Earlier this year I read an advance copy of PORTALMANIA — out this week! — and I really loved it (so did Karen Russell & Mary Gaitskill). It's a collection of unsettling, complex, sometimes melancholy sci-fi stories about escape, possibilities and asexuality. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Portal...

“The pope will be from Chicago” sounds like an 1880s Republican’s dire prediction for if we don’t stop Irish immigration

For a long time, I thought ditching beef would mean missing out on some grand connection I'd gain at the table. For @vox.com, I wrote about reconnecting with Indigenous foodways, while also acknowledge the cultural pull of beef — as a Texan. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

There's a new push for employer-sponsored child care. Is this as good as it gets — or a mistake that repeats the problems of employer-sponsored health care? From @rachelmcohen.bsky.social www.vox.com/child-care/4...

I grew up in Silicon Valley and first heard this phrase at 16. I am, shall we say, amused to see it recounted here as still the reasoning du jour. From an @nybooks.com piece reviewing new books on sexual ethics: www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Got this notice while trying to access a paper with the subtitle "Is Mutual Love with a Robot Possible?" Not at this rate!

. @allaboutchemist.bsky.social and I are developing different take-aways from Mexico. Me: “I will never again go more than 3ft below land.” Him: “The tuna is a revelation.”

here is an ungated version from 2022 www.andreamatranga.net/uploads/1/5/...

[email protected] is creating floor plans for those in Altadena who lost their homes in the fires and might need a simple floor plan for insurance reasons (or just memories): docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I've been thinking about "running to" versus "running from" and enjoyed this similar Orpheus/Odysseus parallel that apparently was a rhetorical parallel that MLK Jr used: davidepstein.substack.com/p/how-to-mak.... (Next line, of course, notes this didn't really work out for Orpheus.)

This detail on anti-social architecture—from a smart @theatlantic.com feature on solitude—caught my eye. Just last week I was thinking about how my place (built 1910) had a "bad" layout because the living room was too large and bedrooms too small. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

where does the new york times even find these people

Odd connections in science (pseudo-science?) history: Chester Carlson, inventor of photocopying technology, bequeathed $1M to past lives research. Today, that institute is also funded by the endowment of 1920s silent film actresses: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/s...

in the article of former North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry:

One of my favorite article genres is "tracking down a zombie stat" and here's a great addition. Have you seen the stat that men are only 20% of the fiction market? @constancegrady.bsky.social tries to track it down: www.vox.com/culture/3929... @vox.com

Proof that the "this amount of flavor would kill a medieval peasant" meme is at least partially true. They would sell out their family for a Turkish Delight because they had never experienced a Starburst.

People complain about babies on flights but when a baby started screaming during the end of mine—as we were stuck on the tarmac for an hour after landing an *already* hours-delayed redeye—all I could think was "only this baby is brave enough to express how we are feeling. This baby speaks for me."

The real deadweight loss is the friends we made along the way

There are a LOT of ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in the US right now. We've been keeping track at @wired.com—and, to make things easier on everyone, created this interactive visual guide. It'll be updated w/ any major developments: www.wired.com/story/ai-cop...

The Gisele Pelicot rape case—which just ended with a "guilty" verdict for her husband—has gotten a lot of attention. @marincogan.bsky.social wrote about the case, and a similar one in the US due to our exemptions in marital rape laws: www.vox.com/world-politi.... @vox.com

Very funny detail from an ongoing case accusing selective unis of letting in rich, academically weak kids. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/u.... Imagine the incentives if kids actually got an admissions edge from having divorced parents!

"The most popular translator in the history of Iran translated hardly anything at all...In some cases, the author of the book Mansouri was supposedly translating didn’t even exist." This 'translation' of Lolita is truly amusing. From @yalereview.bsky.social: yalereview.org/article/amir...

In 1910 William Sadler traveled to Europe to study under Freud. Like many early psychoanalysts, he developed a relish for debunking mediums and psychics. What makes his work interesting today, though, is the paranormal claim he believed was real. On its curious role in AI copyright battles:

"The way we think about how China would overrun Taiwan may well be wrong. Rather than an all-out invasion, it could attempt to capture the island without firing a single shot through 'gray zone' tactics." @joshuakeating.bsky.social www.vox.com/world-politi...

"It had taken Zoë four years to persuade her family and her psychiatrist that she should be allowed to die. Yet at the last minute, she had decided not to go ahead." www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

really interesting new research on IVF and pollution, via @jkutzie.bsky.social 19thnews.org/2024/12/air-...

If only this hed had been written in 2012—the joy I would have felt sending this to the professor who made us read parts of said novel. (It's Что делать? — "What is To Be Done?" — by Chernyshevsky. I remember this vividly because as a joke I wrote my last name as Chenyshevsky for the relevant exam.)

Native New Yorker @allaboutchemist.bsky.social is visiting the Bay Area & so far: a) I caught him staring longingly at an image of Times Square b) he wanted to go to a Halal Guys sit-down restaurant (yes, based off NYC food cart) c) he told me the weather but turned out he googled "weather nyc"