not to make everything about AI, but AI is fundamentally anti-worker. it's a tool built and bought on the promise of lowering our collective value and concentrating wealth at the top. pro-union every day, but especially today: hachetteworkers.com/open-letter/

The Academy has banned AI from ever winning an Oscar. • Only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” can be nominated for acting Oscars • Screenplays “must be human-authored” to qualify for a nomination

Hooray!

Our weekly big list of kid lit links is up (May 1): kidlit411.com/2026/05/the-... Inside: Writing Unreliable Narrators, What to Do 3 Years Before Launch, ChronicleBooks open submission, more. Thanks @ericcastleman.bsky.social for the illo & Penguin Random & Viking Books for the MG giveaways.

All the major school districts in North Carolina are closed for May Day. Teachers organized and got school boards to close!

After former FBI director James Comey's indictment over an Instagram post showing seashells arranged to read “86 47,” social media users claimed conservative influencer Jack Posobiec shared a seemingly similar post directed at Biden in 2022. That’s true. ✅ www.snopes.com/fact-check/j...

Hell of a graph

In conjunction with Children’s Book Week, May 4–10, Chronicle is once again opening its slush pile to unagented children’s book creators

Take a deep dive into the origins of the incredible true story that will get your kids hyped to explore some trails of their own. I talk at length with Meghan McCarthy about her latest. #kidlit 📚👍 afuse8production.slj.com/2026/04/30/k...

Everyone should be prepared for the current Supreme Court to strike down proportional representation bills (at the state or federal levels) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act with bans on partisan gerrymandering and new pre-clearance. You need a Supreme Court management strategy too.

Like the weak SPLC and Comey cases, the best way to think about this is an attempt to sync up law enforcement with the right-wing media narrative machine.

“Yale admits roughly 2,300 students a year. SUNY’s 64-campus system serves nearly 400,000.”

She wants to spend more time with her data centers

How Volodymr Zelenskyy manages to survive in a literal war without a ballroom to keep him safe is just shocking to me.

The biggest professional life-hack I've discovered is that networking is just making friends. Find cool people who do cool stuff, tell them they're cool, let other people know. Who cares about if it will one day benefit you. Brag about these awesome people you know! Have conversations with them!

A focus on literacy skills by parents and teachers is “actively undermining” efforts to get children reading for pleasure, new research by HarperCollins has suggested 👇 #BookSky

IT CAN’T CONFESS! IT ISN’T SENTIENT! FFS, people.

One of the points of overturning Chevron, we were told, was to force Congress to write clearer statutes. The VRA is pretty clear. And that still didn't stop the Court's conservatives from substituting its preferred reading.

yeah, so two things. first, i have been saying for some time that *this* is the message. and that it is a broad one that can fit a large number of concerns. and second, this dude has the juice.

🧵MAY DAY IS FRIDAY! If you can: No Work. If you can: No School. If you can: No Shopping (or: necessities only). If you can: Attend/Plan an Event. Here's a participation guide ⬇️ Do what you can. Be willing to stretch your comfort zone. Then on Sat & Sun, shower ❤️ on good, local, indie businesses.

While Donald Trump was putting the American automobile industry on a road to obsolescence and death by repealing Joe Biden’s EV subsidies, China has been leaping ahead. Data from December 2025 shows EV heavy trucks made up 54 percent of the Chinese market.

11 am: America goes back to 1964 7 pm: America goes back to 1944

Another study that confirms what should be common sense...

Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map and Destroys Key Voting Rights Act Provision www.naacpldf.org/press-releas...

If Democrats regain full power in 2028, there's no way around expanding the Supreme Court—everything depends on it. Overturning this ruling & banning gerrymandering are the bare minimum, but there's only one permanent solution: Adopting proportional representation to make gerrymanders impossible

This:is 💯 correct. The vast majority of Section 2 litigation (and settlements made under the threat of litigation) have been at the local level. Callais will gut minority representation in city councils, county supervisors, and school boards across the county.

We're figuring things out. It's complicated. But as we do, I believe middle grade will bounce back more vibrantly than we could imagine. Full essay 👇 sarahallen.substack.com/p/all-my-mid...

🚨BREAKING: In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for more than fifty years. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Kagan is right. The Roberts Court has demolished the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that ended Jim Crow restrictions & restored democracy to the South. 1/

this is very funny as well as good evidence — you know, beyond what we can see with our own eyes — that there is not some epidemic of anti-white discrimination

Things that are writing: Brainstorming Outlining Drafting Revising Rewriting Editing Things that not writing: Prompting AI to do any of the above

Nursery rhyme nerds, unite! While scholarly attention flounders in this genre, we've @marylannireads.bsky.social, the creator of a whole new book on the topic on hand, with answers galore. Phonological awareness time, baby! #kidlit 📚👍 afuse8production.slj.com/2026/04/29/u...

Even among whites, Revolutionary America was far from all "Anglo-Saxon" English. Dutch, Germans, lots of Scots. And nobody at the time would have called themselves Anglo-Saxon. That's 19th C. racialism garbage. 1770s it was only used in a historical sense as a label for pre-Norman conquest England.

Honestly this is reminding me more and more of the guy who went into his office in the Empire State Building and shot a coworker, and then left and while he was outside on the sidewalk he did not fire his gun at all but the cops shot ten people.

Pretentious Third-Grader Only Reading Children’s Books That Won Newbery Medal — theonion.com/pretentious-...

BREAKING: Over 100,000 students are preparing to strike from school on Friday for May Day. Over a dozen schools have cancelled classes because so many students and teachers are expected to miss class. We're demand an economy and government that works for everyday people, not just the 1%.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States, we invited Abrams editor at large Howard W. Reeves to discuss how his new picture book, ‘We the People Is All the People,’ illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh, underscores the current social and political tension in America

KBR+ (Kid’s Book Revisions Plus) —having our 4th Hangout tomorrow from 4:30-5:00. Just a quick reminder for all of you who want to register and join us - me, @hunderdown.bsky.social and @drydenbks.bsky.social Go to www.kidsbookrevisions.com for more on this, and other cool stuff!

I have been a firm believer for a long time that renewables are our only true path forward—for sustainability and for the environment. But the fact that it will make him furious is such a bonus.

There's great news and concerning news about those ICE warehouse concentration camps. Like Minneapolis, public protest created a vibe where these things might not ever open. ICE detention is down by 10,000! But was this all a massive $1 billion grift? My new column www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...

Some good news, in spite of Trump, about renewables and the energy transition: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The story here is that Congress rejected Trump’s proposal to slash funding for the National Science Foundation, but Trump is gutting the agency anyway. The by-now classic Russ Vought play of treating Congress as an irrelevancy. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Some good news, in spite of Trump, about renewables and the energy transition: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"In this box are all the words I know," he said. "Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked.”

“Of all art forms that I partake in, I feel like zines are the ones that make the least amount of sense to use AI for. They’re supposed to be handmade and scrappy.”

Hold on. We the taxpayers are going to pay companies $900 million, which is more than 6x what we spend on wind power R&D, to NOT build wind power at a time when electricity prices are spiking and we need more clean power?

In case we needed another reminder that book bans and K-12 education gag orders were never about "parents' rights":

ASU's new AI tool cannibalizes nuanced, thoughtful faculty lectures into sound bites and chatbot junk text: www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...

Let me get this straight. The DOJ is indicting someone who allegedly broke through security with intent to kill leaders including the VP & Speaker of the House. Has EVERYONE forgotten that Trump pardoned convicted felons who stormed broke into the Capitol with intent to kill the VP & Speaker? 1/