Can you believe this dress is made from paper? Specifically, hanji — handmade Korean paper that can last for 1,000 years. It was such a delight to speak to artist Aimee Lee about hanji, artists' books, and resilience for @thestranger.com's Spring Arts issue. www.thestranger.com/books/2026/0...

I wrote about the world's first Scent Lending Library for The Art Newspaper. Read all about scent art, scent literacy, and what happened with the bottles I borrowed (it was not quite what I expected!) Sorry to say that peacock doesn't have a smell, tho. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/05/a...

On a better note, went to a sneak peek of the Seattle Art Museum's Beyond Mysticism show yesterday and it's pretty glorious. Of course I got stuck in the Surrealism section, gaping at work by Leo Kenney, a Seattle Surrealist I'd never heard of. www.historylink.org/File/5350

Some good food for thought on AI in the military and beyond here; I particularly appreciated the note that these systems are not trained to *ever* say "I don't know" and the types of mistakes they make are not ones we are used to looking out for. www.kuow.org/stories/anth...

I'm attending a Washington State Immigrant Solidarity Know Your Rights training Feb 11, because I need a refresher on what to do when crap is going down here. And it is going down. This morning there was an ICE arrest a few blocks from where I grew up. I'm livid. Join me Feb 11? waisn.org/events/

quick, someone help, we've got a vegetable situation

Young adult in babydoll dress and Docs around the corner from Easy Street records: "It's In Utero's 30th anniversary?!" Friend: "I don't know who the fuck that is." Babydoll: "It's not a person!" #thekidsarealright

Look, even the cats are against ICE now. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-...

Washington state investors: Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System, Washington State Investment Board

Today's On Point (which should appear here eventually) was about how Minneapolis is resisting ICE--even people who don't consider themselves "political," even people who voted for Trump. The whole city is saying no. We should all be paying attention to how it's done. www.npr.org/podcasts/510...

Given current events, are we sure the success of Heated Rivalry isn't some kind of Psych Ops by the Canadians?

Somehow only just now stumbling on the Public Domain Review's collection of "decayed daguerreotypes," in case you need a distraction from the news for some weird reason publicdomainreview.org/collection/d...

But what I actually came here to say is that if you want a fast, legit way of staying on top of the false claims being spread by this admin (and how they're being supercharged by AI), I recommend NewsGuard's newsletter: www.newsguardrealitycheck.com?r=39ar2 (I am not affiliated)

Spent the first hour of my morning listening to early 90s r&b and hip-hop after PM Dawn's "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" played in an ad and I HIGHLY recommend this as a coping mechanism.

Seattle was gray and also gorgeous today. (This is a pocket park with waterfall on the site of where UPS was founded.)

This ... thing ... has been hanging out in my building's common area lounge for who knows how long. I'm very pleased it has been allowed to just be.

Went out to dinner for my mom's birthday and our server asked, "How was your Christmas?" "We don't celebrate Christmas," I said, trying not to snap. (I have no chill on this issue.) "Neither do I!" she said and looked SO happy. Then she gave my nephew a deal on cheeseburgers with unlimited fries. 😎

“What gets remembered is a function of who’s in the room doing the remembering." What a legend. www.kqed.org/news/1206821...

Hearing murmurs that publishing houses are pushing editors to use AI in their work. How can writers help employees push back against this? If you work in publishing & don’t feel comfortable replying directly, I am opening up my DMs.

Reading this tonight and it's utterly delightful. Sly, perfect, inventive, very human and very strange all at once. I'll be excited for this in January! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Found out last night a friend died of cancer. Put a remembrance of her in my IG stories. No mention of "death." Still, Instagram banned it. I know joke's on me for using IG, but sometimes the dystopia is too much. What happens when our public spaces are usurped by tech and they ban mourning?

It's so sad that this needs clarifying, but there it is.

The flooding in Western Washington has me worried about Northern State Hospital and its cemetery, where the graves have a tendency to sink below ground even in normal rains. I wrote about the place and its caretaker a few years back: atlasobscura.com/articles/northern-state-mental-hospital-cemetery

Oh no, this subreddit is a place I could spend hours. Would listen to a podcast all about these kinds of timeline comparisons and why they're so effective at making our brains light up (even if the answer is sometimes "we're all very poorly educated"). www.reddit.com/r/BarbaraWal...

I can't help laughing at how terrible this "science-backed" routine is for anyone who's a night owl. At 4 pm (now!) I'm heading into the part of my day most suited to cognitively demanding work. Meanwhile, a 7 a.m. run is a human rights violation. www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/202...

This is probably an ill-considered tweet, but this holiday season, I'm thankfully that I don't have to work on any lists of gifts for a holiday I don't celebrate and have no interest in.

Sorry but also you're welcome to everyone tonight who had to listen to me talk about Coast Salish wooly dogs. Something about thousands of years of women paddling out to little islands to take care of these white dogs just touched my heart.

The Victorian Gothic as accidentally heimlich? I love this.

While I am getting loads of attention I wasn't expecting... did you know I run the free education programme 'Romancing the Gothic' which has free online classes from experts around the world every week? Get your tickets here! share.google/tegHFYWn1yp7...

Our very famous madame Lou Graham apparently had a little diamond-encrusted dagger that she used as a hatpin (and also as a dagger for when people would try to rob her) and I love this. (Thank you to writer & historian Hannah Brooks Olsen for this info!)

Listening to a talk about how Seattle was founded on sex work and gambling and honestly, not sure much has changed?

Need a special word to convey the feeling of opening up an exciting advance PDF of a wonderful local writer's book and Acrobat saying: "This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI assistant."

Today is brought to you by discovering they make gluten-free graham crackers, and then eating an entire sleeve of said crackers.

Do you like shadow puppets, weird dreamy art, Macbeth, and/or gruesome anecdotes about Mary Shelley? If you checked any of the above, I've got you covered with a piece on Manual Cinema's latest: www.thestranger.com/TheaterAndPe...

The fact-checker in me has been compelled lately to point out that the subsidies at debate in the shutdown are the *expanded* ones from 2021. They are not *any subsidies at all* or the existence of the ACA in general, whatever Trump may be frothing about. www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-rese...

Being chronically ill is like having a luxury shopping habit that's not actually any fun. And doesn't involve any luxury products.

I was today years old when I discovered that the desire to escape enslavement was once considered a mental illness in some quarters. jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/200...

Spotted @markyarm.bsky.social at the Legendary Easy Street Records, which also happens to be my favorite breakfast joint in town. I love how it's always 1994 in there.

Cool event alert, London edition — this event at the British Library on maps, the mysterious, and the uncanny looks just great. Go in my stead! events.bl.uk/events/mappi...

Still looking for a few brave souls for The Last Word Society — a tiny year-end creative circle for research-based writing + accountability. We’ll meet Tuesday eves, Nov 18–Dec 16, to share work + keep each other accountable. Details → besslovejoy.com/last-word/ password: Research

Glad that if I have to live in the US of A, I live in Washington state. I just got off the phone with my insurance broker, who explained that as a result of some defensive strategies by the state, my health insurance tax credits are increasing significantly — not decreasing, let alone ending.

The neighborhood association that set up an ofrenda in my building's lobby seems to have put a challah out instead of pan de muerto? It's not even Shabbos so I am confused.

Brought to you by the 1.5 hours I just spent interviewing a widow about her amazing husband's career. There were tears, bon mots, a show and tell. This is not an assembly line.

I'm sure this whole "Use ChatGPT and double your output" thing that creatives (ugh) are now pressured to do makes sense superficially, but it does not take into account the bandwidth it takes to hold a subject in your mind/heart and treat it carefully. Writing & art are not factory widgets.

A haunted house but it's a library of empty shelves with signs that you can just get the books on Amazon.

In the Seattle area? Consider supporting this at the Northwest Detention Center/Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma on Saturday.

Sometimes paintings are also short stories. Like this one, Figures in a House by Antonio López García www.march.es/en/palma/col...

RIP to another great place I used to work.

This Peter Schjeldahl quote in a great Jen Graves piece from 2007: "Art is a zone of permanent floating confusion amid the petty certainties of life, and people who can't handle it should really go into the family business and leave the rest of us alone." www.thestranger.com/visual-art/2...