This is worth ten minutes of your time (after reading the essay):

I already appreciated @charoshane.bsky.social's writing, but this is the kind of essay that you read and immediately know you have to read everything else the author writes.

So happy to have read this essay by @charoshane.bsky.social about Daniel Berrigan. This is how you write about a complex person. www.bookforum.com/print/3203/f...

I’ve been listening to old episodes of Bookworm, and I have to say, if I just heard the interview of David Foster Wallace from shortly after Infinite Jest was published and didn't know anything else about the book, listening to that interview would make me very much want to read it.

My goodness, this piece is messy, complex, bleak, deeply human. Absolutely Incredible piece of journalism from @alexsammon.bsky.social

If you're looking for something like this, hire James. And read his manifesto here, filled with generous advice, like this about voice online: "All you really need to do is remind the audience that there is an 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 behind your account, and that you are excited about the work that you do."

Even as we live through the terrible consequences of the fact that most power is held by willing members of the “fell for it again” coalition, I think it’s also important to remember that allowing our personal lives to be deformed by a desire to never get taken is also bad.

Count me impressed on "Engles in the Outfield."

I’m sort of darkly fascinated by the directive these officers must have received not to wear masks. Did someone think they’d be too menacing for the airport (as if their presence wasn’t menacing enough)? Or they don’t feel like they’ll be doxed when they’re in the airport (lol)?

I loved reading this piece. I am playing basketball tomorrow morning at 6am, as I do every Tuesday at 6am, and will savor it a little more than usual thanks to this.

I love March Madness because this dude from High Point just made his first two-point basket of the entire season to give them the lead over Wisconsin with ten seconds left.

I've volunteered with Inside Books for a while, opening letters from inmates and sending packages of books. The most moving part of it is reading the letters, which are often filled with gratitude that someone cares enough to do this work. This policy change is such a travesty, so needlessly cruel.

For absolutely no reason at all: “Everybody Hurts” deserves so much better than the sort of meme-ified, drunken karaoke place it holds in our cultural imagination. “Everybody hurts / take comfort in your friends” is just a beautifully simple, profound bit of songwriting.

I am genuinely astonished by this video. This type of education coming from a public servant, and the burden of responsibility it places on those who emerge in his wake, in NYC and all across the country, is actually world-changing.

Cannot wait to be torn open by this film.

Hey imagine how good this guy must be at curating a bookstore:

Weather is drunk today here in Austin, Texas.

Ricardo Calafiori has just made one of the best defensive blocks I’ve ever seen.

Just discovered that the new Grateful Dead project from the collaboration of legends Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay is officially dropping in November. Look at this glorious cover. Preorder this one from your favorite bookstore.

I can't believe Gwen got away with "what, if anything, is in God's pants," but I'm so glad she did. This is a great piece.

All of human history has led us to today, where the sentence "You do not need bad advice from a computer wearing the skin of Stephen King or bell hooks to write a better email" makes perfect sense.

Finally got to Sentimental Value last night, which I thought was absolutely amazing. Probably the most comprehensively blown away I've been by acting performances across the board in a long time.

Slightly disturbed today by the realization that I'm older than Sufjan was when he dropped "Illinois."

This is a fast, easy, delicious recipe that has become a weekly staple for us. In case you need something like that in your life.

This is an extremely cool and impressive project! Something cool you could do today would be to read through these reviews and pick a book (or two, maybe three) to order or, ideally, buy from a queer-owned store in your community.

Beside the point but it's sort of wild that the "God" evoked in this ad is theoretically the same God worshipped by Talarico.

The best part of university presses are the deep wells of scholars, (almost) all of whom are ready to share their actual expertise to make our commentary on the world a little bit smarter. This segment on James Talarico with Joseph Locke, a historian of religion in Texas, is a great example of that.

A.I. used to make mistakes like these: The fact that the raccoons are now banging an empty yogurt carton around on the driveway, the fact that in the early morning stillness it sounds like gunshots, the fact that, even in fog, with ice on the road and snow banks blocking their vision, people are al

fo his week’s My Time Back, i wrote about @dannyfunt.bsky.social ‘s Everybody Loses, why i think it’s the most important sports book this decade, my own gambling addiction, and why i’m glad it was an illegal bookie who got their hooks in me mytimeback.beehiiv.com/p/everybody-...

I think this is true even with something you expect to dislike. If you're grounded in what you love, you should have the capacity to be surprised by something you expected to hate. If a pan ends up being what's required, having started from that place of openness will make your critique stronger.

I submit that one of the most foolproof ways of turning around your own mood is to creatively turn around the mood of a toddler.

The POW/MIA stuff driven by Gritz is all so insane, such a fitting precursor to our conspiracy age. From Ganz' WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE: "When asked...if he had evidence of live POWs, Gritz replied, 'I have the same evidence, sir, that might be presented by a clergyman to convince you that God exists.'"

I'm not sure there's a phrase that would make me more excited to check out a new novel than "narrator reminds me of Stephen Florida."

I don't go as far back as Tommy but as someone for whom the 7-59 Bobcats were dearly beloved (I watched almost every game, despite everything), this was a fun read.

If you'd like to get a sense of the current state of the party that has held literally every statewide office in Texas since 1994:

"We keep patrolling neighborhoods, running supplies, offering rides, stocking pantries, gathering with each other, showing each other that every moment of fear or anger or grief can come with others ready to feel those things too. They have no answer for these things."

There is no end to the disdain I have for men like this. The most pitiful, entitled, incurious people.

I am grateful that the last year of Mamdani is as real a political reality as the palpable weight, despair, and vacuity that defines most of our politics at the moment.

This great little anecdote is right out of a Grace Paley short story.

Bill Callahan's new record is strong. Great piece about it here:

I’m always wary of bringing my perspective as a parent into interpreting major events—such framing often elevates the experience of being a parent over other types of experience (“you can’t understand this if you don’t have kids of your own”), tends to be self-centered and very reductive, etc.

This made me emotional because so few people give a shit about what happens to regular Iranians in all this, particularly not the people who will directly create new widows, orphans and refugees one second and deny this country has any responsibility for them the next

I am really glad to see Aaron Parsley's "Where the River Took Us" from @texasmonthly.bsky.social on this list for a National Magazine Award, maybe the single most heartrending, harrowing piece of narrative journalism I've ever read. When you're at a place to read it, I can't recommend it enough.

This one is truly pathetic. The amount of planning/effort ICE underwent to take this poor student, whose platform meant it would very quickly provoke outrage, to then release her mere hours later after pressure from the socialist mayor of New York? These are weak, stupid grunts, and they are losing.

the "just asking questions" to "legitimate questions about fairness in sports" to "the state doesn't have to consider us as real people" pipeline working exactly as designed.

“What on first reading all those years ago was near-complete incomprehension balanced by awe at individual lines is now more like looking at a map of a place I’ve never been, but about which I’ve read a lot. I know these poems, even as there remains much that is obscure.” This was a lovely read.

I haven't read the new George Saunders yet but thought I'd share this story, which makes me cry every time I listen to it and is, beyond the great books, the main reason why I will always have a great deal of admiration for him.

My god, the fear and suffering this man must have endured, inflicted upon him by the country in which he sought refuge. Truly no words for this horror.

Hello from Texas, where a teacher friend of mine just shared an email from school administrators informing him that the Ten Commandments will soon be placed, "displayed in a conspicuous place," in his classroom.