“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold it would be a merrier world.” Thorin Oakenshield, The Hobbit.

What would have stopped this from happening was for big news orgs to take the job of doing the news seriously and not treating the whole thing as a hustle or dodge. It's a whole failure top to bottom. Real reporters are being forced to start/join indy pubs because no one is doing the news anymore

ICYMI! I wrote about how we think that you change people's minds and that changes their actions, but it's often the other way around. change actions and people will change what they believe.

This entertainment only thing that you can't turn off turned every computer in this house into a Linux machine. Still on Mint for most of them, but the Mac is running Fedora asahi now. I haven't tried it out yet.

Anyone who tells you NASA or NPR or the Smithsonians are the reason we don’t have healthcare doesn’t understand MATH

W/alt. And I don’t usually say this but Rachel Maddow should know better in re: adding alt text.

Imagine attending a protest, and because some people engaged in conduct a prosecutor could plausibly assert as criminal, you too are charged with a crime for being present & sympathetic. That's exactly what happened in ATL in the case against Stop Cop City activists www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Wanna get Atlanta Dream tickets this season.

Irish news perspective on stupid shit the American government is doing that impacts them is interesting. It’s mostly about the energy crisis thats already a thing here.

There's nothing to reform because, again, the central narrative doesn't work. It doesn't build a meritocracy. It builds a oligarchy where nobody is happy and nobody is safe. You can't use the weight of history to say things have to be like this. All you're doing when you do is expressing your...

This, especially for those of you who are publishing obscure scholarly works. But I mean it about queer genre fiction too. Or whatever else ya got.

This. And as my book budget is pretty low right now, if I think it looks interesting, I'm going to boost it so hopefully someone with more money can buy it. Share your art. The world needs your art.

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Someone said to me, "I'm sorry but I got your book from a library." Nobody should ever apologise for that. You read my book! That's brilliant! I grew up hanging out in libraries and the idea of a world without them fills me with dread. Without libraries, authors, like readers, will only suffer.

I saw the Book of Kells today! But how’s your day going?

From the NYT profile of LaMonica McIver, which I missed on Friday when it came out. I feel like McIver ALWAYS gets forgotten when people discuss politicized prosecutions. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/u...

None But The Righteous is a really super good book tho. I mean… beautifully written.

So excited for this. So much cooking and baking stuff still assumes everybody is feeding at least four people, even though we know it’s not true.

John Waters stuns on the cover of Baltimore Magazine

I'm glad the US pilot is safe but the sheer discrepancy shown by most Americans of all political stripes between the value of the life a soldier who *literally signed up for this shit* and the value of the lives of thousands of civilians who didn't is indefensible under any coherent moral code

INSULINDIAN PHASMID - I exist. YOU - I exist too.

A long piece this week on the various kinds of AI foolishness I have seen lately. Tl;dr: in your professional life, do not use technologies in which you have no expertise and with which you have not engaged critically?! It’s not that complicated?! open.substack.com/pub/naomiald...

Really anything that involves “we’re chasing down a category of people who have had to hide in the attics of their neighbors,” — that’s bad, and participating it is bad, and complicity with it is bad, in every case it shows up.

One of the very worst genres of post is ‘I went somewhere and lots of other people had the temerity to be there too’.

Oops

Have a break. Have 12 Tonnes of KitKat. Remember, kids, Nestle is literally the company who literally told African mothers that their breast milk wasn't good enough in order to sell more formula. Don't be a snitch, now.

What a complete crackpipe of an idea

In the tea shop across from Remembrance Park watching dudes covered in medals come in and out; presumably rehearsing for tomorrow.

Oh hey I’m awake when the Europeans are posting because I’m in Europe wheeee!

As someone who has published a memoir-ish book, there are some thought-provoking observations in this essay. From my experience, though, I would also highlight what does & doesn't get past the publisher's lawyers when they read a manuscript, which definitely reshaped some of my narrative.

Never in Ireland’s history have powerful foreign landlords owning most of the property been a problem…right? Right? #Speirgorm #HousingCrisis

If pretty much anyone named their children Barack and Deborah (and/or Jael) that’s based af actually.

The central insight in this piece - that it is women outside those particular spaces of mother or sexual partner who cause us to be better men - strikes me as very insightful. And was certainly true for me. I wonder if it's born out in the literature?

Very much this. The only way to win is not to play. It's a really fucking stupid game, too, and it ends up leaving us with maladapted brain wiring that takes decades to undo.

I hate this, especially when it's a smaller game without many reviews. Don't give bad reviews to things like you like just to make an overused joke

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Dublin, I am in you.

Okay, I get publishers affirming that the books we've produced are human-made, but have we also considered bringing back medieval book curses??? Just saying.

cosmic horror: does the ISS use Teams

Jews: “ughh why is the Seder so longgg?” Also Jews: “I guess we better mention the Shema real quick” Also Jews: “time to tell the story, let’s go all the way back to the FATHER OF JUDAISM” Also Jews: “You know what would be meaningful here? Some math!!”

This is advice applicable to so many other creative jobs! People aren't just gonna hand you money sight unseen, you gotta get out and make things, and show them to people! Shoot movies on your iPhone with shit sound, write stories and publish them yourself, draw!!!!

Via @NASAEarth: “The Artemis II crew captured beautiful, high-resolution images of our home planet during their journey to the Moon. As @Astro_Christina put it: ‘You guys look great.’”

This is fucking awful

It's a serious thing to use the word "fascism" to describe the governing logic of the regime under which one lives...but also, words have meanings and when the widely accepted definition of a word matches empirical reality it would be irresponsible NOT to use that word.

We have a very simple solution to universal programs benefiting the wealthy. You claw back the money through taxes on the back end. Everyone has known this for 100 years, but people get to pretend they don’t when it’s convenient for their ideology.

Spoiler: It's because he and his boss are racist and sexist pieces of shit

For those of us who work or have worked in Immunization, we strongly support vaccination because, unlike the public, we see the disability and death that are consequences of not vaccinating. Think of this: if you were bitten by a rattlesnake, would you refuse the anti-venom? Vaccines save lives!

Selfish and ignorant parents are choosing to sacrifice other people's children by refusing to vaccinate their own children.

it’s not surprising exactly but it is still shocking just how fast we’ve moved from “woke was excessive” framing to open and explicit white male supremacy