I am so sad about Bud Cort. I saw Brewster McCloud at the Austin Film Society on March 11, 2020, before the world shut down. I loved him in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. & there's probably no work of art that has had more of an influence on my work that Harold & Maude.

The question is not who is the sexiest Muppet (Rowlf) but how is it that so many of the Muppets are sexy.

Protect your heart from breaking by padding it with soft cheese.

There are worse problems in the world but Apple's Center Stage software on Zoom turned my meeting today into a horror movie.

And here is my story: ‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

In 1979, the “New York Times” asked Isaac Bashevis Singer if he planned to watch the Super Bowl.

I cannot say this enough: there is NO middle ground when it comes to writing and AI. Anyone who uses AI to write and admits it should be loudly shamed, hideously embarrassed, paraded through the streets of shun until they flee writing forever

I just subscribed to @roncharles.bsky.social Substack because he's the greatest and Jeff Bezos is the worst: roncharles.substack.com?r=bk77n&utm_...

Read an excerpt from EVERY HAPPINESS by Reena Shah over on Debutiful! @elizmccrack.bsky.social calls it "astonishingly alive, lovable, aggravating, real" debutiful.net/2026/02/03/r... @bloomsburybooksus.bsky.social

Happy publication to Reena Shah and her astonishing first book, Every Happiness. It is deeply beautiful, funny, unsparing. www.bloomsbury.com/us/every-hap...

RIP to one of the best who ever did it. youtu.be/990OaFr8EYw?...

@elizmccrack.bsky.social And don't call them penguins.

Re: last repost. Please watch this video on Rodney Taylor, in the US since he was two. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bADc...

ICE has been holding a disabled Black man for a year! Rodney Taylor is a double amputee who was days away from receiving new prosthetic legs when ICE took him. He’s been denied his prosthetics & placed in solitary. His health is declining. Public outrage might save his life. Say his name:

It's Tuesday. Bovino may be gone but nothing has changed. ICE is still in Minnesota, still not following the law or court orders. Stephen Miller and the agents who murdered Good and Pretti are still on the job. Trump is giving an econ speech in Iowa. The work continues. bsky.app/profile/kyle...

The woman who survived five gunshots from a Border Patrol agent in Chicago, only to be criminally charged and then cleared, now wants a judge’s permission to share records showing how the feds respond when agents use deadly force. chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

I hope somebody photoshops Greg Bovino crying as he leaves Minnesota.

BREAKING: Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino has been carried away by a small Minnesota owl, reportedly used to patch tiny hole in nest

I CAN’T

2. years. old. Violation of court orders to detain a 2-year old is beyond the abilities of "reform" here. There should be nothing left of this decrepit agency and everybody involved should stand trial.

I talked with Woz about where great products come from, why he became an inventor, how people’s personalities are shaped, the link between jokes and creativity, and more. www.fastcompany.com/91477114/ste...

I am reading MFA applications, perhaps for the last time. Every year there's always some oddity that shows up in statements of purpose. In the past, it probably came from bad advice from MFA draft groups. A friend points out that this year it may be ChatGPT.

Any writers who also read Tarot who want to talk with me about a thing? Bonus if you also teach writing or tarot...

Thinking it over, I would like him to die peacefully, in his sleep, on camera, during a press conference.

ICE are paid agitators.

Make no mistake, Trump's "Fuck you" was to all of us.

If there’s a better obituary for an evil cartoonist than an A.I. generated version of his character that fucks up the defining detail of its design, I can’t think of it. No notes. 👨🏻‍🍳 💋

Letting murderers get away with murder is what leads to more incidents of murder.

This wonderful, invaluable book by @elizmccrack.bsky.social went on sale on the other side of the water on the 1st, and I can't imagine a writer (of fiction or otherwise) who won't get a lot out of it.

Does everyone have a book in them? Probably everyone is born with one, like appendixes, but that doesn't mean it needs to come out.

Tell me we should trust AI to give us the facts. Tell me it's a future we can put our faith in. Come at me. I'm right here, waiting.

I took this picture for @bcdreyer.social (at the Picadilly Waterstones).

Today is the 70th anniversary of one of the best movies ever made. archive.org/details/one.-frog...

Goodbye to 2025. (Dutch tile now on display at the Holbourne Museum.) (Apologies to those squeamish about things scatological.)

I bring most excellent news, in case you haven't heard. That dapper man in the New York Times photo after the Louvre break-in? He is a dapper 15-year-old. How did I learn this? He's a friend of my nephew (by marriage) who is also 15. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I had a wonderful time talking to the splendid @firstdraftadow.bsky.social (Mitzi Rapkin). For the fourth time! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

My memory is that Provincetown has had a (very modest) lobster trap Christmas tree for decades. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/t...

This is what they took from us

Not everything is a classic! Some things are just old!

I received a targeted ad from bookshop.org for my own book. I have no intention of buying my own book from bookshop.org (though I bought something else from them yesterday) but I note that at the moment it's discounted, both from the US site and (as a preorder) from the UK site.

The OC Register is McCracken forward. First this interview, which I really enjoyed doing: www.ocregister.com/2025/12/19/e...

I feel like "academic hiring" discourse is always kind of downstream of the fact that in the 50s we started building a giant public system to make a college education almost universally available and in the 80s and 90s we started taking it apart to go back to the only-the-rich model

I need to buy a present for a cosmopolitan 16-year-old boy. (Lives in London now, has been all over.) Advice is that he likes things that are "hip and trendy." This is not my area of expertise. (Got kids; they are borderline Victorian.) Anyone got good advice? Looking at maybe $100.

Thank you, Poets & Writers!

I was so thrilled to talk to Sugi & Whitney (my second time on their very splendid podcast).

I have said before that I was going to post about some things I've written/conversations I've had. I've meant to post my typewriter interview with @austinkleon.bsky.social for a while, but two things have stopped me, the first being wanting to sing Austin's praises adequately, which is difficult.

the president should be a person we can go a few days in a row without thinking about. our brains simply weren't made to think about a president every waking hour. it's unnatural.

I talked to Vogue about Austin: www.vogue.com/article/eliz...