“Once a guy sent me a video with Emily’s nude on a tablet on a pillow, and he was basically recording himself fucking the pillow,” he says. “It was incredibly weird, but he sent me a $50 tip, so I was like, OK, do what you want.”

Jake Lang, one of the 1,600 or so January 6ers pardoned by Trump, unfurled a white nationalist banner at yesterday’s Washington Nationals game. It refers to the racist great replacement theory and calls for deporting 100+ million (non-white) people. He’s now banned from Nationals games.

It's Not Either/Or. It's Both/And. On Blink YA & Undermining Literary Choice. Young people need access to *all kinds* of books, not just those that pass some kind of purity test. buttondown.com/wellsourced/...

Excellent Helen Lewis essay surveying the grotesque, influential landscape of “masculinist” brokers: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

We've become numb to this stuff, but a president accusing a journalist of treason -- a capital crime -- for reporting on an ongoing war is not normal, and we should never accept it as normal.

In 2017, Criselda Vasquez painted this portrait of her parents and titled it "The New American Gothic." Last month, her father, the man in this portrait, was abducted by ICE after being in the US for 30+ years. The family is now struggling with bills. A GoFundMe has been started: gofund.me/456d8a193

America in 2026.

In Utah, nearly all statewide book bans originate from just 2 school districts, sending novels to the shredder, Tribune finds. www.sltrib.com/news/educati...

i don’t take myself seriously, so my first urge is to make fun of the fact that i made the Time100 Philanthropy list. but i really am honored. not just to be on a fancy list (w/my buds Messi and Shakira) and have my work seen, but to have gotten to help people in the place i love so much

Just an endless stream of AI slop from the president, and for some reason it's not above-the-fold news. I genuinely don't understand it.

1/3. Does anyone have examples of US public library boards and/or Friends of the Library groups speaking out against HR 7661, the national book banning bill? It impacts primarily school libraries but this legislation is what *all* libraries should be pushing back on.

Yep - the court is conducting a coup.

I am so excited to FINALLY share the cover of my next novel, Should I Stay Or Should You Go! It's my first YA, and we'll be revisiting Bug and Annabelle as eighteen year olds trying to figure out New York City, themselves, and each other. I can't wait for you to see what these kids have been up to.

Aspiring Black writers in MN! This is an excellent writing mentorship program you don’t want to miss. ✊🏽✨✨ Applications open now.

From an interview I did with Penguin in 2024 about the rise of banned books, and how it feels as an author from a historically marginalized community to see books by Black authors increasingly pulled from the shelves of places where kids who need them could find them.

One thing I will never forget about the occupation is how little professional pride local law enforcement showed. Leaving aside the violence and terror, ICE agents were a clown show of incompetence and sloppiness by any reasonable standard. And local cops stood by and meekly collected overtime.

I am extremely troubled by the amount of standby pay issued to MPD officers during Operation Metro Surge. MPD data shows some officers were paid nearly 24 hours per day for 32 days straight, while dozens were paid 8-12 extra hours each day while we stood out in the cold protecting our neighbors. 1/

This novel is deeply moving and so ambitious and I am thrilled to be working with Victoria. Can’t wait to share RISEBALL.

Mac Barnett Responds Amid Continued Backlash www.slj.com/story/Mac-Ba...

Such a good time at the Minnesota Book Awards.

Ok. We all had our day to talk shit and be angry. But it's Wednesday now and I'd love to encourage the kidlit community to focus on our real fight. There are now 2 book banning bills introduced on the federal level. 7661, which we largely know about but now 2616, too. It's call your reps o'clock!

if ai ever works as it’s been sold to us, the most easily replaced employee of every company would be ceo and as far as i can tell theres never been a single article written about that

“Forcing”

Very excited for this. Hope to see lots of folks there.

Ezra Klein’s main contribution to American political discourse is to mislead his audience about prominent far right figures, sanitize and normalize them, tamping down opposition. Charlie Kirk did politics exactly right, be more like him. Elon Musk cares only about cars and space, admire him. Etc

I've got a bunch of thoughts here, from the viewpoint of a writer, a reader, and a parent.

We teach our children that ‘integrity’ is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. If you cannot define yourself (your purpose) to your customer without denigrating the choices of your competitors, can you truly argue that you know anything about purpose or integrity?

It's appalling, and it's not going to get them in the good graces of the right, if that's what they are thinking. The right doesn't actually want any goddamn books around.

I have been publishing YA novels for 20 years. I have seen a lot of nonsense written about the category, but this HarperCollins imprint has set a new bar. If anything is “cynical” or tailored for “shock value,” it’s this campaign, which might as well be from Moms for Liberty. This is loathsome.

The Trump administration has announced two more payouts for energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects under development.

Among my strongest memories of learning to love reading and writing is a sixth-grade teacher who for some reason taught the epigrams of the Roman poet Martial, particularly, the tenth epigram from book one, called "On Gemellus and Maronilla." Something made me think of it...

Federal agents outside the Metro Learning Center daycare in south Minneapolis. It's pretty quiet but they referred me to the FBI for questions. They've been here for an hour, observers say.

They shot Alex Pretti ten times while he was face down in the street.

Donald Trump was not assassinated. Minnesota State Senator Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were. And the president reposted vile conspiracy theories about their assassination.

Donald Trump is not dead. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are. And the president demonized them within hours of their deaths at the hands of lawless DHS agents acting on his demonization of immigrants.

By this same logic, Donald Trump bears direct personal responsibility for the murder of Melissa Hortman, the assault on Paul Pelosi, the guy who showed up armed at the Obamas, the attempted pipe bombing of several prominent Democrats, the January 6th rioters who assaulted cops, and many many more.

The shooter at the press gala has been arrested and charged for an unsuccessful assassination attempt. Meanwhile, we know exactly who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti four months ago. They've never faced anything like an investigation, much less arrest.

More somebodies www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

Somebodies

And I have no reason to expect shit like this won't happen when Microsoft brings "vibe working" to Word, as promised last week.

Breathtakingly awful. “How does this even happen?” no longer seems like the right question. A better one would be, “Since we know this shit always happens with LLMs, should we be pushing back harder when companies force-feed these features instead of actually improving their products?” (Yes.)

First, the White House Correspondents Dinner should not exist at all. It has always been a shameful spectacle, but in an era of oligarch-controlled media and an administration openly eroding the 1st Amendment, it’s grotesque. How could you make it worse? Easy, let the White House host it.

I watched LEAVING NEVERLAND when it came out, and it was not an easy viewing but it was rigorous and persuasive. And now apparently we’re going to forget about it? You can’t even watch it anymore because of a non-disparagement clause from 1982 (really).

“Has become.”

Don Jr. has a major stake in Polymarket and Kalshi. It is inconceivable to me that most of the administration and their families aren’t doing exactly this everyday. The safest bet anyone could make is that insider trading is utterly ubiquitous.

WHO IS ASKING FOR THIS?! I have logged many thousands of professional hours in Microsoft Word. It is not a good app for human users and has been steadily declining in quality, speed, and functionality for a decade at least. MAY WE PLEASE HAVE REGULAR “WORKING” BEFORE YOU ADD “VIBE WORKING”?!

Props to the NY Times editor and reporter who refused to sanewash this www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

I just don’t know who to trust when it comes to my child’s health: their pediatrician or these garishly-bronzed, elderly pedophiles who can’t do basic math

The Washington Post is dead.