Hi friends! I have a new story out today in the June issue of @pitheadchapel.bsky.social that can best be summarized as "divorced dad has a weird time at the YMCA" and I hope you'll give it a read! pitheadchapel.com/belly/

The local historical society is an embarrassment, and they’re going to lose. www.post-gazette.com/news/politic...

Friend of mine who’s kind of a genius and a genuinely good writer now clearly uses LLMs to write (or maybe “enhance”) posts, and it’s bringing me down. The person is still there, the ideas are there, but the voice is gone.

Probably my all-time favorite quote about editing is, some clueless individual asked Martin Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker how such a nice lady could edit such violent movies, and she replied "Marty's movies aren't violent until I edit them."

"You sign the author more than the book." At a moment of acute industry turbulence, @derekkrissoff.bsky.social marks the 28th anniversary of his first job by sharing some truths about book publishing that endure.

Thank you for supporting a car-free Serpentine, @bikepgh.bsky.social! bikepgh.org/2026/05/26/k...

Reupping for the summer travelers.

Sir, another graduation ceremony in which the students booed AI has dropped. "College graduates were pissed after their school used AI to announce graduates’ names and missed hundreds of names" (via @/FearedBuck on Twitter)

My new favorite genre of short-form video.

Gotta say, having been in the initial convening on which this framework was to be based, these recs feel way out of step with the serious concerns folks were voicing about AI's commercial capture of education, teacher deskilling, short-circuiting of reading/writing processes, environmental costs.

“Emergency response times”: the last refuge of the car-brained. (Get in touch if you’re a neighbor who wants to help keep Serpentine free of car and truck traffic.) www.wtae.com/article/publ...

Retractions never get proportional attention. This one should.

This hit me so hard this week.

This kinda works.

If there’s a cone shortage in Pittsburgh it has nothing to do with Pirates fans and everything to do with the local paving company.

Realized this in a visceral way the first time I helped my then middle-schooler set the Freedom app to block internet access for a bit, but messed up a.m. and p.m. so they couldn’t do any of their homework (due at midnight, which is another get-off-my-lawn topic in itself).

In the sane way a cellphone can now be assumed to be awash in dozens of notifications competing for the user’s attention, we can no longer assume that any digital assignment is free of the immense noise of modern techno-social infrastructure and its attendant ideologies.

After picking up a contractor bag’s worth of trash thrown or blown into Panther Hollow below Serpentine, I can infer that those gas station–style cinnamon rolls in clamshell containers are extremely popular on the worksite. Also that this might not be the most effective trash containment system.

As a teenager I was *obsessed* with I, Claudius and the 1980 BBC production of Hamlet. I cannot even process the news that Derek Jacobi will appear in the Heartstopper movie.

Still unsubscribing and blocking almost continuously, two months later.

this piece is lovely and more involved than this framing would suggest. sometimes we can’t fit a human experience into a headline

Pittsburgh fall | Pittsburgh spring

I never thought I’d have a job that required multiple lengthy zoom meetings to discuss the meanings of the prefix cor- and the root spir, but I do.

I would like it known that I chose my current profile picture several weeks before the cone became a whole thing. The Signs may be overdetermined, but they don’t lie.

I would like it known that I chose my current profile picture several weeks before the cone became a whole thing. The Signs may be overdetermined, but they don’t lie.

Imagine thinking I’ll want to check the standings frequently enough to need a shortcut on my home screen.

This reminds me of my old-timer insight that I learned a *ton* about publishing while filing (and reading) all the carbon copies of all correspondence. And became a better writer when using a manyal typewriter and *completely* retyping drafts.

Y'all, I didn't realize it was National Poetry Month, but now that I do, I'm going to post one of my favorites every day. Kicking it off with a BANG, by the great Ed Ochester, "Monroeville, PA"

Solidarity with the petitioners! When a road through our local park collapsed just before Covid, the city made it car-free, then put some barricades up next to the collapsed part and reopened it. Then closed it again due to public outrage. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/n...

safety advice can acknowledge reality without blaming victims. this office could've made the same point while also placing the onus on drivers to be alert and undistracted at intersections, pointing out that they have a legal responsibility to stop, providing ways to report unsafe driving, etc.

A quarter-century ago, I freelanced for two companies that are now the largest and 47th largest (by total revenue) in the world. Coincidence?

At the start of every baseball season it takes me a few games to get it through my head that the term of art is “flied out,” not “flew out.”

Absolutely ridiculous how healthy this looks.

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

Love this. Publishing is labor.

The most enlightening bit of this article explains very precisely a fundamental shift in Google search— how what we type in is a rough suggestion. And it shares many useful operations and commands to get the information we want. Plus it has a list of alternatives to Google search at the bottom. 📌

H Matthie Repairs, on W Liberty, is an old-school repair shop packed nearly floor to ceiling with sewing machines and detailed explanatory signage. Call ahead (you might get what is known as a “busy signal”), don’t park in front of the auto shop, and bring $35 cash for a deposit.

Grabbed a microphone at a raucous community meeting last night, spoke ineloquently for 15 seconds, and have spent the 12 hours since mentally editing and refining my point.

“There’s kind of a defeatism, this idea that there’s no stopping technology & that resistance is futile, everything will be crushed in its path. That needs to change … We can decide that we want to be human.” #AcademicSky

publishing people know the singular high of "the books are in the warehouse."

The endpoint of journalism is that an AI startup turns you into a fake "editor" without telling you and against your will www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

“They don't see the years of sacrifice.” Tek Rimal says growing rumors in the age of misinformation have added to the challenges Pittsburgh’s Bhutanese community faces after finding refuge in the region. buff.ly/pGGDXkM

I really love America sometimes.

This was a delightful scro//. "Lousy smarch weather" is a classic in my house but I also love "is it about my cube?" "We'll live like kings! Damn hell ass kings!"

It’s well known that no one writes dialogue like Richard Price, but this, from Lazarus Man, should be in a museum: “Bloody nose.” “Yeah, I can see that. It looks broke too. You should get that administered to.”

They've created a tech environment that's just so hostile to elders, y'all..

Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.

Doctorow—who once, pre-AI, publicly thanked me for my copyedit of his book—is at least consistent in his techno-libertarian defense of Open at all costs.