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.

I have never done an email interview or anything of the sort without signing off, “Feel free to edit at will!”

Those sidebars in your textbook that are so tedious to write that you got AI to do it and now you save 15–30 minutes of work per sidebar? Mayyyybe the world doesn’t need the sidebars.

Even the internet's favorite dog account calls out Ring video cameras what they are: Mass surveillance.

As soon as you hear that distinctive “whoosh” warning sound, get out of the way.

Ok, you can stop texting me, I saw the Ring ad. Troubling things about it 🧵: -The long awaited (much warned about) intro of “AI” recognition. It starts w/ searching for a “brown dog” but means the tech is there for lisence plate reading, face recognition, searching for suspects by description, etc

i need an emotional support perogi

In addition to being smart and affecting, this is excellent heron content. Highly recommend Commodore Rookery, a chapbook by Christy Lee Barnes published by @finishinglinepress.bsky.social. www.finishinglinepress.com/product/comm...

One week, two Charlestons (SC and WV), two indie bookstores, and lots of ongoing support—almost six years after the pub date—for the big success story from the little university press.

I'm still processing the news. I loved this gig so much. Getting to shout about great books by especially newer authors has been one of the most uncomplicated sources of joy in my life, and I'm gonna be sad about this for a long time.

man's always hated books and the people who love them tbh

As an individual, it’s pretty easy not to use Amazon dot com, Alexa, or Prime.

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end TPS for Haiti, making clear that TPS holders cannot be deported or denied work authorization while the case moves forward. AILA celebrates this win & will carefully follow further developments on Haitian TPS.

Yesterday I made a coffee & brushed my hair & sat down for a zoom meeting, only to find that the meeting was entirely an AI hallucination. Gemini saw an email thread about possible meeting times, picked a random date and time, & popped it on my calendar. DAMMIT GOOGLE I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS NONSENSE

Looking at continuing-ed course listings. “People who took this also took . . . Beginner Pickleball.” 😭

There’s a lot of evil in the world right now, including this specific variety: the “best bookstores in X city” blog post that includes Amazon affiliate links . . . to books.

The rest of the world: Using the metric system. The City of Pittsburgh:

To the hundreds of businesses small and large whose promotional emails I’ve been summarily unsubscribing from in the last week: I’m sorry. You can blame Gmail’s forced AI update that can’t be disabled without also turning off inbox sorting.

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

Well-reported story about the forthcoming data center just outside Pittsburgh, how state law made it inevitable even though the municipality didn’t want to approve it, and how energy prices are set: www.publicsource.org/springdale-d...

Conservatives don’t avoid hypocrisy, it's a flex. It says the rules apply to the suckers, not to them. Their entire worldview is that they should be in the powerful in-group that can do whatever it wants, and everyone else should be in the powerless out-group they can command, exploit, and oppress.

After the forced-AI update that happened for me last night, Gmail is borderline unusable. I’ve had it as my primary email account for more than 20 years, and I actually *subscribe* and pay a yearly fee, but I’m seriously considering ditching it altogether.

oh it's going to be a Recession recession

Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.

Today in LinkedIn: A Play in Three Acts I. Open LinkedIn. II. Read a post that says, in short, “Sure, my constant AI-equipped video monitoring of students to determine their attention at scale might be used for surveillance, but what if my version of the system is different?” III. Close LinkedIn.

My Bloomfield neighbor has pictures of a coyote in their backyard today.

Chat, please pull the antifatigue drainage mats outside and hose them off every night after service.