Where these two issues collide, imo, is that the second is part of the protective shell that guards the first. If you matter and you can’t suffer the consequences of Covid because you matter, then the people who do must not matter. That line of thinking is a moral evil.

The folly of assuming the consequences of Covid won’t happen to you I understand, that’s basic human hubris. The evil part is the social agreement that those who die or become disabled from covid don’t matter, that they did not deserve your protection, that their death proves their unimportance.

The thing about all this discourse that had always made me snooze is that people who aren’t writers don’t read these books, don’t care about them, and don’t know or care about these discussion. If a tree falls in the forest…

This fucking worm

Cancellation doesn’t exist but you can drive your career off a cliff by being an intolerable asshole

A year ago was April 2025, i.e. only a few months after Trump took office the second time. Huge global events, U.S. elections, etc. stimulate activity on social media. Why do you think 'growth' equals success, significance or importance. It does not. "We" don't have "a problem" imo

almost up to 600 films on my @letterboxd.social list of disabled actors in disabled roles, including a short starring Deaf actor and artist Jeremy Lowrencev opposite The Pitt's Shabana Azeez, Illustrating Sam Newton (2022).

????????????

I would support taking this argument to its logical next step if it meant every headline now asks if richer neighborhoods and gated communities should get access to 911

The means-testing thing is so pernicious man. Designed in a lab to sow resentment, degrade the public good, shrink services and transfer costs away from government coffers and to individuals’ post-tax income

what next? what, are we gonna provide *roads* for the wealthy too? gonna have health inspectors keep contaminants out of their groceries? are we just gonna have gutters and sewer systems around rich people's homes?

"But widespread layoffs, hiring freezes and resignations have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs...By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none." Gift.

literally sickening. idek what else to say.

Maybe the worst guy in the whole fucking administration which given that RFK exists is saying something

I of course own MICHAEL CLAYTON on Blu-ray but for all you normies out there…

The details here (gift article) reveal how utterly inadequate the law is in dealing with sexual harassment etc, esp with a judge who… does not get it. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/m...

Checking in on Pam Bondi:

Jesus fucking Christ

yes… yes… YES

A very good thread about journalists and AI, much of which also applies to writers of nonfiction books. We are being told, with increasing frequency and stridency, that we "just don't get" how AI can help us, by people who are manifestly not interested in helping us. Know your enemy. Hold the line.

This sounds like one of those jobs where your function is to be a tube that sucks things off of various sites you find on the screen on your left, passes them briefly through your keyboard, and splurts them on to the screen on your right.

Haven’t read this package yet, reposting partly to flag it for myself. But I’ve thought a lot about how I have had more success freelancing while massively disabled bc my physical inability to work an actual job has allowed me the mental energy to read constantly, pitch, write.

most helpful summary www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

Unbelievably sleazy

Basically apoplectic to learn that this is the backstory of this book, which has been getting rave reviews and which I have a galley of (this background was not in the pitch emails). WHEN WILL PEOPLE LEARN.

I honestly haven’t been that worried about this case bc it just seemed like there was no way they would go for this bs, but it’s still satisfying (and relieving) to see this guy have his organs slowly but surely removed from his body

Just so you understand, this is as if you prepared for argument in front of a panel that included Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster asked you a question about cookies, and you had not thought about cookies in advance.

a really great thread on this whole heinous mess vs actual, meaningful, human work

I don't see this said enough: the widespread use of generative AI is not only making our jobs as educators harder logistically, but also emotionally. It is genuinely sad to be suspicious of students when you have spent so much time building a pedagogy based on trust and not being a cop. It sucks.

Curious to see this but not surprised (esp given the gross stuff that’s come out about the director). This was the number one biggest issue with CHALLENGERS as well imo

"Stickles the Gender-Policing Elf, a character created exclusively for this series, to, in author J. K. Rowling’s words, 'address the crumbling morals of a world I haven’t really interacted with since 1997.'"

i’m glad the Supreme Court said what we’ve all been thinking: lawyers should be in charge of medicine

I’m no lawyer but I find it interesting that Christian conversion therapy practitioners have the right to tell kids they aren’t trans but those kids’ teachers apparently don’t have the right to say they are trans and people on the internet may not have the right to affirm them being trans either

When the bans on *affirming* care reach SCOTUS the Republican justices will flip their positions. Kagan will write a stirring dissent calling her colleagues out on their hypocrisy, BUT IT WILL BE A DISSENT. Republicans are hypocrites and FINE WITH THAT. They're winning, that's all they care about.

I'm seeing a lot of people trying to justify Kagan's concurrence in the conversion therapy case, and for the most part they're making the same mistake that Kagan herself is making. They're forgetting that the GOP justices DO NOT GIVE ONE SHIT about intellectual consistency.

It's Trans Day of Visibility today. If you're trans and are raising money for something (I don't care what it is), reply to this thread and I will boost you. If you are a cis person, take a look and find someone to support if you can. Everyone give this a share after.

It's simple: The Supreme Court says bans on medical care—and speech related to that care—are only allowed in the conservative direction. Tennessee can ban gender-affirming care as a medical regulation, matter but Colorado CANNOT regulate therapists who wish to deny patients' gender or sexuality

Here's what Bowen Yang told me about being put in conversion therapy in Colorado as a teenager: “That’s scar tissue that will never totally go away...That was a moment of real danger for me, where this thing I love and cherish about myself—there was an effort to eradicate it.”

The alt text here is art.

Two-year-old Kaleth is being locked away at the Dilley trailer prison. He is getting sicker with each passing day. He will not eat the food CoreCivc serves, which detainees have said sometimes has mold and worms. He now has a fever.

Isfahan is a city with over 2,500 years of continuous history. The US and Israel are bombing one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the region. Over 2 million people live there. I’ve only heard from my family once since the war began and this is their city, Isfahan, tonight. #Iran

Okay I am now fully caught up and TMZ messing up a death notice is so implausible it’s basically jumping the shark. Otherwise great show!

Just handed in a 4000 word draft books thinkpiece today for which I’m not being paid that much — not complaining, I wrote that many words because I had a LOT to say. The idea of writing for the fucking NYTBR and doing this… why. WHY

Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympian with a variation in her sex traits, criticized the IOC policy discriminating against transgender and intersex women. “It’s like now we need to prove that we are worthy as women to take part in sports. That is disrespect for women." www.nytimes.com/athletic/715...

simply amazing to watch a man torch his previously positive reputation so thoroughly

oh my god

This feels weird. A lot of reporting is sounding very much like "how long will this take to get back to normal" when there's no sign in the short term that normality will return at all It's like 2020 Covid reporting

You would get so many more amazing books if you had Universal Basic Income. Not even the most dream-scenario AI could compete with the creativity of a world of authors no longer afraid of affording rent.

Catching up on loads of TV now that the Oscars are over. Today I finished THE LOWDOWN, which was exactly as amazing as I’d hoped based on how amazing Res Dogs is and my eternal adoration of Ethan Hawke. Has there ever been a MORE stereotypically Ethan Hawke character. So charming yet so annoying.

I think often of a New York Times photo of a little Iraqi girl tending to her parakeets in a bombed house, probably from 20 years ago now. I will think of this man and his sweet dog often now too. People just want to love what they love, care for their little beings, and instead we do this to them