"Don't you know, Jane, the world says its fucking name to us?" Calamity Jane, quoting Charlie Utter, as he spoke to her in a dream. I'l like to start a newspaper with this as its motto, better than that bad joke on Bezos' Post, "democracy dies in darkness."

In case you were wondering: Yes, there is a Jonathan the Great Tortoise angle to the Pam Bondi firing news.

It is really sad to see how many US schools are eliminating visual art programs. It is worth a detailed report on the students, staff and faculty affected, but I don't know how many media outlets are interested in features on that.

3rd time through Teju Cole’s BLIND SPOT, to which, I confess, I was cool on passes 1 & 2, I finally feel the thrum I suspected, running my fingers over the gloss of page 107, as if to feel the texture of the pictured blue tarp, the bricks, the ripple of shadow and behind it green leaves.

No, no they do not

Lot of truth here. Hence my AI policy for my students, based on advice from my friend @quincemountain.bsky.social “if you want to be a writer, go sit in a bar and talk about yr novel. But if you want to write, write.”

thread

USAID, now US Forest Service. They keep demolishing institutions that were deeply problematic, but nowhere near as awful as their erasure. I think this is big, bad news, the real news of the day, not that nothing-to-see-here speech.

There's a phrase, it's on the tip of my tongue... www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/s...

When I started teaching college 15 years ago almost none of my students smoked, ever; now I’d guess majority do at least sometimes. One student has a theory that it’s proof that everything that dies someday comes back, & thus she’ll get to have a journalism career after all.

This is good news. Two of the major journalists on the rightwing beat, two journalists who get how “fringe” becomes mainstream.

Illiberal democracies often rely on formally democratic institutions like courts to maintain a false image of the state as protective of democratic freedoms.

When the birthright citizenship decision comes out, people will say it could never have gone any other way, that the law was obvious. But the mere fact that SCOTUS took on the case is evidence enough that we are living in a time of democratic precarity.

Gorsuch: are Native Americans citizens under your test? Sauer: [hesitates] I...think so?

Reading @elienyc.bsky.social @mjsdc.bsky.social live skeeting SCOTUS on birthright, with even all the Trump judges but Thomas & Alito saying in various judge ways “WTF are you talking about” is a joy. It remains a shit court but at one key juncture it appears ready to meet the moment.

OH HELL YES. NEIL GORSUCH, THE LAST JUSTICE OF THE MOCHICANS, ASKS "Do you think Native Americans are citizens of the united states." IF YOU TRIP GORSUCH'S NATIVE AMERICAN WIRES, YOU LOSE. GOOD DAY, SIR!

Kagan: "You're using some pretty obscure sources to get to this." "obscure sources" is, apparently, Kagan's euphemism for FUCKING OPENLY RACISTS SOURCES WHO WERE DEVOUT WHITE SUPREMACISTS

My friend just said "Shorter Sotomayor: 'Daniel Webster called you a fucking idiot. Thoughts?'" That's the best description available for what's happening here. :)

Want to make sure you saw this. I think it’s worth holding the publications themselves accountable; their rules about using AI tend to be imprecise and not clearly communicated.

writing a thing about all these journalists admitting to using AI…boy, am i steamed!!!

"Think you know AI? Meet Being, the vogue-dancing teacher and poet." -- actual text for a performance hosted by my employer. (It's a robot.)

scheduling a documentary film series for my creative writing students. Which Frederick Wiseman film would you show?

Hi, I'm looking for a journalist based in Nigeria for help on a radio story. If you happen to know anyone who knows anyone I would appreciate it! Thanks!

I don’t cede concept of “free speech” to fascist champions of 2+2=5. Conversion therapy isn’t speech. That therapist has the right to believe and say what she wants in her free time. But it’s not speech to apply practices proven harmful under cover of a state medical license.

New: Spanish edition of my book THE UNDERTOW: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

I'm glad my writing and journalism life has moved me far enough away from horse race politics that I can't even imagine what kind of long con those touting Rahm Emanuel are running.

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

Notice how this just keeps happening again and again. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I'm looking not for names but for specific, *reported* pieces. Reporting as in someone going somewhere and talking to people and finding things out, not interpreting reporting of others. What do you remember that blew you away?

Accepting nominations for best longform journalism about the Trumpocene from last summer to now. Not looking for polemic or argument but rather brilliant, illuminating, beautifully made reporting. Thanks!

Leviathan smiles.

Vara's one of the writers I've been following for years now to understand AI's assault on journalism and writing and just generally being human.

The author's name is Alex Preston. Or, rather, excuse me, the "author's" name is Claude or Chat or Grok. Alex is just a secretary.

OpenAI's Sora and Meta's metaverse were shuttered the same week. Both were defined by an aesthetic that embodies Silicon Valley's current project: to undermine labor, replace art + lived experience with digital facsimiles, and extract value at any cost. And users recoiled at the mere sight of them.

Ben Gvir's equivalent in US politics would be literally if the leader of the Aryan Nations splinter group The Order were elected to Congress and given a cabinet position instead of dying in a shootout with the FBI. It's difficult to explain how much of a supremacist extremist Ben Gvir is.

what's the J for what's the J for, motherfucker

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.

A close friend wrote: “They will reap the whirlwind. Never forget that the Talmud describes any court of law that institutes the death penalty more than once in 70 years as cruel and unusual. There is no clearer evidence that we are regressing into dark times as a civilization than this”

This is very funny but it's also yet another reminder of the fundamental misalignment of this site's leadership and its core user base, which I imagine will cause legitimate and potentially existential problems down the road

Recs of documentary writers &photographers who work together, or nonfic writers who use photo or vice versa? Teaching new course. Agee & Evans, obv, Parks & Ellison, DeCarava & Hughes, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Eugene Richards, Teju Cole, Wing Young Huie, Meiselas, Guibert, Ewald, Berger, Sharpe...

If you submitted an Anthropic claim, I recommend calling them and confirming it. Their system is riddled with errors and issues. Even if you got a confirmation number, maybe check: 1-877-206-2314

what people sound like when they say i asked claude

I just think there has got to be a middle ground between “journalists are inaccessible and largely not held accountable for their work by readers” and “journalists must be able to gracefully handle hearing the opinions of every human with an Internet connection.”

The bluesky address is @attie.ai and it really needs to be in the top five accounts blocked on this platform. This is honestly some of the most tonedeaf shit I’ve seen from BS and thats saying something

While I'm kvetching about the genuinely innovative creative nonfiction (I can't stand that nonsensicial term) that's out of print, I discover that Wendy Ewald's astonishing Magic Eyes, a book so strange & good I hesitate to even call it just a "book," is back in print--but too expensive to teach.

There are many magnificent books out of print but it blows my mind to learn from my local bookstore that James Agee's & Walker Evans' deeply influential Let Us Now Praise Famous Men--to which, along w/ Slouching Toward Bethlehem, I owe my life as a writer--is out of print.

Call your reps and ask to be next!

this is turning out to be one of the onion's all-time classics

You need to pay for news

I recently saw Natchez, a film that will stay with me for a long time. It explores familiar ground--the shaping of historical narratives & racist mythmaking that informs our present--yet it felt like a gut punch by the end. Thread below by @jeffsharlet.bsky.social captures it well. Highly recommend.