If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

On this Trans Day of Remembrance we're thinking of Faltas by Celilia Gentili. Faltas is a radical act of self-making and self-redemption. The book felt like the beginning of something special, but was not to be.

1/ I’d like to share what’s happened since Sept. 30, the night of the most dramatic raid of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Under the cover of darkness, 37 immigrants were taken from an apartment complex …🧵

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

“Chicago is the future.“ @joseolivarez.bsky.social for @chicagomag.com

I guess it was to be expected but we are there now that Mamdani seems poised to win: unrestrained Islamophobia pure racism And scaremongering.

The hater insta ads “warning” me about Zohran in my feed today are so embarrassing. What wild, racist desperation.

Did you know that if you buy my book on Amazon, Jeff Bezos makes 5 times as much as I do on each copy sold? Sharing some behind-the-scenes book math on why buying directly from presses is best for EVERYONE (except Bezos) in my newsletter today! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/book-math

"No bookstore that PW has reached out to has been as adversely impacted as @loyaltybooks.bsky.social, which specializes in diverse and intersectional literature ... Sales are down 65% since August 11." you can shop at Loyalty at loyaltybookstores.com or through Bookshop bookshop.org/shop/loyalty

💥💥💥💥💥 2025 Kirkus Prize Finalists are Announced! 💥💥💥💥💥 lithub.com/here-are-the...

It is easy to feel this way but I truly think, for trans writers at least, writing books now is urgent. Write good books about your friends, get them printed, get them widely distributed, get them in the world. There has never before been an opportunity like the one we currently possess to do this.

Less than two years ago, an Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza city merited a multi-day news cycle, with international outrage forcing Israel to issue denials and launch an absurd but ultimately successful attempt to muddy the waters with dubious theories about Gazans bombing themselves.

Texas House Democrats offer a brief response to Gov. Greg Abbott's threat of arrest and expulsion: "Come and take it."

An update: We still have no rep in Congress (same with two other Dem-held districts in GOP states) & instead of an election the Governor is holding a special legislative session to redraw the districts. The proposed map will give the GOP 5 additional seats. www.texastribune.org/2025/07/30/t...

Hey if you are or have been a participant/attendee/admirer of the Portland Book Festival or other Literary Arts programming please consider signing on to this divestment ask!! lithub.com/an-open-lett...

From our NPR producer in Gaza Anas Baba and @emilyzfeng.bsky.social

I truly intended this just as an email and not a public thing but fuck it we ball. The New York Times is not alone in its culpability but it is deeply culpable and its near-monopoly status in our blighted American media ecosystem allows it to do what it does.

there is a new billy joel documentary???!!! this is why i engage with the internet. this is my breaking news.

This is a horrific abdication of their responsibilities to students, alums, faculty, staff, to themselves, their peers.

Concentration camp jobs posted on Indeed. I wonder if they’ll start advertising that the uniforms are being made by Hugo Boss: www.indeed.com/cmp/Critical...

Cheeky little reminder as we head towards another "Prime Day" and as I see more authors continuing to push Amazon links.... STOP LINKING TO AMAZON!

“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, the present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many.”

Happy birthday to the prophetess Octavia Butler. We live in the times she foretold. From her notebooks.

No thrones. No crowns. No kings. Houston, TX

it’s absolutely wild to me how many people still don’t know that the origins of the police are the slave patrol

Someone at a family party asked me which books are big right now and I’m like, idk, Stag Dance? I’m farther outside the loop of mainstream publishing than I’ve ever been. This is one of the bigger gifts I’ve given myself in the last two years.

Here are some texts I got from an immigration lawyer friend of mine. Shared with permission. Some of the bleakest shit I’ve ever heard.

Good thread here bsky.app/profile/chad...

live from the huge spontaneous anti-ICE protest after the agency used military-style tactics during a series of raids in Los Angeles today.

Every day that this horror continues, I think of Omar El Akkad's tweet: "One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."

In San Antonio today, plainclothes ICE officers (not masked this time) arrested, handcuffed, and zip-tied a family of five (yes, ALL of them, including the little children) coming out of their immigration court hearing — which ICE had just had dismissed. www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a...

Never not surprising to hear Elmont announced as an LIRR stop. We used to take two buses to a train to - okay we couldn’t have afforded LIRR as teenagers anyway, but still. This stop isn’t for residents anyway. These half thoughts brought to you by a can of shake shack sav blanc on a Sunday.

The AI book list and general enshittification reminded me that I've been credited as blurbing hundreds of books I never have, including books by Patti Smith, Amy Tan, Sidney Sheldon, Joyce Maynard, and Elmore Leonard? And I can't get these fake blurbs taken off publisher and bookstore websites?

One year ago today: at Rainbow Book Fair, posting up behind my little table of books by queer and trans writers for the first time. Happy as fuck. Today: the front table of my little queer bookstore, before a busy Sunday making coffee & recommending queer books. Happy as fuck.

Hundreds of international students have just received an email telling them their visas have been revoked. The ‘justification’ is campus activism or social media posts. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/hun...

“Half of this stuff you can’t just do and the other half is insane,” said Joseph Howley, a professor... “If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.” www.pbs.org/newshour/edu...

Hundreds of Columbia students in the streets demanding Trump release Mahmoud Khalil & Leqaa Kordia — and demanding that Columbia repeal its expulsion of Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia-UAW

rally to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil now, near the federal building (ICE works in there), nyc

Fave.

50 years ago, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band played a show on Long Island where the bootleg was named "The Greatest Performance" because, well, it kinda was. Incredible versions of Incident, NYC Serenade, Kitty's Back, A Love So Fine & more. www.radio-nowhere.com/bruce-spring...

Steve Bannon, after calling for Trump to be President for life, did a Nazi salute on stage at CPAC. Nazism has officially taken over the GOP. The few remaining conservatives have a choice: either leave the party and obstruct it—or choose to be complicit.

The number of people I meet in my BK bookstore who attended a Texas Book Fest I curated makes me weepy. Here we are, connected across time & space by literature & the camaraderie that we used that capitol building for two things: listening to poetry one weekend, & protesting all the rest of the time

TOMORROW (WED): Rallies are being held across the country to protest the funding cuts to science and the illegal firing of federal workers. Please join if you can. We need to show that many people oppose these destructive attacks on science and healthcare. Details: labor4highered.org

Highbrow wit! Philosophical musings! PW recognizes. These stories are great for snorting and cackling on the subway. Or at home! Wherever you like! Pre-order from Little Puss!

Hell yeah to these images of huge protest crowds filling my feed today. I’m not well enough to be out there right now, but am buoyed by these sights of resistance. Hearing that people who don’t normally get out in the streets are out there right now - hell yes!

Just a few blocks from their HQ

Been sick for a week, unable to read without headaches (god bless audiobooks for filling in). This is how I’m getting back into the swing of things. I just want the behind-the-scenes goss. Then back to bending my brain on the Preciado.