Age categories for books have never been absolute, nor movie ratings with an allowed number of swears. It baffles me that so many people have crawled up in recent years trying to make them a new Hayes Code - and that an equal number of people have just kind of gone “well, obviously.”

The idea that reading “should be an escape” is profoundly disrespectful to actual teenagers. Reading can be about escape. Or not. Teenagers are no different from adults in this regard. For every young readers who craves escapism, there’s another who craves relevance.

Fuck this. As an industry, we are in an existential crisis of book banning because of homophobia and transphobia weaponized by racist authoritarians. “Dirty books” are not the problem. Censorship is. Make whatever books you like, but don’t you dare call other books dirty in your shitty marketing.

i think if you tweet "a whole civilization will die tonight" you shouldn't go to the hague, the hague should get to come to you

“A whole civilization will die tonight” is the most vile thing a US president has ever said, certainly during the post-1945 era when they’ve had the power to kill civilizations with the dropping of a bomb. I’m staring into the darkness. May this not be one of the most fateful days in human history.

lots of great books in here, lots of faves and friends and comrades writing about them, get into it

i know people on here don't rly care about culture coverage but sharing because I'm proud I did it: reviewed Mitski's new residency at NYC's The Shed @us.theguardian.com seeing her perform for the ninth time in 9 years (!), I feel confident saying that Mitski is in her triumphant era.

Happy birthday to me :)

I don’t think we should make concessions to the Masked Murderers Guild of America. I don’t think we should compromise so the Masked Murderers Guild of America stops using kidnapped kids from schools as bait. I thought this was already illegal. The Masked Murderers Guild of America should not exist.

a new third thing

During the Jim Crow era, most Americans were ignorant of the fascism going on in Southern states because mainstream media didn't cover it until the Civil Rights Movement really got going in the 1950s. Today, it's northern "blue states" under fascist attack with the rest of the country in the dark.

this is the funniest thing i’ve ever read. isaac chotiner interviews a resident of the town from the lottery. archiveofourown.org/works/73396436

For 248 years the streets of America didn’t feature a roving masked federal kidnapping squad that might send you a Central American death camp or just murder you themselves, but getting rid of it now is some impossible lefty fantasy that professional Democrats lamentably must struggle against.

ICE agent quit your fucking job simulator

As a Brown alum and Providence resident, I have been trying to find the right words to capture the vast grief layered across this community and the people who love it. In the end, I’m not sure if it’s really, fully possible to articulate. But I tried: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Trying to finish up some last bits of work before the holidays but this weekend finally snapped off the lever in my brain that makes Stuff Happen. There’s nothing left. 2025 won.

I will NEVER vote for a politician who votes for anti-trans legislation. Never. I don't care who it is, it's a dead issue. Move on. If my vote is so important to the future of democracy they should have thought of that before they voted to exterminate my child.

Happy Shirley Jackson's birthday! I continue to think that, despite various accolades, she is underappreciated as a short story writer. Here's something I wrote about her story "Pillar of Salt" a few years ago: mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2022/09/time...

Mayor Johnson is cooking

Broadview.

it is october 7. for two years hamas has been offering to return israel's hostages in exchange for an israeli withdrawal from gaza to which benjamin netanyahu has said "no," ignoring the hostages' families demands and prioritizing the destruction of gaza over saving the hostages lives.

as SCOTUS considers conversion therapy (what! is! there! to! consider!) thought some of you may be interested in this choose-your-own-adventure game I released a decade ago, REPARATIVE. you play a therapist at a conversion therapy clinic: jamforleelah81.itch.io/reparative

entranced by these bits from Edwidge Danticat’s introduction to Hadriana and All My Dreams.

Divest from the "Novel That Wishes It Were a Screenplay" industrial complex NOW

last time I saw him he was going through a phase most accurately called “pirate ska”

I’m watching Hellraiser free with ads so every half hour it cuts to someone opening a can of tuna. Pinhead’s cannery side hustle.

HARDEST PHOTO OF 2025 JUST DROPPED

obsessed w the medieval origin of harbinger, it's an amazing word: traveled from Old Saxon through medieval French, conveys in origins harbor, a place of safety. A medieval harbinger was one who provides lodging, as well as one who travels ahead in search of safe dwelling, a herald and guarantor.

the last twenty four hours have made me feel absolutely insane

The one time we got the smoking gun of undeniable ideology that mapped neatly onto american partisanship in political violence was J6, and we decided it was too scary to treat it as such, so now we return to deciphering memes of school shooters like medieval peasants panicking at an eclipse.

Let’s make one thing clear from the start: Charlie Kirk was the victim of a shooting in a country where he, along with other right-wing extremist influencers, have been inciting violence for years. — Kirk is neither a martyr nor a hero, he is a cause.

and stay out, you little rat fucks

I actually think "we are not giving the GOP a single vote to fund this govt so long as there are troops in our cities or even could in the future be troops in american cities" is a good message and one easily intelligible to the average american.

Know your rights, Chicago. Ask for a warrant. Record the goons from a safe distance. We don’t want or need them here.

no more indie rock bands with “mom” or “dad” in the title. how am I supposed to tell anyone’s 90s softcore grunge-pop apart.

We don’t talk enough about Melville’s commitment to the bit

The course evaluation clause is ripe for abuse. It also gives the government pretext to strip work visas, green cards, or naturalized citizenship status from professors. bsky.app/profile/weed...

trans women shall not be welcome on campus

All these private universities rolling over for Trump … they have endowments in the billions and they’re acting like they’re built out of paper. Throwing trans students, students of color, anyone who’s spoken out on Palestine, directly under the train for what? A little peace and quiet? Fuck you.

In the discussion of what is acceptable in art and writing, it's always interesting to me that there are a million sexuality-based restrictions, but they never mention regular degular violence. Can't have a boner, but I can cut the head off anyone with a sword and drink their blood

I've been banging this drum for years now, I know, but Zohran's Big Night is a clear illustration of the power of giving people a vision of the future that boldly contradicts the rhetoric of Republican fearmongers. Not just "disagrees on policies," but actively paints a different image of the world.

Any politician who falls in line with this, I hope a crack opens up and swallows them and drags them into the mantle of the earth.

America has been fighting pointless, torturous wars in the Middle East as long as I’ve been alive. Because our government wants to do it. Because it strokes our ego. Because it makes us money. Because one senile man slithered back into office and felt small, and bored.

God my absolute heart is with the people of Iran, who’ve fought so steadfastly for their own liberation, and are getting fucked half a dozen ways by a whole pantheon of geriatric war criminals while being told they should be grateful for it

trans people will always exist (laudatory) trans people will always exist (threatening) trans people will always exist (factual)

Folks, @resnikoff.bsky.social is right

It’s really comforting that as food skyrockets in price, your neighbors are disappeared by masked goons, and people die en masse of preventable illness, Republicans and Democrats can come together and say: fuck this one trans teenager in particular for trying to run track with her friends