This is gonna be a good time, I feel it in my bones. Come through, Bushwick and adjacent territories! hivemindbooks.com/events/51719...

memories

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Michael F. Moore! Let’s goooooooo

How do I go about becoming involved in making experimental theater?

another call for suggestions!

Of course, on the other hand, I could ignore this website, all the websites, and go read. I do have things to read.

Morality is a feeling quite like anger. That is, I do not feel good when I am thinking about what is the moral thing to do, and often, I am quite furious at injustice, and it is not a good feeling.

Some days I really write the hell out of things

I am increasingly coming to grips with what this piece of writing I’m doing needs. Maybe I’ll even do it.

Am I rude for eating DIY charcuterie in this Amtrak coach car?

Hello from Amtrak train 55 the Vermonter heading south

A friend asked me to blurb their book! I’ve never done it before! I should probably get weird with it. Probably best to get weird with it, right?

A long train ride today. Train’s already running late. This bodes ill for my sanity, but incredible for my posting (ain’t it always the way)

I just saw a really electrifying experimental production of Uncle Vanya and I am starting to think that the jumble of emotions that I’ve been feeling since walking out of the theater was by Chekhovian design

Cruel, vicious men run the world, not because cruelty and viciousness are naturally more powerful than kindness and decency, but because we have allowed ourselves to build a system that rewards those traits with power and control. We must ask ourselves how to empower good, build on good, follow good

Got asked if I’ll read @mollycrabapple.bsky.social ‘s book, and realized I’d been working on an assumption I don’t need to, that as an anti-Zionist Jew and Yiddishist, that I don’t need more Bund facts. But besides being terribly uncurious and unfair of me, it’s clear this book is a cultural moment

Worker-run projects are the future of media for sure!!!

I’m just bumping this for the evening crowd.

Should I translate a poem this April, our National Poetry Month? Just to be cute

My mother’s brisket is delicious on day one. On day two? It’s a showstopper

For any writers who use the English language, the Barbellion Prize is open for entries. There is no fee for entry. Please share with others who might be interested. barbellionprize.org

It was a really sweet Pesach Seder tonight. Really very sweet and good.

As my social world dives into the hard work of the last few days of preparing kosher kitchens for Pesakh, we have to confront that in the Knesset passing a death sentence for Palestinian prisoners, Jewish jurisprudence, the Jewish legal urge, once bent on the Holy, is now a genocidal tool.

My wife gets only my dumbest, least edited takes and jokes and that’s why the passion between us is so hot and irresistible

The threat to the arts from LLMs and image generators has nothing to do with the texts or images produced and their quality— which is bad and not art or literature. The threat is the same one we’ve been facing since before their invention: Devaluation of labor. And in this, art is not alone

I wish English speaking publishers* had more appetite for translated literature. But I’m not sure even if more people published translated lit it would mean more money. The USA is VERY good at not paying writers and artists *I remain unconvinced by continuous claims that readers are to blame.

There’s a space at this wedding for children (like my son) and people with audio sensitivity (like myself) to retreat from the noise. It’s a nice accommodation. We watched some of the Apple TV series of Frog and Toad. I’m trying to be gentle with myself about needing the break. I’m not succeeding.

Still trying to organize a giving group to help a family in Gaza who live under brutal conditions maintained by the Occupation. Please contact me if you can either donate any amount consistently on a monthly basis or if you can take on facilitating collecting and distributing the money.

A thought from a day later. I read HP to be like everyone else. I liked HP because it held out the promise of being so very special that I might save the world. Neither urge, to conform or to be flattered as unique, is something we should encourage in children.

Beloved @mkzvokel.bsky.social asked me, who does being ashamed of having liked Harry Potter serve? I answered him a bit, but I also want to say: You! Me! All of us! It serves all of us to say "I liked this thing that is not very good and evil. Why did I do that?" Take a beat and think about it!

I am so tired of watching money be squeezed from intellectual property ad nauseam.

Imagine childhood for your children without the limitations of your childhood: Imagine a childhood for them without Harry Potter

I don't know what kicked of the JK Rowling talk today and I don't want to know, but I'll say for free: She is a bad person, AND the Harry Potter books are not good. They are not good books, morally or aesthetically. They are bad, and you shouldn't enjoy them. If you did, you should feel bad. I do.

Reminder that even though Bluesky keeps on deleting his account, Mohamed Ahmed is a real person, he has posted endless photos of Mawasi refugee camp in Gaza, and also of his small vegetable garden he started behind his tent. You can support him and his family here -

Yeah, I’m going to say it: Any defense of AI-generated work, no matter who or how many loved it, is disingenuous and demeans/devalues original writing. Someone’s unpolished prose is preferable to ANYTHING AI. We have to have a red line and some fucking standards, and this is it.

Planning out the day. Where does the haircut fit in? We may never know

The flat white worked! Translation is happening! Yiddish and coffee go in, pages in English come out!

Every day, all day, this is the job

if you had a MYSPACE now is the time to login to your MYCHART and schedule a COLONOSCOPY

LLMs, or so called AI, is not capable of doing the things it claims it can do, which makes me wonder: what did we lose with the electric loom and so on? How many capitalists bought machines to replace human craft artisans with no real understanding of what those artisans were doing?

Anna Seghers wrote her story “How Does A Man Become A Nazi?” In 1943. She is unflinching in how small, stupid and mean the fascist is, even as she chronicles the societal forces that shaped him from childhood. But Seghers starts at the end of his life, facing a red army execution for war crimes 1/

Animal Farm. I mostly understood it, except I kept trying to find one to one parallels in Soviet history, and just generally wasn’t great at understanding what a parable is

Angel: Be not afraid Me: Don't tell me how to feel

Cancelling God for expecting emotional labor from me to Love my neighbor

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

Proof that if we all just ignore shitty technology that nobody wants, no matter how much money these dinguses throw into it, it will eventually go away. Next up: AI!

Hey listen, if we're friends? And you have a silly idle thought that's too long for posting? You just go ahead and call me. I love hearing that shit. Love a long run for a short slide.

For some reasons and some non-reasons my mental health is really raw right now. Crying a bit here and there. Time for the map of places to cry in public, I guess

It's pub day for Differential Diagnosis!!!! Thank you all for your continued support <3333

As footage emerges of pimple faced DOGE workers testifying to why they cut NEH grants for “DEI” based projects, I don’t imagine that feeling going away