Also worth keeping in mind that if you use this service as an author, I (as a translator) may personally come piss in your Cheerios some morning. You never know.

Oh what's this? One of my favorite romance series of all time is on sale?

I am not an influencer, but please help me boost Palestinian-owned Nabiha cafe on U street near 17th in DC. The coffee is AMAZING, staff is super friendly, links to donate to Gazan families are easily accessible for customers who want to help

Not me getting the address wrong in the last post… hold please 😔

If you saw me going for a 5 mile run on the streets of DC while absolutely sobbing my eyes out to the audiobook of Atmosphere, no you didn’t, it was dark out, you were probably mistaken

Feeding America has a page where you can input your zip code and it'll show you all of the food banks near you overlaid on a map. If you need it, it's there. If you don't need it, think about donating money if you have it and your time if you don't. www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-lo...

This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

In case anyone wants some recs for this mini-trope www.instagram.com/p/ClEJz8wOVz...

what's the tiniest microtrope in romance that lights your soul on fire? examples: mine is when a person's expression subtly "softens" while looking at their LI in public I have a friend who loves when 2 characters sit on opposite sides of a wall/closed door and each press their hands to it

the Muppets have been real quiet since the Louvre heist

Couldn’t protest today as I was stuck on a train for 8 hours, but when I got back to DC the mood felt… different? Lighter? Idk, I’m usually a cynic, but I think today mattered

folks can complain about the effectiveness of scheduled orderly mass protest but to think about it another way its the closest thing we have to the opening scene of A Muppet Christmas Carol where all the muppets sing "there goes Mr. Dipshit, there goes Mr. Ass" to Scrooge and it clearly bothered him

In Philadelphia, #nokings goes back a long way.

This also indicates the essential dishonesty of saying “it’s just a tool.” A hammer is a tool. Nobody writes about the “inevitability” of hammers. Nobody has ever studied the harmful effects of hammers on learning and concluded that teachers must all hit their students with hammers “responsibly.”

If you could interview any author, living or dead, about any one book of theirs: which author/book combo would it be, and why?

/adds to lexicon/

Oh, definitely Wishbone! I got to college and was assigned The Time Machine and halfway through it, realized I’d been mentally picturing the hero as a Jack Russel terrier the entire time 😂😂

DC is resisting, part 1

Happy #InternationalTranslationDay! Keep AI out of translation!

Ok, I have a very niche book request. I grew up on Boxcar Children and Little House on the Prairie. I imprinted HARD on a particular brand of cozy survivalism. Anyone know books for adults with this vibe? Ideally without the problematic politics of LHOTP

did the Moby Dick quote bot attend my faculty meeting yesterday? bc this pretty much sums up my feelings lately 🫠

It sucks the way the humanities are being eroded & labeled unimportant. For every rant against a “new identity,” there is an ancient poem or painting or song or or or that tells us there is nothing new under the sun

Highly recommended, if you can swing it: blocking off 24 hours for a “readathon” where you just try to read as much as you can in the time that you have. No phone, minimized distractions I finished two books today and started a third, and I feel significantly less stressed and despairing

gonna pull together a list of polyam romance recs in a thread 🧵

If I were editing a college president’s guest essay about the importance of colleges hosting “difficult speakers,” I would ask her to clarify how her argument squares with her history of expelling students for protesting, and why speakers should be treated better than her own students.

I want a reverse vacation. I want to stay home and have everyone I know go away for a week.

I just saw the proofs for my first published novel-length translation and I am… basically beside myself with excitement

my god, people don’t even KNOW how amazing a city DC is. wandering around the Art All Night festival and feeling legit emotional about how much I love living here and how much I fucking HATE the people in charge

More adventures w TikTok watercolor tutorials (highly recommend @nicholasholmanart.bsky.social on TT!!)

just taking a moment amidst all the copyright talk (I am cheering you on from the sidelines, authors) to point out one of the dumbest things about academia: for journal articles, at least in my field in the US, copyright is always with the journal, not the author

I am filled with back-to-school nerves and excitement. Teaching college is the greatest job ever, and nothing beats a campus on the first week back. And I am SO MAD at how hard this administration is working against everything that’s good and meaningful about what we do

Taurus: All your prayers will be answered this week! The answer will be no.

Thanks, ChatGPT, for making sure I get to think about this on a regular basis 😫

it was the worst of times, its was the wow somehow it keeps getting worse of times

Anyway, time to make more art

Fuck you, you can’t break us

hi if you want to listen to a d.c. band who makes music about the resilience of our city’s queer community against fascism, may i introduce you to “pink balloons” by ekko astral

D.C. is a lovely and vibrant city, the unhoused people there just want help, and the people who live in the city have no voting representation in Congress and thus lack one of the major opportunities for anyone to advocate for them.

this right here. for those who don't already care about the 700,000 of us regular human beings who live here (and gosh, a lot of people seem not to care) you might care about the fact that your city is almost certainly next feeling absolutely sick for my city today

Sunday watercolor

So thrilled that @joiedelivresmtl.bsky.social is participating! We have a full day of author book signings, pink bubbles by the glass, strawberry shortcake, and a cute free tote with purchases > 100$ !

Watercolor robin, to celebrate the sudden profusion of them in the tree outside our house 😍

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

More adventures in trying to enjoy doing amateur art

Approximately two-hours-with-family away from absolutely exploding over the number of “political” topics that are “off limits” how do people live like this

we've lost the art of cutting high-waisted, full legged trousers that will show off a man's buttocks

*commences doing the “my out of office message is up for a week” dance*

Too many genre portmanteaus, too little innovation.

Another day, another man unprepared for what’s about to happen to him when he tries to speak to me about “AI”