First-day-of-fall greetings to everyone except the woman at the literary reading in the 1,500-seat theater last night who was scrolling on her phone during most of it.

Journalism is an optimistic endeavor. By surfacing truths the powerful prefer to keep hidden, we provoke discussion and unlock change. This happened hours after we published an investigation exposing the Trump admin's sweeping retreat on human trafficking www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts to combat human trafficking, leaving traffickers to operate with increased impunity, experts say. Guardian investigation by @aglantz.bsky.social, Bernice Yeung, & Noy Thrupkaew.

Tomorrow Wed Sept 10 at 7pm, join @motherjones.com, @capitalb.bsky.social, @texasobserver.org at the Julia Ideson Building in downtown Houston for an evening of stories, action & resilience in the 20 years after Hurricane Katrina.

Looking forward to this collection of poems by @asaldrake.bsky.social. Explorations of “lineage and future lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance” are my jam. Coming February 2026!

Time to submit to this literary journal that keeps rejecting me so they can reject me again in 6 months. Can't wait.

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

Got my COVID & flu shots today at a local Brooklyn pharmacy. But there's confusion out there. First they said I needed an RX, then they said I didn't, but made me write down my health condition. (I am immunocompromised.)

Helpful reporting by @sabs.bsky.social on WTF is happening with covid vaccines

Helpful reporting by @sabs.bsky.social on WTF is happening with covid vaccines

Recently, in #BitOfJoy: Transported heirloom tomatoes from the SF Bay Area back to NYC in my luggage, then made Eric Kim’s furikake tomato sandwich. cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024...

One thing about Chinese immigrants is that they will just walk up to another Chinese person in hopes that they speak the same kind of Chinese. Happened to me twice in one day. In the first instance, I knew enough Cantonese to help an auntie at the oncologist’s office reschedule her follow-up.

This racist government will literally burn this country down in the name of racism.

I’ve been in the SF Bay Area for the last few weeks & among my friends I know 9 people (5 households) who have had Covid recently.

From @josephinelee.bsky.social and @michellepitcher.bsky.social in 2024: 24 Texas prison units still have agribusiness operations. Nine are located on former plantations. Incarcerated workers harvest many of the same crops that slaves and later convict laborers did from 1871 to 1910.

Today, the fact that the airstrike that killed an Al Jazeera journalist and his crew whom Israel had smeared as a terrorist in advance hit next to a hospital is just the fourth or fifth most horrific detail, and yet the international response will be… what? More nothing.

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.

Peak Asian American headline sports.yahoo.com/olympics/bre...

Sometimes I think of how only two generations of us were even allowed to attend these settler colonial ass universities in tiny, awkward handfuls, and how even that was too much

This vintage toy museum in Mexico City, which was founded by a Japanese immigrant, Roberto Y. Shimizu. The museum is in a former apartment building & it's like visiting an eccentric uncle's house. There's stuff everywhere. www.museodeljuguete.com.mx

We discussed exactly this when I was on the Book Friends Forever podcast with @alvinaling.bsky.social @authorgracelin.bsky.social. I said a museum about food in transit (such as airplane meals). But I forgot to say that it's interesting to me b/c that's also the history of humans.

Oh, it's the last day of Disability Pride Month, which takes place in July because that's when the ADA was signed. I don't feel pride about my disability since it gives me chronic pain. But I am proud of contributing an essay to this anthology edited by @sfdirewolf.bsky.social

65. The fastest growing disability population has to be Palestinians in Gaza.

I'm sharing a series of slides from @elgendy95.bsky.social's instagram account about how mutual aid works in Gaza. There are 5 slides (I will thread them) & you can see the original post here: www.instagram.com/p/DMaj16Ostyh/

I'm sharing a series of slides from @elgendy95.bsky.social's instagram account about how mutual aid works in Gaza. There are 5 slides (I will thread them) & you can see the original post here: www.instagram.com/p/DMaj16Ostyh/

Ordinary people doing what they can, because our governments won't

Just another reason why I support ProPublica. Thank you, @propublica.org, @texastribune.org, Alianza Rebelde Investiga, & Cazadores de Fake News, for reporting on every single one of these men.

If you didn’t hear this story from Anas Baba on NPR today, you should take a listen. He walked 3 hours to find a working internet connection to file the story www.npr.org/2025/07/25/n...

Disgusting.

Today's #BitOfJoy is that an author I admire recommended the exhibit that I curated for @carlemuseum.bsky.social.

The Sameer Project has been doing crucial work to get food into Gaza. Gaza is facing mass, created starvation- people are dropping in the street from lack of food and water. Never again is now. Donate if you can and spread the ord. linktr.ee/thesameerpro...

I’m going to say this gently because I know not everyone knows this: delivery is not a luxury for many disabled ppl. It’s survival. It may be a luxury for you, but this is not a universal truth. And I totally agree delivery is often bad, which makes this situation worse.

"Many lung cancers in nonsmokers have no known cause and are discovered only by chance." This is how it was for my mother. She didn't have any symptoms. 10-25% of lung cancers occurs in people who have never smoked. In certain groups of Asian & Asian American women, it's 50% or more

"Many lung cancers in nonsmokers have no known cause and are discovered only by chance." This is how it was for my mother. She didn't have any symptoms. 10-25% of lung cancers occurs in people who have never smoked. In certain groups of Asian & Asian American women, it's 50% or more

He's 82. 82! He went to an immigration appointment because he had lost his wallet and needed to replace his green card.

For @carlemuseum.bsky.social I wrote a curator’s essay about the career of @authorgracelin.bsky.social, Asian American identity, and narrative plentitude (with thanks to @vietthanhnguyen.bsky.social for coining the term) carlemuseum.org/explore-art/...

Just thinking about how quaint it was for me to be so upset over Betsy DeVos

a disaster for many reasons, but I’m especially livid thinking about countless disabled students whose families who will have even less in the way of recourse when their kids’ educational rights are violated

Spent the past week offline (mostly) at @kenyonreview.bsky.social writers workshop, where I wrote every day. It was nourishing, especially in these times, to be with other writers and learn from them. Leaving with my heart full.

Was wondering how AAPI, & specifically Chinese, voted in the NYC primary. Mamdani reached out to orgs like CAAAV early on. “We focused on Chinatown, Sunset Park, Astoria, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Jamaica. And in every single one of those neighborhoods, Zohran beat Cuomo handily”

If you haven't seen me on here, it's because I've been offline, screaming.

“‘It’s not a detention center, it’s a prison,’ said Islam Musaev, a Kyrgyzstani man who remains detained as his successful asylum case is appealed by the government. ‘There is no difference.’” www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

This is happening this Thursday 6/26. Bernice is going to interview me about what it was like to start Hyphen mag, and I'm going to do my best to try and recall. The first issue came out 22 years ago this month.

Here's the ultra-short read on the Mamdani logo design www.gq.com/story/zohran...

Mira Nair doing the classic desi mother cheek-pull right on camera as her kid is on stage after a political victory.

Vaccination schedules on the CDC website have already started changing under RFK Jr. So we published a guide to the evidence-based vaccine recommendations in place *before* all 17 members of the advisory panel were abruptly dismissed by the new admin. www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-... 🧪

They really tried with the Islamophobia, but happily, NYC did not fall for that shit. Also, as someone who has created Asian-language political ads, it was great to see how multilingual Mamdani's campaign was. He gets it.

My migraine brain hates this heat wave. Definitely in more pain lately with these temperatures.