Lots of good people have been saying stuff like, "Fight venomous people with unconditional love." I disagree. Love is an affirming hug, not a lesson. Venemous people need to learn consequences. Sending them love tells them chiefly that what they are doing works, in furthering their agenda.

Yes.

Someone saying hello to you and then being delighted about it should make you happy. Not guns.

Guns should not make you happy. Giving someone something nice that they didn't ask for should make you happy.

Oddly thoughtful while looking at a sky partly filled with heavy clouds. Why are people not talking about things like THIS?

We need new scales. New scales for everything.

In secret response to writer who wanted to know if any writer can 'write a book these days without using the f word' . . . well, if you mean characters speaking with characters, then my answer is No, I haven't so far . . . but if you mean narrative, that's something else I suppose. But why fret?

Well! What a political turnaround! I didn't see that coming at all. Not one bit. Nope. I'm totally surprised.

If you're feeling bad but aren't feeling bad enough, you can always trust the news. Look at it, go ahead. Just take a good look at that stuff. Breathe it in deeply.

These days, when I cut a small paragraph, or a sentence, and everything is better for it, I feel better, myself. It's the reduction of breaths, you want them all smaller and smaller and smaller . . . especially if it comes down to just a little punctuation . . . better. That is all I want to be.

These days it's the itty-most things, the smallest you can find, that keep me going. There are no medium ones to be found. So I get smaller and smaller with those things, until I fit into a drawer, in microscript. Soon you won't see me at all, and I won't miss anything.

This day in things I didn't buy that I wish I could have (out of print at the time) and instead I made a copy of so I could own it and look at it and show it to others.

Me: If I could just make a duplicate of myself I could get more work done. Calvin & Hobbes: Ahem . . .

Look at those numbers . . . summer's apparently over already, sigh.

No explanation.

. . . silence . . .

Holy fucking . . .

"The white Europeans who settled America and conquered the West “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” he said. “They fought [. . .] they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America, in all its glory, is their gift to us..."

This here, Thank you, God!

OH wow. Thank you, Senator Sanders.

11pm and allergies want revenge!!!!

Sometimes I feel like Latka trapped in a tiny room.

With everything turning from terrible to horrific, I write. I write. I finish the damned novel and hope someone will read it. I have no leads, no contacts, I will have to act like a nobody-hero. Here I go!

First impressions are usually wrong.

This is understating things.

Somebody tell me how to do everyone's work for them and stop our unchecked progress into authoritarianism. As an artist, I'm accustomed to working for free.

Every so often I have to sing, "Over There." I think the lyrics go: Over there. Over there. There's a farm and a barn over there. Over there. Over there.

via Apple News: "The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response within the Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with developing a list of about 26 critical drugs vital to "national health and security", the White House said in a fact sheet." Only 26????!!!

BREAKING NEWS: What about Trump's mental decline? What about that, eh? Analyze that, assholes.

From Seelie Catch . . .

Apples, by Christos Nikou . . . here's a film that knows how to tell a story, in such an interesting way. One of the very best films I've seen in a long time. Also, such humanity in the film, in the characters. Humanity is something I've been missing in the films I've seen lately. TLee

So you all know, from now on I live in New England Uplands, so make your addresses to me accordingly . . . unless you're sending me something by USPS. They're weird.

What every opinion article, advertised weightily by some news site, sounds like to me: Trump said something! Will it matter? Will it not matter? Is strawberry the only red? Is a circle a lie? Some writer weighs in to fill a work quota. Readers comment.

Nice time-lapse!

YEAH, man!

. . . "I assure you I won’t take unnecessary risks. But I’m not going to stop speaking out."

. . . From Gertrude Stein's "Lucy Church Amiably."

Nurses actually intervening with ICE agent.

So, I've been through two of Gertrude Stein's books ("A Novel of Thank You" & "Lucy Church Amibably") some 3 or 4 times, and cannot find this quote, something like, 'A chapter is that which has in front of it more and more cousins.' [paraphrasing] Can anyone help me find this?

Always thankful for Robert Reich's thoughts...

How I'm feeling...

...As began with Sparta continues with this admin...

some above/ground press author activity: Robinson, Kemp, Jenks, Inniss, Davies + Browne, / @tomjenksuk.bsky.social ; abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/07/some...

From the Epstein files, reporting by Hugh Dougherty:

Susan Collins says only: "I am pro-Israel" as she gets into her car.

🚨NEW: When ICE raided a Californian farm yesterday, they snatched & disappeared a disabled US veteran who was in his car. They smashed his window, peppered sprayed him & dragged him to the floor. Listen to his wife & sister here, distraught. No-one will tell them where he is. (🎥 ABC 7 News)

ICE is out of control. This is not law enforcement. It is state violence.

Humans do not "need to argue." Yet lots of [men] think we do.

Alison Shaw makes me wish I knew French.