Your annual reminder that the mom from The Santa Clause has every right to be terrified of Scott losing his grip on reality. She went through a very traumatic game of Mazes and Monsters in college.

Who's with me?

Absolutely delighted to report that the last book of the Empire of the Vampire trilogy stuck the landing.

I just took my 12yo daughter to Hot Topic for the first time. 1) I am a proud whimsigoth mama right now. 2) RIP my wallet.

This is the bad place. wapo.st/3Mbd9a6

Here’s your morning mood, courtesy of Benjamin König.

I did a school visit yesterday, and a student asked how old you had to be in order to be an author. I told her that you could be any age. "Can you be an author if you're 100?" "Yes, you can be an author if you're 100!" "Can you be an author if you're 67?" And I walked right into it.

I have a character from Salem thinking about the forests back home and wanted to include some specific trees, so I did a quick Google. This is the dumbest timeline.

PSA for any Dresden Files readers whose library only has the version of Ghost Story that isn't narrated by James Marsters: Chirp has the proper one on sale for $6. www.chirpbooks.com/audiobooks/g...

I was already kind of iffy on this book. Then they started praying the Luminous Mysteries of the rosary. It's set in 1765.

Happy Bi Visibility Day to everyone who has seen Mask of Zorro youtu.be/kaJv6L8vF-Y?...

It is so dangerous for me to go to Spirit Halloween with the kids. "Mom, we should get this!" "...we should, shouldn't we?"

I need a Green Bone Saga RPG, and I need it NOW.

If you have a sudden need to read a fantasy novel about a Black girl kicking all the butt, I'm about 2/3 through A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney and it 100% fits the bill. (I picked it up for Alice in Wonderland, but it feels more "10% Alice, 45% Buffy, 45% Sailor Moon." Which is JUST FINE.)

For the record. My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers. I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

Me yelling to someone about art just now: I don't care if they think it's cringe. I do not care. I have limited time on this earth and I made this. Go take your nonchalant selves elsewhere, you're liable to melt in my presence.

Finally watching Wicked with the kids. 🎵What is this feeling so sudden and new I felt the moment I laid eyes on you?🎵 12yo: Love. 🎵My pulse is rushing My head is reeling My face is flushing What is this feeling?🎵 12yo: Love. 🎵Fervent as a flame Does it have a name?🎵 12yo: JUST KISS ALREADY!

Oh, this is cool! I love how Utena adjacent the third one is. Given how complex Utena is on gender, that feels perfect.

Well. Crap. This is appalling. Takeaways: 1) If you're a podcaster and you accept ad revenue, find out if your host does this. 2) If you're a listener and a podcast you like has uncharacteristically awful ads, contact the host; they might not even know. Suddenly very glad not to have ads.

Me: okay, the kids are all at school, time to do some podcast stuff Coraline: I'M NOT AT SCHOOL MOM MOM, LET ME RUB MY FACE ALL OVER THE POP FILTER MOM, I'M GOING TO WALK ON CRINKLY PAPER RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, IS THAT OKAY? MOM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH MY CLAWS NEED SHARPENING

I had a dream that we had the votes to get him out of office. The process hadn't started yet, but we had the votes. Then my alarm went off. Sigh.

I walked into the food pantry and had the sudden urge to announce my presence with "I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a volunteer" and now that urge will never leave me

My 12yo: I like animals better than people. That means that when I grow up, I'm either going to solve climate change or become a supervillain. Y'know, she knows herself.

Daughter is getting a haircut & telling stylist about her Warrior Cats fanfic. Stylist has never heard of Warrior Cats & now knows about how daughter's OC mated with Tigerstar in the Dark Forest & their kits have superpowers because they were conceived in hell. Anyway she's getting a very big tip.

So, just to be clear, the federal government is pardoning an ACTUAL felon who was here illegally in order to pursue their vendetta against an innocent man who was here legally, just so they don't have to admit they made a mistake. Despicable. wapo.st/40i4Ttt

We have tickets to see Les Miz on with our older kids Saturday and are watching the PBS concert version to familiarize them with it. 14yo: "I simultaneously lost my mind laughing at the Thenardiers and hope they burn in hell forever."

Android users: is it just me, or has autocorrect gotten WAY more aggressive about rewriting real words to be what it thinks you mean? I just had to change "cast majority" bc I guess not enough people say "vast" for Android to think I mean it. (Also I had to change "cast" to "vast" in THIS VERY POST)

Please take a break from doomscrolling to admire this glorious potato butt

Oh dang, I'm excited. Whalefall made me cry.

Gift article. This is the dumbest dystopia. wapo.st/43VwxgS

My parents got the kids stuffed animals as souvenirs from their trip to the Great Plains, and the oldest got a stuffed bison. He has named it M. Bison. Carry on.

Found in the wilds of Northwest Arkansas: @rachelkolar.bsky.social 's classic Mother Ghost.

Got to Magician's Nephew in my Narnia reread. I was about to say Uncle Andrew is the most nasty, loathsome character in the entire series, then I remembered that Shift exists.

I wouldn't have stayed Catholic for as long as I did without Pope Francis there to witness that it wasn't all terrible. Eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

Proud of my senator

Watching Mockingjay with the older kids. Katniss is singing Hanging Tree. Plutarch: It was originally "necklace of rope." I changed it to "necklace of hope." 12yo: Wait, Plutarch writes for Kidz Bop?

Went to #handsoff with my 12yo. It was a DC suburb (Greenbelt) but still had a solid 200 people or more. It was her first protest and she loved it. Posting some of my favorite signs without faces in case of reprisals. 1/

Sunrise on the Reaping was really good, but I don't think I'm ever going to be able to bring myself to reread it.

My part of Maryland has a huge Salvadoran population. There's a good chance that Kilmar Abrego Garcia went to my in-laws' church. That his autistic son went to the same special needs preschool as my autistic daughter. No one is safe.

When your podcast isn't going to edit itself but Sunrise on the Reaping isn't going to read itself either

Today in "my daughter is a nascent supervillain": we went to the IMAX Princess Mononoke (transcendent experience). I thought her favorite character would be San, because both of them are feral and love animals. Nope. Eboshi. "Because she's a girlboss, and she tanks a bite from a god."

The climax of Prince Caspian, in which the Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory along with all that is good and holy from pagan myth in order to save children from the tyranny of school, is possibly the most C.S. Lewis thing that C.S. Lewis ever wrote.

My commencement speaker was David Foster Wallace with This Is Water. No way is anyone going to get a cooler commencement speaker than-- Oh. Yeah, okay.

IF YOU FOUND YOUR NOVEL IN THE LIBGEN DATABASE, YOU MAY BE A CLASS MEMBER FOR THE KADREY ET AL V. META PLATFORMS CLASS ACTION Law firms you can contact if you're a potential class member: Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP (415) 500-6800 Mathew Butterick (323) 968-2632 [email protected]

The thing about so-called generative artificial intelligence is, the intelligence isn't artificial. It's real. It's OURS. The techbros stole our intelligence (our data, our thoughts, our stories, our art) and used the software to regurgitate it and spackle it together into digital particleboard.

the last decade has really helped me understand in a more visceral sense what it meant when God hardened the pharoah’s heart

Rereading Narnia for Lent. When he finds out the White Witch has Mr Tumnus and that no one has ever entered her house uninvited and left alive, Peter's suggestion is "Couldn't we dress up and pretend to be peddlers or something?" Peter has big PC energy and I'm here for it.

Every American needs to read this. This is our country. This is who we are and this is what we are doing. Next time I see or hear anyone say anything about “well, but we need to keep criminals off the streets…” I’ll be showing them this and asking them what a criminal is.

Happened ~