hey I’m trying to raise a couple of kids to be generous, sensible and well-informed and some of society’s most important people are out here every day saying cruel and extravagantly untrue things.

More than one million people a week are having conversations about suicide with the suicide machine

Live Long and Pasta

“It is a civic duty to give people joy.” —Steve Kerr Happy holidays, from the @jmooallem feed

“It is a civic duty to give people joy.” —Steve Kerr Happy holidays, from the @jmooallem feed

Just got a long, festive text about holiday specials from the bakery in Connecticut where I sat and wrote a eulogy for my mom in January. Peace on earth.

This is what I was doing while my wife sat beside me, trying to exchange some cleats to Nike, saying "Talk to a human!" "Talk to a human!" We've got a fire going in the living room and the tree is lit and hung with ribbons and bells. Tidings to you and yours.

Having a high-stakes job for which I’m under-qualified and which I’m unequipped to do feels like a nightmare to me.

where your email finds me

A second levee broke south of Seattle last night as our relentless parade of atmospheric rivers continues. Thinking of the John Holdren quote that we have three options: mitigation, adaptation or suffering. The third is growing ever more apparent as progress lags on one and two.

trying to eat more rotisserie chicken in 2026

Each summer, I lead a week-long creative retreat for environmental researchers & academics on Catalina Island. We develop your most ambitious project ideas. It's truly life-changing. Applications for the 2026 Storymakers fellowship are now open! Deadline is Feb 1. dornsife.usc.edu/wrigley/enga...

Whenever I hear the term “data centers,” I hear an archaeologist saying it: “This was one of their data centers.”

business idea: personal visitations by three AI agents to rekindle the spirit of Christmas

Having untold numbers of sad people looking for meaning and connectedness is a huge problem for society. But also an opportunity! Depends what possibilities we place in front of them. This guy became the PDX Chicken. By the excellent @caseyparks.bsky.social www.seattletimes.com/nation-world...

Societal trend forecasting for 2026: Wholesome Fun 📈

Having untold numbers of sad people looking for meaning and connectedness is a huge problem for society. But also an opportunity! Depends what possibilities we place in front of them. This guy became the PDX Chicken. By the excellent @caseyparks.bsky.social www.seattletimes.com/nation-world...

2025: The Year in Screenshots

Please support moon-based photographers. They are freelance.

Curtain opens. A rundown street in Jamaica Plain. Ray (early 20s musician, heartthrob addict; Dandolike) descends stealthily from second-story window, guitar case in tow. As he scampers off, buttoning pants, Juliana calls down, aggrieved: “I just want a bit part in your life!” Opening number.

I worry that the more inequality, injustice, agony and strife consumes our world, the less chance I have of finding financial backing for my Lemonheads jukebox musical “It’s a Shame About Ray.”

The future is real things, tactile things that make sense on the scale of individual human beings. That’s where it’s all heading—you heard it here first.

Arabic numerals are more than 2000 years old. Watching this generation band together and manage to make two of them absolutely un-usable by an entire society (two really prominent numbers, even! in the top 10!) makes me feel like these kids can accomplish anything.

“Emma Watson says she was ‘told off’ by Angela Lansbury”

New sign for my meditation room

classy email from nyt this morning about my omission from their most stylish people list

Are there writers retreats in Brooklyn for writers who already live in the woods?

could there be an entire feed dedicated to this, in exactly this format? Pithy shaming.

New sign for my meditation room

No one played me in the movie, but Stephen Glass stayed with me in my freshman dorm on a pre-college campus visit. He asked me what I’d written for one of the admissions essays, which asked for page 217 of your autobiography. I told him I’d just made a bunch of stuff up. “Wait, you can do that?”

”Delivered Quietly”

any “Machines Only Get One Button” candidate has my vote

I do not think posting is healthy for me.

Just think, it all started with fish hauling themselves onto land and becoming lizards. Happy Thanksgiving.

These are my interests.

Really proud of my colleagues for launching this new series at @coyotemedia.org -- First Aid Kit, a set of pieces that help you be safer, healthier, and more helpful in your community. How to respond to an overdose by @nuala.bsky.social

It was phenomenal.

Just had an experience with an owl.

chat, if you buy yourself a comfy $19 sweatshirt for Pacific Northwest winter cozy times and immediately (within minutes) splatter salad dressing all over it, do you get to buy yourself another to replace it or do you have to wear it like a slovenly scarlet letter until spring? asking for friend.

SHELL GAME season 2, out now! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

one social media goal of mine is to one day have the expertise/self-esteem to slap the target emoji onto another poster’s observation, just once.

Ezra Klein: Patti Smith, welcome to the show. You’re very different from me. What’s that like?

I journalism-careered wrong.

“Book III“ out tomorrow, can’t wait!

Welcome to LIMITED SIGHT DISTANCE, the JMooallem feed’s regular feature about what’s happening ”out there”

Dispatch from three-dimensional space: Seconds after this was taken, garbage truck hauled around the corner. Owl flew to higher perch. Truck stopped, garbage guy watched, made binocular-eyes at me with his hands to make sure I saw, and we both did gleeful thumbs up. Lots happening out here.

”They’d be impressed if they knew I just finished an advance copy of the new (amazing) George Saunders.“ - me, cleaning my gutters on a ladder, thinking about the internet

mockup of a shirt I’d buy to vent my frustration while shopping at my town’s unnecessarily fancy grocery store, proceeds of which could go to Feeding America or similar, thus leveraging privileged grievance into actual help for people who need it. just an idea.

very cool you have your own fancy horse to do that, I’ve been getting kicked in the head by a feral mule every day for years