just recalled the singular emerson college-friend wedding i took my husband to and he walked into the banquet hall, looked at me, looked back to the group, and he muttered, “my god, it’s a room full of cute librarians.”

By retreating only to "kitchen table issues" to avoid being labeled "woke," Democratic leaders have left an open goal for the GOP. When you treat the harassment of vulnerable communities as a "distraction" rather than a crisis, you're not avoiding a fight: you're just forfeiting it.

i cannot stop laughing at this, as someone of polish, hungarian, AND italian descent www.instagram.com/reel/DL0IG4V...

the grocery store is starting to feel like those early 90s grocery stores from my childhood... lots of generic/white labels, bare shelves, couponing, rationing i don't know what this is really going to lead to, but it isn't anything good

Alright, #BookSky 📚💙: What books are being released in the next month should I pre-order or pick up ASAP? What are you most looking forward to?

Hi! I write historical (and some contemporary) romances. Here's a list of my books by series in reading order. www.courtneymilan.co... /jb #HistoricalRomance #ContemporaryRomance #Romance #Romancelandia #HEA

there really is no natural law that dictates that Elon Musk can never be arrested or meaningfully punished

narrator: one of the earliest forms of long distance communication was carrier pigeon husband: didn't your grandmother have pigeons? me: *great* grandmother

we’re watching a docuseries about early civilizations and clearly it was made by an EU production company; so many of the talking heads are from italy and they keep saying “purposes” as “porpoises” and it is so magical; i am so excited to welcome engineering and medicinal porpoises into my life

I love in SHADOW OF THE THIN MAN when Nora is like, “This laundry list has to be code, or else it’s wash day at Vassar!”

Yeah, what kind of democratic socialist shops w/ a brand that (checks notes) owns their supply chain, reduces their carbon footprint, & teaches workers how to handcraft quality goods for a fair wage. Why isn't she wearing $40 pleather boots glued together by slaves who sleep on the factory floor?

i just finished Louise Penny’s latest Gamache, THE BLACK WOLF, and I just need something cleared up: Do Canadians think Mexico is in North America? Yes or No?

wishing you a year of luck, prosperity, and corn bread, which is its own blessing. and good news: it’s all vegetarian!

damp jays coming for breakfast

Reminder: Viviana Valentine and the Ticking Clock *begins* on December 31st, 1950. You can ring in the new year alongside Viv, Tommy, Betty, and a ton of new faces to solve a murder: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729815...

putting my ver good biography of Caravaggio on hold to get to THE BLACK WOLF i really wish we still had the Three Pines TV show with Alfred Molina. i love Alfred Molina.

this is how the fairies and gnomes get ya

honest to god, no single headline or piece caught me more off guard in 2025 than this article about how a generation of Americans was deliberately taught how to make things up and call it reading

i’d die for her

NYE plans

The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

One of the best Christmas movies ever made, 1934's THE THIN MAN takes a flawed novel, turns it into a flawed movie, and creates a wholesome romance that requires at least three dead bodies.

a story in two images: instagram telling me to edit my “mean” comment, the comment i posted.

I do think there is something kind of interesting about this, which this article never really gets at and which is at the heart of conservative complaints about feminism, and it is that this problem is driven exclusively by women being allowed to have opinions.

thinking about my favorite burrito place (which sadly went under in the pandemic) that always had excellent service… and then we realized MONTHS in to going that the servers were identical twins and there were two of them. service was still great, mind, but that made a lot more sense.

cozy has a tendency to uphold the rural idyll in a way that is now very red hat coded but i think when considered in conjunction with the fact that the cozy sleuth is almost always a social outsider, it **can** be read that no one is truly an outsider in a place where no one is truly unknown

For those that want to tackle Moby-Dick we're starting A Month of Dick 2026 on Thursday! 🐋

A mushroom anthropologist and her violence-first bodyguard stumble upon a piece of history that contradicts religious canon, leading to questions about who owns history and who has the right to tell someone's story.

It really is fascinating how markedly different the book and movie are, and not just in the standard page-to-screen type of way.

This is so dumb, and my heart goes out to anyone assisting people with their shopping who has to tell the person they’re serving that suddenly they can’t have what they want. That no, flavor and perhaps a moment’s satisfaction are not for them.

i had a boss once who was a waiter for a short time. he served Orville Reddenbacher and his multitudes of grandchildren at a fairly expensive seafood restaurant. His tip… was a button that said I Met The King of Popcorn so yeah, he looks like Orville Reddenbacher

I was having a birthday dinner at a restaurant in downtown Culver City when Tim Robbins walked by in a Santa hat singing Christmas carols. He walked back and forth a few times and each time had a bigger group of people with him. (Yes, my birthday is around Christmas, he's not insane)

One of the best Christmas movies ever made, 1934's THE THIN MAN takes a flawed novel, turns it into a flawed movie, and creates a wholesome romance that requires at least three dead bodies.

Horseshit.

you ever have a bad night’s sleep IN A DREAM? i feel like I’ve been hit with a mace this morning

the dream is, truly, to own a cabinet of curiosities

what WAS it with Jerome?? he’s been name checked 20 times in this new doc series

that the cozy mystery is seeing a renaissance in Trump times is so unbelievably not surprising; i genuinely think we need MORE cozy mystery to help combat this all

i had my favorite zero-effort lunch today: 1lb cannellini beans, 2qts liquid (ideally a broth of some kind), 6-7 whole peeled garlic cloves, handful of thyme sprigs. chuck in an instant pot on high pressure for an hour. serve with bread, parm, salt + pepper to taste, and a squeeze of lemon.

our household geekery is defined by the fact that my husband and i just yippee’d at finding a new multi-part Waldemar Januszczak documentary about the Mannerists on Prime

the biggest goal i have for 2026 is to publish more short fiction, so… always open to hearing about places that take mystery/noir/crime shorts!

not me, but my brother: on a field trip to new york city in high school, a group of teens passed none other than Henry Winkler in a crosswalk. imagine fifty or so 14 year olds (in the early 2000s) holding up their thumbs and going, “AYYYYYYYYY!” apparently, Mr Winkler burst out laughing

I wrote this essay about 20,000 years ago, and it's not GOOD, exactly, but it does go to show that none of this was hard to see coming www.theawl.com/2010/11/lady...

he wants breakfast.

Every bit of this: "I do understand: you want permission. ....You want to know you can use it sometimes without me thinking less of you." EVERY time, someone is like "I just use it to" "I mean otherwise X sucks SO much..." anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h... (h/t @jacquelyngill.bsky.social)

someone responded to this that “revenge of the nerds” was a better movie than reality but remember: what the movie and reality have in common is a rape subplot.

my favorite thing about DIE HARD is that Holly still divorces John because John is a shitty husband

people who do fire pits in dense, urban neighborhoods (especially dense, urban neighborhoods that almost burned down less than a year ago) deserve to be drawn and quartered

i never realized how much of DIE HARD’s score is “winter wonderland” in minor

i am now old enough that when football players do something impressive i can be, like, “great job, young man! don’t get yourself hurt, baby!”