Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration

Podcasts and "deep dive" media will try to convince you that you *now* know things, thanks to them. A PhD, especially one with archival, observational, or observational components, will definitely convince you that you know next to nothing, thanks to the available resources & one's predecessors.

it's honestly my only pedagogy

“When you’re honest to your feelings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life.” Richard Hugo

Stop trying to argue with the logic of the right. The right purposefully employs inconsistent logic to specifically in order to make people show it is above consistency. It is purely about dominance. And it also has the added benefit of getting its foes obsessed with arguing instead of fighting.

Should read. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Don't forget the bait to debate is so they can make content. It was this way before we had content media the way we do now, too. I was often baited during work, moving through a restaurant with my coworkers, baited so they could watch me get angry and laugh at me as I lost my cool.

I worry about how we're all siphoned into our little tunnels of distraction and entertainment, not seeing. Not seeing what everyone else is doing in their tunnels. On the mainstream airways. With headphones. We aren't seeing it. Gonna get worse before we fight for each other (I still think we will).

It is so damn obvious the trans sports issue is a drummed up nonsense moral panic masquerading as “common sense” - but if you look deeper for two seconds you see how the whole point of sex segregated sports is to defund women athletics & to build and propagandize the western idea of women as weak.

the funny thing about the constant misappropriation of MLK is that the guy left a massive body of writing specifically aimed at explaining his views of those of the movement he represented to the broad public. it is extremely easy to know what the guy thought on a variety of subjects and yet

I've really come to think that many people recoil from climate politics, as they did from Covid politics, not *in spite* of the fact that the problem obviously calls for (can only be solved by) solidarity & cooperation, but *because* of it.

May I recommend a night with Lucy Dacus in the middle of 🌟all this🌟

a poem

As you cancel streaming services, here is a casual reminder that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure anymore, and your local library has hundreds or thousands of books you haven't read. They would love to see you stop by and renew your library card.

It’s going to break your heart how many people you know, love, and respect will turn out to be cowards. Prepare yourself as best you can. You are not alone, but you are your own center. Be a strong center.

When the state can bully organizations to cancel television shows and fire people for speech, we don’t live in anything close to a functioning democracy.

Trump-aligned billionaires owning all the social media platforms is a really big deal

Y'all

Overall, this rapid media consolidation during this political and economic moment scares me easily as much as the administrations political theater other the military.

“Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.” www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

I want our young people to know that there is a path forward, that a better world is possible. I don't want them to give up, to become cynical. They deserve to be young and full of optimism. They are owed a world that supports and sustains optimism.

So right-wing oligarchs now control X, Facebook, TikTok, WaPo, Fox News, CBS...and others not controlled by them are capitulating. Do I have that right?

Arthur Sze has been named the new U.S. poet laureate. He succeeds Ada Limón, who has held the position since 2022. During his term as poet laureate, Sze plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages. Read more: at.pw.org/ArthurSze

Not sure if joy is an act of defiance in a troubled world, or an escape from it, or a way to repair it. All I know is that I need it, that it is only found in things deep and enduring, and that without it I cannot make the most of this day, and the next, and however many others I may get --

You can take way better pictures of critters and creatures with technology that is widely available! I took this picture of a dragonfly with my cell phone!

Please give me an unironic list of things that have gotten better over the last ten years because I’m spiraling. I’ll start: you can buy an enormous TV from Costco for like $100 bucks now.

This is a major theme in revolutionary texts, but it’s also literally right in front of our faces standards of decorum are only applied to the people who are harmed by the status quo and want to change it

all i know is that normalizing debate with fascists has only facilitated the rise of fascism.

"where we stood, saying I"

Muriel Rukeyser

important

I always feel my class based differences really strongly when something like this happens. I share zero of my professional colleagues’ impulses.

For a story: looking to talk to Gen Z workers in different fields about how/if you’re pushing back against the “everything-is-an-emergency” approach to work. If you feel you can’t take this approach (because of your field, disproportionate pressure, etc) would also love to talk. Email/Signal in bio!

Today’s poem is selected by the Estate of Mary Oliver as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry. We share this poem in celebration of Mary's birthday today, September 10th.

Goodness, I just read this poem and it gutted, no flowered me. "Like us, thin-skinned and tender, they are quick to bruise, quick to droop and fail. My dad, my dad is failing quickly, drooping, bruised." A mini masterclass in line breaks and repetition!

bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad

The New Yorker asked me “how bad” today’s Supreme Court ruling was. I boiled it down to one paragraph: link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...

More than anything else, the whole world runs on the disregarded suffering of children.

now THIS is interesting to me

That Unknown Number documentary is a perfect example of what I’m talking about when I talk about the irrevocable biological emotional tether children have to their parents, and how that connection, a connection the child never chose or agreed to, can be used to harm them over and over again.

Han knows what's up.

This is appalling. As I've said before, giving DL control of an annual anthology for 35 years was a mistake. BAP is a deeply reactionary project thru which DL launders his ideology (& ego!) via a rotating cast of "ecumenical" editors. It's an unequivocal good that this year's edition is the last.

If anyone (@thebaffler.com @nplusonemag.com @publicbooks.bsky.social) might be interested in an article offering an ideological post-mortem of almost four decades of The Best American Poetry anthology as a conservative publishing project, I'm yr guy.

When I see people online, even in jest, suggest that people living in Republican-controlled states should be abandoned because of their politicians, I feel a deep heartache. New York CREATED Donald Trump and none of y’all are ever talk about it the way you disparage Alabama or Mississippi.

Sappho didn’t write tiny poems with giant leaps. They were torn. Everybody, mostly men, Swinburne, for example, has been filling her holes ever since. She said…well, actually, you can say Sappho said anything. She says about two words and then everyone, the world, jumps in. Eileen Myles, Inferno

I'm looking for pitches for @MotherJones' print culture section, Mixed Media! These are ~2,000-word essays that combine reporting, cultural criticism, historical research, and/or personal narrative. More details in our pitch guidelines here: www.motherjones.com/contribute/w...