A couple times a week I think to myself, we could’ve been a bidet nation

Reading about 19th century garment industries in Manhattan and remembering how much of today’s fashion industry (standardized sizing, ready-to-wear, the pivot of Levi-Strauss to clothing outfitters) was either pioneered or expanded as a direct result of uniform production during the U.S. Civil War.

I always recommend logging off, even though I struggle with it too. Throw your phone into a box and put it into another room if necessary. As @lindaholmes.bsky.social once wisely said, you don't need to cook your brain in other people's anxiety.

Mounting evidence that the country is being run by toddlers 🛻

I started wearing hats regularly at the beginning of 2023 and I do think it is a small thing that has improved my life. They’re my protective little skull buddies. Shielding sun and strangers. If you have a lot of Scorpio placements, maybe try hats.

And yet, land-grant(!) OSU wants you to say the full trademark: "*The* Ohio State University" (emphasis added). Words matter. Land matters.

I know it’s all bad faith bs BUT I keep thinking about how the whole “reason” we apparently can’t pass any effective gun control legislation to prevent mass shootings is the idea that we need an armed populace in case the federal government decides to invade our cities and towns. Like??????????

I love love love reading the class descriptions that writers teach. I love that writers teach in so many ways, on so many topics, online and in person. There are so many good ones being cooked up this fall. Going to keep track of them here: 🧵

On the hunt for open submissions for a friend who has a really great flash piece that I want to see published. Who’s looking for flash fiction that takes on themes of language, state violence, and bread?

Going to watch Weekend at Bernie’s tonight, à propos of nothing

Nine years ago exactly, I was listening to the same rhetoric from Uzbekistan's dictator Islam Karimov, who had died. The regime would have hidden it longer but they had the misfortune of him of dying right before Uzbekistan's independence day, when he would come out and wave to show he's alive.

My toddler, who will be 2 in a month and a half, requested I sing Bon Jovi for his bedtime songs. If only I could have known all the karaoke I did in my 20s would lead to this.

If you’re a feminist you can spend your whole life grappling with the inadequacy of narrative to convey reality or summon enough political will to enact change. But if you’re a fascist you can just use narrative as a hammer to claim ownership of reality and beat material conditions into conformity.

Why are so many AI people trying to get into hobbies they absolutely despise? "Fuck reading just give me the summary", Fuck art just make it for me", "I got ideas but fuck actually writing" like??? Maybe just find something you enjoy doing and do that?????

The last paragraph is garbage, and cowardly walks back from the main point. US immigration policy is *exactly* the same as nazi immigration policy. This is in the words of those who wrote the US policies. Two white nationalists who were close friends at Duke, came up with them. Here's one of them:

It's 2025. We have actual concentration camps, and a white nationalist setting US immigration policy, and the majority of white people surveyed say that they support how Trump is "handling immigration."🤦🏿‍♂️ And I *still* have white folk in my mentions saying "I don't think that many support it? 🤡

Today, I ran an errand where the presence of my child in a waiting room pissed some boomers off and it has plunged me into mom rage all day.

This is me, too. I sometimes forget even to mention I have asthma, I think about it so little. But after having a run-of-the-mill bout with Covid, I couldn’t breathe well or walk more than a few blocks for 10 weeks. 30-minute Zoom meetings (taken from bed) wore me out.

The facts: There is no epidemic of trans shooters. Mass shooters are overwhelmingly cis white men. This is another attempt to scapegoat the trans community. Get prepared to put your body between trans folks and these fucking bootlicking fascists. www.thetrace.org/2025/07/mass...

There’s a lot here, but the idea that Democrats are still basing their messaging on online surveys compensated by gift cards or whatever is beyond. No wonder they’re just garbling nonsense. What is this, 2003? What a way to meet the moment. Jesus. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Timeline cleanse — the toddler loved the Jon Bon Jovi rest stop in New Jersey, is now getting into the music, and so we’re obviously contemplating a Baby Bon Jovi Halloween costume. Fantastic development.

I was home with a sick baby today but catching up on how wonderfully this played out is just delightful. People hanging out in the streets, enjoying public transit, queuing patiently, learning local mayoral history, posting about the Staten Island Ferry 😆 Works on so many levels.

Feel the urgency to read so many books, but am in a slow, ponderous reading season of life. Hoping that, someday in the future, my reading speed and reading appetite can agree to meet somewhere closer towards the middle.

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In addition to everything everyone has said about this, as someone who has worked with a lot of tech companies, $50/hour or $12k for a “major AI research company” is an insulting lowball rate, it’s chump change for any major tech company, it’s so predatory.

Been seeing people say that this is a sign of regime weakness not strength. But spectacle is a big part of fascism and humans aren't brave. The point of this in a visual age is to ensure that people think 'if they do this for something so petty, then there's no way I'll do anything'

It remains *remarkable* to me every time I sign up for a meal train and the responses are 92-98% women. Men have the same 24 hours a day we do. I took care of a friend who was terminally ill. She had unfailingly made chicken soup for her ill friends/coworkers. Zero of those men brought her food.

I’m not an extrovert, I’m not an introvert, I recharge by being alone in a public place where no one pays attention to me and I can just be with my thoughts while overhearing snippets of other people’s conversations

Studying, with your raw human mind, is now a radical act (and maybe always has been).

Likening PhD holders to a (non-functional) algorithm is a form of dehumanisation & anti-intellectualism that is a bellwether for contemporary fascism. Essentially it's a typical — if not the archetypal — first step towards fascism: to dehumanise, deskill, defund, and, ultimately, fire the academics.

All streaming services seem like a bust these days, but I did subscribe to this current season of South Park. Seems important.

If you need any sources on AI being shitty, I've been collecting and compiling them: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

What news outlets and publications are all you smart people reading to understand this moment we’re in? Who/what do you check in with regularly?

Like many technologies, AI is designed to kill humans, but in the most soulless way possible, stripping away even our ability to own and express our pain. Bertolt Brecht: "In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing, about the dark times.” AI: NOT SO FAST

A must-read.

30 years of therapy have usually been enough to process it all and then you read something so powerful it digs into the next layers of your gunk to be processed next.

The elite colleges concession to the Trump administration, which is broadly unpopular, is also morally reprehensible and will cost them more than they pay in bribes to the White House. There’s no up side.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania coal country in the 1970s and 80s and I remember how my small town had more than one oxygen supply store because so many of my schoolmates’ grandpas were slowly dying in their living rooms from black lung.

Christ. Is this where we are? I think maybe this is where we are.

That they overturned Roe and immediately the media started a nationwide moral panic over “male loneliness” has got to be one of the least subtle moments in the long history of antifeminist backlash.

“Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture,” said Bowes. “Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment.”

I used to think it was so curious when I saw people walking around the city with empty strollers. And today a young guy snickered at my childless stroller full of groceries, saying “You lost the baby! Har har har.” I was once you, sir, not understanding the intricacies of drop off and errands.

I am used to the structure and limitations of toddler life and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t really even think about it much. But I’ve been making plans with a bunch of wonderful childless people and woah! I have a lot to explain.

A wild week to be in the middle of Julia Phillips’ novel set in Kamchatka

Brooklyn is incredible with kids, it really is

Hard to imagine but the strategy of Israel's IDF even more murderous. British doctor reports it confiscating formula feed. Only purpose can be to kill babies.