For #tdov I was lucky to catch a special screening of this very very good documentary that's been at some festivals - hoping it gets distribution soon, it's important work and it'll make you warm & weepy & angry. www.thefilmcollaborative.org/films/justkids

I imagine that one reason for the large overlap between just-asking-questions contrarians and AI superfans is that a bot will never, ever get tired of their musings or tell them they don't really have a point.

Being an American who grew up in the 80s & 90s, I've seen my country threatening to go to war with Iran for pretty much my whole life, and up till today I took some comfort in that being one of the disastrous things we had managed not to do. I'm sorry my country is so sick and dangerous.

Maybe I shouldn't give it clicks, but I do think this bit of Vox/Atlantic goofballery is useful as an example of rhetorical evasiveness, and hand-waving at real leftist concerns that the pundit doesn't really give a crap about, because there is no real goal, just "you're wrong to care about ___".

Todd Haynes's POISON. I walked into it randomly, as a teenager who was just getting used to being able to go to random arthouse movies in the big city. Had no idea what I was in for, ended up still not being sure what I'd seen but loving it.

I need people to wrap their minds around the fact that here in Minneapolis, ICE broke the window of a vehicle yesterday, pepper sprayed the occupants, and arrested them, and shot another observer in the face today, and OBSERVERS ARE STILL GOING OUT TO PROTECT THEIR NEIGHBORS AT MASSIVE PERSONAL RISK

What if there was a feature on this website where if you wrote "I guess I'm not allowed to have an opinion" and "sorry if the truth hurts your feelings" in the same post, your phone would throw up on you

A really lovely and informative and engaging interview with Graeme Wend-Walker about one of my favorite novels. I still haven't dived into Graeme's new book on Hoban, but it's on my table giving me come-hither glances every day!

Hey, SF Bay Area, I bet next month you want to come see me & my friends frantically present a bouquet of performance art in THE INFINITE WRENCH BEST OF 2025! This time it's at Z Space main stage, the most absurdly large stage I've ever personally been on; we better be loud. www.zspace.org/neos-2025

Yeah, I'll admit I didn't think I'd be able to see the aurora here in Chicago so was pretty shocked when I stepped out on my back porch

I lived in NYC for 25% of my life and I frankly do not understand this strange universe where NYC actually elects a good candidate for mayor. The only thing that'd be more bizarre to me is if San Francisco did. Then I'd know someone is messing with me. Anyway love to all my east coast peoples ❤️❤️❤️

High school health class, anti-drug day, some of us got randomly picked to read out some material about different drugs. So, one kid had to recite facts about heroin from the textbook. Someone raised a hand & asked: "So... what's heroin made out of?" "What-- I don't know, it's made out of DRUGS!"

Btw, donating money to food banks goes a *lot* further than donating food. They're set up to buy things way more efficiently than you or I can.

You know how sometimes you copy text from a webpage and some ad material shows up in the middle of it, so you end up with a nontraditional version of "O Death" that has a couple of jarring shifts in tone and subject (even though the first line of the ad weirdly has the right meter)?

I hope all my Portland friends, and also all the people I don't know in Portland, are as safe as can be through all this goddamn bullshit.

Of all the beloved venues in SF that I've seen go away, this is the toughest for me because I remember so vividly when it started & have seen it get built up over the years into this amazing work of art & temple of community glee. Love to D'Arcy & the late Heklina & everyone who's made it great.

Walking through the park, I see at the edge of the path what looks like a pretty big snake, almost 3 feet long. On getting closer, I see it's a rubber snake. Nearby kid's mom: "It's fake! We were trying to freak people out with it... but mostly no one notices." The kid looks very excited. [1/3]

All times are appropriate times to donate to Trans Lifeline and The Trevor Project, but also now.

This will only be meaningful to fans of experimental theater and/or the 1991 Addams Family movie, but: Judith Malina once handed me a joint.

Everything Lavignia said and wrote about his DOGE work seems like a huge red flag saying "nobody should ever hire me (regardless of whether it's even for money) to perform, supervise, or plan, any type of task whatsoever." These were not *technical* mistakes. www.propublica.org/article/insi...

We asked people who lived in homeless encampments that were cleared out in city “sweeps” to write about what object was the hardest for them to lose. “They took my baby pictures and my moms obituaries,” a 29-year-old in California wrote.

Bay Area: so much special SF Neo-Futurists theater real soon! This weekend, our mysterious site-specific HOLE. Next month, the first ever BLACKEST WRENCH on Juneteenth; then, our reliably fabulous Pride special! It's all here: www.sfneofuturists.org (and I'm back in the regular show June 13)

I've seen amazing feats in the field of "weird non-questions raised by audience during an artist Q&A", but a special award goes to the one recently where someone thanked Carl Franklin at length for making Something Wild. And, after being gently told that that was a Jonathan Demme movie...

In case you know someone who needs to read this, it's very, very well written.

New Column: On Musk. The headline says it all. Well, actually, the subhed says some of it, too! newrepublic.com/article/1947... via @newrepublic.com

Well, I just wasted 45 minutes of my life 1. reading some bullshit from the HHS anti-trans report, 2. reading more bullshit by the probable author of it, & 3. investigating the stupidest footnote in the world. For more substantive analysis, see: www.erininthemorning.com/p/fact-check...

The only reason anyone would cut the Narcan program, a mere $56 million annually, is because they want people to die as punishment.

Do you want your convention to be accessible? Hire me. I can't afford to do this for free any more, folks. I've had to drop out of Worldcon Seattle because I can't afford to attend or even work remotely for free right now. Pay disabled people.

My two best self-published comics, BUSYBODY #1 and NINE FACES OF NOTHING, are now for sale as e-books on itch.io instead of the crappy place where they used to be. There are still a few paper copies of these available, but I'm unlikely to print more. eli-the-bishop.itch.io

A useful measure of how well or poorly one's brain is working in general is: can you deliver a very basic dad-type joke without fucking it up. The other day I'm in an ensemble meeting where we take turns pitching ideas, and the organizing person introduces this task and says "No small feat!" so...

No idea why I might have been thinking about how cultists rationalize their leader's arbitrary decisions, but: I just rewatched THE MASTER, & had forgot about Laura Dern's great cameo where she's privately trying to get the Master to clarify why the doctrine in Book 2 contradicts Book 1.

This is just one of many similar crises that are going to be hitting small businesses now, so everyone can only do so much, but I'm supporting Fieldmouse's fundraiser because the art they publish means a lot to me.

Just in case you are like me, an artist who thought Gumroad seemed useful & wasn't paying attention to news about them... argh. Well, I was barely getting any money from them anyway. Bye, asshole.

This is the start of my 4th year writing & performing with the San Francisco Neo-Futurists. Other than meeting my spouse, there aren't many life changes that have been so important to me. It's a joy & an honor to know these people & make stuff with them. That's all! www.sfneofuturists.org

Let's take a moment to recognize a minor but real achievement in the field of audacious bs. Today a crank/troll pulled the "I'm a credentialed scholar" bit to back up their claims. When doubt was expressed (like, "assuming that's nonfictional"), their bold reply was... [drum roll]

I know it's never possible to point to just one thing, but this rings true to me. I managed to avoid ever starting smoking, mainly because I was scared of anything that might set off my asthma, but I always had a weird envy like "this seems to help people have less of whatever my problem is"...

All anti-mask laws—even those with so called “medical exceptions”—stigmatize mask-wearing. Fewer people wearing masks increases the spread of infectious diseases. No matter how lawmakers try to spin it, any law that criminalizes wearing a mask endangers public health. Period.

Everything (or almost everything) being said about the dangers of & malicious intent behind Trump's voter-suppression EO is true. That's different from saying "it's over, he's seized all the power, no elections." It means those are the stakes of the fight that we're in. This is a shot fired.

Not that anyone needs to care what I think about movies, but I was glad I managed to write down a few of the 1000 thoughts that came up when I finally saw BORN IN FLAMES earlier this year (which happened thanks to @mediameltdown.bsky.social). letterboxd.com/hob/film/bor...

I know calling Axios shallow is like shooting the surface of water in a barrel (not even the fish), but this is such a hilarious example of the "make everything into bullet lists with savvy-sounding categories" style adding absolutely nothing: www.axios.com/2025/03/24/a...

Related: reading one of the historical background pieces in the recent "A History of Transgender Medicine in the US" & it's interesting/sad to see how, in some cultures that traditionally had a niche for some type of gender variance, the boundaries of masculinity were still aggressively policed.

I only got to see half of this last night, and that was still like 3 of the best 10 shows I've seen in the last year. Awesome performances and some things I really haven't seen anyone do before. I'll see anything Printz does.

I've finally read all of WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD and whooo yeah, it's significant & intense. I've been a fan since early days, and that may be partly because I'm a very morbid person but Gfrörer has a specific vision & eye (& ear—really tightly crafted dialogue) that's hard to compare to anyone else.

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired. It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

Because it's important to imagine that a better world is possible, here's my homage to the cover of STARSLAYER (THE LOG OF THE JOLLY ROGER) #2 (1982), after Mike Grell. #comiccovercover #fanart #coloredpencils #spacepirates

I wonder sometimes what % of the frustrating stuff about online discourse is just because people are posting while at least slightly drunk/high. And I don't just mean like a goofy shitposter who does it on purpose—I mean people who aren't aware that they get confused & combative after a few.

Stephen King has written plenty of very dated things, but IMO the big fateful event in The Dead Zone isn't one of them. People online who go "that wouldn't work now, b/c modern right-wingers are shameless" are missing what makes it a good choice: they're shameless about evil, not about looking weak.

Btw, I said "go listen to the podcast" and not "go read the transcript" because the transcript of Newsom's podcast is unreadable machine garbage. This is very funny in context, because the machine combined some of Newsom's lines into Kirk's & vice versa... and it made very little difference.

To anyone who heard about this & maybe even watched Reed's video & thought "huh, idk, maybe it's out of context"—it's not. Go listen to the whole podcast. It's worth 71 minutes of your time to really get the depth of Gavin Newsom's scummy opportunism. He is who he was, but this is a new low.

Can confirm!