A large pot sits in plain sight. There’s a frog in it. Every day, Leader announces his plans to boil the frog. His campaign slogan was “BOIL THAT FROG.” He has already made at least one run on the stove. A man stirs the pot with a large stick. “It’s a metaphor,” he says.

TFW you realize your health care provider has scrubbed the phrase "women's health" from its website and you cannot search for the doctor you need. Cowards. COWARDS. #fuckingcowards

My dream scenario tbh people.com/man-in-norwa...

@acls1919.bsky.social, the AHA, & @modernlanguage.bsky.social filed a lawsuit in federal district court today, seeking to reverse the recent actions of the NEH to devastate the agency, including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs. 🗃️

Can’t wait to read stories with Taco Bell references in a bunch of journals after we all get rejected by @tacobellquarterly.org

When I left the Washington Post in 2023, my colleagues and I were worried AI would hoover up our work and enable "zombies" to churn out stories based on our reporting and writing styles. Today WaPo announced a partnership with OpenAI. And here it is: Zombie Gillian Brockell. I DID NOT WRITE THIS.

Have you visited a physical bookstore lately? They're delightful. There are actual people there. You can touch the books, flip through them, smell them, and marvel at the crazy way the shop has decided to group the books. Sometimes an author even shows up to read part of her book to you.

And also Stories Books and Cafe www.storiesla.com

Now that I live in LA I feel lucky to live near Skylight Books www.skylightbooks.com/new-front

Most of the NYC Indy bookstores I haunted have closed but Book Culture (neé Labyrinth) still stands. www.bookculture.com

For Independent Bookstore Day, I thought I’d highlight a few of my fave bookstores, starting off with D.G. Wills in La Jolla, CA, which sells new and used books and was a haven for me in high school. www.dgwillsbooks.com

one of the greatest letterman performances AND one of the great (greatest?) rock songs of the 2000s youtu.be/SlHrCg67axw?...

JFC www.npr.org/sections/sho...

Fellow authors, I love you, and I know it feels like we don’t have a choice, but B&N and Am*zon both scheduled sales this week to preempt Independent Bookstore Day, a hugely vital source of income for indie bookstores. Please don’t promote their sales; please promote your local indie this week.

How many times will I expand and contract this story

TFW you are 70% through your application letter to the Elizabeth George Foundation and you find out the grant is no longer.

Bat, Literally Translated into English. Map by me

Just read the email from Harvard about suing the feds and man, the PR people at Columbia right now must be under a table in shambles. So much of the defense was always about framing and narrative…

Q: "How do you respond to Governor Newsom?" Sen. Van Hollen: "I think Americans are tired of elected officials or politicians who are all finger to the wind...Anybody who can't stand up for the Constitution and the right of due process doesn't deserve to lead."

My son just saw this in a parking lot in Kansas City 😆

“Consider Fort Sill, which—before it was a site of Japanese American incarceration, before it was used to detain migrant children—was founded as … a base from which war was waged against the Comanche, the Kiowa, and the Cheyenne.” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Never seen it framed this way by all recent elections Wild

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever they aren’t going into universities’ endowments they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research

Weather is getting nice, what if 10 million people went outside at the same time

what I love about this one is the interviewer is clearly trying to get them to say it’s ironic, and they’re like “no this song just fucking rules” youtu.be/9iRuIr9OQBI?...

This story is absolutely getting overlooked. They are deploying the military within US borders. This is so dangerous for Natives from border tribes, and all public lands users in this region. And they won't restrict it to the border, this is just where they are starting.

Men are more likely to have fertility issues after 35, but there is a societal myth that men can have healthy babies into their old age, and that the issue is just women. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Meta used at least 16 of my books, and numerous articles, to help train the AI it will use to make billions. Authors, search your name here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

I work in grants. The only serious option right now is to yell at our Congress people. You’re already crowd funding research in the form of taxes. Congress has already said that money should go to research but Trump and the Doge folks have decided they make the decisions instead of We the People.

Are you a #ColumbiaAlum who has yet to sign the letter in support of academic freedom? Now is a good time. (With thanks to @luxalptraum.com ) www.columbiaalumniforacademicfreedom.org

@columbiauniversity.bsky.social Oh look! It’s what you should have done. www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

Same, medieval dudes. Same.

“Let my people goth.” - Emoses

The Syrian Arabic word for a hamster is أبو جراب (abu jrab), where jrab refers to a pouch/saddlebag/tote. And abu often means “father of,” but can also function as a general honorific (like “mister”). So it’s not too big a stretch to say the Syrian Arabic word for a hamster means “Mister Saddlebags”

If I became independently wealthy, there are a ton of things I would fund before this (END SCHOOL LUNCH DEBT!) but: I would anonymously sponsor the Paris Roubaix Femmes race so that we can end the indignity of having to refer to it as "Paris Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift."

Macaroon 5

How all great inventions are born: getting sick of alternating between two different pairs of glasses for near and far vision.

This is outstanding

Thank you @propublica.org! www.propublica.org/article/noaa...

Loving this episode, wherein there is discussion of Tinder for giant squarish hogs, among other interesting topics.

Episode 2 of Absolute Units is out now! We speak to Dr Hannah Lyons (Curator, University of Reading Art Collection) about what art teaches us about England’s rural past, and why people painted such giant hogs. 🔊 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/abso...

I love tulips and have just discovered glorious #TulipTuesday 🌷 Here are some beauties from the tulip festival at Arundel Castle, photo taken yesterday. #Bloomscrolling #Flowers #Arundel

Seven years today since we first introduced you to this absolute unit.

Hey, everyone! We’re Adobe and we’re here to connect creatives to createry so they can create and be flying about like petals on the wind in a magical creative land of creative creatingness! Reading this tweet costs you $578 and a convenience fee of $725 annually! Get fucked! Haha! Yours, Adobe