Highest level of support since Gallup started asking this question a quarter century ago

Here's my weekly must-reads list and some thoughts about Trump's AI slop post declaring war against Chicago. Trump is attempting to blur the line between reality and his fascist, annihilatory fantasies of control and domination. That means we, and the truth, must break free.

Black Americans will always find joy even when the world around us is burning. And where joy can’t be found, we create it. That’s one thing they keep trying to take from us and it pisses them off that they can’t.

#Sirens26 Faculty Diana M. Pho (@dianapho.bsky.social): brilliant scholar, playwright, Hugo Award-winner, Editorial Director at Erewhon. 📖 Academic work on race in fashion, performance, and the media, as well as fan studies and communities.🧙🏽‍♀️Runs Beyond Victoriana, on multicultural steampunk. 💗

#Sirens26 Faculty Dr. Micaiah Johnson (@micaiahjohnson.bsky.social): world-changing author, scholar, activist. Purveyor of hope, joy, rage, and revolution.🚀 The NYT says her fiction "rattles [your imagination] out of complacency."👩🏽‍🚀Her academic work focuses on the intersection of race and tech. 🫶🏽

#Sirens26 Faculty Dr. Layla Azmi Goushey (@laylaazmigoushey.bsky.social): all-around ⭐ educator, with academic work focused on the literatures and cultures of the Southwest Asia North Africa region. Speculative poet and author. Editor of the literary magazine Baladi ("my home" in Arabic). 💖

#Sirens26 Faculty: Jewelle Gomez: speculative fiction royalty 👑, author of THE GILDA STORIES , the first Black lesbian vampire novel (sequel forthcoming!!). 🧛🏾‍♀️ Novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, Lambda Literary Award-winner, activist, educator, and "foremother of Afrofuturism." Absolute legend. 🌟

#Sirens26 Faculty: Sarah Gailey (@sarahgailey.bsky.social): speculative fiction master (their latest, SPREAD ME 👾, comes out Sept 23!), essayist, fan, community-builder, Hugo winner, raconteur, provocateur. As EW once said, "for those who aren't [familiar with Gailey's work], well, get ready." 😍

#Sirens2026 Faculty: Dr. Stephanie Burt (@notquitehydepark.bsky.social): poet, literary critic, Guggenheim Fellow, Harvard professor (remember that famous Taylor Swift course?!), and author of numerous books. 📚🧜‍♀️The NYT says she's “one of the most influential poetry critics of her generation.” 🤩

Invited speakers--our faculty--are the cornerstone of Sirens's educational program. In 2026, we're expanding their role: more speakers, with more presentations, which means more opportunities for you to learn from experts in a variety of fields🤓 Let's meet our first round of 2026 faculty:

Sirens has been around since 2009, though we've taken a few years off to read, rest, and reimagine what Sirens could be. It might be different from what you remember--or from other events that you might know. As you make a decision about whether to attend, you might find some info helpful 🤓

Hey, everyone! #Sirens26 is just six months away and we've got news. But before we get to that later this week, let's find out if we're your sort of people! 📚👽🐉👻 #reading #books #sciencefiction #fantasy #horror #conference #convention

Gender affirming care for cis folks gets celebrated.

The key connection for today is that Roosevelt was watching fascism arise in Germany and Italy in 1933, and he DESIGNED THE NEW DEAL TO STOP THAT in the US. The works programs were as much about helping democracy as anything.

Real consumer spending dead stopped growing in 2025, per @jaredb-econ.bsky.social. #NumbersDay #EconSky econjared.substack.com/p/weekly-wra...

The things communities can do with community spaces, y'all

There is no longer any doubt that Israel has set up a fake humanitarian organisation so it can kettle Gazans into a kill box and murder them en masse It is evil beyond description and in a decent world it would result in immediate, massive, global action to stop them and prosecute those responsible

Dude's out here just failing up

Fundamentally, we have laws because we are terrible humans

oh this is interesting. i pretty firmly believe, just as a matter of observation and experience, that complaints about affirmative action are a psychological salve for people who aren’t confident of their ability to succeed

Mothers, teach your daughters about Judith beheading Holofernes. #themoreyouknow

It. Can’t. “Apologize.”

my regular reminder that many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country very plainly believe in eugenics

UPDATE: he’s being booed now. Loudly. By so many people security and his goon squad can’t shut it down. Many, many fuck yous. Good.

i think the big middle event between george floyd protests and covid that accelerated this hard right turn in elite circles was tech employees using slack to stage walk-outs and force concessions from management. tech bosses got a first whiff of organized labor's power and started reading mein kampf

Ex-farm worker here. We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing. Not true AT ALL. Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are. The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour. At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.

Any day in which NYC chooses a vibrant, inclusive political revolution is a great fucking day to reread THE CITY WE BECAME, my very favorite of NK Jemisin's transcendent body of work

EXCLUSIVE: As Paramount considers settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes interview, the Freedom of the Press Foundation warns that it will sue over a deal that allegedly “could amount to a bribe.” www.wired.com/story/freedo...

The challenge is to ACT. YOU, in courageous concert, are the something or someone.

This is a view from the surface of Comet 67P. The busy particles in the foreground are cosmic rays or bits of dust and ice. The dots moving in the background are stars.

If you are white, heterosexual, male, nondisabled, affluent, congrats--you are automatically seen as a leader. Otherwise (women & others) then on top of day to day responsibilities, you must mount an impression management campaign to be seen as a leader. hbr.org/2025/05/how-...

Tech has entirely turned on the customer www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgiv...

This is one of 2 reasons why I hate "women and nonbinary" events. The other is that nonbinary people who look more femme (like me) often get treated like women and have she/hers pronouns thrown at us. Any event billed as "women and nonbinary" I avoid like the plague.

The male ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶e̶q̶u̶e̶n̶c̶e̶s̶ loneliness epidemic

New on the blog, something I've been meaning to write for a long time. As we get ready for HHS to ramp up its attacks on our care, let's take a minute to remember why it matters: because we do, and we deserve lives worthy of living.

I want to talk about my move from Substack to Ghost for a second, and what it's been like working with a nonprofit tech company that actually lives its values. Especially if you're a writer still on Subtack, please read. 1/x First of all, about the org: They are a nonprofit, I just met employee +

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Columbia cancelled my Race, Media and Int'l Affairs course. But I'm teaching it anyway. In just two days, 360+ of you enrolled. If you are interested in a scholarship, email [email protected] w/ subject line, "Scholarship Request". karenattiah.substack.com/p/enrollment...

This duck has decided to make her nest in the middle of the main tourist footbridge, in defiance of all gods and reason. The town has ceded to her. We regulate around her. She is the highest authority. Please Do Not Feed Her.

All sustained resistance requires community, collective action, and care work.

Over the next four years, you’ll see people — some with some level of pull or protection, and many others without any power beyond their own words and deeds — stand up in whatever ways they can, and perhaps even keep doing so even in the face of pressure, action, or harassment. At the very least…

Those who seek to dominate require their victims to resist (and have their resistance overcome) to complete the drama of their own power. So submission does not actually appease the autocrats: They will make greater and greater demands until they either extract resistance or destroy their target.

And that friends is the game for Musk.

we fucked up a perfectly good planet is what we did. look at it. it's got billionaires

This is a rare thing - where journalists publicly engage and explain (and revise) their coverage about the illegality of Trump administration actions. From @sarahjeong.bsky.social www.theverge.com/policy/63339...

The quislings at Paul Weiss didn't even try to fight it, just instantly rolled over and committed to around 20,000 to 40,000 hours (given their current rates) of free legal services to advance incompetence, corruption, bigotry, and fascism.

Right to Be offers a number of free "bystander" trainings if you're typically a conflict-averse person who would like to be less that in our current times. righttobe.org/upcoming-fre...

However the AI bubble bursts, we are now witnessing one of the most consequential moments in tech industry history - the consequences of ceding the future to the most narrow-minded and short-sighted management consultants alive. A captured tech media is waking up, but not as fast as the public.

Tonight, hours after the Paul Weiss news broke, an associate at Skadden Arps sent a firm-wide email: "Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment...We do not have time. It is now or it is never..."