Ann Douglas

It's gorgeous!

Oh, Nick. I am so sorry. We'll be here whenever you're ready to resurface but, in the meantime, please take extra good care of yourself. Grief is such a hard and lonely thing. 💔

In a Victorian bedroom, a very small table the size of a side table and a regular size chair are near the window. The table is set with a small lamp, a sheet of paper, an inkwell, and a pen.

While I was in Amherst, I also visited the Emily Dickinson House. Her writing desk was so tiny.

About 9 or so months since The X-odus, my sense is something like a third of Canadian news / politics Twitter migrated to Bluesky for good, a third stayed on X and the rest have sorta disengaged from social media altogether

For me, Bluesky's numbers are now more or less equivalent with Twitter / X

The fact that you didn’t break any parts of yourself is also great news!

Such a gorgeous blue-green.

Here's hoping!

UPDATE: I regret to inform you that I had to stop cleaning the bathroom long enough to jot down four important plot points.

The plot points are everywhere and they're not afraid to track you down. They'll even shake you into wakefulness at 3:00 am, as you have no doubt discovered countless times.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the answers to your plot problems are almost always wandering in the woods, unsupervised. You just have to go get them.

Funny you should mention this! I had to record and send myself a voice memo after encountering one of these rogue ideas in the forest yesterday. "Maybe this happened...or this happened...or this happened."

Partners who are there for us during the hardest times are the very best people. 💗

I am totally open to that. 💗 I am planning to schedule some events for dates/times starting in September and to share the registration page link here. I've also made a note of your Bluesky handle so I can remember to send you a message about this as well.

I love the lack of weasel words and "you do you" messaging. Seeing this sign improved my mood by 10,000 percent. (It doesn't take much to make me happy. Just leadership, evidence-based policy, clear communication, and a desire to take care of people. That's not too much to ask for, right?) 💗

That is so helpful. Your comment made me think about a virtual craft group I participated in during the early months of the pandemic. A bunch of us got together, worked on some sort of craft project, and had a really relaxed, free-flowing conversation. It was zero pressure and 100 percent fun.

An orange and white road sign sitting at the edge of a road, surrounded by very dry grass. The text reads: Total Fire Ban.

It is so refreshing to encounter a political message that is crystal clear and 100 percent in the public interest.

A poignant illustration of what people are fighting for and up against in the States. Horrific. The whole thread is eye-opening.

California Press Rights Tracking Doc (Consolidated)

I've updated my tracking spreadsheet of police-press incidents with the 10 journalist victims of LAPD misconduct on Friday night. Starts ~ line 32. Temporarily marked light red as I get more details.

We're wayyyyy over 100 incidents of law enforcement misconduct toward press around LA this summer.

It would also put less pressure on me to be engaging and/or entertaining. I wouldn’t end up draining my introvert batteries within the first 15 minutes! 😂

This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for! Thank you for letting me know what might (or might not) appeal to a particular person.

This makes perfect sense to me. Grief is such a deeply personal experience. It can be easy to lose sight of the fact that others are also grieving this loss.

I’m wondering if online friends would tend to prefer a one-on-one visit as opposed to a conversation that includes other people they don’t know, or if they’d be *happy* to chat with new people. I would choose a theme for each tea party and invite up to 3 people to register in advance. Thoughts? 2/2

I am trying to think of simple things I can do to support and encourage other people while continuing to build community with others during the difficult days ahead. One thing I’d like to do is to host virtual tea parties for small groups of people (or maybe just one other person at a time). 1/2

The entire time I lived in Peterborough, I kept waiting for The Old Boys to lose their grip on power. It never happened. The number of truly mediocre politicians with almost cultlike followings was astonishing. (Cheer for your hockey team, people: not that ridiculous guy on your political “team.”)

How do abusers get away with it? Lois Tuffin provides some insight.
A gift article from @ptboexaminer.bsky.social

Op-ed of the week for me. I believe manipulative messaging conned us into something we didn't really sign up for.

"the Carney government’s approach is one that shares more ground with the right than with the activist spirit of postwar governance"

#GiftLink 🎁

www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

If you figure it out, let me know! BTW Your alt-text is great. I had no idea who these characters were. Thanks for filling me in!

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has released a draft standard requiring masks (like N95s) in health care settings to stop airborne infections.

There is a strong attempt to push back against this, so need your public comments to get this through: publicreview.csa.ca/Home/View/22...

There seem to be an exceptional number of just plain ludicrous news stories tonight. Clearly, I have accidentally subscribed to a satirical newsfeed, right? 🤦🏻‍♀️

(I'm happy I spent most of my day reading/writing fiction because I am not loving our current reality.)

Last week, I encountered a website that was so bad that I felt compelled to email the owner to let them know that the shopping portion of their website was completely dysfunctional. It would load and display a group of products but, the moment you started to scroll, all the products would disappear.