Cassie Mannes Murray

My wild controversial opinion is that we do, actually, owe it to strangers to take basic precautions and engage in actions that ensure the safety and well-being of others, to make the world accessible and non-hostile and easy to navigate.

During Thanksgiving and holidays, people want to do food drives where they collect canned goods etc... and I really would love to offer that food banks need MONEY so if you can collect and donate MONEY please do that. They can then use those funds to purchase what's needed AT DISCOUNTS.

They picked trans folks because there are so few of us they think they can get away with it, and they are perfecting a playbook they will use to go after more groups of people until they've concentrated enough power to be unstoppable. It's entirely up to cis people to stop this. Please help us y'all

"Writing the best yet commentary" is Ta-Nehisi Coates' whole-ass job description. A Baltimore legend happening in real time.

they are, in fact, allowed to do that

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."

#ReadPoetry #SealeyChallenge buff.ly/1dT0kCg

Sans intervention immédiate, les derniers reporters de Gaza vont mourir 21 juillet 2025 L'AFP travaille avec une pigiste texte, trois photographes et six pigistes vidéo dans la Bande de Gaza depuis le départ de ses journalistes staff courant 2024. Avec quelques autres, ils sont aujourd'hui les seuls à rapporter ce qu'il se passe dans la Bande de Gaza. La presse internationale est interdite d'entrer dans ce territoire depuis près de deux ans. Nous refusons de les voir mourir. L'un deux, Bashar, collabore pour l'AFP depuis 2010, d'abord comme fixeur, ensuite comme photographe pigiste, et depuis 2024 comme principal photographe. Samedi 19 juillet, il est parvenu à poster un message sur Facebook: « Je n'ai plus la force de travailler pour les médias. Mon corps est maigre et je ne peux plus travailler ». Bashar, 30 ans, travaille et vit dans des conditions égales à celles de tous les Gazaouis, allant d'un camp de réfugiés à un autre camp au gré des bombardements israéliens. Depuis plus d'un an il vit dans le dénuement le plus total et travaille en prenant d'énormes risques pour sa vie. L'hygiène est pour lui un problème majeur, avec des périodes de maladies intestinales sévères. Bashar vit depuis février dans les ruines de sa maison de Gaza City avec sa mère, ses quatre frères et sœurs et la famille d'un de ses frères. Leur maison est vide de tout aménagement et confort, à part quelques coussins. Dimanche matin, il a rapporté que son frère aîné était « tombé, à cause de la faim ». Même si ces journalistes reçoivent un salaire mensuel de l'AFP, il n'y a rien à acheter ou alors à des prix totalement exorbitants. Le système bancaire a disparu, et ceux qui pratiquent le change entre les comptes bancaires en ligne et l'argent liquide prennent une commission de près de 40%. L'AFP n'a plus la possibilité d'avoir un véhicule et encore moins de l'essence pour permettre à ses journalistes de se déplacer pour leurs reportages. Circuler en voiture équivaut de toutes les façons à pre…

🚨BREAKING: The last journalists working for AFP in Gaza have said they can no longer work for the news agency.

They are out of energy and they are starving to death.

I have never seen a statement from a news organisation like it.

🧵

That Guardian article about AI tanking the graduate job market has an interesting comment from a recruitment consultant saying that the ability to read, write, and form an analysis without using the internet are now "elite skills." Wouldn't it be great if we had degree subjects that teach just that?

Memoir Land on Substack “Jonah’s injury was an anomaly, unexpected personally but not statistically, not if you examine the probabilities; it had to happen to someone somewhere—I had just stupidly, selfishly really, assumed ...

substack.com/@memoirland/...

Excited to have this excerpt from Frontier up at Memoir Land! Big thank you to @saribotton.bsky.social and @cassmannes.bsky.social

LOOK AT THIS SHIT: Nothing says “Jesus saves” like a room full of Republicans locking arms and praying over legislation designed to cut healthcare for dying kids so rich donors can buy their fifth yacht.

Dismantling our collective social obligation to care for one another to fund the gestapo and tax cuts for the rich isn't just a moral failure: It will ultimately hurt everyone, incuding those self-same rich people who are about to find out how much the safety net affects their daily lives.

may every congressperson who voted for this bill never know peace

may they be disrupted every time they are in public

may they suffer the most extreme consequences that they have inflicted on their constituents

It's a fascist regime, folks. You have to start treating it like such. You need all hands on deck and a remarkable change in attitude, language and tactics to confront Trump and MAGA.

The old guard ain't gonna cut it.

I get credited by name when I offer a solicited pre-pub blurb, but not when I choose to write about the book on my own. That's weird. "Salon" didn't say that about your author's book. I did.

collage of photos of a reading at a cafe. Writer is a white middle aged woman in a black dress. She has brown hair and glasses. The photos are of her and various family and friends, food, and wine.

I forgot to post Book Launch pics! So cool to pack our local cafe with people I love! My art is (still) hanging on the walls! We sold out of books, almost sold out of art prints, and raised $200 for the local domestic violence resource center! Amazing. @cassmannes.bsky.social @wlupress.bsky.social

I know it's easier said than done but this feels like a really good time for people in positions of power at institutions and those who work for them to refuse to follow executive orders

Lawlessness and grievance, that’s all he’s got.

Fighting back has to be the answer.

The thing about watching a JD Vance speech is that everyone knows he’s a little pig man. Everyone knows he exists to squeal for Trump‘s amusement. No one respects him and he clearly doesn’t respect himself.

thinking of one of abraham lincoln's great quotes this morning:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

One small step news orgs could take is to start using "harm" instead of "impact" if all the impacts expected are bad.

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number. A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it.

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/n...

Nicole Graev Lipson is bored by the tired notion that “girls and women are wired for rivalry.”
buff.ly/5TWC54j

Funny and Large and Wild: A Conversation with Sarah Lyn Rogers - The Rumpus I’m interested in knowing when I’m lying to myself and how that allows me to make different choices later.

"A book as deeply critical of interpersonal codependency as it is on labor-exploitative late-stage capitalism, this collection asks us to question our relationships and how they serve us."

A pleasure to chat with Gabrielle Grace Hogan for @therumpus.net!

therumpus.net/2025/03/19/s...

From Kyla Jamieson's book, Body Count: bookshop.org/a/862/978088...

#poem #books #writing #spring

The kid’s name is Cal Clifford (they’re in Oklahoma having Octopus babies!!!) just search him and you’ll find all the goodness!

The very best thing about Parker Posey is that she's been exactly the same for the last 30 years. She was like this back then, in that young person body, she was still this old weirdo.

Wait did you follow the family on tiktok (I’m not on there anymore but it was … maybe six months ago) that had a pet octopus that had babies! And then they befriended an old man marine biologist who helped them secure homes for all of them! And there were so many! I will find them for you!

This, right here..

Politics hasn't been this simple in a long time: do you think it's good for one man to exercise unchecked, arbitrary power or not. Those are the two available ideologies right now

Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

This, by the by, is an effing disaster if it holds up. The number of public libraries that will go under if IMLS is shuttered is mind-boggling. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...