Joseph Osmundson

I’ll omit the depressing-for-a-writer comments that others have made on this excellent article. Instead, I’ll say that it’s disastrous for readers.

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

Coincidence I am sure

I also think it’s very relevant that myself and @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social — the two writers who went on the record here — are very openly queer, writing very openly queer work.

So… there is that.

Tune in next week to hear about amazing HIV work that has saved countless lives but continues to be threatened. Help us #SaveAIDSResearch .
I’ll be presenting with @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social on mpox which affects many of the same communities as HIV and whose global funding is also under attack

hey dude, I noticed you attempting to carve a small space for joy in the face of overwhelming sadness. kind of problematic considering all the horrors

I won a journalism award with @xtramagazine.com and all I can think about are these fucking Teflon pans.

reluctantlyjoe.substack.com/p/i-won-a-jo...

(Thank you @tmziniuk.bsky.social for being the best gay editor there is!)

Xtra contributors win awards in international coverage and blogging from NLGJA | Xtra Magazine Contributors Nico Lang and Joseph Osmundson are being recognized by the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists

Good news: I no longer have to keep a secret!! Because, good news: @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social and Nico Lang have won awards for their work @xtramagazine.com!!

xtramagazine.com/inside-xtra/...

Made it to Friday, aka Fri-yay, but at what cost?

Cuomo: New York *does* have an affordability problem! My nephew’s first cousin by marriage can’t even afford Uber Black anymore!

If you're seeing this, post an old photo of yourself that you still love.

So grateful to see this book still in the world!

Pennies and the Tour Eiffel Looking through artifacts and being surprised, and not surprised, by who I once was

New Substack writing on the box of former selves I go through every time I move, and what my next home may bring.

reluctantlyjoe.substack.com/p/pennies-an...

eric adams is pictured in front of a clock reading 11:00, with a text timestamp of 9:01 am

lmao someone on twitter has spotted an interesting discrepancy in eric adams' 'get ready with me' social media content

internalizing american notions of race and ethnic division as timeless truths about the world is a shortcut to smoothing out your brain

if anyone at the NYT wants to talk about this rufo/mamdani/columbia leak clusterfuck, i’m marisakabas.04 on signal

it actually seems like a newsworthy scandal that a white nationalist hacker stole decades of private student data from Columbia University and handed that data over to a trustee for a competitor institution. But on the other hand, the New York Times is worried about being "scooped" by neo-Nazis.

Fewer clinics, unhealthier people, less warning: The ‘big, beautiful bill’ will make the US less prepared for pandemics The so-called "big, beautiful bill" will lead to millions of fewer people having health coverage in the United States. It will make the country less prepared to detect and respond to a future pandemic...

“As I have argued with colleagues in The Lancet, access to primary health care is the cornerstone for preventing disease outbreaks and responding to health crises.”

thebulletin.org/2025/07/fewe...

FERAL!

apropos of something I read recently: just because the words are good and the craft is good doesn't mean the thoughts are good. you have to sit with the thoughts even more than with the words and the craft. that's "the work."

This is hateful and ugly and you don’t know what tf you’re talking about. First, nearly 5 mil Texans voted for Harris, way more than the 450k who voted for her in Maine. Second, it’s harder to vote in Texas than it is in any other state bc it isn’t a red state but a voter suppression state.

Ok but I am recently on a CPAP and will never shut up about my sleep score

Very leopard meet face situation incoming I fear

Like he always sucked and showed it to us in the hiv / health space but this is… WILD

@benryanwriter.bsky.social Didn't waste much time getting this up on your personal website! Perhaps you could throw a cite out to the Guardian reporter who has named your very secret source in a March 2025 article?

Wait WTF hahaha Benjamin Ryan subscribes to Cremieux!?

So much makes sense now.

included in a database of millions of student applicati ns to Columbia going back decades. The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X. He provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race. The data included information on applicants' citizenship status, national

NYT updated the story, bang-up job all around

so let me get this straight—the NYT accepted hacked information given to them by a substack white supremacist to be used against a mayoral candidate?

Not to do TOO much Mamdani discourse this morning, but one of the reasons American racial categories are what they are is the idea that "African" is a single, coherent, and consistent racial identity. That belief is downstream of slavery ideology, and has no real salience for actual reality.

NYT responds to criticism of its Mamdani story, likening the concerns about their source to “Wikileaks or Edward Snowden” (lol)