Diana Helmuth

What’s the German word for having enough energy for a spin class but not enough energy to put your laundry away

The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations “In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...

As a tencious user of the em dash—yes

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

Having empathy for someone who said “empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage” is the ultimate test of my empathy

Rewriting the Future - Dreamforge Magazine I was writing hopepunk before there was a word for it. That’s not some hipster boast —I’m much more feminist nerd than cool kid— but my […]

I wrote an article on hopepunk but solarpunk is mostly these same principles applied specifically to the climate/eco part of the polycrisis. If you're interested in more about the craft of writing these stories, it's a good overview: dreamforgemagazine.com/story/rewrit...

I can’t believe this is happening. But then again I had a copy editor tell me they were using Google AI for fact checking. *Fact checking*

Glad you are making noise about this, it’s a depressing trend.

OK but this does sound like my version of Utopia 😂

Had a serious talk with a pal about how solarpunk may never take off as a genre because it's just too...*nice.* "What tension can exist in utopia?"

Curious for people's thoughts on plots for a Solarpunk setting (Beyond "we had paradise and now we have to get it back?")

<3 <3 Sylvie. Thank you for beta reading

Can Someone Please Tell Me How to Talk About Palestine? I am writing an essay about the dangers of staying silent for fear of being misunderstood, and I am terrified to publish it, for fear of…

In which I process the question: how can we talk about Israel in well-intentioned discourse if we can’t even agree what Zionism is, what anti-Zionism is, and which of those is anti-Semitic, or not?

definitelynotlost.medium.com/can-someone-...

Also, if you are using generative AI to:

- write your SEO blog posts
- write your product's marketing content
- write your novel
- write your emails

...we can tell.

Cute! (search A Storm of Spoilers wherever fine podcasts are found)

This isn't totally true. Bereft of other options, undocumented immigrants often use the ER for simple needs, and Medicare pays the ER for the care.

If immigrants had access to better healthcare options, Medicare wouldn't be paying $300 for baby Tylenol in the ER. That's the actual problem.

What the SAVE Act Means for Women

I want to say this is just another reason women should not change their names via marriage, bc your identity should never be erased in exchange for love

But I am also one of those ppl 😭 at weddings, bc I am a sap for love?

So thanks, SAVE Act, for ruining love
www.politico.com/newsletters/...

My cat doesn’t even know who Trump is

happy “come the f*ck on” day to those who involuntarily celebrate

Seriously. I am exhausted with poll after poll now showing the Dems lost support over Gaza. But journalists are still tearing their hair out over how Dems are losing steam. It is not complicated. People reject the binary "support a genocide or get fascism (that also supports genocide)"

fuckin THANK YOU

There are some Indivisible Protests today?
Here's some things that have worked for me when I decide to protest:
- Don't bring your phone (the police can set up towers to log you were there and hunt you down later)
- Wear a mask and a hat! Make facial recognition hard
- Don't talk to the police.

About to Backpack for the First Time? How to Suffer Outside by Diana Helmuth is the Book for You It is with great pleasure that I am finally writing my first book review on this blog, and it could only be for How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking. As its title sug…

The actual nicest thing about telling your stories is when you hear that your work inspired someone else to tell their stories.
Thank you Rob Rogers, intrepid wanderer of the Florida backcountry.
backpackingdeskjockey.blog/2025/03/04/t...

We're making this the new cover of Edward Said's "Orientalism" right

I do. I really do.

I think this is a good time to point out that USAID often worked with the CIA as more or less an arm of imperialism. They did some good work, but much of it with an agenda. Like how the mafia will make sure your grandma gets her insulin.

I do not support DT, but this should be said.

All The Federal Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders We put them all in one place.

www.courtwatch.news/p/lawsuits-r...

We will keep fighting like everyone else in the world has had to do to get anywhere with their governments, since the history of governments. We will not always win. But life will go on.

It is just our privilege that is dying. Not our humanity.

No matter what they do, you get to keep your humanity

Even if things get worse: people will have birthday parties. Children will go to school. Teenagers will study engineering and literature. Mothers will feed their children. Businesses will open. People will go outside and fight for human rights and freedom of speech. Then come home and order delivery

Many of us sense that America is dying right now. What's dying is our privilege; that unearned, hubristic global supremacy we were lucky enough to be born into, but many of us ignored or took for granted

Now it's all too obvious.

But it is just our privilege that is dying. Not our humanity.

People had birthday parties. Children went to school. Teenagers studied engineering and literature. Mothers fed their children. Businesses were open. People went outside and fought for human rights and freedom of speech. Then came home and ordered delivery.

Humanity wasn't dead.

I lived in Egypt for a year during the revolution as a student. But I still saw a lot. This is what I saw:

Yes, the trash stopped being picked up. People got food poisoning. ATMs would go down. Power was spotty. Anything government-run was unreliable. At the same time 🧵

For anyone else now terrified to fly in this country — thanks to “leaders” who value bigotry more than public safety— I found this thread of aviation workers rather comforting www.reddit.com/r/fearofflyi...

A huge part of the problem is that individual citizens feel powerless, and demoralized, when looking at nation-sized problems. We don’t have the power billionaires do.

This is when I find the adage “community works faster than government” to be very comforting.