Erik Schuckers

I can't trust politicians who are anti-trans. Not because I'm "only searching for perfection" which is what centrists will be accusing me of for the rest of my life, it's because if you're not pro-trans you'll be garbage on lots of other issues too. Being anti-trans NEVER exists in a vacuum.

January 2017 by Derrick Austin You are the safest child in the world, I say to plastic Jesus in the nativity. My Facebook timeline is a villanelle of suffering: the boy from Aleppo whose dust-skin is the color of water pouring, still, from faucets in Flint. Drunk, recovering from last year, my eyes are wet moonflowers. Christmastide is over. No carolers approach the well-lit houses. No one knocks on a stranger's door. And who would admit them?

An early January poem from Tenderness, nearly a decade old

they didn’t leak it to make the shooter look innocent, but to make the victim look guilty. not guilty of a crime. guilty of having a visibly queer wife. guilty of liberalism. guilty of opposing the regime. they don’t seek to exonerate themselves, only to demonstrate who deserves to die.

Oh and btw 2026 is for art, for craft, for direction, for growth, and for creation. With these, we nourish ourselves

Whether you loved City Paper or loathed it (and those of us who worked there often did some of each) this is a goddamn shame. But the fact that Pittsburgh's alt-weekly survived so long is a testament to its community, and to its staff and contributors over the years, including those let go today.

One of my new favorite prose poems has entered the chat

Hedgie Choi, from her debut collection Salvage (2025)

JAMES MERRILL CHRISTMAS TREE From loes torn hamin Had been fed, looked after, kept still, Meant, I knew— of course I knew - That it would be only a matter of weeks, That there was nothing more to do. Warmly they took me in, made much of me, The point from the start was to keep my spirits up. I could assent to that. For honestly, It did help to be wound in jewels, to send Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep Fragrant sables that cloaked me head to foot. Over me then they wove a spell of shining — Purple and silver chains, eavesdripping tinsel, Amulets, milagros: software of silver, A heart, a little girl, a Model T Two staring eyes. Then angels, trumpets, BUD and BEA (The children's names) in clownlike capitals, Somewhere a music box whose tiny song Played and replayed I ended before long By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals Plowed back into the Earth for lives to come — No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn't bear, Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin. Needles and bone. The little boy's hands meeting About my spine. The mother's voice: Holding up wonderfully! No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today's Dusk room aglow For the last time With candlelight. Faces love-lit, Gifts underfoot. Still to be so poised, so Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.

James Merril’s poem “Christmas Tree,” written while he was dying of AIDS. 1995.

Thanks for sharing this document, @rweingarten.bsky.social.

I read it, and I believe it's inexcusably inadequate and will not prepare teachers or schools to confront the very real dangers of the "A.i." products pushed by your partners, including OpenAI.

A few thoughts for your consideration...

it's a cheap joke, and it doesn't even work

these comparisons of Erika Kirk with Tammy Faye Messner do TFM deep injustice. yes, an affinity for glitter and makeup. but TFM was complex and compassionate, words that do not in any way describe EK.

Headline: ProPublica management wants 100% discretion over when and how to use AI Supplementary text: The organization rejected our proposal that ensures staff will not be replaced by AI and requires labeling AI-generated content

1/ At bargaining yesterday, @propublica.org management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.

Amazon Is the World's Biggest Online Book Marketplace. It's Filled With AI Knockoffs Authors say Amazon's knockoff book problem is leaving them frustrated — and making the internet worse in the process.

Amazon is making money off AI copies of books - and putting the onus on authors to prove they’ve been plagiarised.

Honestly, just stop buying books from Amazon. Get them from an actual bookshop or order them from a reputable book supplier like bookshop.org

www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

This entire grift relies on convincing people that they don't know how to do the things they have always known how to do, and ironically, if it works, we will, in a very short amount of time, forget how to do all the things we have always known how to do.

If Netflix can make everything gay, I'll finally subscribe.

tech bro: i have made Artificial General Intelligence

programmer: you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

You say blob. I say rat king.

Only 364 days til Halloween

the truth is that this isn't a theocracy and jesus isn't my fucking king

Real pictures from the protests are inspirational. AI slop is not.

This morning outside the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh!

Salvation Army seen feeding ICE today. For anyone who doesn't already know about their bigotry, here is more, No need to give them your money this Christmas, or ever.

The cast on this! Adding to my rewatch list for the weekend (along with Paz's Nurse 3D).

"This country would not exist if Black women had not birthed it from their wombs on the blood-soaked earth of Native people. Enslavement, lynching, Jim Crow, genocide, the prison industrial complex aren’t footnotes in American history. They’re the main text." Yes.

Like John Wayne Gacy was just "bucking tradition" and clowning precedent.

On this, the birthday of Clive Barker, one of the great Patron Saints of the Subversive, let the power of queer horror guide you.

Thanks for a reason to revisit this one! Feel like Avary almost accidentally stumbled onto something really interesting with this one.

Rocky Horror Picture Show promo poster for 50th anniversary with lips & gold glittery top hat with "50" on it

four young men in gender bending outfits, poses, and lipstick ready for Rocky Horror

Happy 50th, Rocky. My first time was 1991 at a summer arts program at Mercyhurst. We had to improvise outfits last minute because we didn't think the campus nuns were going to let us screen it. (Tbh this wasn't much different from how we usually dressed.) Don't dream it...

Mark Lucas on the bad site says "President Trump was trapped in a 'fatal funnel' when the escalator paused."

I'm going to start calling all staircases "fatal funnels."
"Do you want to take the elevator?"
"Nah, I'm going to go up the fatal funnel instead."

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers First published on October 9, 2009, this classic by Colin Nissan is our most-read article of all time. We’re celebrating the 16th anniversary of th...

"When my guests come over, it’s gonna be like BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes."

Very true. Unfortunate then the relentless promotion of a technology (generative AI) in classrooms that degrades critical thinking skills.