Dr. Emily Friedman

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.

–Frank O’Hara, from Meditations in an Emergency (1957)
#everynightapoem #fragment

My first job out of college was working at the United Steelworkers; my coworker tried to teach me the most important lesson you can learn working for a union is you cant change the world from a pine box

Over a decade later, plus 7 years of therapy, I finally started to believe it

Highly reccommend

Trying. Failing better.

January #Newbooks: "Impolite Periodicals: Reading for Rudeness in the Eighteenth Century" by editors Emrys D. Jones, @elementaladam.bsky.social, and Katarina Stenke, and "Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America" by Jerónimo Arellano.

To order: tinyurl.com/89yw6np6

What @prisonculture.bsky.social always says is: find the thing you can do and do it. You can’t do all the things. (Or something like that but more eloquent). I remind myself when I feel I should be writing marching observing delivering organizing meeting reporting shopping

Emily holds up Austin McCoy’s LIVING IN A D.A.I.S.Y. AGE

So thrilled to hold @austinmccoy.bsky.social book in my hands! Congrats on your book birthday my friend!

www.simonandschuster.com/books/Living...

Definitely fascinating and most definitely a timely game to play in 2026.

"By playing WINTERHORN you’ll have a chance to reflect on weak points in your own activism, and think about ways to harden organizations you care about against government intrusion."

bullypulpitgames.com/products/win...

Stop supporting ed tech or predatory platforms like academia dot edu. Start supporting community-led initiatives like Knowledge Commons (Humanities Commons), built by academics *for* academics.

CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.

Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!

*to submit an abstract before 21/3

I grew up with Alex Pretti The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

Truly, truly.

The most famous example is his contemporary satire A DISH OF CHOCOLATE, billed as a “free” entertainment with purchase of the titular drink (later revised as A CUP OF TEA)

When he lost his leg in an accident, he turned it into material for a new plays, THE DEVIL ON TWO STICKS and THE LAME LOVER.

Thanks to the late Jane Moody, I studied a fair bit of Sam Foote’s work in my MA. Foote operated for much of his career dancing across the line of legit/“illegitimate” theatre, using his gifts as a mimic to satirize many & using all kinds of tricks to skirt state control of his work.

Notes on Parlor Games and Oulipo Notes on historical parlor games resembling Oulipian works

I've written up a few notes on literary games, 17th C poetry, secret codes, dialogue / fortune / poetry generators in the 19th C, and Raymond Queneau / Oulipo --plus yet another game with role-playing elements and an example of play ca. 1822 ("The Court of France"): wobbupalooza.neocities.org/oulipo

Spirit Swap developer Alex Abou Karam on marketing a game in times of war "It was really hard [...] to be so focused on making a game about queer, trans, POC joy in the midst of so much abject intentional suffering."

at mothership today we have a story about activist burnout... take care of yourselves (and maybe play some Spirit Swap) www.mothership.blog/soft-not-wea...

Data by Design

More good news, this time on the local front. DATA BY DESIGN has a page on the MIT Press website and with that, an official pub date! October 20th, 2026. Watch the skies! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205618...

Gamergate (and other similar movements) was extremely successful in convincing a lot of men to hate women, while simultaneously convincing a bunch of idiots that was not it's purpose at all.

Mass Effect: Priority Hagalaz is the rare IP board game that 100% nails the original source material. It captures Mass Effect's hypnotic rhythm -- between battlefield tactics, hard choices, crisp storytelling, and cool assets.

It's a role model for all of us working in narrative games, frankly!

As a Canadian, what I've learned so far:

- Minnesotans are very nice and VERY organized
- Mainers are aggressively xenophobic but in a way that lCE will not like
- Philadelphians crave the blood of their enemies
- LA is ground zero for chaos tactics that never lose
- New Yorkers love gay hockey

Dragonlance recruited a whole generation of young women into gaming, right alongside the work of Mercedes Lackey, Ann Rice, and Patricia McKillip.

I owe the often 50/50 gender parity at my TTRPG tables throughout junior high to a series of authors who successfully reached their audiences.

Tomorrow is another day [God willing]. Good night everyone. May tomorrow bring us more justice and some peace.

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour Tressie McMillan Cottom joins Geoff Bennett for our ‘Settle In’ podcast

“The more time you spend doing something, whatever is possible for you to do in the world, the less exhausted you are by the onslaught of information that really wins when it can convince you that the only thing you can do is watch what is happening to you.” 🔥 from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

Also, Cardinal Broglio told Catholics in the military they should refuse immoral as well as illegal orders: www.ncronline.org/opinion/edit...

I am really, really pleased that Leo is rapidly yeeting the bishops who forget there are *seven* Catholic social teachings.

I personally don't tell people who have been fighting their hearts out daily for weeks not to celebrate wins of any size. I certainly don't do that when I've been nowhere near the place where the fight has been happening and have done little more than make some donations from miles away.

For any elected official who needs to hear this, I impart a lesson learned from the NFL:

When the other team is tired and on the back foot, you don’t call a timeout so they can catch their breath. You grind their fucking face into the dirt until the final whistle blows and you’ve won the game.

Danielle Steele def has named chair money, a million times over

I don’t think students should only read horny books in college, but they should be assigned at least one (1) very horny book at some point when they’re in college.

Three tarot cards: 8 of Pentacles, Strength, 9 of swords

Apt cards for this moment. I read them as: Keep doing the work. Remember that kindness is also strength. The nightmares are scary but we can't let them demoralize us.

I'm not into putting private DMs online but WOW tempted by the person whose whole platform is telling you how to ditch unethical companies/where to go instead telling me

"I’m on Substack because it’s the largest platform for what it does/ Appreciate your concern though, I’m trying my best ❤️"

😐

The disparities in these numbers are fucking terrible. A quantification of how much more valuable a white and then American life is than an immigrant POC.

Links to fundraisers in thread.

bsky.app/profile/last...