Danielle Evans

NOTE: you all should check out this interview I published today with Danielle Evans, all about a single story in her straight up amazing collection, THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS, which published in 2020, and which I interviewed her about this summer just bc I love it and wanted to.

We can’t let weird stuff like the actual, rock bottom crime rates affect our number one industry, which is the imaginary crime industrial
complex

It is pretty noticeable that even as mainstream opinion on Israel and Gaza finally shifts, you don’t hear the Responsible Adults apologizing for punishing all the college kids protesting the atrocities. Quite the opposite in fact!

Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship

Amy Sherald says the Smithsonian suggested removing a painting of a transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty from her upcoming show at the National Portrait Gallery “to avoid provoking President Trump.” Sherald: “I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship”

Aid Groups Blame Israel’s Gaza Restrictions for ‘Mass Starvation’

The distance between what is in happening Gaza, fully backed with US dollars and political support, and the reaction of American politicians who by and large just don’t seem to care or support it is just completely brain-breaking.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/w...

The only not-real people allowed to be reported about as if they’re real people — it’s the law, they teach it in J school — are the Muppets

So far, we've raised $7510, which makes us 25% of the way toward of goal of raising $30K!

Help us send 30 young writers to camp by making a gift today bit.ly/2025WBScamp

people seem really confused about racial categories maybe we should have some educational programs to teach how these historically constructed categories structure our entire society in insidious ways we could even do programming in workplaces to improve how people communicate with each other

Almost twice as many people ride the New York City bus every day as live in Wyoming.

The bus should have two senators

ICE *already* can't meet their detainment numbers without rounding up children, veterans, people born in the U.S., people with no criminal records, people at immigration hearings, plus academics and visitors with valid visas.

So who do they plan to detain with >10x the budget?

The answer is: you.

Zohran's win has a message for national Dems, if they can hear it. Campaign on an aspirational platform that you actually believe in, wear your true politics on your sleeve, don't equivocate or triangulate or throw people under the bus in the name of attracting 'undecideds'.

Business Insider recommended nonexistent books to staff as it leans into AI Some titles on the list included books with extremely garbled titles and fake authors.

This is basically the standard GenAI use case. Someone hoping AI will let them pretend to be informed yet actually just wasting everyone's time with nonsense. www.semafor.com/article/06/0...

A white cat with brown tabby markings placing his paw on a woman’s arm and looking at her/the camera with what appears to be an expression of skepticism or concern.

Cannot work under these conditions

What if it’s this bear though?

bsky.app/profile/sdhu...

Also: I assume Harvard will try to sue fast and fix things, but the cruelty this letter unleashes *today* will induce lasting fear and panic not just on the 6800 international students at Harvard, but also on all international students in this country, even if there is a swift TRO. Why stay here?

Please tell him his impressive commitment to professionalism just sold me some necklaces!

I know this is a minor point in the overall nonsense of this, but I am stuck on why your imaginary book’s imaginary climate scientist has wealthy clients who are targets of eco-activism? Are they paying her to not do her job?

Also everyone knows that if I ever write a followup to The Great Believers it will be called
2 Great 2 Believe!

Veruca Salt?

I spent a lot of the time my mother was sickest frustrated or even arguing with her because she sometimes trusted what I thought of as predatory wellness-industry nonsense, but I also understand that we are all made vulnerable when our actual systems of care are at so many levels unworthy of trust.

It’s an infuriating read but worth it even if you have no personal connection— not so much an expose of one company as of
many ways systems and processes that could protect us or improve the world are warped by corruption/underinvestment/narratives that don’t align with reality

Photograph of the cover of No More Tears: the dark secrets of Johnson +Johnson, by Gardiner Harris

I spent this mother’s day finishing this book, which I picked up in part because my mother died of cancer and is part of the talc class action, but I probably noticed it on the shelf because the iconic logo reminded me of my mother combing my hair with no more tangles no more tears when I was little

Grief is strange and slippery. Wednesday would have been my mother’s birthday. I’m missing her and also knowing how much of her anger was a kind of faith in the potential of the world to improve. This is one of those years when to find any faith in the rage I have to remember who raised me.

No matter what this Administration tells the American people, the law is very clear: Members of Congress have a legal right to enter any DHS detention facility to conduct oversight without prior notice - something I’ve done twice this year without issue.

This expands a similar purge recently at the Naval Academy library, in Maryland. Last month, civilian Navy officials, following orders originating from Mr. Hegseth, pulled from shelves books including one that critiqued “The Bell Curve,” a 1994 text that argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people. But the academy kept “The Bell Curve” itself on its shelves.

You’re allowed to argue that black people and women are genetically inferior. But you’re NOT allowed to argue they are NOT inferior because that’s divisive. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

This Rümeysa Öztürk hearing is radicalizing.

I've been a court reporter for many years, and I've never covered anything like this: A student deeply committed to her studies, imprisoned solely over writing an op-ed, being made to testify under oath for her own freedom.

Dark, dark stuff.

For every doll you deny me I will push another jet off an aircraft carrier

The harpist’s nemesis gardened and sold produce at the local farmer’s market on weekends

“I asked ChatGPT” well I asked the three Fates and the one with the scissors got very agitated when I told her you were using your one precious life thread talking to that cursed thing