Megan Stielstra

Hey all,

The Onion is accepting applicants for our writing, video and graphics fellowships.

Fellowships last six months, pay well, and provide full benefits.

You can apply at theonion.com/fellowship.

same, lovely.

*looks at plane tickets*

What's happening with the Chicago Public Libraries right now is terrible. The proposed budget of the city would CUT 89 CPL positions. Importantly, 78 positions were lost LAST year. That would be 167 positions in 2 YEARS while COPS KEEP GETTING MORE MONEY. ENOUGH. SAY NO.

Saved by Stoppard Sir, In 1993 my wife and I went to see the first production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (obituary, Dec 1), and in the interval I experienced a Damascene conversion. As a clinical scientist I was trying to understand the enigma of the behaviour of breast cancer, the assumption being that it grew in a linear trajectory spitting off metastases on its way. In the first act of Arcadia, Thomasina asks her tutor, Septimus: “If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?” With that Stoppard explains chaos theory, which better explains the behaviour of breast cancer. At the point of diagnosis, the cancer must have already scattered cancer cells into the circulation that nest latent in distant organs. The consequence of that hypothesis was the birth of “adjuvant systemic chemotherapy”, and rapidly we saw a striking fall of the curve that illustrated patients’ survival. Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia. Michael Baum Professor emeritus of surgery; visiting professor of medical humanities, UCL

Amazing letter in The Times (also an unbelievable play fwiw)

Interactive AIDS Quilt The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience People around the world can experie...

“The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 50,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience so people around the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.”

Congratulations!!!

same.

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

I wrote an essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social about what I learned about close reading when I taught at West Virginia University

www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

I see you 👍

Chiiiiiiiiicagoland!

"The books that small-press publishers produce show us – more than any other – that writing itself is as much a process of thinking, one of creative-critical engagement with the world through which we reach new understandings; and that this thinking is collaborative as well as singular."

(xo @elizabethniarchosneukirch.com ilysm)

Let's make essays.

I see you.

As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Omar El Akkad : One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Tin House In late October 2023, weeks into Israel’s bombing of northern Gaza, the novelist Omar El Akkad retweeted a video taken by a Gazan man. This video showed a lifeless moonscape with endless empty streets...

Congratulations to Omar El Akkad for winning the 2025 National Book Award in Nonfiction! ICYMI: Omar's appearance on the show was one of the great all-time conversations so far.
Audio: tinhouse.com/podcast/omar...

"Now might be a good time to try and detect your own pelvic floor. Sit on the corner of your chair, or more ideally the corner of a table, so that the area between your legs is in full contact with the surface. (If you’re in a public place or office, try to be … a little bit subtle about this.)"

Astonishing to stop and realize that, at any given moment, bands of masked men armed to the teeth are storming churches and daycares, terrorizing entire communities—and that most of the country's political establishment barely blinks.

you translated for those who could not stomach the thought of standing face-to-face with monsters but who required knowledge of monsters as the monsters accrued ever more power as they revealed or converted ever more monsters among men

DAN

sam ❤️❤️❤️

One way I have found to mourn someone is to set up a monthly sustaining donation to a mutual aid effort they cared about. If you can join me in honoring Alice Wong, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social with a sustaining donation today, please do. Thank you Alice, and I will not let the bastards grind me down.

I wrote a letter about why this matters (I'm allergic to the phrase “now more than ever” but jfc):

This spring I'm working with @offassignment.bsky.social on an online class about writing rage. Dan, Maggie, Ashley, and Carmen are going to help me. Their work has kept me from launching myself into the sun. Come join us.

i’m ready for something different than whatever the fuck this is

I know quite a few comrades on the ACA exchange. I used to be on the exchange for years. A doubling or tripling of premium costs will be a death sentence for people who NEED HEALTH INSURANCE to survive. PERIOD.

We've heard Democrats say as much for WEEKS. So what the hell??????