Meghan Herbst

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It's been a remarkable year so far. A look back: 🧵

They get to just word salad all over people's rights while pretending like nothing is different.

‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans Trump order allows VA staff to decline providing healthcare to patients based on political affiliation or marital status

In the name of "defending women," I could now be turned away from care as a veteran woman.

Right on! This is the way.

Get yourself a man who, even though he goes to work at 5am for an increasingly authoritarian state, will set a second pot of coffee to go off right before you wake up so it's nice and hot.

A world (still rapidly warming by the way) in which you have to pay to receive weather warnings is bad for pretty much everyone. Not to mention most private companies base their forecasts off of FREE data and analysis from the NWS.

NOAA has long been in the crosshairs for Trump. Back in 2017 he nominated former AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers to head the agency. Myers had previously lobbied to restrict the National Weather Service, part of NOAA, from providing weather forecasts for free to the American public.

Adrien Brody with his hand up telling the Oscars to turn off the exit music

Me filing my long ass drafts to my editor

Thank you so much, and I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. I hope he lands on his feet. My husband has actually avoided getting laid off so far, but we're very worried since he's currently probationary. So we'll see, but I super appreciate the kind words.

Among everything else, what a shitty fate, to have national systems of support dismantled by two men who have never once changed a diaper.

The way they're being cast aside as chum to ultimately line the pockets of predatory billionaires is, frankly, sickening.

It's vitally important for us to read these stories, to see the human toll of these firings. These are our neighbors, dedicated civil servants who do a million little things to keep the lights on in our country every day.

Now he's afraid for his job, and for the implications of his job disappearing for the American public. We've been reading story after story of others across the federal workforce being let go this week.

He works in food safety-- helping to make sure you and your family don't get deathly ill from eating a cheeseburger (as 732 people did in 1993, spurring an overhaul in fed regulation of meat processing- the reason you're now more likely to get food poisoning from the lettuce than the burger itself).

My husband is a federal worker, a disabled veteran, a loving father and stepfather of three. He's won multiple awards for streamlining processes, improving systems, and all around busting his ass.

A picture of cranberries with the words "Bog Peanuts, Motherfuckers"

I've just learned that cranberries are not actual berries and GODDAMNIT why are berries so full of lies and deceit, how hard is it to have fruit standards

Fuck it, I'm making the call here

Nothing is a berry anymore

Everything is a fucking legume now

Cranberries are Bog Peanuts

Deal with it

Jesus H.. this is very bad.

Really happy to have a non-bot-infested, non-toxic platform on which to anxiously obsess over a breaking news event again.

But also, please be safe and heed warnings. It's always better to over prepare. Nature does not give two shits about us tiny humans.
#tsunami

Thanks so much for the nod @longreads.com !

LOL of course. And thank you! It was so great to meet you and Martha as well.

Bill still lives there today, and told me they recently had to replace the old toilet. He tried to donate it to the Cushing collection, with the hook that Harlan Ellison used it during a visit, but no one wanted to catalog a toilet. “I still give them hell for that,” he told me.

Another wonderful surprise was getting to meet Martha's longtime friend Bill Page, and learn about the Monkeyhouse (briefly mentioned in the piece) where the Cepheids lived and hosted parties for years, bringing in some of the biggest names in science fiction: Martin, Octavia Butler, Larry Niven.

“The Wall,” as it’s called, wasn’t enough to house everything, so the overflow lives in another section of the stacks called “Eastwatch by the Sea.”

It’s also the official repository of George R.R. Martin’s work. There are boxes and boxes of manuscripts, notes, letters, even financial information—Jeremy joked to me that Martin is probably just clearing out his desk.

A few details and mentions that didn’t make it to the final piece: Thanks a million to @jbarchivist.bsky.social at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M for a tour of their Science Fiction and Fantasy collection (one of the biggest in the world).

How Murderbot Saved Martha Wells' Life Martha Wells created one of the most iconic characters in 21st-century science fiction: Murderbot, reluctant savior of humanity. Then she faced an existential threat of her own.

It was such a treat getting to visit Martha Wells and her lovely family and found family earlier this year. She’s well known now for her iconic Murderbot series, but Martha endured a number of heartbreaking trials over the course of her career as a working writer. She’s got some true grit.

Tweet by @BrendanCarrFCC: "Broadcast licenses are not sacred cows. Media companies must operate in the public interest, or they will be held accountable under the Communications Act." The tweet quotes a Los Angeles Times article titled, "How Trump's FCC chief pick could make life more difficult for media companies"

This is Trump’s FCC pick. By threatening to yank broadcast licenses, he is hoping the media companies obey in advance and won’t say critical things about Trump. It’s a fascist tactic.

Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.” When he was 42, Cormac McCarthy fell in love with a 16-year-old girl he met by a motel pool. Augusta Britt would go on to become one of the most significant—and secret—inspirations in literary history...

This piece is absolute dreck -- the prose so purple it's suffering from near-fatal strangulation -- AND it manages to elide whether McCarthy was having sex with a 16-year-old runaway from foster care. Demerits all around and also jesus christ www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...