Jody DiPerna

This is exactly what churches should be doing, calling out injustice.

📌 Lake Street Church Nativity: a bold social justice statement with ICE-like Roman soldiers, the Virgin Mary in a gas mask, baby Jesus zip-tied, Joseph on the ground, pushing viewers to think about immigration.

HOUSTON: A church employee pretended to be ICE to extort a masseuse for money who is in the country legally with a temporary visa

'The True, True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)' by Rabih Alameddine won the National Book Award and I *could not be more thrilled.* It is one of the best novels I've read in a while. Definitely one of my favorite reads of this year. It's funny, weird & unexpected.

Oh man, I loved Jimmy. Rest well.

Still thinking about this — b/c how could anyone not JFC?! But also thinking about a BS focus on improving the quality of the input into LLMs, eg by feeding them UP books. But that’s not how these things work. Anyway: all publishers should also watch this.

He attacked six Democratic members of Congress calling them "traitors" and accusing them of sedition that's "punishable by death" after they urged members of the military and intelligence community to "refuse illegal orders."

Shhhhh. Quiet Piggy.

His grotesque misogyny is a feature, not a bug. This is exactly why MAGA loves him.

Also unlike the original Biggest Loser, the contestants are actually healthier and happier because hoarding wealth like that is a serious illness.

They continue to give away money until they have a 900 million dollars left. Unlike the actual Biggest Loser, audiences aren't watching to engage in their worst instincts to make fun of fat people and revel in Jillian Michaels behaving like an abusive husband. cont'd ...

The Biggest Loser, but for billionaires, wherein they give away money either voluntarily or by force to various and sundry vetted organizations. (Anything from food pantries to community libraries, public defenders offices, environmental organizations and small nonprofit newsrooms.) contd ...

Unwatchable!

Yup

They have been incredibly boring for DECADES

I just want to say there are a lot of journalists and writers who do real, incredible work on topics that matter while maintaining high standards. Many of them do not have stable employment or recognition from major institutions.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson @biidaasamose.bsky.social wins the $75K #HilaryWeston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction for Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, published by Alchemy by Knopf Canada. The prize is supported by The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation. #WTAwards #canlit

I have jury duty. We are in the selection process which basically means hurry up and wait.

I am drinking institutional prison coffee.

I ate a half of a rice krispy treat from the vending machine.

Pray for me

www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-november-11th-we-cave

@crownpublishing.bsky.social

4/ I pray that Crown overpaid this bloated hack and they lose a ton of money on this. Not that they ever learn any lessons from this kind of bullshit.

@newsfromgoogle.bsky.social

Dear Google, please tell Notebook, the "new" AI powered reseaercher to drop dead, eat shit and die, fuck all the way off and just go the fuck away. Take your AI and shove up your ass.

I tried to tell people, but they didn't listen. They were fooled by the hoodie.

"When you publish with an independent or university press, you don't wake up on Tuesday to find out you share a publishing house with Steven Miller." (although I'm pretty sure she had referred to Mike Pence, the sentiment remains.)

'Unfettered' refers more to his inflated ego than anything else.

3/ an imprint of Penguin and it makes me think of something Meg Reid, the director of the fantastic publishing house Hub City said years ago about the big five/big five publishers. ...

2/ writing negative reviews. If I was covering it, that meant I thought there was something worthwhile there. That was the approach.

Enter, 'Unfettered,' and, my god, what I would love to write about this book. 'Unfettered' is published by Crown Publishing ...

1/ In my years of covering books for a whole bunch of different outlets, I always ran author interviews and not straight reviews. I also never covered anything that I thought was not good because (a) I didn't want to read books that lacked merit and (b) I didn't want to be in the business of ...

It's like Chuck Schumer wakes up every day by asking "what can I do to make young people despise my party even more?"

Tourists! Come to America! Our air traffic controllers haven't been paid, so there's a non-zero chance your flight will crash! Don't worry, if you do get here you could be kidnapped by a masked stormtrooper and held indefinitely in torture conditions! Bring your money to the US!

Books -- 'The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,' by Deesha Philyaw 'The Sound of Holding Your Breath' by Natalie Sypolt 'Sleepovers' by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips 'Working It Off in Labor County' by Larry Thacker 'Here in the Dark' by Meagan Lucas 'Knockemstiff' by Donald Ray Pollock 'Shiloh and Other Stories' by Bobbie Ann Mason 'Civilwarland in Bad Decline' by George Saunders 'Blackberries, Blackberries' by Crystal Wilkinson 'Sidle Creek' by Jolene McIlwain 'The History of Sound' by Ben Shattuck 'The Complete Stories' by Flannery O'Connor 'This Ditch Walking Love' by James Braziel

The latest installment of *This Week on My Desk*

(not pitctured -- 'Orange World' by Karen Russell and 'Brawler' by Lauren Groff.)

For anybody following, I reached out to a few historians who unanimously recommended the book 'The Great Steel Strike & Its Lessons' by William Z. Foster, originally published in 1920. I am also going to check out 'Pittsburgh & the Great Steel Strike of 1919' by @redpgh.com