Visual showing
This visual, posted to Reddit by Stephen Nass in 2015 and adapted by @cingraham.bsky.social is forever the gold standard, and i just used it to explain this month's Virginia election to my 8-year-old (est. 2017).
When I was getting bombarded with OKCupid messages, my husband was the only one with good grammar and spelling, which caught my attention. For some reason he doesn't think that's a romantic origin story.
My favourite grasshopper fact: Grasshoppers first appeared on the planet 250 million years ago.
Grass did not appear on the planet until 40 million years ago
Imagine it: 210 million years, hopping around on any random surface you can find, waiting for the grass that will make you truly yourself.
(Side note: I saw three condors in Pinnacles National Park this last December, and it was magical.)
I guess, go ahead and chase those condors, but stop and appreciate the vultures sometimes.
I've been birding for a while now and I still get unreasonably excited about a bird I've seen a hundred times. The common ones don't get any less good. There's probably a thought-leader-y data viz lesson in there somewhere but I'm not going to make it into a metaphor right now.
Google's constantly giving me pop-ups telling me I've used 89% of my storage space, so I need to buy more immediately. I've had this account for over 20 years and it took me that long to get to 89%, so I just don't feel like I'm going to use that last 11% imminently.
Cuts at the Washington Post:
• Shuttering the Sports desk.
• Books section ended.
• Metro cut from 40 reporters to 12.
Bezos bought the Post for $250 million. He paid $500 million for his yacht.
Alyssa is both a serious data journalist with immense technical chops and a super-talented visualization guru, figuring out all sorts of solutions to create the best storytelling approach. Plus she's a great collaborative partner :) Someone needs to hire her ASAP.
A screenshot from NYT cooking of "Mortadella cookies." The cookies are round, pink, and studded with pistachios and macadamia nuts, looking exactly like mortadella.
Lord help us I love it
cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1027...
Screenshot shows Google Photos' tagging of people and pets in an image. First is Mercator, a black and white cat. Second tag is an unnamed red panda's butt and tail.
A precious orange prince naps on a green chair, sprawled in a goofy position with his belly exposed.
Google Photos is convinced that Seymour is a red panda.
Google maps screenshot showing top review keywords, including drunken noodles, catfish, and object-relational mapping. A review shows a mention of the Lao stew "orm."
Our local Lao place is renowned for their object-relational mapping special.
Feels like 2020 again
Sepia-toned cover of Beings by Ilana showing a forest canopy over a small road and a car by the side of the road, with a flying saucer hovering overhead. With author text is dull gold over the saucer and the title in the middle of the cover in all caps in white and "A NOVEL" at bottom also in gold. Below the cover is a quote from the New York Times Book Review: "Engaging, elegant... A restrained, gentle reflection on the nature of 'truth' versus memory."
Really loved BEINGS by @ilanaslightly.bsky.social, with its intricate threading of lives and the speculative. Beautifully written and deeply perceptive! Available now! bookshop.org/p/books/bein...
Can someone out there who's more influential than me come up with a new word for "subtweeting" that happens outside of Twitter? And then make it a thing?
@ilanaslightly.bsky.social's novel BEINGS in on sale today! @nytimes.com Book Review calls it "engaging, elegant... restrained, gentle reflection on the nature of ‘truth’ versus memory." Read the full review here: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/b...
photo of me, a white queer with glasses and long hair wearing a white tank top, holding my second novel, BEINGS, which is out today.
photo of BEINGS's dedication, which reads:To Mike, who kicked this whole thing off, and to Micha, who unknowingly helped finish it
Photo of BEINGS's epigraphs which read: Safe journey, space fans, wherever you are. - Stephen Hill, host and producer of Hearts of Space "It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now." - Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure. - Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
The start of BEINGS's acknowledgements (which are five pages long) which reads: Before I get to the thank-yous, I want to acknowledge that any misrepresentations of or factual errors regarding real places, time periods, or people--and any mistakes in general--are entirely my own. There are many, many people to thank (some of whom don't know I exist but whom I feel compelled to acknowledge anyway), so let's get started. Thank you to Mike Cahill, to whom this book is dedicated, for always listening to podcasts while making dinner, for letting me interrupt you...
BEINGS is out today! Writing can be a lonely project (and this book is about loneliness in many ways) but it is absolutely impossible, at least for me, without having a community of people who have your back (and this book is also, in many ways, about having, needing, or finding community).
"Are you likely to recommend Earth to family and friends?"
and on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is not achievable at all and 10 is easily achievable, how achievable do you believe this dream is for you
4 stars, Ariel
I dream of someday leaving my house without being asked to fill out a survey about my experience.
That's incredible. I love how the heron looks like it's eyeing its next snack.
It's actually set into the window frame? I haven't been brave enough to try that yet with any of my stained glass.
ohhh thanks for sharing! I see a bunch of used copies online for around $4, so I'm gonna grab one.
I used fusible bias tape to do the leading and then stitched it down with a twin needle. It was a lot of fun, so I'll definitely be trying it again soon.
I bought a stained glass pattern that I converted to fabric, so a little of both?
A wall hanging showing a great blue heron in stained glass style next to a stained glass panel of a quilt block.
My stained glass quilt pairs well with my quilt stained glass
A quilted wall hanging showing a great blue heron standing in water, in a stained glass style.
I finished my first stained glass quilt this weekend.
