👏🏻👏🏻 hooray! Congratulations!

hi, cis folks!

if you said you’d stand with trans people, we need you now.

the FY26 budget bill gets a vote by 9/30. the GOP wants to jam a ban on federal funding for ALL health services that provide trans care for ANY AGE.

we need you to call senators: reps.fyi

more info & script downthread.🧵

Read Like a Criminal Big Gay Read 2025 Keynote Speech

I got to deliver a talk on the history and legacy of the Hays Code and the Comics Code, contemporary censorship efforts, and the necessity of identifying with criminality. You can watch and read the whole thing here:

👀 intriguing!

The Insiders by Mark Oshiro

The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston

there are so many amazing middle-grade magical novels for young readers that have come out in the last decade-ish written by people who are not hateful assholes btw, a quick sampling off the top of my head:

Last night @60minutes.bsky.social opened an otherwise superb segment on Germany’s approach to online hate speech by saying “in the U.S., most of what’s said on online [social media] platforms is protected by the First Amendment.”
No.The First Amend protects us against GOVT infringements on speech.

Embrace graphic novels
1/ ?

I'm going to say it again:
Immigration is good, actually.
There are no qualifications on this statement other than "don't be a comemierda" and that goes no matter what.
"Legal" and "illegal" are artificial categories imposed by States with arbitrary rules, usually with suboptimal outcomes.

I LOVED that book, and the second, also can’t wait for the third!! Thank you for the reminder it’s coming so soon.

(1/x) So much of what is happening in our present stems from what we have not resolved in our past.

For the last couple of years, library workers have been begging and pleading for attention on this. If you think this won't happen in your community, guess what, it will. You *have* to get involved. Now. Don't wait until the ban is in place.

You just don’t need to use AI! Not for ugly pictures or made up facts or email summaries, for so many reasons, but water use is one.

1775. An editor comes into work on Christmas eve to find a manuscript on his desk. The title: A HISTORY OF PYRATES by Charles Johnson. (We have no budget so we’ll say the editor is played by Michael Stuhlbarg).

Found her books in 2022 and read all of them that year — such wonderful, thoughtful books. Closest I’ve found to the feeling of those books since (at least set in space) was The Stardust Grail. But I should really read Becky Chambers’ books again, too.

Loved this book! So maybe I need to watch Hot Frosty?!

Donate » NICWA

NICWA works to support the safety, health, and spiritual strength of Native children. Their work helps Native nations keep Native families together. You can support their efforts here.

Colored pencils and a planner / coloring book open to the first page. Some of the page is colored, and it reads “Planner for a Magical 2025” with a cauldron and animals.

THIS will fix things next year, I know it. (Or at least will be really lovely to spend time with next year)

This is an absolutely wild interpretation.

Bookish checkpoint!

✧ last book you read: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
✧ your current read: The Duke at Hazard by KJ Charles (audio reread)
✧last book added to my TBR: Time and Tide by JM Frey
✧ next anticipated read: Little Moons by Jen Storm, Ryan Howe, Alice Rl
#BookSky

for the @inquirer.com, I wrote about the importance of a free press to democracy and how it's not just investigation, scandals, & poll-driven predicting. Authoritarians don't care about scandals. We need to focus on bearing witness, humanizing, and contextualizing.

Now with gift link ⬇️

Tuxedo cat staring at a bug with a maple in the background — the sun is shining on the maple and the leaves have turned red.

This tree has lost all its leaves now but look how beautiful it was a few weeks ago — Nova found a bug lots more interesting.

Picture of a small pond from very low to the ground. Pebbles and water plants are in the foreground.

Frog’s eye view

Ruby colored bee balm is blooming in the foreground, there is a peek of echinacea in the corner, and in the background a small pond with floating plants, surrounded by small rocks. There is an overgrown garden behind it.

Still grateful for this little pond — I admit I spend a fair amount of time lying out and peering into the water to see what wildlife shows up. The frogs are very welcome visitors, but there are also a lot of fun invertebrates to watch zooming around in the water!

Tiny wildlife pond. Closest flower is a wood anemone, beneath it is a small wintergreen and salvia. Behind it there are small rocks and a pond with a few floating plants.

I tell you what, adding a little pond into your backyard isn’t super practical but is really, really lovely.

Black and white cat curled up in a hammock with her pink nose and paws poking out.

Biiiig streeeetchhhh

Two tuxedo cats sitting in a window, one turning back to me to meow that she has killed a ladybug. There are two plants in the frame and the sunlight is coming in through the window onto the plants.

Ladybug patrol

Operation Olive Branch Digest 02.23.2024 - Stone Soup

This week I learned about Operation Olive Branch, which collects verified gofundmes to help evacuate people and families from Gaza:

Thank you!

Two black and white cats with green eyes looking up while following me around the house seeing where the food might be hiding

Cats cats cats everywhere I go around the house (the same cats, but they are good little shadows)