Orange tabby cat with a stern expression in a cozy living room. Transcribed Text: Me, waiting for my turn to speak, but the topic's already changed.

Tuesday

It’s the reason we don’t have universal healthcare imo. Some white folks would rather die than see Black people get anything at all

Hand-knitted jumper, on display at the National Library of Scotland

What every well-dressed librarian is wearing @natlibscot.bsky.social

A dark wooden door with a grey push panel and green trim around it. The sign on the door says “Dames”

Yes, I know, French, but going through this door makes me feel like a broad in a 1930s gangster movie

A painting in a gold frame. It depicts two girls, a taller one with dark hair behind another whose hair is more blonde. They are outdoors near a field. The taller girl is placing flowers in the hair of the other one, who is holding more flowers in her blue skirt as she stares at a point that is not quite the painter. Something in her eyes is terribly weary and sad.

A closeup of the two girls in the painting.

We went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts today and I spent a long time staring at this painting. Something in the younger girl’s eyes brought tears to mine.
William Bouguereau, Crown of Flowers, 1884.

My sweetie has a cousin who was born on exactly the same day. She and her husband drove from Nova Scotia to meet us for their 60th for dinner at a restaurant in Montreal. My love had no idea. I think I did good this year.

Today is my beloved’s 60th birthday. I spent the past week collecting video greetings for him from friends and family. He watched them all tonight, told me it was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him, and cried.

TIL Harvey Fierstein, playwright, actor, gay icon for the ages, has now reinvented himself as a quilter. He's posting videos on Facebook of his quilting. He's really quite spectacular at it.

It's never too late to find your next thing.

Good thing about the city after a rainstorm: lots of very small people out in rubber boots. Stomping in puddles is serious business.

58% of Photographers Have Lost Work to Generative AI: Survey Commissioned works are down.

98.4% [of photographers] want $ for past infringements by ai corps.

96.1% believe there should be mandatory labeling for ai-generated works.

89.9% not interested in licensing their images as data for machine learning.

85.3% want default position to be ‘opt-in’ for ai training, not ‘opt-out.’

After waiting years, I finally have the initial appointment for an (OHIP-covered!) ADHD assessment. I may have cried.

!!!

Deeply insightful video worth your time here.

"The present is different from the past, but that’s no use if you can’t remember the past. With feminism, the immensity of its achievements over the past 50 or 60 years disappears if you forget things used to be worse in ways almost unimaginable to those who didn’t live through them or study them."

This kind of thing at Substack (including their Nazi problem and trans hate problem) are why my newsletter is at Ghost.org and always has been. Andrew Tate is a spectacularly vile human being accused of numerous violent crimes against women and hugely corrosive for young male minds.

Sullen 16yo me who HATED yard work would not know what to do with the 56yo me who is joyfully heading outside to work in the yard.

A closeup of mostly brown vegetation but there are small green buds at the tips of the branches

This is the best time of year. Everything is coming back to life, full of hope and possibilities

WE HAVE HOT WATER

HOT, RUNNING WATER

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Octavia E. Butler, 1998:

I was 11. My science teacher drove his own TV to the school in the back of his yellow VW Beetle so we could watch. Deepest gratitude to Mr. Detjen, who kindled in me a lifelong love of spaceflight that led me to witness the last launch of shuttle Discovery in person.

Love David Byrne….hope the kids at Coachella were paying attention and appreciated the genius they were witnessing last night

"Love and Kindness are a form of resistance"

I vehemently disagree that ICE should even be allowed into Canada, ever, for any reason. Are they going to ask marginalized people for ID? Use face surveillance? Pass this info to Immigration Canada?
www.ctvnews.ca/sports/artic...

Water update: we have running water! Not HOT water, mind you, but we can turn on a tap and things happen!

A local red-bellied woodpecker wasted no time figuring out that the backyard bird feeder is full again. (Yes, its belly is white and its head is hot pink. I don’t name them.)

We bought this place and its wee bit of land in 2021, and it has saved me. I am so grateful to be here.

Out of the city and back in our unfinished house without running water for the weekend, and I am just about giddy. I love this place and I feel so much better here

I’M ON A BOAT

I saw someone post a bad opinion, wrote out a reply, and then remembered I could literally do anything else

Imagine what we could do if we ended white supremacy, war, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and wealth hoarding.

So much more would be possible.

As the Integrity crew splashed down TO THE MINUTE of their estimated arrival and hit the BULLSEYE, this is a reminder that Katherine Johnson was an absolute genius. My God. #NASA #ArtemisII

NASA is one of the best things about this country. Hope. Innovation. Exploration. Wonder. Give them, the post office, and the national parks service all the money from ICE