Maybe this will clear up the apparent yes/no confusion among VA voters!

A Bit of Good News: 3 Book Ban Bills Defeated in Florida PEN America has shown up each legislative session with a goal: to push back against censorship in our schools, colleges, and universities.

Things can feel pretty hopeless out there sometimes, but I need you to know that, yeah, even though we lose some fights, we also WIN a lot of fights. Here's some news from PEN American about 3 book ban bills we defeated IN FLORIDA.

I mean, an interrobang might also have been appropriate. :)

How much longer after the big celebrity push did NFTs last?

I've always been intrigued by the idea of writing good novel versions of the bad movies featured in MST3K

it’s a great day for transphobes to eat shit

Here's wishing every single hospital administrator who complied in advance a very wakes up in a cold anxious sweat every day until they a) reverse course and b) apologize.

If you feel like the fight against AI is a losing battle — DON’T!

We have defeated $82 BILLION worth of data center projects all across the country. We are winning.

From sea to shining sea, Craig!

Reader Prom!!!!!!

Happy Monday #BookSky!!! It's Independent Bookstore Day Week and we have got a very exciting totally unrelated announcement on the way today!!!! Stay tuuuuuuuunnnneeeedddd!

Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen — Debut trans romantasy — LittlePuss Press A time-skipping quick-quipping trans romantasy supernova! "An utterly essential, astounding new voice." —Charlie Jane Anders

I promised a second thread on Plastic, Prism, Void & here it is! This time I want to talk about it as writing, not as typesetting. And I want to talk about it as writing about love, specifically about trying to be loved as a trans woman.

(remembering to put the pre-order link at the top this time!)

View from above of a handful of small green leaf sprouts coming up through brown leaf litter. Ramps.

I just need society to survive long enough for us to get at least one meal from the ramp patch we've been tending at my mom's house.

Reposting with alt text

I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"

Please enact a two-year moratorium on the use of AI in NYC Public Schools The use of AI in the NYC schools is expanding, despite the lack of rigorous protections and the growing evidence that it can undermine student privacy, cognitive skills, creativity, critical thinking,...

You can sign our petition and we’ll keep you posted on what we have planned next! actionnetwork.org/petitions/pl...

Also always happy to chat!

Attn: Democrats running for office! Coming out strong on AI regulations will only make me want to vote for you harder and tell all my friends to do the same.

Preeti, do you remember how listening to these consultants went last time? I feel like we should know if their ideas are any good or not

Once again I will be blaming everything on these jerk ass consultants who need to be stripped of any power whatsoever

A bookshelf filled with folded paper booklets.

The zine section at @portersqbooks.bsky.social is a sneaky delight.

There are more opportunities for Democrats to lead as the minority party in the House than maybe any other point in American history

Physical mail can be a very powerful tool for advocacy SOOOOOO your assignment this weekend is to send your Rep a postcard or letter this weekend urging them to oppose HR7661. Maybe make it a fun art project for the fam. Or have a party with your neighbors!

Stuffed Animal Portrait Party to Support the Porter Square Books Foundation 2026 Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with the Whole Family (even the beloved stuffed companions who’ve protected your children from monsters under the bed for decades). Commemorate these gallant guardians of the night (I salute you, Snowball) and have their portraits drawn by professional children’s book illustrators! The portraits are ‘free’ with your generous donation to the Porter Square Books Foundation, a non-profit that invites authors to schools and makes sure every child leaves with a free signed copy of the book.

Time slots are filling up for our Stuffed Animal Portrait Party on Independent Bookstore Day! All the info & to sign up in ye olde link!

"As goes Maine, so goes the nation," as we used to say.

The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis A provocative look at the secret society that has controlled St. Louis for over a century, revealing how shadowy elites organize themselves against working-class power. Every December in downtown St. Louis, the city's upper crust attend a garish costume party that doubles as a debutante's ball. The daughters of high society are paraded to the throne of a cloaked monarchical figure, and bow to the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. At first glance, the event seems outdated and clownish, but in truth the Veiled Prophet Society has functioned as an exclusive club for the "city fathers," where solidarity is built between wealthy men who head major U.S. corporations, banks, and control whole industries. At the Veiled Prophet's Ball, these titans of capital come together to crown one of their daughters the Queen of Love and Beauty, and celebrate the breaking of strikes, the sabotage of protests, and the enforcement of racial hierarchies. Devin Thomas O'Shea's The Veiled Prophet is the definitive history of the Veiled Prophet Society in all its violence and pageantry, offering a colorful alternate history of the United States through the lens of the Midwestern elite. O'Shea follows the Veiled Prophet Society from its origins in the wake of the 1877 general strike, through the 1904 World's Fair, to the height of the Prophet's--and St. Louis's--influence during the Cold War. The Veiled Prophet examines the unexpected ways this secret society has shaped the course of history, from the CIA to the Vietnam War to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Yet the power wielded by the Veiled Prophet has not gone uncontested. Since the Gilded Age, the Prophet has faced resistance from orphans armed with pea-shooters, Communist Party organizers during the Depression, Civil Rights icons, and renegade debutantes. The Ferguson uprising of 2014 was only the most recent challenge to the Prophet's influence. As the fight for the soul and streets of St. Louis intensifies, it's more critical than ever that we expose the sordid history of these powerful, masked figures and their control over our democracy.

Been sucked into this forthcoming history book, primarily because it is, like, 5 bananas conspiracies all rolled into one, but also because I think it shows how much money & power are leveraged to preserve the ideas of white supremacy in this country. They're not inherent. They're manufactured

Anti-Zionism by Benjamin Moser: 9780385551243 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism, from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser. In Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers...

Penguin does have one coming out in the fall! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/770236... I think Moser has been working on it for a while

Now we're talking!

Now that it's a NYT Bestseller I look forward to all the other major publishers rush out their own anti-Zionist solidarity focused history & nonfiction since there is clearly a market

Opinion | Don’t Use A.I. to Do This

'Some people say, “I just use it to brainstorm ideas.” If you don’t know what to paint or compose or write, you’re in the wrong job. Art is the business of making up stuff — go make up some stuff.'

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

It’s Getting Harder to Spot AI in Contemporary Publishing. And That’s Very, Very Bad. Lately there has been a lot of hand-wringing, and rightly so, about if and how the publishing industry will deal with AI in the wake of the cancelation of the first major book deal due to suspected…

Overheard a self-published author say they got the title for their book from ChatGPT made me feel like a part of my brain fell out of my skull.

Wild to live in a society that declares "People are only poor when they refuse to work hard" AND "AI dominance is inevitable because of how easy it makes things."