you'd think the governor of illinois basically going "we're being invaded by an authoritarian" would be something you'd see real easy on the front page of most everything an hour later
Writer. Mom. Coffee person. Books at michellerichmond.com Inspiration at wanderingwriter.substack.com. Essays on writing & publishing at caffeinatedwriter.substack.com
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you'd think the governor of illinois basically going "we're being invaded by an authoritarian" would be something you'd see real easy on the front page of most everything an hour later
Why aren't we all talking about Trump claiming that he used to see AI-generated stuff when he was a baby?
Orwellian: when the 79-year-old president claims in all seriousness that he's been seeing AI since infancy and every Republican behind him nods as if it's the truth. Actual quote: "I saw something as I was growing up, since I was a baby til now, I said 'Who did that?' and it was AI-generated!"
Trump can't stop talking about crime in Chicago, but Birmingham, Alabama has a much higher per capita murder rate than Chicago. Memphis has the highest per capita murder rate of any metro area in the country. Why isn't he sending the National Guard to red states? usafacts.org/articles/whi...
THE ADJUNCT by Maria Adelmann should be required reading for MFA &. PhD candidates considering a life in academia-a brutally honest sendup of the academic gig economy, wherein adjuncts do much of the heavy lifting for poverty wages. A campus novel sans the tweed & ivy @simonandschuster.bsky.social
Netflix just gave Gavin Newsom 2 million for the redistricting fight and made a deal with Sesame Street. New episodes will air there and the backlog of old episodes will Be free to watch. Netflix picked a side. I will keep my subscription.
Today my husband and I were discussing which streaming service to cancel to cut costs. Now I know which one we’re definitely keeping.
Better yet, the murdered colleague wrote a bestselling novel, & therefore was considered persona non grata within the department, where others had labored diligently over chapbooks wherein the word “cumin” frequently appeared
Yesss!
Lol…never. It will be in committee until the end of time.
Just don’t expect any of that “happiest place on earth” stuff. Disneyland Paris staffers lean into melancholy. It’s often raining, always smoky, & hilariously difficult to navigate. But delightful in its total denial of the “Disney experience.”
This article on the crazy cost of a trip to Disney World reminded me: the few times we visited Disneyland Paris we rarely waited in line. Parisians don’t “get” DLP. You can do a whole Paris vacation including crowd-free DLP for the price of a trip to DW or Disneyland. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...
wait, what???
JD seems really keen for people to know that his boss is alone early in the morning and late at night.
JD Vance doubling down on how prepared he is to become president in the event a "terrible tragedy" befalls his boss is so Shakespeare 101.
Again and again and again.
Water (life) returning to a dried river bed after a good rain.
A federal court ruled that ANTHROPIC illegally copied MILLIONS of books to train its AI. All authors and publishers whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirate websites are subject to receiving compensation. This could involve your work. For more info: authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...
*parents
He also encouraged patents to abuse their children. A hateful, dishonorable man who brought out the worst in others, whose ideas were a blasphemous distortion of the teachings of Christ.
Moved our son to the third floor today. First apartment, first year off-campus. Fortunately, there was an elevator!
I just cleared a paper jam from my HP laser printer & it feels like the nineties all over again. #amwriting
Article I Sections 9 & 10 of the U.S. Constitution—which limit presidential power over tariffs and protect habeas corpus—have disappeared from Congress’s website. They claim a coding error is to blame.
If Greg Abbott believes Democrats can be removed from office for leaving town to thwart the Texas GOP's attempt to fix the elections, can't GOP congress members be removed from office for fleeing D.C. to avoid releasing the Epstein files?
Fascism is expensive.
"Writing is hard. There’s no question about that. And the more you do, the longer you’re in this game, the harder it gets." JT Ellison on live-writing a book, the challenges authors face throughout their careers, and more. www.writersdigest.com/live-writing...
Thank you for your service, and for truth. I hope there is a way for data to be preserved as the current administration steamrolls ahead in its efforts to undermine every government institution and to replace the unbiased career employees who keep the country running with unqualified loyalists.
He didn’t like the factual data showing the bleak jobs market, so he fired the messenger. We go deeper Orwell every day. He also pressured the Smithsonian to remove his name from the display on impeached presidents. Erasure of date, facts, & history is Fascism 101 (aka Project 2025).
It looks great! Why doesn’t everybody put the word “chapeau” on their homepage?
The Hawaii News Now live reporting on the tsunami, where the meteorologist explains wave movements and the appearance of the water in real time, is a reminder how crucial it is to public safety to have experienced scientists with a deep local knowledge. #hawaii www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/07/29/t...
Strange times when the San Mateo coast a is under a tsunami warning for the second time in a few months. Thinking of our westerly neighbors...stay safe, Hawaii.
excellent use of the past tense
He doesn’t care about the victims, obviously. He considered these girls his property.
Susan Minot’s unputdownable novel, plus 8 more novels featuring a writer as protagonist #booksky
The thing about Sundays is you can binge 148 minutes of Hunting Wives & feel okay about it because you were on the treadmill on an incline the entire time. My TV friends are bad people but they’re great for my glutes.
Is NOBODY going to call DoJ's Todd Blanche "questioning" Ghislaine Maxwell what it actually is - WITNESS TAMPERING? Really, not one person?
wow
Does anyone trust Trump's DOJ to seek the truth in their interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell? They'll ask about Trump's enemies, carefully wording their questions so Ghislaine doesn't implicate Trump, who is already dangling a pardon in exchange for her cooperation and her silence. It's a coverup.
Welcome to America, where the convicted sex offender president is about to pardon the convicted child sex trafficker whose client he was.
“Don’t forget: beautiful sunsets need cloudy skies.” — Paulo Coelho. I took these two photos about ten minutes apart. #sunset #vermont
right?! I'm so mad. If I could turn into he Hulk I totally would.
They are also impersonating me with a gmail address that begins with my full name. Using this address, they write to potential clients with a phony endorsement from "me." I'm generally slow to anger, but this is giving me David Banner feels.
Someone named Naomi Kingsley has been sending out claims that she assisted me with book marketing. This is false. She has a wonky Wix site called ProBook Book Marketing. I’ve never heard of this person or company. Be vigilant, writers! #booksky #writingcommunity #writerslife #bookmarketing
I love it when people get married! It’s a great big “yes, and” to life and uncertainty. Here’s a couple taking the leap on the beach in Aptos, California.
In response to the WSJ article about his creepy letter to Epstein, Trump posted, “I don’t draw pictures.” So the NYT published several of the puctures he’s drawn over the years. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/u...
NEW statement from Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal: "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."
Kudos to all members of the WSJ team who resisted legal threats from the president to do journalism about the president.
*february 😬
I’ve met FSOs who learned the language, understood the culture, and stayed long after the rest of Washington had lost interest. When you fire 1,300 of them, you don’t just eliminate jobs. You gut the connective tissue of American soft power. open.substack.com/pub/trygveol...
Canada energy. Respect.
I got a paid subscription to Wired in Fedeuary. They were doing reporting on the DOGE disaster/coup that no one else was doing
Moviephone, early to mid nineties. It was so exciting to call a number & listen to the listing of movie times and locations. But it took forever. Kramer saying “Why don’t you just SAY the name of the movie you want to see?” Is still one of my favorite Seinfelds.
Yes, and Crisco! Butter-flavored Crisco! We used it because it was cheaper than suntan lotion.
Yes and you’d build forts in the empty lot on your street, all the neighborhood kids gathered there and just spent the day building & getting bitten by everything that lived in the kudzu
Totally—on our last cross country drive (2023) we noticed insectaggedon. Our windshields were eerily clean. They used to be spattered with love bugs.
In the Bible Belt I don’t recall ever having access to PBS.
Right? On Sunday afternoons the only options were Shirley Temple, golf, and Soul Train. So you’d watch all three in succession before heading back to church for the night.
Yes me too!
Unpacking the giant home PC and then using DOS to program it so you could perform basic functions. Every high school kid had to use a big manual to figure out how to program your family’s computer! Even future english majors like me. We’d never heard of STEM.
Ooh, I missed that era, sounds like the sweet spot!
Oh! I always called the other thing microfiche. Apparently I didn’t look up microfiche & microfilm in the encyclopedia!
Yes!
Searching the thousand-page Sears catalog months before Christmas to order items to put on layaway, esp. Spanish Barbie. Then going to Sears to make each payment at the customer service counter in the basement. Then hoping there was enough money to get Spanish Barbie off layaway at Christmas.
Yes! The microfiche! That sound it made as you scrolled left to right! The speed snd trying to land on the right page!
Consulting the encyclopedia every day. Then setting it back on the shelf in the “den,” which was the room with the furniture-sized TV, in alphabetical order.
And sitting by the radio waiting for a “tenth caller” contest & calling over and over in hopes of getting the prize, which was, like, a bumper sticker advertising the radio station. Also, calling in to Car Talk & getting advice on air about that thumping sign your Cressida made.
Consulting the encyclopedia pretty much every day. Riding in the bed of the truck. Riding in the wayback of the car, under the back window.
🚨NEW: When ICE raided a Californian farm yesterday, they snatched & disappeared a disabled US veteran who was in his car. They smashed his window, peppered sprayed him & dragged him to the floor. Listen to his wife & sister here, distraught. No-one will tell them where he is. (🎥 ABC 7 News)
I don’t know you, but I know your work and your experience will be missed.
My heart breaks for every parent awaiting news about their daughter in Texas, every person who has lost a loved one to the floods. We desperately need early warning systems, fully staffed weather centers, and the irreplaceable institutional knowledge of local & federal scientists & meteorologists
We have reason to be freaked out. The enormity and swiftness of the dismantling of democracy is head-spinning.
So heartbreaking
Uh-oh, I went to the library and everything looked good! New fiction by Susan Minot, a cool debut by Emet North @emnorth.bsky.social, essays by Lucy Ives, & more. #booksky
If you like your fiction on the weirder side - Return on Investment by Magdalena Waz #booksky “Reads like the birth of a brand new genre”—Joseph Bates, author of Tomorrowland
If you like your fiction on the shorter side: Flash in the Attic #booksky
Summer weekend reading for anyone who’d rather read about a boozy boat trip with old friends & lovers than trip than be on a boozy boat trip with old friends & lovers. CATALINA by Liska Jacobs #booksky
You should live in San Francisco because it’s almost always cold here, including today. (I’ve been to Iceland in January & October and found it delightfully chilly.)
A sold out showing of La Haine tonight at the Balboa.
Thou shalt not arrest elected public officials for trying to speak for their constituents.
The rapid march to fascism in America is hard on high school and college kids. They are watching the rights and freedoms their parents enjoyed being stripped away, at the same time the economy is destabilizing. It is a frightening time to be young.
Tuned into the Army parade, to get a sense of it. As former military, I see no sense of pride in the faces of the soldiers marching. Not even a shadow of it. I know that look, face after face. They've been pulled from important duties for bullshit political purposes. Sorry, service men and women.
Princess Diana’s green dress, seen at the Dress Codes exhibit at Kensington Palace last week. I loved this brief, informative tour, which included a walk through the rooms where Queen Victoria spent her childhood.
Just a reminder of Fun Things You Can Actually Do That You Did All the Time 10 Years Ago But Totally Forgot About
It lacks what Past Lives had in spades: depth and empathy.
Imagine a film in which every scene involves men saying they’d never date a woman without enormous breasts or a 21” waist. How would it be received? This is just a mean-girls flick parading as romcom. It’s lazy & deeply meanspirited, and doesn’t have the depth or intellectual chops to work as satire
I love rom-coms. There was zero comedy in Materialists—not sure why it was marketed that way.
It’s the ONLY plot point. It felt incredibly lazy.
It was cynical to its core. No comedy and zero compassion.
I was here. It was beautiful.
A kid in San Francisco speaks up for his friends. No Kings
Lots of peace, love, and patriotism at the San Francisco No Kings march.
A sea of peaceful protestors gathering to march from Dolores Park to Civic Center, San Francisco. No Kings
The way the BBC is reporting on the assassination of a Democratic state senator and her husband is tragically accurate: "America is a highly armed, highly violent country."
It should not be lost on anyone that Minnesota Rep Melissa Hortman, who was shot to death in her home last night by an assassin, was a gun safety advocate who worked tirelessly to protect her constituents from gun violence.
Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman who was shot and killed last night had been fighting for gun sense laws.
Hello from Berlin where a few hundred Americans are outside the embassy, currently reading aloud from the Declaration of Independence. #nokings
