@meaganhhoule
Writer, comms professional, occasional musician, insatiable bookworm. Unapologetically queer and disabled. Joyful, though I have considered all the facts. I will always protect trans kids. (She/her) 🏳️🌈📚🎶🦯
I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is
This will be amazing and it looks like there are still some tickets left. If you're in #YEG, come support your trans neighbours, contribute to a great cause and listen to some beautiful music! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 https://simpli.events/e/sing-with-love-2026
"'It [is] a rat race, but I don’t know who’s chasing me,' Makayla explained. 'It’s like I’m chasing myself.'"
idk i think in a time when it feels like nothing matters & all is futile it might actually be time to double down and write your stories & make your paintings & sing your songs & do your art. create the things that make us human and share them.
The alien ambassador sidled through the museum in awe.
"You Humans have so much art! Do you have machines to make all paintings, poems, stories and songs?"
"We experimented with that, briefly," the guide said. "But humans are both cheaper and more creative. And, well, we will make art regardless."
1) decide to do a task
2) think “I’ll listen to a podcast while I do it”
3) look around for headphones
4) accept side quest from villager
5) get killed on a mountain pass while stealing a wyvern’s egg
Agreed! I wrote quite a bit—you know, twenty years—before I got published. It may seem that writers/artists come out of nowhere, but that’s marketing for you. Creative folks work at their craft.
Which is why they tend to get annoyed when people steal it.
Fellow writers: I am deeply saddened to share that if we want the rewards of having written, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of writing
This site features ways you can donate to those on the ground. If that's not an option for you right now, here's a form to send encouragement.
It’s time to play, “Describe that Video!” This Hour Has 22 Minutes at its most blistering - and prescient. This was posted yesterday. But it couldn’t be more timely. Whether or not you can bear to watch “that” video today, you need to watch this one. #Minneapolis #CBC
A woman found me sobbing in her front yard during a severe thunderstorm because I was completely lost, soaked, freezing, my phone was dead and I was terrified. She drove me home even though her husband was angry that they were heading somewhere and I made them late. I will never forget her.
I found the ep in PLURIBUS where Carol--white, American--meets 5 non-white, non-American survivors of the hivemind off-putting, but in a way that made me curious to see where Gilligan was going. Now that I have, I wrote about how empire, privilege, genAI, & resistance converge in the show's subtext:
"I spend a lot of time on the rug now, down at your level. When the world ends I want to be looking into your eyes."
A screenshot from an article that reads: "As the great Soraya Chemaly notes in her important book The Resilience Myth, resilience cannot be, must not be, a solo endeavor - it is communal care that must be at the heart of our thinking at this moment- the way we will hold each other through this. I'll talk more about that another time. And it's also true that the things that we do to nourish ourselves can help fill us up as we navigate the day-to-day. It's a both-and, and frequently not an either-or. I'm talking about the kind of thing that helps you plug in to yourself, other people, the world and your place in it and (if- and only if - this resonates with you) the Big Bigness, the Universe, the divine, the great Everythingness of which we are a part. (If God isn't your language, maybe words like creativity, intuition, love, the universe, or interconnectedness are.) Maybe you call it "spiritual practice." Maybe you don't. Your meditation. Your prayer. Your morning writing pages. Your long walks. Your art. Your swimming. Your pottery. Yes, even your parenting, if you can show up in the right frame of mind every once in a while. Do the thing that sustains and nourishes you."
I'm not saying my Bsky Rabbi ( @theradr.bsky.social ) gave me official orders to knit as much as possible, but I'm not NOT saying that, either.
"Do the thing that sustains and nourishes you." from her amazing and unfortunately evergreen article: www.lifeisasacredtext.com/fortify/
I have kept a common place book for something like 15 years and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
The scariest thing in Pluribus so far has been Carol letting everyone in the world read the first draft of a chapter she wrote before dawn, 19 seconds after it emerged from the HP Printjet on her desk.
Cultivate a community of people with unique skills and points of view. Collaborate with them.
We are not supposed to be able to do everything. We are supposed to help each other with things that are bigger than one person.
It's the time of year I'm white knuckling through all the promoted ads chanting the protective spell:
"Another planner WOULD NOT fix me, another planner WOULD NOT fix me, another planner WOULD NOT FIX ME."
Seems to me most AI use cases depend on people waving away really basic facts, like how an animated reproduction of a dead family member is not, in fact, that family member
“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas”
Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.
Before, you'd have to collaborate with a vocalist. Now you can spin it up in three hours. No need for the collaboration and unpredictability that make art so fun and satisfying. Depressing that we'd rather "partner" with an ever-obliging machine than with each other.
Uh. Hi.
bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
Leaving this here.
Please preorder. Preorders tell my publisher that you're excited about my next release and helps me get a contract to write more books.
My editor says this might be her favorite book I've ever written & I love it too, SO much.
Update November 22. We’ve updated this article after realising we contributed to a perfect storm of misunderstanding around a recent change in the wording and placement of Gmail’s smart features. The settings themselves aren’t new, but the way Google recently rewrote and surfaced them led a lot of people (including us) to believe Gmail content might be used to train Google’s AI models, and that users were being opted in automatically. After taking a closer look at Google’s documentation and reviewing other reporting, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Gmail does scan email content to power its own “smart features,” such as spam filtering, categorisation, and writing suggestions. But this is part of how Gmail normally works and isn’t the same as training Google’s generative AI models. Google also maintains that these feature settings are opt-in rather than opt-out, although users’ experiences seem to vary depending on when and how the new wording appeared. It’s easy to see where the confusion came from. Google’s updated language around “smart features” is vague, and the term “smart” often implies AI—especially at a time when Gemini is being integrated into other parts of Google’s products. When the new wording started appearing for some users without much explanation, many assumed it signalled a broader shift. We’ve revised this article to reflect what we can confirm from Google’s documentation, as it’s always been our aim to give readers accurate, helpful guidance.
If you have been sharing that Malwarebytes article on the Gmail thing, you should note the giant correction up top.
www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...
"AI girls never say no" is the essence of the appeal of so much of the products of nu-AI
Chilling piece on employment effects of AI on early careers. Includes this line, which will probably become the norm for many firms: "Managers at Shopify must now justify hiring a human by first explaining why AI can’t do the job."
nymag.com/intelligence...
Windows is all "I can help you write that!"
With all due respect, you can't even open the window I want open when I click on that window in Windows. I'm good.
love today's piece from @lyz.bsky.social as a former Iowan raised in the Methodist church who's returned in later years (as an agnostic)... it's about community, and it's important we fine some, less so where we find and share it.
“It’s impossible to measure how she shifted the world — I feel it everywhere.”
thesicktimes.org/2025/11/15/a...
The book cover for my latest book, "True Color: The Strange and Spectacular History of Defining Color--from Azure to Zinc Pink." It's a tan ground with multicolored...folded-over cards, or windows with shades, or books that are kind of fanned open, or color chips (it's meant to be mysterious) in a 4x3 grid with the title and the author name (mine) between each row.
Good morning, kids and people, today in book, we have a cover:
(Preorder this jawn at www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555914... and use the Bookshop link if you can!)
