Erik Kennedy

Keep us posted about the search.

it was the infinite media-sphere censoriousness about the rhetorical framing of climate change as a matter of 'hope' vs 'doom' that ultimately sent me over the edge when I had to finalize the title for my book

Vincent O’Malley: From Aotearoa New Zealand to the Emerald Isle • Auckland Writers Festival

Great to be taking part in the Auckland Writers Festival this year. Looks like a stellar lineup of writers.

www.writersfestival.co.nz/programmes/e...

columbia strawberries, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1914

columbia strawberries, painted by mary daisy arnold, 1914

Donate to We Lost Everything to a Fire. Help My Family Rebuild., organized by Chloe Clark On January 24th, our childhood home burned down. Our parents lost 50… Chloe Clark needs your support for We Lost Everything to a Fire. Help My Family Rebuild.

I'm still doing a GoFundMe to help my parents rebuild after a devastating house fire. The costs of doing so, with an uninsured house, are extremely high. My parents are elderly and low-income and my disabled brother lives with them. I deeply appreciate shares of this link!

gofund.me/ac93c03d5

Publishers urged to take steps to improve chances of books being recommended by AI, LBF hears Publishers are being urged to invest in generative engine optimisation to reshape metadata and make books more culturally embedded online.

'Made-up problem must be solved urgently.'

www.thebookseller.com/news/publish...

The Queensland government has interfered with the state’s literary awards – again Are judges of literary awards and fellowships now being asked to assess not just the work, but the writer too?

The Queensland government has interfered with the state’s literary awards – again
theconversation.com/the-queensla...

Speaking of iconography, when Monica Sjoo exhibited “God Giving Birth” (1968) in 1971, those excitable blunderbusses at the Scotland Yard investigated the painting to see “whether it was pornographic.”

Graffito on a page in a copy of Tristram Shandy: a line drawing in profile of Slawkenbergius, recognizable because of his large nose.

Niche but cool. I mentioned in class that there was little evidence that #18thc readers had ever responded to the invitation tendered by the blank page in Tristram Shandy & drawn the Widow Wadman. & then a student revealed the portrait of Slawkenbergius she found inscribed into her copy of our novel

During the pandemic, I had days when I felt I was by myself on a shore drained of the tide, dragging a stick across miles of wet sand. There were also days when I was a boy again, sliding down a snowy hill on a flattened cardboard box. And there were days when I remembered the teacher who made us memorize a poem each week, and when we asked why, she said we might one day find ourselves in a wreck at the side of the road and we would recite these poems to stay alive.

Rick Barot ♥️

A beautiful reminder of what poetry can do.

We need a name for this, something like vice-signalling, where people, usually in or around tech or finance, claim to do some quirky bullshit that patently doesn't work just so they can post about it to build their personal brand.

'Maybe my brain is internet poisoned' . . . 🤔

Obviously humans are still actually responsible. But you can see how this is supposed to work. They are very obviously using a machine to absorb some part of the responsibility for a monstrous crime.

Today, we're publishing Don't Steal This Book - a (mostly) empty book from almost 10,000 authors, protesting the theft of their work by AI companies.

🧵 1/3

'Syllabot' is a top-ten irritating portmanteau.

Sandy Sandilands, the UK Defence Attaché to the United Arab Emirates

Sorry, but I just learned about the UK defence attaché to the United Arab Emirates, then I had to spend ages verifying that instance of nominative determinism

Every morning I wake up and read about fucked up shit happening in the US, but I can’t remember the last time the shit was this shockingly fucked up.

Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab The Defense Department went on a $93 billion spending spree in 2025.

As millions of Americans were losing their SNAP benefits the Pentagon spent:

🔹️$6.9 million worth of lobster tails🦞
🔹️$15.1 million for ribeye steak 🥩
🔹️$2 million for Alaskan king crab 🦀
🔹️ and even $98,329 on a Steinway & Sons grand piano

✏️ by @newrepublic.com

What is the ‘acid rain’ in the wake of US bombings in Iran? An atmospheric scientist explains This rain would include acids but also likely many other pollutants harmful to humans and the environment. It may be worse than the term ‘acid rain’ conveys.

Horrifying.

theconversation.com/what-is-the-...

Mazda accused of greenwashing with tree-planting promotion Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle's CO2 emissions.

Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle’s CO2 emissions.

Mazda has now been taken to the Advertising Standards Authority over the allegedly misleading promotion.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/09/m...

They went for 'Uglow revival' when 'Uglow-up' was right there.

Pop cultural references in class start off as a way of making the material more understandable and the instructor more relatable, and incredibly quickly turn into a way of emphasizing how old and out of touch the instructor is.

The Rainbow The forest dwarfs had caught Yobuënahuaboshka in an ambush and cut off his head. The head bumped its way back to the land of the Cashinahuas. Although it had learned to jump and balance gracefully, no- body wanted a head without a body. "Mother, brothers, countrymen," it said with a sigh, "Why do you reject me? Why are you ashamed of me? To stop the complaints and get rid of the head, the mother proposed that it should change itself into something, but the head refused to change into what already existed. The head thought, dreamed, figured. The moon didn't exist. The rainbow didn't exist. It asked for seven little balls of thread of all colors. It took aim and threw the balls into the sky one after the other. The balls got hooked up beyond the clouds; the threads gently unraveled toward the earth. Before going up, the head warned: "Whoever doesn't recognize me will be punished. When you see me up there, say: 'There's the high and handsome Yobuenahuaboshka! " Then it plaited the seven hanging threads together and climbed up the rope to the sky. That night a white gash appeared for the first time among the stars. A girl raised her eyes and asked in astonishment: "What's that?" Immediately a red parrot swooped upon her, gave a sudden twirl, and pricked her between the legs with his sharp-pointed tail. The girl bled. From that moment, women bleed when the moon says so. Next morning the cord of seven colors blazed in the sky. A man pointed his finger at it. "Look, look! How extraordi- nary!" He said it and fell down. And that was the first time that someone died.

from Eduardo Galeano's Genesis (this one is a Kaxinawá story)

There are people out there who think it's ridiculous to say that killing 100,000 Palestinians and expelling 100,000s more from their land is a genocide, but that describing people coming to your country to work and start a family as genocide is totally reasonable.

Screenshot of four different jobs from the NY Mag feature about what people make in NYC: "Home Health Aide $23,000 I've been a home health aide for ten years. My main patient last year was in Brooklyn. I spent most of my time taking care of her. I worked two days a week, and I was being paid for 13 hours of work each day - my agency, Loyal Home Care, budgets eight hours of sleep and three hours for mealtimes into our wages. But I was basically working 24 hours a day. She was active, and I was worried she would fall, so I would watch her all day and night. This is a pretty common experience for health aides. The agency can deny our overtime, but you can't deny a patient. When they say, "Oh, I need a drink of water; I need to use the bathroom," how could you possibly say "no" to them? Bronx Day-Care Worker $31,000 $16,600 from day-care profits $14,400 from trainings and consulting Last year, I lost a lot of kids. I live in the Bronx, and a bunch of families in my neighborhood lost their child-care vouchers. We're talking about people who make as much as I do; most of the moms I work with are home health aides. They can't afford full-time child care. If I have 16 kids, I can pay myself for 40 hours of work. But last year, I didn't, and obviously I'm still doing the same amount of work. I've been running the day care out of my home for more than seven years. It's a profession I entered out of necessity and have stayed in out of passion. I pay for everything - food, cleaning supplies, toys - and we have to meet the same requirements as a large company in terms of paying for liability insurance, which can feel pointless in this industry. I mean, if something happens to one of my children, I lose my license. End of story."

It's all so clear

Trump practically admitted Tuesday he had no plan for evacuations—he didn’t even have a plan for the war itself.

Meanwhile, the State Department has pushed back on claims that it left Americans high and dry. trib.al/cCb3Ypm

Lol.

I guess I just don't remember the show that well.

What a great picture. Was that even in 'Get Smart'?