Esther Allen
@eallen.bsky.social
Translator, writer, CUNY prof, martiana. estherallen.com
At the @nychistory.bsky.social for the reenactment of the toppling of the statue of George III by New Yorkers who’d just listened to the Declaration of Independence. T minus 20. Historically accurate “getting pumped by listening to a drum and fife” is happening.
I'm proud to be on the Board of ALTA! This June we have a goal of 100 new / renewed / gifted memberships. Joining and supporting the ALTA community is one of the best investments in the literary arts you can make in these troubling times . Will you join ALTA by 6/30? tinyurl.com/4u83xd8s
ALTA
tinyurl.com
A detail I didn’t know: “The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz … who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.” share.inquirer.com/THMiUZ
Julie K. Brown receives Pulitzer Prize special citation for her work on Jeffrey Epstein case
Brown's 2017 and 2018 reporting was cited at the awards ceremony. “Her work, and the government’s release of the Epstein files, continue to reverberate around the world.”
share.inquirer.com
Pour one out for the Hilton staff who are working perhaps the worst shift in food service history rn.
Look, for my money the absolute game changer technologies right now are batteries and biosciences, not statistically modeling a mid conversation, but you do you.
What’s interesting here is they say “culture” when they mean “people” but they think that this maintains a veneer of deniability about what they’re really saying. In any case it’s true that the “culture” of the tech billionaires is morally and intellectually depraved rot bsky.app/profile/elio...
Eliot Higgins@eliothiggins.bsky.social · 6mo agoExtremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement
mamdani being a cheerful normal guy that people project absolute insane things on is one of the things that make him very relatable to me, personally
@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe fact that Mamdani just seems like a cheerful normal guy who's policies are things like "we're going to tax second homes to fund pothole repairs" or whatever and yet this generates panicked responses like "This is basically Stalin's great purge turned up to eleven" is... telling. It tells things.
i will vote for any candidate who offers up this slogan
András Tóth-Czifra@minczifra.bsky.social · 7mo agoPerhaps Magyar's most important promise, and the one that certainly resonates with voters: "never again a country without consequences!" The crowd chants: "To prison! To prison!" [with the corrupt officials of the outgoing government]
Friend snuck this photo last week on his commute. My life is complete now.
not only is this exciting — the lt. governor’s office should, uh, contact me — but it is a not so subtle way to claim some of virginia’s most potent historical symbols — its universities and the affiliated figures, like madison and jefferson and george mason — for the libs
Lt. Governor Ghazala Hashmi@ltgovhashmi.bsky.social · 7mo agoI’m thrilled to announce the launch of Literature & Government, or L&G with the LG, a lecture series engaging campuses across Virginia in thoughtful dialogue on democracy, leadership, and public life. Coming to a campus near you!
i said last year that these people were segregationists and that “merit” just meant “white and male” to these people
Bob Mann@robertmannbooks.com · 7mo agoGutter racism. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/u...
ah - the great @elizkolbert.bsky.social already wrote this up with incredible video here: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
The Astonishing Lessons of a Sperm-Whale Birth
In 2023, researchers witnessed a rare event—a sperm whale being born. Their findings suggest a previously unknown level of coöperation among whales.
newyorker.com
Philip Gourevitch@pgourevitch.bsky.social · 7mo agoBBC NewsHour just had a thrilling report on this case of sperm whales collectively assisting a birth — a scene like nothing observed before in species other than human — behavior most nearly described 175 yrs ago by Melville in The Grand Armada chapter of Moby Dick. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"Mother Tongue" by Osdany Morales, on @wwborders.bsky.social in my translation. It is about Italo Calvino. It is not about Italo Calvino. wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
Mother Tongue - Words Without Borders
With equal parts humor and pathos, Osdany Morales imagines an alternate life for the Cuban-born Italian writer Italo Calvino.
wordswithoutborders.org
I want to say that if this dragnet snags enough white people, we might finally get meaningful action. But I am pretty sure the elites have already called off even the pretense of caring about poor white people AND they’re actively making middle class white people poor. Sooooo…
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 8mo agoA 50-year-old woman “had never been on an airplane until authorities flew her to North Dakota last year to face charges” based solely on AI facial recognition.
Let me just say that having been there, the idea of being a Black woman in labor in America and having to go before a judge is terrorism.
ProPublica@propublica.org · 8mo agoNEW: They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. Two Florida women had to attend virtual court hearings while in labor to argue for their right to choose their own medical care. By @amyyurkanin.bsky.social
Ms Rachel talking to Deiver Henao, a 9yo in an immigration detention center www.instagram.com/reel/DVzUzoz... What a world
Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.
At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports
Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.
motherjones.com
I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.
I have two poems in the new @pnreview.bsky.social 288. One is a Propertius (via Grigory Dashevsky). You can read it here: www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/two-...
PN Review Print and Online Poetry Magazine - Two Poems - Sasha Dugdale - PN Review 288
One of the outstanding poetry journals of our time.
pnreview.co.uk
there are a lot of people working in the government right now who want to intentionally trigger an apocalypse to create the conditions for the return of jesus christ and I know how crazy that sounds but its absolutely true
Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.
Callers to Washington state hotline press 2 for Spanish and get accented AI English instead
Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.
bit.ly
📰 [TMR EDITORIAL TEAM] Meet Abdelrahman ElGendy, our new literary editor and author of forthcoming Huna (Penguin Random House, Sept 2026), exploring dissent and erasure in post-revolution Egypt. #TheMarkazReview #TMRteam #AbdelrahmanElGendy #SWANALit
Behind the scenes with Managing Editor Lara Vergnaud: Why #MotherTongue is our first bimonthly issue theme. Mother Tongue goes live in a week, on March 6th.
I keep saying to people in my life that the problem with writing in these days is that you sound absolutely off your nut for simply saying what is happening.
Latest Irish Times fiction in translation column is now online for subscribers. I have a couple of these in my TBR – lucky me, it seems. Translated fiction: books by Maria Stepanova, Édouard Louis, Anna Nerkagi, Michelle Steinbeck, Helle Helle and Pirkko Saisio www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
Translated fiction: books by Maria Stepanova, Édouard Louis, Anna Nerkagi, Michelle Steinbeck, Helle Helle and Pirkko Saisio
New books in translation from Russia, France, Switzerland, Norway and Finland
irishtimes.com
Current status of the fundraisers for those killed by ICE: Renee Good: $1,499,580 Alex Pretti: $1,289,249 Keith Porter, Jr. $302,423 Parady La: $45,848 Heber Sanchez Dominguez: $47,991 Luis Beltrán Yanez Cruz: $18,640 Victor Manuel Diaz: $2,538 Geraldo Lunas: $2,260 Luis Gustavo Núñez: $1,935