iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 56m

Wow, amazing how getting an email from your kid's teacher can make you feel all the absolutely-irrelevant-to-this-situation shame of having once been a rule-following child who never wanted to get into trouble yet still sometimes got into trouble due to bullying kids and weirdly aggressive teachers

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 22h

I think about this all the goddamn time as the parent of a (as far as we know right now) boy. He's in prime toddler mode and has a lot of trouble sharing and his emotions escalate so quickly, and it's hard, figuring out how to balance not squashing his big feelings with not giving giving into them.

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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Teach your son to wait. Teach him that other people are as important as he is. Teach him to apologize and go back to the end of the line if he made an entitled decision. Teach him that girls and women deserve respect in *all* scenarios—not just during sex.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The worst thing about traveling when you're a freelancer is that a) you have to work while doing it because you can't take time off and b) you somehow still end up not working as much as you would have at home and thus c) you still return home with a daunting pile of extra/delayed work ahead of you

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The Objective @objectivejournos.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"If a $1/word rate matched today’s inflation, the average writer should be making about $2/word. But — according to our data — they aren’t." @fspnwu.bsky.social members jen byers and Elena Novak analyze data from the project's Rate Sharing Database. buff.ly/g7wyXFU

buff.ly

Freelance journalism rates have barely changed since 2000

New data from the National Writers Union offers a glimpse into a bleak picture of decades-long wage stagnation in freelance journalism.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

About to do a six hour flight with our toddler, wish us luck

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

For @goodtape.com, I reviewed "The Corridor," the latest season of @thresholdpodcast.bsky.social - it's a fascinating listen that I highly recommend, and it was such a pleasure to work my critical skills around a medium I've been engaging with for nearly two decades: goodtape.com/magazine/the...

goodtape.com

'The Corridor'

This evocative series meets a nuanced subject with equal depth.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Connecticut is just littered with houses that look like they belong to Mortimer Goth

A red brick house with a huge lawn and several cars as well as a boat parked in its circular front driveway

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Okay - googling shit is literally getting so useless right now. Bluesky pals, if you have good sources on the false promises of AI and how funding for these companies is basically all dream-based, please share them here?

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I need @mcsweeneys.net to start a running tally of all the things techbros promise/claim AI will/can do the way they have a running list of Trump cruelties

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

For @altajournal.bsky.social, I'm thrilled to have reviewed the inimitable @susanstryker.bsky.social's new book, CHANGING GENDER. It's fantastic and fascinating and she is an incredibly generous thinker and scholar: www.altaonline.com/books/nonfic...

altaonline.com

Gender Epiphany

Historian and activist Susan Stryker traces the evolution of gender as a concept.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Just read my child a Star Trek alphabet book because my partner and his family are indoctrinating this kid young lol. He already knows how to differentiate different Enterprises, Romulan warbirds, Klingon birds of prey, and the Defiant XD

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Don’t believe people who tell you ai can be liberatory or any other misappropriation of movement talk or justice frameworks. Find some people who are preparing to rebuild and cast your lot with them. Then read a bit more. Just keep your wits about you because they are trying to run game.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Leaving my kid overnight for the first time ever to go to Provincetown Book Festival, please send good vibes, I'm weirdly scared shitless. (That I'm writing another book about a dead parent is probably heightening these anxieties. Whoops.)

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I want to go to the Provincetown book festival someday. Probably not this weekend, what with being in Minnesota

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If any of y'all are on or near Cape Cod and want to brave the weather like us intrepid panelists, please come hang out at the Provincetown Book Festival this Saturday!!!

Event poster that reads:

All Fiction is Speculative
'Pemi Aguda, One Leg on Earth
Ilana Masad, Beings
Jordy Rosenberg, Night Night Fawn
with moderator Santiago Sanchez
September 26th at 12:30pm

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Bigfoot should absolutely be allowed to vote, but they've obviously been purged from the voting roles

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

...gonna be a bit mushy and share what I wrote on IG about this day: One year ago today, BEINGS was published. In an uncountable number of ways, it's been a better experience than I could have ever imagined.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

*sobbing* Today is, indeed, the one year pubaversary (the publiversary?) of BEINGS, a book I worked on for so long, did so much research for, rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, and which I am so immensely proud of. I'd be so grateful if you told your friends about it <3 bookshop.org/a/20948/9781...

bookshop.org

Beings: A Novel

Winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction“The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Ilana Masad excavates the juicine...

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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

For my newsletter I wrote about a dystopian novel and a nonfiction treatise on the state of America in this political moment and surprise! They both share many, many similar themes. www.themarisreview.com/the-maris-re...

themarisreview.com

The Maris Review, vol 123

The theme of the week is one super chill question: who will you be when America descends into chaos? What I read this week Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel I love how in her four most recent bo...

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

altaonline.com

Gender Epiphany

Historian and activist Susan Stryker traces the evolution of gender as a concept.

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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 22/09/2026

TODAY: New speculative fiction from @annaleen.bsky.social. flaminghydra.com/issue-652/ "Something weird started to happen to me as I began research for my final chapter, on medical drawings of the vagina."

flaminghydra.com

Missing button

New speculative fiction from Annalee Newitz

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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's Monday. Please enjoy this short story about a graduate student whose clitoris disappears after the Second Comstock Laws go into effect.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I have a LOT of these, but from the last few years: Meet Us By The Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy Before All the World by Moriel Rothman-Zecher Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe All were well received but did not, IMHO, get anywhere near the attention or fawning accolades they deserved.

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Marty Cahill @mcflycahill90.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What's a book you love with all your goddamn heart that you believe did NOT get the love and attention it's due? I'll go first, and it's abso-LUT-ely THE CITY IN GLASS by Nghi Vo. There are moments from that book that live in my blood and wake me from the dark.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My toddler is sleeping between my partner and me this week while we visit my in-laws and between the two of us we're nursing bruised cheek, nose, belly, and balls. I don't know how little ones can fold in half like that and still have so much strength in their little feet, but OW.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I need more of you to read this and subscribe to @flaminghydra.com so that a) I can look good to all the incredible media celebs I'm somehow sharing space with there and b) so I can have more incentive to keep writing about unhinged children's lit (and also other things, obvi)

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

WOW, JetBlue is now basically auctioning off upgrades? Like they say you can "offer" how much you're willing to pay per passenger for an upgrade. Bizarre. We live in the most ridiculous, greediest timeline.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Some people really love BEINGS, you might too ^_^

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Shot my shot for a Narratively column about a topic that I'd actually really fucking love to write about, wish me luck

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

At my in-laws' in CT and got the afternoon off from family obligations and took a walk and passed a little free library and picked up M is for Malice by Sue Grafton. Never ever read her but I do enjoy a mystery and I'm very much enjoying the spiky narrator in these first few pages.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I blurbed Josie's new book and you know it's serious because I have also been hand-selling it to: a) people in my neighborhood who saw me reading it and b) friends on Instagram posting a Tom Cruise quote about him being intense because this book showed me why he is how he is

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Josephine beckbook.com Riesman @josie.zone · 18/09/2026

Thank you so much to @ilanaslightly.bsky.social for the wonderful blurb!!!!!

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It is never a good idea to share a personal hygiene revelation on the internet

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

RFK Jr, JKR, a lot of really cursed R and K initials happening out here these days

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I can't seem to reply to this, Eileen, sorry, but thank you for alerting me, this is so bananas. What I hate most is knowing that I have family that will earnestly read this and not see the issue with it because they're so primed to simply reject all criticism of Israel. It's infuriating.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

What. the actual. fuck. This is...not how you do criticism. You can critique an online discourse, but you cannot fucking claim to be critiquing the film the online discourse is coming from without WATCHING IT?! What are we doing here people!!!

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The number of jobs I've applied to, the number of accounts I've created in WorkFlow or Greenhouse or whatthefuckingever the many databases are called, the number of times I've heard absolute bupkis after doing it... Truly, I don't understand how economists sit there and say things are looking good

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Raven of @theravenof.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

oh i need to get this for my son bunnies AND buses??

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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 14/09/2026

TODAY: @ilanaslightly.bsky.social with a close reading of the rich, bonkers BUNNIES ON THE BUS. "We’ve already seen them jumping around, grinning maniacally, tossing carrots and balloons into the air inside the bus, but now they are beginning to endanger others." flaminghydra.com/text-and-sub...

flaminghydra.com

Text and Subtext in ‘Bunnies on the Bus’

Philip Ardagh’s Bunnies on the Bus, illustrated by Ben Mantle, is one of the most bonkers children’s books I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. The tale begins on a sunny summer day in Sunny ...

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I am proud to present my ACAB analysis of the modern children's book classic BUNNIES ON THE BUS! flaminghydra.com/text-and-sub... (TL;DR: This is where I start teaching my kid that the police protect property, not people :))

flaminghydra.com

Text and Subtext in ‘Bunnies on the Bus’

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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 14/09/2026

ALSO TODAY: @brianhioe.bsky.social encounters new scams overtaking Taiwanese society. "I told her that she was preying on the insecurities of older people, in particular, and that she should feel ashamed of herself as a member of the medical profession." flaminghydra.com/scams-with-f...

flaminghydra.com

Scams with Fangs

The scary thing about getting older is that your parents do, too. As they get older, you might see them become more and more paranoid about their health—and yours, too. Those fears can leave them vuln...

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

flaminghydra.com

Text and Subtext in ‘Bunnies on the Bus’

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

...pretty sure it started months ago when she tried to censor that story

Breaking news: The Bari Weiss era of “60 Minutes” begins

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You know it's a bad migraine when your cat's purr makes it worse rather than better

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Update - it was a scam but I forwarded it to the actual Peter who wrote back very kindly and said that I should know for the future (and thus I'm sharing with y'all too) that if an email from him doesn't include some profanity it's likely fake 😂

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The great Kate Elliott has said so and so I must remind Bluesky that my novel, BEINGS, won a Lambda Literary Award and is available at your local library (and if it's not, request it and it will be), and your local indie bookstore (ditto) and on Bookshop and on Librofm bookshop.org/a/20948/9781...

bookshop.org

Beings: A Novel

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

...do any writers/editors in the SF world I know know the Canadian writer Peter Watts because I got an email allegedly from him that is not scammy and *seems* like it could be legit but also he has very little digital footprint so I'm wondering if it's one of those weird opening gambits for a scam

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