iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 8h

Wait did you see her Hamlet, IT WAS SO GOOD

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Todd Dillard @toddedillard.bsky.social · 8h

remember how we’d Halloween-ify our Twitter handles, back when there was joy and groceries

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 9h

but then again is there anywhere in California where one could live without financially scrambling as a creative person who is, according to the number of jobs I've applied to, apparently unemployable?

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 9h

Want to stay in LA but also want to feel like I'm not financially scrambling every day of my life and apparently you can't have both

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14h

So well said. I am so angry about this all the time.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14h

YES. I am sick of hearing that the economy is "good" or whatever when prices are so fucking high and rising, and 38% of the American workforce is fucking FREELANCING (which includes contract work and gig work - source: www.wicpa.org/news/6ab6e96...) and thus also DO NOT HAVE BENEFITS

wicpa.org

38% of US workers earn money from gig work, study finds - Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants

A recent study found that 64 million Americans now work as freelancers, accounting for 38% of the U.S. workforce.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 14h

Finished my semi-annual read of Little Women last night and I can't get over how much that book changes for me every single time I read it <3 <3 <3

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Maria BOO!stillos @mariabustillos.com · 15h

How @annaleen.bsky.social transcended the trauma of getting a Ph.D. to become a brilliant science / fiction writer. Scary, inspiring, ack!, #yay and more. flaminghydra.com/issue-663/ AND today we celebrate their pub day, of the new novel A WALL IS ALSO A ROAD bookshop.org/a/126284/978...

photo illustration by Joe MacLeod:
An illustration of a brain going into a meat grinder and there's a diploma coming out and it has spraypainted broken-hearts on it

Trippy outer-space / weird cell forms / mosaic cover of Annalee Newitz's new novel, A WALL IS ALSO A ROAD

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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 05/10/2026

TODAY: @zachrabiroff.com in conversation with the artist Dave McKean on the current and coming horrors of AI in art. "We’re entering a world of insanity. And I mean that quite literally. We’re not going to be able to discern what is real and what is not real." flaminghydra.com/issue-662/#a...

flaminghydra.com

Culture warrior

Dave McKean and Zach Rabiroff on the gathering storm in AI, art, and ethics

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Having a debilitating migraine that makes you throw up three times is quite something, you just lose a whole day somehow, like you're sick, except you have no outward symptoms unless you're vomiting, no fever, no visual signs of bodily dysfunction. It's so strange.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Omg what an empathetic child you must have been!!!

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

lol I am told that the hyenas' shrieking laugh in The Lion King freaked me out so much that I had to be taken out of the movie theater

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The academic urge to tell someone about your book that's in their field vs. the writerly urge not to embarrass yourself

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Like the only people I see engaging with this discourse online are women and mothers and birthing parents and while of course we are absolutely responsible for our children, if we have partners who are men or if our boy children have other men in their life, those people are also responsible :)

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

It would be nice if in the discourse around raising better sons we talked about dads' responsibility too 🙃

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Colin McGowan @csmcgowan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I like that Hydra publishes a wide variety of stuff, including work from a few really talented cartoonists and illustrators. @mkupperman.bsky.social's latest is a good gag. flaminghydra.com/issue-661/#t...

flaminghydra.com

Exquisite corpse / Science friction

Little-known history revealed by Michael Kupperman; a Nobel-winning biologist had the answer in 1969, says Maria Bustillos

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Maria BOO!stillos @mariabustillos.com · 01/10/2026

did you know that @katewagner.wehwalt.net writes wonderful and quite scary short fiction (that would be so great as a film)?? she does you can read it at @flaminghydra.com

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Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com · 01/10/2026

TODAY: @katewagner.wehwalt.net with new fiction. “John closed his eyes and could see in the orange fields of his eyelids a parade of white shapes and tessellations. He wondered, in his ragged anxiety, whether these were illusions and whether he was really seeing them.” flaminghydra.com/the-episode/

flaminghydra.com

The Episode

One day in springtime John couldn’t stop talking and the blue of the sky seemed as audible to him as the peal of a bell, and as he walked the long Elysian fields of campus he began to laugh, at the th...

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Maria BOO!stillos @mariabustillos.com · 01/10/2026

Sociopolitical aspects of wild potato chip flavors considered by the inimitable (and omnivorous) @brianhioe.bsky.social READ IT you will NOT regret flaminghydra.com/issue-660/

Joe MacLeod photo illustration of wild snack foods (beer flavored Lay's, 'spicy crispy squid snack hot roast chicken flavor' and century egg Doritos) on a ground of Pizza Hut mochi pizza in turtle shape

Yes, but the question I find myself asking is: could Baudrillard have anticipated chicken-flavored squid? Or would that have been something even beyond Baudrillard’s imagination? I know literally nothing about the man except the one book, but if only Baudrillard had lived to experience Japanese chicken-flavored squid snacks in the year 2026. I’m sure you would have enjoyed it, Jean Baudrillard.

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It should be illegal for there to be a heatwave in October on this hemisphere

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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 · 30/09/2026

omg congratulations!!! This is so great!

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Are you interested in books coverage of science-related nonfiction?

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Incredible, truly incredible how stupid these people are

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

wait is that casting implying that it's Heated Rivalry but...straight?

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Oh I know, it's totally developmentally appropriate, I'm aware, and I also know that people tend to anecdotally share that girls even this young (and I've seen it too) seem to be "better behaved" in public, and that gives me pause too. Like what are girls being taught this young?

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Ilana Masad @ilanaslightly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

Thank you for your service on all counts, Emily!!

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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

Who are we casting as fuzzy wuzzy

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

I'd watch the shit out of this prestige TV show

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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

P.S. if anyone has any feelings about driving on Cape Cod during a high wind warning, please let me know, I'm terrified but I'm going to have to do it :)

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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 · 24/09/2026

The LAX People Mover is Los Angeles's private Jetsons' flying cars

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

Ah shoot, I also got one of these and actually emailed the con to check in about this. What a bummer!

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

I'm so glad I got it on your radar! This is exactly the thing, I feel like the word of mouth stuff hasn't been happening as much as I'd hoped it would - so very glad we crossed paths here and that you saw this ^_^

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