iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 30/04/2026

You can tell I’m getting ready to launch “Meg Tries to Launch Digital Writing Career 2.0” because I’m starting to fight in Reddit comments under my own name. (The OP was about how Denver restaurateur Johnny Curiel appears to be MAGA adjacent, based on his wife/business partner’s social media)

han-so-low commented, “Food is political? How the fuck do you draw that conclusion? Food is cultural. Food is a way for people to connect despite differences. Food is nourishing. Everything doesn't have to be political.

MegConley replied, “ Whatever one thinks of IG stalking restaurant owners...l gott say...food is absolutely political. In a nation-state, culture cannot be separated from politics. Connecting with people over food despite acknowledged differences is a political act. Who gets nourished, and who does ~not, are pretty much the questions at the center of Politics.”

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 13/04/2026

I get this is just an AI image generated by an imprecise prompt but also what the fuck

Detail of the Trump as Jesus AI image. The detail appears to show soldier angels in a ring of light and clouds surrounding a cyborg type creature with three horns

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 02/04/2026

"The photos where you have hair are the old mom. I need some photos of you and me like you are now!" - my 8 yo daughter www.instagram.com/p/DWmwhRHDgS...

My eight year old daughter stands in front of me, smiling into a dressing room mirror. I am behind her, taking the photo.

"The photos where you have hair are the old mom. I need some photos of you and me like you are now!" - Brontë

Kids always cut right through the bullshit, don't they?

Wherever this cancer journey leads, I'm not going to get to be the same person I was before it started. This is sad, but also okay. Change is proof of life.

I'm trying to take more photos to fulfill her request. Like this one in a Hollister while her sister tried on shirts today. (Hollister?! Still exists? I thought it was left behind somewhere in the 2002? We lost Franklin Mint stores but held onto Hollister? Booooooo)

Also how great is Bronte's Olivia Rodrigo tshirt? 8 years old and already so much cooler than me.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 06/03/2026

I turned 41 last Friday. I'm in chemo every Friday. The nurses gave me a very kind birthday card. Several of them wrote that I am one of their favorite patients. This THRILLED me. Yes, the teacher’s pet energy stays with some of us forever, in sickness and health. www.instagram.com/p/DVjGzeYDse...

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 06/03/2026

www.pocketobservatory.org/raising-daug...

And so even as I explain the broken world to them, I try to help us remember what Mariame Kaba taught me - that “hope is a discipline.” Hope is a work performed in community. I try to help them see the people doing that work. I try to help us understand how we can join in on it too. When we practice hope, we expand the potentialities of our collective present and future. Children have a better understanding of this than most adults. My 8 year old was demonstrating her understanding when she made anti-ICE flyers while sitting next to her sick, sleeping mama.
We’ll post the evidence of her hope around the neighborhood as soon as I feel well enough for a little walk.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 06/03/2026

www.pocketobservatory.org/raising-daug...

nodded in agreement. Of course, she is very little too. And the achingest part of myself wails that 8 is not old enough to know that ICE kidnaps people and kills witnesses. But some of those kidnapped people are children younger than my daughter. Those witnesses were doing some of the same work her own mother does. ICE is in our city. The people who should protect us from living in a country plagued by secret police- our representatives and senators - have allowed Trump’s regime to inflict ICE on our communities. They’ve decided my daughter is not too young to be exposed to ICE. And so when she asked what happened to Renee Good, I told her. And when she wanted to know why a little boy in a blue hat was all over the news, I told her that too.
We’ve had a lot of difficult conversations since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I
try to frame the conversations with her age in mind. But there’s really nothing age appropriate about being a child who is afraid her mother will die and her neighbors will be kidnapped. She is simply too little. All of my daughters feel too little. The achingest part of myself wails that I am too little too.
But here we are.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 06/03/2026

Sharing the short piece here in the next three posts. My feelings won’t be hurt if you just skip to the last image for the Mariame Kaba quote! That’s the best bit anyways. www.pocketobservatory.org/raising-daug...

few of the anti-ICE signs my eight year old made while I took a chemo fatigue nap next to her on the couch. When I woke up, she presented them to me very seriously. She wants to hang them around the neighborhood.
The signs say “Stop ICE,” “Stop Trump!” and “Why are we paying ICE to be f____ing idiots?! They are killing lives!”

That last one with the “f___ing” made me laugh a little. We don’t really believe in “bad words” in this house, but we have helped our kids avoid routine cursing as a nod to societal norms. A few months ago, my eight year old was having big angry feelings that just needed big angry words. We told her she can curse about two things that give her the biggest feelings without ever getting in trouble - my fucking cancer and fucking Donald Trump’s regime. She usually makes great use of this dispensation. So I was surprised she censored “fucking” in her sign. She told me she bleeped it because “little kids go on walks in this neighborhood and they might not be old enough to know bad words.”

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 03/03/2026

A couple of the anti-ICE signs my 8 year old made yesterday while I took a chemo fatigue nap. She wants to hang them around the neighborhood as soon as I feel well enough to walk around with her.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 03/03/2026

Me, listening to a story about a guy who insists the scope of fatherhood does not include care work. My 17 yo took the 📸. I can’t stop laughing about it. Also that look sums up my feelings about (waves hands around the United States of America) so many men. www.instagram.com/p/DVZW8-skZ4...

A picture of me sitting in a chair, bald from chemo, wearing pajamas. My sheepadoodle sitting on my lap. A very disgusted look on my face.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 04/02/2026

In this same conversation, Epstein says he wants to publish a defense of himself in "the cyber world" to give accused men language to defend themselves, is looking into AI's potential + wonders if language is a transmitter that organizes culture. Not hard to see where he was going with this.

On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 10:41 AM J <jeevacation@gmail.com> wrote:
As the stories get wilder and the writers make the girls younger. prostitution is a tabloid s dream ,
. I wondered if having something out in the cyber world that let some people point to rational
arguments might allow some to defend themselves from their wives . " how could you " etc.
I have been exploring the AI world with the cutting edge people. I remind them of your comments
re machines thinking :)/ I thought that culture was the conciousness of a society. tribes were
like self. . media approx transmitters. . It provided constraints and rules for some underlying
interactions.
It doesnt exist in a physical sense but either does conciousness. which it appears to me as an
evolutionary advantage and provides the brain with rules memories. ( culture again ) . and
constraints. . tribes when attacked , act like a self . . compete like selves. etc. The world we call
physical . follows rules that we have created, most unknowingly. I assume language acts like an
effective transmittier. . some language like adrenaline. some like dopamine. . do some extent the
hormones of the culture. ?

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 13/01/2026

I've owed my agent a memoir proposal for LITERAL YEARS. So my kids keep joking that I got cancer so I could finally write that forking book. When they gave me this hat, I laughed so hard I started hiccuping. Dark humor is our love language. DO IT FOR THE PLOT! www.instagram.com/reel/DTdZm2Z...

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 23/12/2025

I thanked her sincerely and left a very good tip. Because I’m a lady. www.instagram.com/reel/DSm10ZN...

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 05/11/2025

You can also listen to the piece right on my site! And yes, it's about a post mastectomy crash out? But there are also some funny parts! www.pocketobservatory.org/its-babys-fi...

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 29/10/2025

This piece about my breast cancer diagnosis was published this morning right before I went in for a bilateral mastectomy. Sharing it now from my post-op bed. (Everything hurts. I’ve decided to treat the pain as proof of life.) www.pocketobservatory.org/i-have-breas...

So Come On, I Can Take it, Give Me Everything You've Got

This morning, I go in for a bilateral mastectomy. A doctor will remove all my breast tissue. She will cut away both my nipples and lymph nodes connected to my left breast. Another doctor will line my breast skin with a matrix woven of cadaver skin, she will sew in tissue expanders. I think of them working over me, cutting and stitching, and I thank god for women’s work. Six weeks later, I’ll start an AC-T chemotherapy regimen, a dose of chemotherapy every two weeks for twenty weeks.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 12/09/2025

Pepe meme / Accused Charlie Kirk shooter dressed as Pepe meme

Pepe the frog, depressed, in adidas suit. A far-right meme

Facebook post by mom of accused Charlie Kirk shooter. Contains photo of shooter dressed as a Pepe meme for Halloween. Caption reads, “…since these weirdos ditched me! Tyler is some guy from a meme, Austin is the crazy end of the world homeless guy, and Logan is a fancy skeleton. #mykidsareweird #happyhalloween #boymom”

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 08/09/2025

“You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100 percent but we are.” 19thnews.org/2025/09/trum... via @19thnews.org

President Donald Trump on Monday downplayed the severity of domestic violence crimes, saying that were it not for “things that take place in the home they call crime,” the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., would have resulted in a bigger statistical reduction in crime.
“They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ I said, no, no, no — it’s more than 87 percent, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100 percent but we are. We are a safe city,” Trump said.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 24/08/2025

Hey @radiofreetom.bsky.social 👋 I agree “Patriarchy” is a construct we should totally toss! But it’s slightly older than you seem to think! And it’s currently the organizing principle of the GOP. Let’s destroy patriarchy so that we can like totally stop talking about it! You’re right, it’s yucky!

patriarchy(n.)
1560s, "ecclesiastical province under a patriarch; church government by patriarchs," from Latinized form of Greek patriarkhia, from patriarkhēs "male chief or head of a family" (see patriarch). Meaning "system of society or government by fathers or elder males of the community" is recorded from 1630s.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 25/07/2025

Husband just gave me a Switch 2 for our 19th anniversary and gosh damn. Despite all my misgivings about the value of being known by ~anyone…I gotta admit, it’s nice to be known by ~someone. 🎶 Gaming consoles are a girl’s best friend 🎶

Marilyn Monroe performing “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” She’s wearing a luscious magenta dress and lots of diamonds. She’s surrounded by leering men on a red stage.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/06/2025

Trump reposting “Fordow is gone” feels like the run up to this moment in Independence Day. Total destruction declared before the dust clears. And then, “The target remains. I repeat. The target remains.” (Except in this version, the US is the horde of parasites AND the bomb droppers. Not good!)

A scene from the movie Independence Day. The US nuked the invading aliens, declared the bombing a success, then realized it hadn’t touched the spaceship.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 24/05/2025

I’m obsessed with American butter wrappers! Standard size is 8 tablespoons. Such helpful little bits of wax paper with their little measurements. Impeccable unfussy design. I keep meaning to get a painting of them. Something like this www.etsy.com/listing/1573...

A painting of a butter stick showing measure labels.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 17/05/2025

Digital ephemera created with 1888 trade card from the “Birds of America” series, a quote from a 16th century emblem, "'In simulchram Spei" (The picture of Hope), and a hand drawn font from Beth Mathews. Get the free download and read my latest Pocket Note. www.pocketobservatory.org/hope-is-not-...

digital ephemera was created with a trade card from the “Birds of America” series (N4), issued in 1888, a quote from a 16th century emblem, "In simulchram Spei" (The picture of hope), and a hand drawn font from Beth Mathews. It features a card with a picture of a crow on a tree. And a vintage label that says, "A Crow, The faithful prophet. When it cannot say, 'all's well,' It says, 'All shall be well."

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 15/05/2025

Please tell me you get the "not a classic anecdote" reference! That line from Notting Hill echoes in my head every time I tell a story like this. By the end, I always hear Hugh Grant's voice in my head, "It's not a classic anecdote, is it?" www.instagram.com/reel/DJrfw3J...

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 03/05/2025

Such a breach of fair dealing from Newton and then Roose! Anne Leckie was right AND she wasn’t talking to Newton. He decided to post ~about her with a screenshot. ~He was wrong. His replies are full of people - who use AI - explaining why he’s wrong. And yet! bsky.app/profile/pock...

A screenshot of the thread linked in this post

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 01/05/2025

Me, to the lemon balm smothering my little garden

An image of the demi Lovato "Get a job" "Stay away from her" meme. here is an explanation of the meme courtesy of Know Your Meme, "On or around April 8th, 2016, Demi Lovato posted and deleted a series of comments on one of Instagram user StalkerSarah's posts. StalkerSarah is known for posting photos with celebrities and has posted photos with Lovato several times. It is unclear which post Lovato commented on, although it may have been a photo of StalkerSarah with Lovato's sister, Madison de La Garza, who Sarah was reportedly seen with around the time.
The most notable comments left on the post read, "GET A JOB" and "STAY AWAY FROM HER"

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 28/04/2025

some toggle headings in my notes on Veblen lol. I always go through and clean up my toggle titles after I've finished my notes. but also??? maybe these will do this time

Image of three toggle headings. One reads "I HATE YOU VEBLEN." Another reads, "EAT GLASS VEBLEN. Much of the "waste" you decry also gives us TIME. TIME TO BE WITH THOSE WE LOVE. TIME TO CARE FOR ONE ANOTHER." And the third reads, "VEBLEN YOU FASCIST. This is how the wealthy STILL judge consumer choices made by people with lower-incomes. My god."

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 26/04/2025

You better believe I ~immediately~ sent my brother-in-laws a screenshot of @sethpartnow.bsky.social sharing my work. They think I am very cool now. It only took 18 years.

A screenshot of Seth Partnow’s Bluesky account reposting the essay this post is quoting (phew!)

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/04/2025

Kent Monkman's 'History is Painted by the Victors' is at the Denver Art Museum through August 17, 2025. It's included in general admission - which is very reasonable - and kids 18 and under are always free. www.denverartmuseum.org/en/exhibitio...

An image of the Denver Art Museum thumbnail for the History is Painted by the Victors exhibit.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/04/2025

www.pocketobservatory.org/i-went-to-an...

I know that sounds scary. But your kid will be all right. The thing is, many children do not go to an art exhibit to learn about family separation and other kinds of state violence. They learn about state violence through their own life experiences. Asking your child to look at a few paintings is not asking too much of them or yourself.
Anyway, I am not here to tell you what to do one way or another. But I think you should go in. So I guess I am here to tell you what to do.
The woman who took our tickets was more succinct. After her pause she just said, “...not everyone notices the sign.”

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/04/2025

www.pocketobservatory.org/i-went-to-an...

Can I ask you to consider that there are other possible realities? And that art can help us consider them? And once we consider them we can construct them?
Here is just one example: Kent Monkman paints historical interventions like The Deluge, a piece where children who were once swept away by church and state atrocities are now rescued. When you sit in front of The Deluge, you’re witnessing a reality framed by the protection of Indigenous children. How can your child help construct that reality if they've never considered it? How can they consider it without art like this?
Of course, this is very difficult to convey to a child. I know that. A child looking at a painting like The Deluge will want to know if the children were really rescued. And you’ll have to tell them that some were rescued, but many weren’t. You’ll have to explain that people died trying to rescue the children. You’ll have to tell your child about state violence. You’ll have to tell them that state violence is still used against Indigenous people, including children. You will have to help them see things as they are now.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/04/2025

www.pocketobservatory.org/i-went-to-an...

A woman standing at the door took our tickets. She looked down at my seven-year-old daughter. And then gestured to the words written across the glass doors to the exhibit,
This exhibition contains depictions of violence and nudity. Parents and guardians may want to preview.
"I just wanted you to be aware there are depictions of violence and nudity. I am not at all telling you not to take her in there. I just needed to make sure you knew because …”
She paused. And here I knew I could never do her job. Because every time a family with a seven-year-old came into the line, instead of pausing I’d start talking a little too quickly,
...because I don’t know what your child can handle. But also no one asked Indigenous children if they could handle being abducted from their families. And whether your child sees this artwork or not, they are living in a reality framed by the attempted genocide of Indigenous Peoples of North America. You want to keep your child from seeing representations of the violence that built their world. Why? Is the answer worthy of you, of your child?

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 22/04/2025

Monkman depicts the abhorrent nature of state violence. Meanwhile, the United States government targets children with propaganda that glorifies state violence. I link to this recent example shared by @paleofuture.bsky.social in the note. www.pocketobservatory.org/i-went-to-an...

A Bluesky post shared by @paleofuture.bsky.social. It's a photo of Trump baring his teeth while holding a card. He's surrounded by children. The caption description reads, "U.S. President Donald Trump holds a collectors card depicting the assassination attempt during the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 21, 2025 in Washington,
DC."

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 14/04/2025

It mirrors the way Nazis insisted their people - especially the women they expected to use for breeding the “Aryan race” - approached food. Lots of purity tests and pseudoscience. But when you explain the history, they usually dig in. People have forgotten the relief of being wrong!

A regency (ish) era illustration of a woman looking over her shoulder. With the words, “Have you never known the relief and joy of being wrong? I pity you.” written above her head. The words are a play on a quote from Emma, “Have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you.”

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 11/04/2025

We're like 3 weeks away from living in The Night Market episode from What We Do in the Shadows. "Sadly, we have no one form of currency between us all. So we have to rely on the old ways AKA the bartering system. Lots of people usually end up dead."

A still from the Night Market episode, with Nadja shrugging her shoulders in the night market.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 11/04/2025

The anti-tattoo hysteria coming from State Department and SCOTUS is obviously a cover story for rank racism. But it's also an insanely implausible cover story? Every basic bitch millennial has a tattoo! Including me! (Video of the process is v soothing btw www.instagram.com/reel/Cgz4Er5...)

A engraving inspired tattoo of a bean plant on a woman's inner arm

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 04/04/2025

Saw this little guy on a Fiordland hike. It’s toxic. And invasive in the Southern Hemisphere. But it’s also very cute. And can induce synesthesia, if it doesn’t kill you. (Or maybe ~before it kills you?) So. It’s complicated. Anyways. Look at this little guy.

Amanita muscaria mushroom, red cap with white spots, growing on forest floor in front of a log.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 03/04/2025

I immediately sent this screenshot to my brother-in-law, a professor who researches sustainable sheep production. He is going to finally FINALLY think I am cool. Thanks @themerl.bsky.social

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) followed you back

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 02/04/2025

✨I’m your huckleberry✨ was my senior quote. Pretty much the only thing from my teen years that isn’t excruciatingly mortifying.

High school senior yearbook photo of Meg Conley. Her hair is somehow both frizzy and crunchy. She is wearing a rented red grad gown. “I’m your Huckleberry” is written below her name.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 29/03/2025

I’m in New Zealand visiting family. Here’s a pocket note about botanic gardens, colonization and nephews who show us the way. www.pocketobservatory.org/people-keep-...

Meg Conley in a green sweater sitting on a rock overlooking a blue river.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 20/03/2025

Authoritarian regimes can’t justify their claims in an information-abundant environment. Information enclosure must precede systemic dispossession. So I've started a not-for-profit information regeneration project with a Creative Commons license. www.pocketobservatory.org/dear-observe...

The cover page of the Pocket Observation curriculum. It reads Pocket Observation: An Attention Reclamation project

The back cover of the curriculum. It features a quote from Octavia E Butler, "There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns."

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 17/03/2025

Spend this St Patrick’s Day sorting through the states least likely to celebrate the federal government whisking you away in the middle of the night for thought crimes while wondering what could have been if your Irish ancestors had simply not gotten on that boat!

The Twelve Pins, Connemara

A painting of the mountain range by Letitia Marion Hamilton (1878–1964)

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 16/03/2025

I purchased Careless People because @roxanegay.bsky.social wrote a thread about it yesterday. I’m sitting in a pile of unfolded laundry* reading it and oh my god. *I planned to fold it, but then I started reading and well

A photo of my arm extended, holding out Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Laundry dots the background.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 16/03/2025

One of 17 free downloads coming to my site this week

Black and white poster that says Buy a Tesla, Fund a Nazi with a photo of Musk giving the Nazi salute in the right hand corner.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 14/03/2025

Bow to the Senators of Slime! The Senators of Filth! The Senators of Putrescence! Boo! Boo! Rubbish! Filth! Slime! Muck! Boo! Boo! Boo!

An image of the ancient booer from Princess Bride

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 12/03/2025

Sneak peek at the free-for-all knowledge sharing project I am launching this weekend. It's taken 3 months and every last dime of the money I earned from writing last year. So anxious I could cry. But also, once it launches I'll be able to sleep. So that will probably help with the crying part.

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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 11/03/2025

1939 WPA poster reworked for Trump’s Trade War.

1939 WPA poster of a fruit stand reworked for today’s Poster in Chief. “Save America! Protect our food supply. Elon Musk and Donald Trump don’t care if you can afford fruit. Call your representatives and tell them to save America from Trump’s Trade War.”

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