elizabeth van den essen
@espressolizzo
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insights pro on a break; writer in tiny increments. #vss365. small, concentrated, pressure-made, bittersweet. bean/caffeine
Joined August 2021
My #vssChristmas prompts… turned into a #histfic #mmromance #lbgtq #writing thread. 25 tiny chapters, HFN end. If you have peeps who'd like this, I’ve no issue with Q/RTs. The thread ended today but their story will continue, somewhere. I love these two, hope you do too.
I rationed the visits. Like sweets. Or medicine. I was-- seemly. Yule was fit reason, surely? To offer season’s #greetings. To see how he was faring. And to torment myself with the heart-stopping beauty of the man. I calmed my breath & laid my knuckles on the wood. #vssChristmas
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I tell people I'll pray for them because prayer is invisible and costs me nothing, but honestly they need me to sit in their hospital room smelling their fear, they need me to bring groceries when their pride is too broken to ask, they need my body not my thoughts, my time not my
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Nice exploration of how metrics can lead to gaming the systems they measure, with a focus on US public education @kylefarnworth as I read it I confess I thought of you!
One way to think about AI's unwelcome intrusion into our lives can be summed up with Godhardt's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure": https://t.co/iHfCCpwPU1 1/
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I have an opportunity available for an author who is in central Florida. I signed up for a booth at the Page and Pen festival in March, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, I will not be able to attend. I can, however, give my booth to someone else (there is a wait list
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politics is possession. watch someone get infected with ideology. eyes change. voice changes. start speaking in someone else's words. possessed people think their thoughts are their own. but they're just channels now. left right doesn't matter. same possession different demons
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My Belgian husband is two drinks into the evening and we have just cleared up his linguistic confusion on the difference between a tater tot and a teeter-totter
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“Some things only exist when you stop trying to see them” ❤️
We close our eyes when we kiss because some things are too real to watch. Too close to survive seeing. Same reason I shut my eyes when pain hits hard. When I remember faces that won't come back. The big moments can't be stared down directly. They burn through you instead. I used
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“I 100% got all this - but the dinosaur bit was overkill” Not quite, bro. Mid 19th c, dinosaurs captured the English imagination. Megalosaurus scientific/religious discourse starting in the 1820s was big Dickens is doing the pop culture references of his day
New article for today, I'm tapping the sign again https://t.co/0uVHVoZ4Uf
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QUICKLY NOW! Give me your hottest take about the penny no longer being minted before the media or your favorite influencer tells you how to think!
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Part of a longer thread, but this piece of it strikes me as particularly universal
There’s only one way to select for integrity in the people around you: don’t assume anyone who makes you feel bad is a bad person, and anyone who makes you feel good is a good person
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The scientific research replication crisis begins in the locker room
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The packaging for hanging and displaying the socket wrench is impossible to remover, & has made the wrench unusable In the annals of fiercely evil packaging, this one is up there
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IME this is exactly right. At the exact point of no return, deliberate revenge has a definite, unmistakeable taste. It’s a deep, deep salt-sour bile It tastes like rotten soul and it’s proof that you have one and should better care for it
revenge feels like justice until you taste it. then you realize it's just pain passing from one body to another. a virus that needs hosts to survive
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Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov The Planets Suite - Gustav Holst (LSO) Departures - Yojiro Takita The Good Place - Michael Schur
Post 1 book 1 album 1 movie 1 TV show that define your operating ethos.
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What haunts the dying is rarely sin as religions describe it. Rather, it is the sin of absence, of having been ghosts in their own lives. Of having let fear guard the chambers where love waited. Of having built monuments to security while joy knocked unanswered at the door
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REOPEN THE CHURCHES or schools, libraries, Ys, garden clubs, wherever your fellowship comes from but for Christ’s sake — literally — please go outside and make your own friends don’t let this guy make them for you
Zuckerberg explaining how Meta is creating personalized AI friends to supplement your real ones: “The average American has 3 friends, but has demand for 15.”
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I’d not seen this piece before and the gathering & quick summation of psychological types lends it a Glass Onion/Knives Out quality Would love to see a play based on this essay
“Who Goes Nazi?” is one of my favorite essays of all time. you might find people in here that are familiar to you, if you look closely. I hope you like it.
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haven't had much time to read lately, but recently finished Whalers by @kylefarnworth & enjoyed the hell out of it a no-spoilers review for anyone interested https://t.co/I7LW7Rd1OD
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Parents of special needs children face an uphill battle that most don't see. Beyond the daily caregiving, they become full-time advocates in a system that seems designed to exhaust them. 🧵
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Reciprocity means treating others the way you want to be treated. Integrity means your language and your behavior line up. Reciprocal integrity means interpreting others’ language and behavior as charitably as you want yours to be interpreted.
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