The Pocket Observatory Archive

‘Your pussy might poison people’ was never a plot point in those Cancer Girl movies.

I asked my husband to send our daughters a picture as proof of life. I held my arm up and he tapped his screen. One of my daughters responded, “Okay, album cover!” I laughed and then I cried.

and other sentences I never wanted to write.

And also share some links to cool stuff

This is a Pocket Note about birthright, abortion, and hope.

Let’s use trash to learn about power and weakness

Will renderings of aborted fetuses be used in victim impact statements?

A Pocket Note about garbage, echolocation and love. Pretty much.

where your kids can make dolls for rich kids

+ also felt god or whatever it is I’ve always called ‘god’

Snark about an AI startup, as a treat

(The AMA bit is just some bleak humor. I have no answers.)

Sometimes things are worse than you imagined

This is a pocket note about saving things from fire

Trump can’t explain groceries because he doesn’t understand markets

A pocket note about botanic gardens, colonization and nephews who show us the way

Pocket Observatory is not-for-profit project offered to you for free through a Creative Commons license. The continuation of this work depends on donations from people like you. Support Pocket ObservatorySubscribe for Free A pocket note about being very bad at many things, including believing in physical reality while flying between

Authoritarian regimes can’t justify their claims in an information-abundant environment.

Make a record of it

Every paid subscriber and every donating reader? This upcoming community project exists because of you. More to come on what that means for you when it launches this Sunday. (MEETUPS!!!) Sneak peek at an image from the free-for-all knowledge sharing project I am launching this weekend. It’s taken 3 months

It’s time to hit Fury Road.

Musk is trying to trap us in the Alienation Loop, a building block of the fascist state

What the fork is happening at the NYT

A techno-optimist creation myth is keeping her up at night.

Republicans are using anti-trans restroom bans to reinstate an architecture of legalized domestic tyranny.

An exclusive essay, prompts and a gift!

I understand now that a White woman with shelves full of food for her family and body bags for her neighbors is a pretty literal representation of how White women have historically hoarded care resources.

I understand now that a White woman with shelves full of food for her family and body bags for her neighbors is a pretty literal representation of how White women have historically hoarded care resources.

How was I going to tell the kids?

a few words from James Baldwin

JD Vance and the Pro-Slavery New Right are going to strip women and children of the right to survive.

Some of my writing on the racist power structure that hurts everyone

According to them, a well-ordered society requires slavery.

A man is only truly liberated if he can exercise dominion over others, I guess!

death knocks thrice and other awkward porch interactions

It could work. Unfortunately.

Thomas Carlyle meets Ancient Roman Empire meets Founder Mode

These guys want to bring back slavery. For realsies.

and mice and men

an exclusive essay and prompts

and through the wall

This is where it all comes together.

An incomplete list

I’ve officially sobbed in two more countries.

Ballerina Farm, an apocalyptic cult and The Technology Meme Men

Emphasis on the (ish)

They’re all happy to fist pump over our bodies. So what now?

This project is exclusively available to Pocket Observatory members.

The details of our lives are valuable data. Community founders aren’t equipped handle them safely.

The word ‘robe’ is directly related to the word ‘rob’

And I really forked it up.

I’ll tell you everything in person next time we run into one another

This is not wise and I will delete it later, when I need it less, probably

Um. Yes.

Does my dead dad hate who I’ve become? And other questions for the not-living.

Let’s talk about vandalism and (pearly) gates

Private equity is eating the world and spreading rod-shaped gram-negative bacteria.

The average minimum wage is $14.17. The average housing wage for an apartment is $35.84. I have never made that kind of money.

“Don’t look at me,” she says while sharing a video of herself.

And other concerning innovations from the future

Engaged communities like the Swifties are data-rich ecosystems exploited by surveillance capitalists.

I almost titled this letter ‘Semaglutidings’

A reader asks how I learned to become open to being wrong. I try to give the right answer. (See what I did there!?)

So killing thousands of children in Gaza is not an unprecedented escalation, but a drone attack - that was designed to fail - is? Seems broken.

I keep a pair of eclipse glasses in a drawer next to my passport. To me, this is evidence that I have become an adult, but it might also be proof of something else.

A free art print for Pocket Observatory Members

Spoiler alert: The answer is no.

An attention reclamation project by Meg Conley

A Book List and Giveaway

I am sure I’ll regret posting this video once the pain meds wear off

She’s weaponizing the kitchen table because she understands its power. Which is more than I can say for many of the Democrats.

I left you a voicemail about a few moments in a hospital.

Why is a billionaire arguing with me about Dune? (Like for real, that is happening as I type this sentence.)

A truly unhinged birthday post

Life is not a folktale. I still wish some curses could be lifted.

I grew up in a mixed reality.

In January, I always find myself waiting for something, anything.

In January, I always find myself waiting for something, anything.

ghosts, grief and hope at maximum tilt

Roald Dahl’s framework has a different physics than the world King is trying to build.

I miscarried on a toilet, too! ARREST ME.

Who is going to housekeep on the moon?

This essay is about creativity, care work, childhood promises, and mornings when it’s hard to wake up.

The world is getting darker

My five-year-old, Brontë, has her first bad cold of the season. She kind of reminds me of a grumpy gnome when she’s sick. But this particular sickness kept her from twirling outside in the first snow of the season. So she’s been in a mood that feels a

Somewhat unbelievably, you and I have been featured in the Columbia Journalism Review. Can I tell you about it? Earlier this year, I started leaving you voicemails. And then I invited members of pocket observatory to leave voicemails on my answering machine. A few months ago, Danny Funt reached out

falling leaves and falling bombs

I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.

this is worth your attention

men who hide behind pulpits and priesthood

I use my pocket observatory to collect the dead starlight illuminating trending topics. Detect atomic insights in kitchen breadcrumbs. Listen for the cultural frequencies that move through all of us. Every piece of writing and bit of audio is a single imprecise measure.

A series on the LDS Church and abuse

Choose what is divine

but only by one measure

that I’m afraid of getting stuck in.

Why was I feeling God in this Eras Tour?

My parents bought it for $240k. Today, it’s for sale for $1.3 million

Let’s meet up, huh?

Earlier this week, Keke Palmer’s boyfriend (I will not be using his name, because he is only known because of her splendid-ness) decided to get onto Twitter to shame her for wearing a fitted dress to an Usher concert. It was gorgeous, with vintage pinup vibes. He said a

An explorer is someone who cries out

Tech is good*, actually *this one time

The mountains could burn and the sky could smoke. We’d be underground.

What if money didn’t keep mothers from getting divorced?

An Intro to the Carceral State while Building Castles

ADHD, PMS and a little offering

I’m not joking

And tell me what you are grilling this summer.

I don’t want to smile nervously at Elon’s party anymore.

First, a hard thing I wrote and then, a happy meal I went to New York City for spring break with my kids. It was really special. And also very difficult because of an extenuating circumstance I like to call “being a parent in America.” I wrote a piece about

Here’s what the history textbooks will say about it.

What else is there to say? (A lot and I want to hear you say it.)

AD (Artificial Devotion) prayed before AI could think

and yet.

My kid is in lockdown. Right now

The Global Financial Crisis wasn’t just a story about banks. It’s your story too.

“I don’t think radical joy feels like happiness.”

Joy requires neither ease nor permission.

None of us are fearless girls because they’ll keep funding things built to make us afraid.

Meg and The Need to Buy One

Also, it’s my birthday

Nail biting through an Adderall shortage while AI models get all the digital dopamine they need.

Blood, Extraction and Regeneration

A bad day and also some reading material

At risk of drowning in a culture hostile to earnest girls, Titanic was a lifeboat

As we debate the future of internet search, we need to remember that the way we find answers matters.

And then the LDS missionaries knocked on my door

Before the stove debate simmered, fire formed us.

Family annihilation and cooking with gas

I thought I was writing about hobbits and 9/11

I thought I was writing about hobbits and 9/11

Vultures taught me what to do with the dead.

Southwest Airlines, Zuzu’s petals and big lives treated small

And then I found out I have aphantasia. Plus a winter playlist! A real smorgasbord of a newsletter, I guess.

And the 90s restaurant that weighed each child to price their kid’s meal.

And I am sharing 137 books you should pre-order right now. And yes, those two things are related. Also, I get very real about my work. (oof.)

I am not proud, but I am loyal.

What about the people at home?

Grief, Ghosts and the Impossible Promise of Christmas

My 4 year old couldn’t breathe. And the medicine was gone.

I am so mad and my head hurts so bad

To be warned of impending grief by grief, and other childhood obsessions

Christian Nationalism makes itself at home

If semen supremacy split the world, can semen-containment bring it back together?

Onions, bog butter and cast iron

What is it about a woman’s purse that draws so many eyes?

Three Things. A short little shared meditation about three very different moments in the week that have a similar resonance. Monday : Breaking News We were in the car listening to the kids favorite podcast, when Brontë shouted, “Mom! I’ve never seen a newspaper for real life!” I nearly tapped

My daughters will live the rest of their lives in a conflict zone

When a cheating scandal hits close to home

Breakfast burritos kept my suburban childhood structurally sound

Failing at home. Rehearsing the truth with my dead dad. Being eaten alive.

The white middle class home is a Garden of Eden.

My daughter is afraid of heaven. Donuts in a heat wave. Red Rocks, 7022 AD

For me, scream into a pillow anger is the kind of anger that is good, righteous even, but the sound of it will change absolutely nothing. So I shove the sound of my fury into a pillow, or the palm of my hand or the walls of my shower. It’

Let’s sing about it.

The problem with promises is that the future can’t keep anything.

Even the suburbs of my childhood had something to lose.

I can tell you if you want.

I am in Southern California for the month of July. I grew up here. It’s lovely and horrifying to be back home, for all the reasons homecomings have always been lovely and horrifying. When Odysseus came home, he raged against the developments of greed and lovingly traced the outlines

I used to think America was a promise I had to help keep.

My daughter, Dobbs and inflammatory systems

I remember teaching my babies how to sleep through the night. I’d sit in the hall and listen to them cry. It made me physically ill.

Cruelty is learned. Care comes first, naturally.

I am sensing a bad energy.

Anti-abortion activists and white feminists feast while insisting scarcity is the norm.

I know the abortion cost too much. She was right to pay the price.

Manifestation culture, Christy Dawn and the occult???

If I followed him, my family would stay together forever

I’ve been thinking about the things children leave behind.

Two stories from Ukrainian women. One who is still in her hometown with her 10 year old child. One who had to flee her hometown in 2014 when Russians blew up her home.

I’d like to help the world witness you.

Putin started this war with a story. Sitting behind a desk, he once upon a timed . Instead of a fairy tale, the story he told was an invented history. He said Ukraine was not a nation. The Ukrainians are not a people. And the not-nation and the not-people are resources

The future reached back and changed the past. It changed the once standalone war to end all wars into the first in a series.

Two Things That Go Together

yikes

A world built with an algorithm is a world without discovery.

She’s spent half her life in a pandemic.

Magnolia Network is not just programming. It’s a point of view and a promise.

I can tell I am about to enter my late thirties because I’ve set up a year-long alert for food ornaments on eBay.

There is no hope in controlling the lives and bodies of women.

The answer is more books. Not fewer. Always.

If enough needles tip away from Trump, my table and the people around it shift back into a world I can understand.

“Only poor kids have to work to have fun.”

A powerful father openly living for his children may not be cinematic, but it’s rare enough to be news.

Journalists need Twitter. Does a mom need Instagram?

While we thread theories online, the bones of mothers, sisters and daughters wait to be found.

I could be embarrassed about my baby blanket. Instead, I’ll tell you everything it’s taught me.

As a Mormon mother, I’d gotten used to being sold MLMs. I didn’t think I could be shocked anymore! I was wrong.

My daughter was born on 9/11. People said I should tell her she was born on the 9/10 instead.

White communists, socialists, feminists, and capitalists tried to engineer society through kitchen design.

As the tide rises, the effectiveness of my ADHD medication descends.

We sent planes to Afghanistan full of troops, guns and maladapted intention. They always came back hollow. This time send them empty and bring them back full.

Americans are refusing vaccines because they’ve forgotten that it’s natural for children to die of infection disease.

It’s a comfort to gain so much control over an outcome. Even when that outcome is one single roasted carrot.

They weren’t being paid for care work, they were being paid for their online depiction of care work.

We dance holding hands because we are all on this journey together.

Pregnant during a once in a lifetime heat wave that happens twice every summer.

The state can always find a reason for us to kill each other.

What was the first album by a woman you remember feeling was forbidden?

There is no ladylike way to say, “Sometimes I bleed from my butt.”

The fighter jets that invaded Iraq train over my backyard.

Raised in a culture veined with the fool’s gold of American Exceptionalism, I thought I had to be exceptional.

An elegant dance in a utilitarian kitchen.

My neighborhood’s fight for integration changed America. Now white neighbors are suing a Black pastor over his social justice work.

Racial Justice at the Kitchen Table

She was a Mormon homemaker who just wanted to take part in the market economy. Then it all came crashing down.

How visiting Appalachia helped me begin to understand my family

Profit, power, preconceived notions. For these things we let dreaming children die.

The Hofmann story was male-driven, but the violence it resulted in was evenly distributed.

I ask that you show my daughter whiteness is not a prerequisite for salvation.

Lingerie is complicated because lingerie is not neutral. It is a consumer good driven by exclusionary trends.

During a pandemic, it takes a celebrity village to raise a child

I own the table of my dreams because someone was desperate.

Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio are for bringing children into this world, but against helping them survive it

An incomplete list of things I’ve been wrong about

The diagnosis that came decades later than it should have

How much soup do you need to survive a pandemic pricked with insurrection?

In the end, Utah Sen. Mike Lee rejected the voter fraud conspiracy. It’s time for repentance.

After years of Trump, my kids think America is normally violent. They’re right.

I am feeling a little defensive of the common house spider.

Helping Americans find shelter must become an integral part of the American Dream.

My husband and I bought our first home when we were 24. Hard work had nothing to do with it.

Why was I embarrassed to tell people I rented my home?

If there’s one thing we love more than a haunted house, it’s a haunted woman.

What does it mean for the table to come first in our homes? In our country?

We don’t talk about what happens in women’s bodies or bathrooms.

What has crying in the home looked like over the centuries?

I want you to know what it is like to sit in her home.

I finally understand that help is not coming

Wait, let me start over. I mean my motherhood is like a dirty fridge. Hear me out.

I wasn’t very interested in the transcendental. I just wanted to feel like reality was a place worth being.

I was a kid with an anxiety disorder. Regis Philbin was my (unlikely) hero

Internet culture has a kid consent problem

Originally published on Medium Lego Masters landed on our TV about the same time the pandemic landed in America. It’s a show about, well, Lego Masters. In each episode teams were given a LEGO building challenge, Build a Fairy Tale! Build a Theme Park! Build a Bridge! Contestants could

Today is the third day of protests in Denver.

As my daughters and I stared at a livestream of an open casket, I realized death is always remote

Prominent Instagram influencers are getting dragged for fleeing New York, showing their millions of followers what not to do during a pandemic

A pandemic reminds us that work-life balance was always out of reach

On fact, fiction, and the origin stories we claim as our own

I’ve lived in this home since you were born. Well. Not this house. I’ve lived in five houses since you were born. But each house was this home, the only world I could claim.

Political theater can be automated, but political virtue cannot

Moms can’t hold this pyramid up much longer

I wasn’t raised to rally but I also wasn’t raised to retreat.

Mothers have always crossed boundaries to save their kids