Stephanie Leary
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sleary.bsky.social
Stephanie Leary
@sleary.bsky.social
1.5K followers 510 following 1.6K posts
Front End Developer doing UI and accessibility work on open source library software. Previously: MLIS @ UW iSchool; tag wrangling; wrote some tech books a while back. Pretty young for an Old Internet Person.
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sleary.bsky.social
Bosses often ask us if there are specific words they should say to jump in if something goes off at work. Like if someone yells in a heated meeting. Or a new exec uses a slur during a competitive ping pong game. We get variations of this all the time because, in actual real life at actual real work, shit really does go off. They aren't generally asking about horrors or atrocities. More like, how to dissent with your mouth when you've already clocked that you dissent with your brain. The core of this question is beautiful. It's basically, "How do I use my power in a situation like this? I may not be the most senior person but I'm still a leader here. And I don't want to manage in an org where bad shit just goes unremarked, y'know?" We do know. And the answer for them is the answer for you, too. If yours is an org or a world where bad shit happens unremarked, the most important tool at your disposal is that you can remark. For the ping-pong match. For the heated meeting. We find that a loud, clear, "Nope!" Followed by, "That's not how we do things here." Will get your point across. Because in that moment, the thing that the entire room is waiting to see is whether this is a place where bad shit happens and goes unremarked. Or if this is a place where we stop, stare at it, and say not in my fucking house.
February 5, 2026 at 6:15 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Oh, I wouldn’t say the anxiety over gender and sexuality has overtaken the racism. More like, it found a hospitable growth medium.
While other great Southern universities-such as Ole Miss- may be neurotic about race for the rest of time, A&M's anxieties have been more about gender and sexuality. Women weren't allowed to attend until 1963; the…
January 30, 2026 at 9:07 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Come for the clear-eyed analysis of what’s happened to A&M over the last few years; stay for the zingers.
In July, Melissa McCoul was teaching a class on children's literature that included a middle-grade book titled Jude Saves the World, in which the main character is nonbinary. Such books are banned in Texas public schools. But the ideal candidate for a university education is a person mature enough to withstand the psychological torments of what some might consider a distasteful kids' book. Not everyone in McCoul's class possessed this maturity.
January 30, 2026 at 9:01 PM
sleary.bsky.social
I LOLed.
Madness had taken hold. The adults proposed starting their own student newspaper as an anti-woke counterbalance. And the association recommended using Ancestry.com to research the family trees of professors, beginning with the anthropology, sociology, and psychology departments, the last of which might have offered some useful therapeutic assistance.
January 30, 2026 at 8:54 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Ilya Rozanov speaks
January 25, 2026 at 7:41 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Oh, wow, these are fantastic poster fonts!
Just Seeds font samples: Medicine, Busted Knuckles, Upright Citizen, Green Bans, Rise Up, Respect, Libertario, ¡Squat!, Mujeres Libres Just Seeds font samples: Pasionaria, Ransone, Melodie Jazz, Madrid ML, Kiki, Valencia Ama Just Seeds font samples: Amandla, Manifesto, Rent Strike, Madrid Ama, Committee, Brix, Rosa Blanca, Labour, Umbral, Mai
January 25, 2026 at 3:37 PM
sleary.bsky.social
I don’t need another planner, but I think I’m buying it just for the stickers.
Black spiral planner titled Carpe Fucking Diem Interior page: the struggle is fucking real Sticker page: fuck this, holy hell, make it fucking happen, fresh bullshit served daily, make today your bitch, clean your shit up, a fucking day off More stickers: crossed fingers, middle fingers in various colors and sizes, WTF, FML, and suck it up
January 17, 2026 at 10:30 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Angry goose meme: Hidden? Hidden from whom?
December 23, 2025 at 4:29 AM
sleary.bsky.social
I did not notice them until I heard that interview. Here’s Scott’s team:
The fictional New York Admirals jersey showing the Empire State Building with a starburst at the tip
December 12, 2025 at 6:49 PM
sleary.bsky.social
No jury would convict Rachel Reid if she set the publisher’s building on fire for this
Out of Your League sent a detailed list of questions to Harlequin regarding the promotional plan for Heated Rivalry, including asking whether there were plans to print more copies, whether Harlequin printed copies ahead of the TV premiere or sent stock to bookstores to prepare for the increased interest; whether there were plans for a tie-in cover or special edition of the book; or if Harlequin was involved in any upcoming promotional plans or events. The publisher declined to answer specific questions and instead sent a statement. “What we can share is that we’re so excited for the continued support of Heated Rivalry and the Game Changers series,” said Lianna Cohen, the Senior Manager of Brand Publicity & Influencer Marketing at Harlequin. “As retailers continue to place orders, physical books are being shipped to fulfill orders and supply replenished with reprints to ensure availability. We’re excited to have Heated Rivalry readily available in audiobook and eBook formats in addition to trade paperback.”
December 11, 2025 at 8:41 PM
sleary.bsky.social
"Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts."
Judith Beheading Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi
December 1, 2025 at 4:01 PM
sleary.bsky.social
It’s still less evil than the pseudo-Van Gogh Exploding Tardis puzzle, which is the most fiendishly difficult I’ve ever done. Once you get the more distinctive colors in place, you’re left with hundreds of tiny pieces with blue and gold paint strokes.
The Doctor Who Exploding TARDIS 1000-piece puzzle, based on the lost Vincent Van Gogh painting from "The Pandorica Opens." The broken TARDIS in the center is surrounded by fiery swirls in the dark blue sky, in the style of Starry Night. An extraordinarily difficult puzzle, since everything is gold and blue, and most of the image is swirls of abstract color.
November 30, 2025 at 5:11 PM
sleary.bsky.social
This puzzle was EVIL. Several of the planets and the astronaut are single pieces. Most of the larger planets have an embedded star-shaped piece. The shapes around all those are bonkers. We love it.
The completed Zero Gravity 1000-piece puzzle by Galison. It’s a collage of colorful planet illustrations in varying styles and sizes on a black background with a suited astronaut drifting at the center. 10/10, will puzzle again.
November 30, 2025 at 3:22 PM
sleary.bsky.social
This is so good!
complicity: Aha, those sanctimonious New Englanders were just as tied to slavery as the Southerners! But complicity seems too easy. Isn't everyone, in one way or another, complicit in systems of exploitation that sometimes they choose not to see, and that sometimes they can't see? What's interesting then, is not complicity or non-complicity. I suggest we take complicity as a given and then look for the ways in which it is lived at a given moment by specific historical actors. I hope that readers come to see that our own moment doesn't give us a cut-and-dry option regarding complicity in structures of economic and ecological exploitation. We should start with the premise that it may be very difficult to find ourselves with clean hands under the configuration of the world that we presently inhabit—and then figure out what we want to do about it.
November 22, 2025 at 2:44 PM
sleary.bsky.social
@alexandrarowland.bsky.social likes it a whole lot. reactormag.com/you-should-r...
Basically, it’s Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor (fealty, ethics, loyalty, the joy of serving a worthy and honorable lord), meets The West Wing (liberal politics, conversations in hallways, the long slow process of making the world better by increments, and the quote: “Do you have a best friend? Is he smarter than you? Do you trust him with your life? That’s your chief of staff.”), meets Moana (leaving home to follow the call of a powerful dream, returning home to bring back the dream and the fruits of your labor to your people; community and family; a solo journey across the sea mirrors an internal journey of personal identity). It is my favorite book in the entire world, hands down.
November 13, 2025 at 11:25 PM
sleary.bsky.social
It’s been a rough week, so here’s a book rec to soothe the civic-minded soul: The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard.

www.victoriagoddard.ca/products/the...
Cover art: a stylized sun with a face on a plain black background
November 13, 2025 at 11:25 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Q: Anything you don't like about it? A: I can't really see the front out of the windshield because it's so long. Q: What's the craziest experience you've had in the car? A: In June of this year, I wanted to put the truck through its paces. The Rubicon is a very famous, 22-mile, off-road trail, and it usually takes two to three days. We decided to try to be the first EV truck and Cybertruck to cross the Rubicon. We built out the truck, I think we spent about $50,000 kitting out the car, and then we went. So three days into the trip, we were only five miles into the trail. It was way more difficult than I could have ever imagined.
October 16, 2025 at 5:28 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Men is too headache.
September 5, 2025 at 10:39 PM
sleary.bsky.social
“Some things are just too important to simulate. Maybe one of them is each other.”
This is not merely a matter of improving the chatbots' programming so that they more believably imitate humans, or provide more responsible outputs when presented with poisoned cognition in their users. There is a simple and tragic category error at the core of the Al chatbot push-at the core of so incredibly much of 21st-century American life, really-that only gets more alarming and more obviously deadly to all of us the further the psychotic tech industry projects it out among us. It is the idea that things like connection, friendship, intimacy, and care are essentially sensory arrangements, things an individual feels, and therefore things that can be reproduced by anything that provides something like the right sensations. This misapprehension holds that a person who is socially isolated is merely experiencing a set of sensations called "social isolation," and so also holds that this can be resolved by interacting with a mindless computer program that produces in the isolated person the impression that they are connecting to another being. This is deeply poisonous. More to the point, it is also just wrong! Incorrect!
August 27, 2025 at 10:51 PM
sleary.bsky.social
The number of Medium articles that were clearly written by code camp students fulfilling an assignment… 🫣
A published Medium article with identifying specifics redacted. It includes a Visual Breakdown subheading followed by a prompt: “If this were visualized in a Medium article: …” and then two placeholder descriptions for before and after screenshots that were never inserted. Hope that person got their certificate and will be working with you soon!
August 14, 2025 at 5:28 PM
sleary.bsky.social
BFF picked up an old saddle stapler at the thrift store yesterday. It looks like this one.

Me: You could murder someone with that!

Her: That’s what I said! Youngest son was unimpressed.

Me: That’s what you need to publish a really high-quality Star Trek fanzine.

Her: *nods reverently*
A vintage Swingline saddle stapler. It is gray and angular and industrial and looks like Agent Peggy Carter could kill a man with it. This is the stapler you need to bind your subversive pamphlets without crunching the pages. Hot.
August 13, 2025 at 1:44 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Tumblr drakensberg-blog: The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor. poupon: how dare you say we piss on the poor
July 10, 2025 at 3:54 AM
sleary.bsky.social
Murderbot with a speech bubble that encompasses the quoted post
June 28, 2025 at 11:04 PM
sleary.bsky.social
@smashingmagazine.com Hey, could you fix your sidenote text color in dark mode? #666 is no bueno. #ccc maybe?
Screenshot of an aside in Smashing's "Fostering An Accessibility Culture" article, showing medium-gray text on the dark gray background in dark mode.
May 28, 2025 at 7:33 PM
sleary.bsky.social
Listen, capitalism is a hellscape

but if I cannot purchase a small Murderbot bobblehead for my dashboard, we have fought in vain

IT WAS ALL FOR NAUGHT
The Murderbot figurine from the opening credits lands on its back in the dirt after apparently falling from somewhere in space
May 16, 2025 at 2:53 AM