Wanda Pedersen > Recent Status Updates

A very small number of these verified users had chosen to pay to keep the status under Musk, and, after months of moribund sales, Musk suddenly and nonconsensually gave these users a tick mark that had come to mean "I am someone who tolerates--or even likes--Musk's unhinged management of Twitter and/or his personal views on race, immigration, gender, and workers' rights. I am voluntarily giving money to the....

Remember, shareholders prefer to get paid by the companies they invest in, but their ability to compel the companies they invest in to pay them is limited to voting for company directors who'll appoint CEOs who'll agree to give the company's money to its investors, rather than spending it on product maintenance and development, wages for staff, improved infrastructure, or executive bonuses.

He heard the urp and felt the warm, wet liquid spreading over his chest before he had a chance to get the blanket on it. "Damn." He wiped the spit-up off, but the damage had been done. "I'm going to change the undress uniforms to camo."
"I don't think they make baby-barf camo."

"Granted, most of my research came from a Skroll web series Lea recommended, starring a blue-haired girl and her bespectaclced lumberjack boyfriend."

Hey, a call back to Love and Other Conspiracies! Cool.

"I learned a lot about how the Doors work. They don't hone in on wanting. Everyone wants, kids especially. A child is a vessel for wanting--and snot. Lots of snot in your average kid."

"A wizard is never late," I muttered. "He arrives as soon as he's dealt with his PTSD."

"If she can't use her mojo on me," I said, "why are you so worried?"
"Because she's charming, manipulative, extremely intelligent, and she's forgotten more about seduction than most will ever know," Molly said. "Plus, she's a woman. And history suggests you don't deal well with those."

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things--enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife's with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought.

"That was more than thirty years ago," Annette argued. "People change. They grow up and get jobs and have midlife crises and sprout tentacles."

"What you've described so far could be anything from a zombie uprising to an outbreak of Unseelie herpes to--"
"Psychosis spreading through the ley lines," suggested Annette.
"Or even a nonmagical threat," I said. "Nuclear war. Pandemic."
"Worldwide riots over the price of Taylor Swift tickets," added Temple.

"I can't believe you're doing this."
"At my age, it's important to keep active."
"By investigating a murder?"
"It beats bingo," Mrs. B said, and opened the car door.