The return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is a testament that our free speech is still alive. Freedom of speech is worth fighting for. This is not the left nor the right issue, but I am glad to see some conservatives speak out in defend of free speech. Even Ted Cruz stands up like a man and speaks up for free speech.

America is not America without the freedom of speech. Let’s review the First Amendment Fundamental Freedoms in the Constitution of the United States:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The government can’t take that away from us. No authoritarian can take that away from us. Since they can’t go after our free speech, they go after our jobs. Many people had been fired for speaking against the opposition. I was a bit worried of losing my livelihood too, but my employer had put out the following advice:

As you review the social media policy, you will see that it highlights a widely recognized business best practice—including a disclaimer on personal social media profiles. DHRM encourages employees to note that the opinions expressed are personal and do not represent George Mason University and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I put a disclaimer on every page of my website years ago to make absolute clear that all opinions are my own:

Opinions expressed on this personal blog are my own. My views do not represent those of institutions or organizations I may or may not be associated with.

There’s still hope for America. We need to speak up against authoritarianism. We need to fight like hell for our democracy.

Introducing a brand new visual identity for the Institute for Consumer Financial Choice at Antonin Scalia Law School. Typeset in Nickel Gothic Variable, designed by David Jonathan Ross.

Vừa đọc xong truyện tiểu thuyết Điều bí mật của tác giả Hân Như. Không biết sách trên giấy thì bao nhiêu trang, nhưng trên iPhone là 1010 trang. Lúc ban đầu, tôi ngần ngại có nên đọc hay không vì tôi không mấy thích đọc sách dài trên màn hình. Tuy nhiên khi đọc thử vài trang thì tôi bị lôi cuốn bởi lối viết nhẹ nhàng, thơ mộng, và truyền cảm của Hân Như, tuy tôi chưa đọc sách của cô trước đây.

Đúng với tựa đề, Như Hân câu đọc giả từ bí mật này đến bí mật khác. Đương nhiên, trong chuyện tình cảm thì phải có kẻ lành kẻ ác, kẻ thắng kẻ thua, và kẻ hạnh phúc kẻ đau buồn. Bên cạnh những mối tình éo le, tác giả để lại trong đầu óc người đọc cái đẹp của Hà Nội, tuy tôi không biết gì về Hà Nội cả. Thú vị hơn là cô cho đọc giả nếm những món ăn độc lạ của Việt Nam. Chẳng hạn như món “bốc mả”, Như Hân diễn tả:

[Ông] chủ quán đặt lên bàn, ngay trước mặt ba người một cái mâm, sau đó đặt tiếp lên mâm một cái rổ tre lớn, vốn thường để rửa rau sống. Cuối cùng, ông tiến lại bếp, nhấc cái nồi lớn để đun nước dùng lên, bê thẳng ra phía bàn và đổ mọi thứ ở trong ra cái rổ tre. Đồ trong nồi vẫn nóng nên khói bốc lên nghi ngút. Chút nước còn sót lại chảy hết vào mâm ở bên dưới.

Ông chủ quán đặt cái nồi xuống đất rồi ngồi xuống cạnh người đàn ông đạp xích lô. Đại cười và lại rót tiếp ba ly rượu nữa. Tường Vi nhìn vào trong cái rổ đẩy hơi nóng bốc lên, chỉ thấy bên trong rất nhiều xương, đủ các loại mà cô cũng không phân biệt nổi là xương của con gì. Ba người đàn ông cụng chén và uống rượu, trong khi Vi vẫn ngồi nhìn đống xương đã rũ hết cả thịt trong cái rổ ấy, lóng ngóng một hồi cũng không biết phải làm gì.

Không chén, không đũa, chẳng lẽ là dùng tay?

Đây là lần đầu nghe món “bốc mả”. Dĩ nhiên nếu có cơ hội tôi cũng sẽ thử cho biết. Quyển tiểu thuyết này đã đồng hành cùng tôi hơn sáu tuần. Buổi sáng thức dậy cũng đọc. Lên xe buýt đi làm cũng đọc. Ăn trưa xong cũng đọc. Lên xe buýt đi làm về cũng đọc. Trước khi đi ngủ cũng đọc. Tôi đọc chậm để được thả hồn mình vào câu chuyện hư cấu chứ không muốn đối diện với đời thật. Nhưng truyện hay nào thì cũng đến lúc phải kết thúc. Cũng may là ngày mai lại vào thư viện tìm truyện khác.

I used to change oil in high school, which was more than 20 years ago. Today, I changed oil for our 2011 Toyota Sienna XLE at 210,000 miles. The last time I took it to the dealership, they charged me almost $150. When did oil change had become so expansive?

Of course I watched some YouTube videos to refresh myself. Here are the parts:

• Oil Filter Wrench for Toyota: $30 (It’s a great tool for removing the oil filter)
• Toyota OE Engine Oil Filter 04152-YZZA1: $8
• Kirkland Signature 0W-20 Full Synthetic Motor Oil 5-quart, 2-pack: $30 (Only 6.5 quartz are needed)

Without the oil filter wrench, the parts cost less than $40. It saved $100 and 3 hours waiting time. I spent about an hour on it, but it will be faster the next time because I will know exactly what to do.

Nowadays, I have to do as many things as I can. Everything is so damn expensive.

A newly refreshed brand identity for Simplexpression is typeset in NaN Druid and NaN Druid Sans, designed by Anna Khorash and Reymund Schröder.

Simplexpression, a small jewelry design studio based in Fairfax, Virginia, is created by Dana Nguyễn. With her background in chemical engineering and her passion for design, Ms. Nguyễn strikes the balance between structural precision and natural beauty to elevate her craft in jewelry design. Her love for organic shapes and pure colors, both in her work and in her life, presents a simple expression on any occasion.

She who never wanted children who took pills not to have them who took pills when she feared she would she who waited for the right job the right partner the right moment to even open to the idea of them she who carried them she whose organs went two- dimensional to make space who grew a new organ whose own body bowed to the needs of the idea of something she who vomited every day for eleven weeks who travelled with sour candies in a bag until her tongue bled she who bled calmly on the phone with the doctor she who slept on the floor of an empty office she who lowered her doses of all the medicines that made her want to live in the first place she who fed the body that fed the body on nothing but raw corn and vitamins she who grew forty pounds and carried it to and from the bus to the subway to the walk to work and back again she who took a course on labor and labored for days she who heard the nurse say perhaps she has a low tolerance for pain and thought back to when a mirror shattered her body and her father unsure of how to stop the bleeding put her in two pairs of sweatpants until they soaked through she who knows punishment is always a negotiation of tolerance she who lost consciousness when the epidural did its job too well who stomached three shots of ephedrine to breathe again so the child inside could breathe again she who they raced into surgery whose abdomen was sawed through and stitched up she who held the baby covered in her own insides who itched for days from withdrawal who loved the baby instantly who fed the baby until she passed out who gave up sleep and time and mind and heart she who gave so generously of her body over and over only to have them say it was never hers to give

Lizzie Harris

In the last few days, I have lost the motivation to blog as free speech is under attack. For over 20 years, I have been writing whatever the fuck I want without the fear of being censored from the government or being fired from my job.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Americans are getting fired from their jobs for voicing their opinions. Even Jimmy Kimmel lost his show. Media organizations are being sued for criticizing the president. The current administration officials are using government power to crack down free speech.

What makes America one of the greatest countries in the world is our freedom of speech. Democracy will die without the ability to speak out in opposition. America is heading toward authoritarianism. The freedoms we all love and treasure will be gone.

Without a doubt, I am stressed the fuck out about our freedom of speech, our democracy, and the future of America. How long can I still write freely like this? America is nothing without free speech. George Washington once said, “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” We need to stand up and defend our freedom of speech.

Đạo is already a junior in high school. He hasn’t shared much with me about his school work. I reminded him about PSAT, SAT, and college preparations. I hope he will step step up and take charge of his future. He’s a bright young man. He just needs to devote more time on academics and less time on digital devices.

Đán has been killing it in school. His progress reports have been excellent. He stays up late to do his homework. Though I would rather see him finishing his homework first before playing video games. Nevertheless, he gives me some peace of mind knowing that he cares about his education.

Since school started, Xuân and I are reading together A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker 1925 – 2025 for 20 minutes each day. I can tell the improvement in his reading even though neither of us understand all of the poems. Somehow he has been able to keep going and not given up. Xuân struggles with Spanish and I can’t help him much. We need to get him tutoring.

After trying to teach Đán and Xuân to read over the years, I am glad to see that Vương is a good reader. We have been reading The World According to Mister Rogers together for 15 minutes a day. Even though he doesn’t like the book too much, we are more than halfway through the book. He can read, but doesn’t enjoy doing it. Maybe we should go the library to let him pick out his own books.

The world out there has been insane these days. I focus my attention on my kids instead.

Visual identity for InBalance, Antonin Scalia Law School’s health and well-being initiative. As part of the initiative, the law school hosts various programs and posts helpful information that supports law student well-being. Typeset in Nickel Gothic, designed by David Jonathan Ross.

Now that the TV is gone and the music
has been hauled away,
it’s just me here, and the muffling silence
a spider wraps around a living morsel.
And at times, often, the unbearable.
I bear it, though, just like you.
Long ago, I bore a suitcase filled with books,
bore it far on city streets. To sell, I guess, at some
used-books place, one of those doorways down
steps into dankness and darkness. The scent

of mildewed, dog-eared, fingered pages.
The suitcase, big and square and sharp-cornered,
covered in snakeskin, bought at Goodwill
for a dollar, knowing I had some travelling to do,
some lugging, and I was right.
What books I sold I do not know.
Maybe that’s where “Modern Poetry” went.
The cover cherry-red and blossom-white.
I can see its spine in my mind’s eye,
pointing downward beneath the dank

and the dark to the water tunnelling
under the city and making its way to the river.
Poems sliding down the book’s spine
into water, the shock of the cold and dank,
down where my uterine lining, my blood
and cast-off ovulations, cast-off fetal
tissue swims, below the city.
The micro-dead ride modern poems
like swan boats in the park.
From the park to the river to the sea.

I’m thinking now of PJ Harvey and Nick Cave.
Balladeers. Lovers. Vita and Virginia.
Frank O’Hara and Vincent Warren. Somehow,
we ride our lost loves out to sea. Or they ride us.
It doesn’t matter. Poet or poem or reader, the same
ectoplasm. The modern, in time, becomes antique,
and the stone faces of the dead convert to symbols,
ripe for smashing. Come to think of it,
symbols are terrible. As the tyrant
shouted to the masses,

part of his brainwashing campaign:
I know it, and you know it, too.
I was twenty-three when I sold off
“Modern Poetry” and sailed to Italy, seeking
Romantic poetry, which was at one time
modern, and found my way to Rome,
and Keats’s death room.
His deathbed, a facsimile.
Everything he touched was burned,
to kill what killed him.

I lifted his death mask from its nail,
cradled it, closed my eyes and kissed his lips
until the plaster warmed,
and stained his face
with the lipstick on my lips. Red
as the cover of “Modern Poetry.”
The color of the droplets of arterial blood
he coughed onto his sheets, and viewed
by candlelight. Then he knew he was done for.
His death warrant, he called it.

After those many kisses over his face and eyes,
and the reticulated eyelashes,
cold and tangled,
my lips were blossom-white,
my face, chalked. Like I’d caught
something from him,
and I don’t just mean consumption,
though my lungs burned for years.
They still burn.
This is the danger of the ecstasy of kissing

the dead or dying poet on the mouth.
The disease you’ll catch—well,
it changes you.
The tingle in the spine,
the erotic charge, will be forever married
to poetry’s previous incarnations.
It’s why marriage itself never worked for me.

I kept wanting to get to the part
where death parts us
and I could find myself again.

Keats made such a compact corpse.
Only five feet tall, shorter than Prince,
and intricately made. Always,
he was working it, working it out,
the meaning of suffering, the world’s,
his own, the encounter with beauty,
nearly synonymous with suffering,
how empathy could extinguish him,
and he could set down the suitcase at last,
or finally deliver him to himself, distinct

as the waves in his hair and the bridge
of his nose. How auspicious,
rare, lush,
bizarre, kinky, transcendent,
romantic, to be young, just twenty-three,
and to cradle him
in my arms, as we listened
to the burbling water
of the Fontana della Barcaccia
from the open window.

Diane Seuss