Zora O'Neill
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zoraoneill.com
Zora O'Neill
@zoraoneill.com
930 followers 950 following 2K posts
Author, ALL STRANGERS ARE KIN (now an AUDIOBOOK!). Editor. I comment on: Arabic, refugees, travel, grammar, Queens, more. she/her. Profile pic: black tee with “love” in white, in Arabic and English. Banner: mosaic of Manhattan skyline seen f/ Queens.
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zoraoneill.com
NYC aurora check: nope but it’s pretty anyway.
Apartment buildings and row houses with glowy lights in windows with the sky surprisingly blue above, like that Magritte painting.
November 12, 2025 at 5:48 AM
zoraoneill.com
“Young & Restless”?! Now it’s like 1975?! Don’t want to be ageist but just how old are all the city’s headline writers?
Daily News headline: young and restless voters propelled zohran’s win
November 9, 2025 at 6:19 PM
zoraoneill.com
“Yuppies”?! Did I wake up in 1987?
NYT headline (analysis): In New York Even Yuppies Are Rebelling: Turning to Mamdani Amid City’s Grind
November 9, 2025 at 5:36 PM
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Is the fentanyl so cheap because they bought it on the street? The Tylenol so pricey because RFK Jr hates it? WTF is wrong with out health care system?
Hospital bill with acetaminophen charged at $151.38 and fentanyl charged at $1.25
November 8, 2025 at 5:26 PM
zoraoneill.com
For the mini version, see Lebanon.
Terrain map of Lebanon showing thin strip of sea-level terrain (in green) along the coast, and then a heavy dark-brown section of mountains inland, consuming most of the rest of the country -- all very similar to the Nepal map in the quoted post -- just smaller scale and rotated 90 degrees.
November 5, 2025 at 6:12 PM
zoraoneill.com
I just love this! Have always wondered if this style is just one guy's invention, or if it signifies "traditional Punjab" style (like "traditional Basque" font with its big heavy bars on the A's). Either way, I kind of want to throw a dance party in a garage and call it Body-Work.
Black hand-painted sign reading Auto-Repair & Body-Work. The Y looks like a tuning fork. The W looks like a bat. The A looks like the friendliest kids' book cartoon A.
October 26, 2025 at 11:37 PM
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Seeing these hand-painted posters in the background and *only now* is it occurring to me that the campaign could've been even MORE incredible by hiring the guy who does all the auto-repair signs on 21st St in Queens. DAMN.
Hand-painted signage directly on a brick wall, advertising Auto Repair, Painting with High Tech Spray Booth. The letters are very vertical but rounded, with heavy with very small spaces (voids? there's a font design term for this) in the P's and R's and A's and O's. Also the K has a cool curved shape.
October 26, 2025 at 11:30 PM
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Skull and symbol enthusiasts (since there are so many these days!), can you tell me what's going on here? Is that some Chinese symbol between the eyes?
Skull sticker, black and white, big blotchy eyes and some kind of calligraphy or symbol on the forehead.
October 25, 2025 at 9:59 PM
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Horrible that I knew this would happen before I even clicked.
Snippet from a history website about slavery in the US, with a link out to the Census Bureau page on Slavery. US Census Bureau web page: "Sorry, the page you requested has either been moved or is no longer available on this server." Just to be thorough, searching the Census Bureau website for the term "slavery": "0 results found."
October 25, 2025 at 5:30 AM
zoraoneill.com
Always cool to see Navajo on mundane documents in NM.
Trilingual text on a medical insurance document, in English, Spanish and Navajo. The Navajo is in its own distinct font.
October 24, 2025 at 5:36 PM
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America, what are we actually doing with cars this big?
(“EcoBoost” 😭)
October 24, 2025 at 5:30 PM
zoraoneill.com
Looked up the story again just to reread the extremely tortuous explanation for the tattoo (added to caption after the article ran and I and many others wrote letters and pointed out the issue to the writer online), and I see there's a skull on his surfboard. Hmm.
Photo of a man sitting on the ground in a parking lot. He is wearing a wetsuit, but pulled down so his chest is bar. He has several tattoos, one of which is a large 88. In the foreground is his surfboard, with a skull sticker on it. Caption reads: Rudy Garcia-Tolson had planned to travel from his parents’ home in Southern California to Colorado Springs in order to train at the Olympic facility there. Garcia-Tolson’s tattoos include an “88” on his chest to signify the year of his birth, 1988, which pairs with another tattoo on his back that says “no limits” with each numeral noting an infinity symbol turned sideways.
October 21, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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#NoKings in Tijeras, NM, had a solid turnout of 500+ at peak lining the intersection of Rt 66 and Hwy 14/337, between feed store and public library. Lots of flags and guys with big white beards (including someone in a Santa costume as well tho no pic of him).
Inflatable rainbow unicorn with a “Honk if you ❤️ America” sign and a guy in a red jacket and bill cap waving a big American flag Guy in a flat cap and yellow shirt with a sign reading “No kings, bring back kindness and empathy.” Guy wearing a face of Donald Trump sticking out of his crotch like a horse’s head. His sign says “Jesus was a brown skinned immigrant and he too rode upon an ass.” Same guy was selling t-shirts with a Mexican skull with Trump’s hair swoop, with the words El Pendejo below. Five people in front of the Tijeras post office (zip code 87059) holding handwritten No Kings signs and hiding under hats from the bright sun. The man on the right is not holding a sign but wearing a US Navy sweatshirt and sunglasses and basking in the sun.
October 18, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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Women don’t care about the Cybertruck.

Women want only one thing, and it’s the adorably retro free trolley (that also has free WiFi) in downtown El Paso.
Truly adorably rounded-corner streetcar, the kind with the accordion doors. It’s painted mint green with a nice red stripe for accent. Its front is painted in a Mexican folk art style so it looks like a Día de Los Muertos skull with a cute smile and the headlights are eyes. Bonus: it’s just pulling up to a rainbow crosswalk because the point where the two steeetcar lines cross happens to be I guess near some gay bars.
October 18, 2025 at 4:15 AM
zoraoneill.com
Oddly passive way of saying “Israel bombed everything and everyone to shit so what do they expect”
NYT headline: Israel Pressures Hamas to Return Bodies, but Gaza's Destruction Poses Challenge Israelis were angered that Hamas handed over only four bodies out of some two dozen left in Gaza. But the devastation in the enclave complicates the task.
October 14, 2025 at 6:44 PM
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"the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa"
The drag queen Divine in the film Pink Flamingoes, in a tight-fitting orange dress and eyebrows to her hairline. She looks pissed and is pointing a gun straight at you.
October 9, 2025 at 5:12 AM
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Van Jones can piss right off.
October 5, 2025 at 6:24 AM
zoraoneill.com
Read the text of the Gaza ceasefire proposal and was like ok ok reasonable and then I got to this
• This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the "Board of Peace," which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
September 30, 2025 at 4:02 AM
zoraoneill.com
Hilarious/sad how instead of earnestly saying “I like all Americans” (as Coates basically does), Klein shifts to having seen the data. This reads to me like Klein saying “once you can fake sincerity, you’re set.”
Even before the question of what your policies are — and I believe this very deeply — there is a question of whether or not people feel like you respect them and like them, even if they disagree with you. Before people will give you power, they don't even ask if they like you, they ask whether you like them. And I think a lot of the country feels we don't like them. I know that. I've seen the focus groups. I've seen the survey data. I've talked to the people who work on this. Changing that is going to require making moves that somehow send a loud enough signal that people begin to think we have changed it at some level.
September 29, 2025 at 4:58 AM
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Just read the Coates-Klein transcript. I think this part from Coates, where he’s shocked by Klein even jokingly calling people deplorables, is v important. Yes, it’s ideas that are the problem—not the people themselves. Yet even a lot of supposed “let’s do dialogue” liberals I think dislike the ppl.
I don't even think that, by the way. I don't even focus on people. I am at war with certain ideologies and ideas, and I want them expunged. I want to turn them into phrenology. That's what I want. But I don't want the people out. When you start talking about who people are in their bones —
September 29, 2025 at 4:39 AM
zoraoneill.com
New Yorkers, don’t do this! The deposit redemption machines scan the barcode on the can. Which means crushed cans are worthless to the people who live on collecting cans. Just put your cans and bottles outside in a bag—someone will take them!
New York magazine item about a can crusher, written by someone complaining about how her husband drinks so much seltzer that it overfills their recycling. Someone apparently unaware of part of the NYC economy.
September 28, 2025 at 6:18 PM
zoraoneill.com
Same, meat carcass, same.
Cross section of a lamb carcass that looks like it’s screaming
September 26, 2025 at 6:27 PM
zoraoneill.com
This is good because it dovetails with the problems in travel culture also — same adherence to checklists, no risk.
What was once the promise that food could be a source of knowledge, culture, and joy now feels more like the pressure that every meal must be the best one, that the risk of trying something unvetted — once the whole point — is too great. "You have this exploration, and then these loud and charismatic people declare that actually we found everything, and these are the best, you can stop looking," says Rosner. The world of fandom whittled down to a checklist.
September 24, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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Impeccable side-eye, no notes
Getty Images photo of Trump either arriving at podium at UN, or leaving it after his speech. He is escorted by a UN peace officer, a Black woman, in dress uniform and gloves. She has a look on her face like "this absolute motherf-cker." For what it's worth, Trump is also making a terrible face -- either "wow I really f-ed that up" (if after his speech) or "these people are trying F me" (if before his speech, but after he was apparently stuck on a nonworking escalator and told the teleprompter wasn't working).
September 23, 2025 at 8:37 PM
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But WTAF!!! I knew the US had a problem with solitary confinement but this is sick.
Detainees who express thoughts of suicide are frequently put in solitary confinement, where the isolation, darkness and dirty conditions tend to worsen their mental states, according to immigration lawyers and psychiatrists.
September 21, 2025 at 7:12 PM