The toddler discovered an old Oddish plush I had in my office. He’s carrying it around calling it his “beet” in a clear attempt to get me to go back on my decision not to introduce him to Pokemon until he can name 151 real animals.

Parent hot take: Dolly Parton and library posters have gaslit us into thinking The Little Engine That Could is about “I think I can, I think I can” but by word count, it’s actually about how most people are cruel, selfish, uppity assholes and not to expect help from others when you need it.

People don’t give Grover enough credit as a pioneer of the gig economy.

Found my old copy of Dinotopia The World Beneath. Opened it to a picture of Arthur Denison on tyrannosaurus back chasing a mechanical trilobite. I think I may know where my tastes in science fantasy originated.

My current life goal is to leave the attention economy to go live in an attention anarchist commune.

Not to be that guy, but Andy Weir’s vibe was off for me when I first read PHM. As someone into themes and the meaning of a story beyond the text, it felt like he put effort into making sure it was devoid of any major meaning.

Good line from Grant Morrison in their recent appearance on the Team Human podcast: “We keep telling ourselves the world’s ending because we’re so scared to make the future”

Anybody got 3D printer instructions for one of those machines that turns plastic bag back into oil?

What’s everyone’s favorite homeopathic ingredient? Bay leaves are a classic but I think mine is lemon zest. Perfect for when a recipe needs the idea of a lemon and the memory of everyone who ever handled it.

New open source software idea: OpenMaps, a maps app maintained and updated by amateur cartographers.

Every time I spend some time working on queries I realize it's hard to find a home for fantasy-cyberpunk-portal fiction.

The toddler has begun referring to the evening as "blue time" and he isn't wrong, especially on cloudy days.

One of the great tragedies of gaming is that Dark Souls came out after the popularization of wikis. Can you imagine how hard all of the Dark Souls shrine sites would have gone?

At this point we should really be calling them the Leftinized Balkans.

I picked up my saxophone for the first time in *mumble* years. The only music I have is from when I was doing my minor in college and it’s very pretty walls of sixteenth notes and double sharps. I think I understand why I didn’t play much after graduation.

Okay, but what if I didn't market myself and someone just magically discovered me and decided to bankroll all of my craziest ideas?

I'm so close to finishing this draft, but the end of every scene necessitates one more, additional scene.

My current WIP is 81,000 words, which feels significant because I’m still on my first draft and it usually takes me a couple passes to break 80k.

Music update: the toddler is really into Thick as a Brick, like, really into it. I haven’t seen him rock out this hard before.

I think I'm starting to understand Bluesky, but the more I understand the more I want to nuke my account and start over from scratch.

I can feel my attention span healing every time I watch Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood with the toddler.

It’s not that I don’t have opinions or feelings about current events, I just have a rule that I don’t post anything while dysregulated, and, well, *gestures at world*

I agree with my opinion that we need more neurodivergent romances. I question my decision to be the one to help solve the problem, but so it goes.

I’m liable to meltdown if one more things goes wrong/not according to plan, and that is not a place you want to be with a toddler.

The real tragedy of AI is all the creatives named Al who are being boycotted due to working in sans serif fonts.

The difference between a regular creator and an auteur is that no one is surprised when the auteur turns out to be an asshole.

I wish I could see potential ASD representation in a series and go “yay, that’s exciting” but no, instead I’m assessing all the potential red flags to guess how it could go wrong. Either my brain needs to chill or people need to do better, probably both.

The toddler is starting to have opinions on books. I handed him one at the library and he said “I’m not feeling this one” and handed it back.

Nothing better than finding a well polished gem of outsider art.

I’m finding it increasingly tempting to self publish, mainly because I want to work with someone on designing a cover.

A less talked about part of autism is that I don’t interpret emojis the same way allistic people do. It’s always fun when my wife gets home, pulls up a text and goes “what exactly do you think this means?”

There are two kinds of board game players: those who plan their turn while the others are playing to keep the game moving and everyone else at the table.

My in-laws tend to just take whatever recommendations my wife gives them for gifts for me. This occasionally results in them giving me something completely incongruous to who they are. My favorite was a collected edition of The Metabarons last year.

I got the last few volumes of Blame! for Christmas, which means I’m due for a reread.

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m with family but my brain has been in writing mode all day and I’m having a hell of a time turning it off.

Are there really people who can read before bed? It always amps me up instead of calming me down.

Really appreciate my writing accountability group for letting me channel my pre-flight anxiety into shouting about the differences between modernism, post-modernism, and meta-modernism for nearly an hour.

Not to brag, but I just made a twenty dollar donation to my local library. I had to if I wanted to check out more books, but I like to think I keep my overdue books out of the goodness of my heart.

Everyone says to kill your darlings to improve your writing, but then you do it and they all go “how could you do that to your wife?” And now, I don’t even have time to write anymore.

I really want to play a dungeon crawler rpg. I need recommendations so I can do something other than my n^th play through of Etrian Odyssey.

The toddler has figured out that mom and dad have names, which he always pulls out for his most out of pocket statements.

Oh hey, I have a science-fantasy-folktale short story I lapsed on submitting places. I even got some slush reader feedback I can use. Let's see...

You know you're to deep in an auteur's body of work when you read their worst story and don't even notice the complete lack of setup or forshadowing for a major revelation because said revelation is too on brand not to have seen coming.

So glad I discovered @hellitself.bsky.social I told my most recent story that it has four more submissions before I send it to hell and it promised to try harder to get published.

To set the record straight: yes, children do spontaneously say wise sounding things about universal love or taxes. This does not come from small children being wise-mind Buddha’s, it’s because they are tiny Eldritch entities whose every synaptic pathway is a non-Euclidean nightmare.

Go listen to Pachinko by The Moron Police. I just broke a two month social media hiatus so I could recommend it, it's that's good.

Microsoft helpfully reminded me that Windows 10 is about to lose support AND my free Office365 is about to end. It's like they want me to move to Linux.

Tis nearly autumn, the time when folks start posting pictures of snails and I have to keep myself from replying ‘effervescent’ ten times a day

My favorite genre of picture book is ‘small child and dog wander across baby’s first Hieronymus Bosch landscape’

I hate it when Wizards designs cards that “solve” an interesting and creative commander theme. This design reached its apex in Spiderman. Guy in a Chair ruins my people in chairs deck. It feels so cheap when you’re no longer designing a deck, and instead Wizards it designing cards for your deck.