📣 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS! In a new ep of the @strangehorizons.bsky.social SFF criticism podcast, I talk with @redfernjon.bsky.social and Nileena Sunil about books that might be longer, and others that could be shorter. How to read a text that offers too little, or too much, stuff? Some ideas.

I rewatched They Live (1988) last night *mild spoilers* It's been a while since I've watched it and I'd forgotten that 2025 was the year mentioned by the alien as the year they'd have full control over Earth

The size of the snake god puppet will double every two years until Promethea ends everything. Moore's Law.

RSS is, and I say this without hyperbole, an incredibly useful tool for psychological independence in the current environment. Newsblur, as Vajra suggests, is good, I use Feedbin, there are others. Most remarkably easy to set up.

I stopped calling Octavia butlers work prophetic once I realized she herself literally said that her work was influenced by deeply studying history which gave have her insight into the future. I realized I was watering down how truly brilliant she was and what she was trying to get across

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

People should just watch F for Fake, imo. This is continuity, not rupture.

“We hanky-panky men have always been with you.”

There was a Guy on the train tonight that led to me, after he got off, saying loudly to the entire car “Ladies and Gentleman I would like to apologize on behalf of dorky-ass white guys. We’re not all like that.”

The decision between “ask the coked-out robot to draw the building you’re literally sitting in” vs “send an intern with an iphone downstairs” is sure indicative of some things

I had forgotten this important contribution to the Waffle Discourse www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGXF...

"average person kills 10,000 psykers a year" factoid actually just statistical error. average person kills 100 psykers a year. The God-Emperor of Mankind, who is kept alive by the mechanisms of the Golden Throne and kills over 1000 psykers each day, is the only one who should have been counted.

“I think that was a pretty successful party” *looking at phone* “well except there was a Constitutional crisis during your party” “…ok, well, locally at least”

Taylor Swift announces next album title: The Queen in Yellow. She told Variety: "A few years back I came across this amazing play and I was so inspired. It's been living in my head for years. I even dream of it, of the city in the play."

wizard frog is insane

Whenevir Ich heare of the bear yclept "32 Chunk" Ich thynke it ys a Teixcalaanli name from *A Memory Called Empire*

An essay in praise, ultimately, of black eyeliner worn as lipliner and ‘the crappy hill in Talma, Finland that churned out hundreds of legendary snowboarders in the 90s because they could do dozens of laps in the same time you could ride a normal mountain once’ — that is, of limits.

Is everything about culture ‘actually just downstream from cheap rent (and its disappearance)’, and is it ‘even possible to have a meaningful conversation about cultural criticism that’s not just about that?’ Emily Segal went back to Berlin and it had changed: open.substack.com/pub/nemesisg...

The Writing Process Considered As A Magickal Battle With The Demon Chrononzon isn't as catchy as it could be for a TED talk title, but there's a truth there (shout out to the handful of fellow writer/occultist crossovers who will get this).

I have always respected Fishbone, but I did not expect to add “epic Theremin precision” to the reasons why.

My classmate!

Hex map

On National Poetry Day, the greatest poem I have ever read

harlan ellison would have already punched sam altman so hard in the face he'd meet himself in the future with an even more broken face from all the face punches harlan threw in the interim between both points in time

Hey, everyone! Adios is on sale today for just $10! That's right: it's cheaper than Arby's and will make you cry in a completely different way! Get it while it's hot! store.steampowered.com/app/1271400/...

I've had enough great conversations with Wm about genre-bending, as well as our mutual respect for the greats of the field, that I know this is going to be worth reading. I grabbed it posthaste.

“generals gathered in their masses to listen to gigantic asses“ headline is sitting right there, which outlet is going to step up

We laugh at this shit -- I mean, how can you not? -- but it's serious: these guys want to infuse reactionary thinking into AI and then infuse AI into every nook & cranny of American life. They can't win the argument so they are trying to blunt-force their views onto us with money & power.

I just instantly pre-ordered this. As someone who loved THE BRIGHT AGES and hopes someday to write something similar, this was an obvious thing to do.

Portland is reacting to all this in exactly the way I would expect Portland to react to this lmao

I'm too tired to write so please, please, please do something gross and beautiful and fleshy, do it for me

I've been agonizing over how to phrase this for days now. But sometimes, the best way out is through. So here goes: Indie thrives on community. On shared belief. On support from people who choose the small and meaningful over the massive and impersonal 🧵

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

Hey fellow Industrial nerds; I just (re)discovered Fini Tribe, a project including Chris Connelly, on Wax Trax! back in the late 80s. Early sound is very RevCo (unsurprisingly), later they went more Psychosonik. Apparently they have a retro box set out soon. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5602...

I have 2k’s dance floor industrial playing on the radio and first thought this was a really radical remix until I realized the ice cream cart guy outside was honking his little clown horn exactly on the beat.

We need to return to the age where dudes were publishing 500+ page encyclopedic tomes on railroad history instead of whatever the fuck it is they do now. Bro stop listening to Joe Rogan and start listening to the ghostly echoes of the long lost Milwaukee Road Pacific Divison.

I'm not quite prepared to be a dick about it in public so I'm not admitting to who but I just described a certain SF author as “we can create a unified field theory if we use gravity, electromagnetic, weak force, strong force, and testosterone”. I encourage guessing but I will not confirm.

PSA: don't trust google docs with your grammar corrections without consulting a human. I am now at 5 instances of it trying to insert past tense verbs into present tense sentences in this document. And the dirty clothes in the corner are "rank" not "ranked".

I'm trying to determine if the correct present tense verb form of "echo" is "it echos" or "it echoes". I find references for both. Anyone have any strong opinions?

My ostensible bus driver just went rogue, took the highway up the coast and skipped the first several miles of the route, including my stop. Good job, Oakland AC Transit.

Laurie as always doing excellent work here.

Oh this is the good stuff

Making cursed art mashups.

I’m never going to stop being mad that hedge funds and tech middlemen siphoned off all the money that should’ve let someone like Kaleb Horton have the career he deserved

What’s your sign?

Me: “having more books isn’t a problem, it’s a solution!” Her: “…” Me: “ok maybe the solution would be if one of those books taught me how to make a bookshelf.” Her: “there we go.”

Wake up babe, new Strange New Feelings just dropped

I was not searching for either dogs or underwear when Amazon decided to show me this product. Make sure to click to see the whole image including the price.