if I can give a piece of "theory of change" advice: never never never make a purchasing decision to stay away from a brand for ethical reasons *without letting them know that's what you've done*. they don't have a way to know otherwise. spend 5 minutes and send an email to the company.

Jude Law and Jason Bateman are doing a miniseries (I'm sorry "limited series") together and the first I'm hearing about it is halfway down the suggested Netflix landing page?! Really gotta turn the internet off and wait 30 seconds and start it up again, things are just busted.

The person who picked up the phone at Josh Riley's office seemed, dare I say, to be a bit disappointed themselves in the Congressman. Maybe I'm projecting, maybe they've just heard this a lot this afternoon. Either way: nice to be reminded that it is always worth the call.

Looking for an October Country read that I’m designating a new classic? @paultremblay.bsky.social’s HORROR MOVIE is it, friends.

“If all of your fantasies are imagined confrontations, you are not so secretly rehearsing for the chance to fight and punish your enemies.” @jamesfolta.com on the state cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel.

Although the headline is headlining, the balance of this week's Lit Hub Podcast is about perfect: @scumbelievable.bsky.social on getting fired for posting about CK, 831 Stories on romance publishing & community, and @chillsubs.bsky.social on the Lit Mag Incubator lithub.com/this-week-on...

Not enough episodes is exactly the same issue Dr Who has had in the last couple of years. Episodic TV *needs* filler episodes, ones with low/undercooked stakes, to give you more time with the characters. If every episode is a fight against a god, or a musical episode, you can never settle in.

For Brad’s very cool and fun PTA series I wrote a little appreciation of—what else—INHERENT VICE

“They’re playing in our face.” Jess Keefe on AI “art” in Regular Mag

By the way, you can in fact run a media business where people give you money for goods and services. 56k+ people give The Onion ~$100 and we give them a year of newspapers. This business didn’t exist last year in this way. People will pay for good shit. Now’s the time to break glass and go for it.

If you’re rich and not a coward, this is what you’d refer to as a “market opportunity” to dominate a media ecosystem that’s about to be covered in grotesque government slop. To be a pop of color in a sea of beige will be easier than ever. People will flock to it. You gotta be a little brave, though.

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

As I've said, it was possible to tell oneself from ~1975-2000 that politics was just a debate about policies, but this was an unusual period of our history. Leaders in politics and media didn't grow up in a world where deep factionalism was normal and don't know how to handle our return to it.

I can‘t believe people are getting so mad about @angryblacklady.bsky.social saying that you shouldn’t register for a protest. Just show up. Don‘t register.

It's starting to happen again as we careen into the fall: the scourge of poor quality POD paperbacks from Ingram! Just got in a copy of MOONFLOW that looks like it was printed for 15¢ at Kinkos. It's truly inexcusable and shoppers notice and now is the wrong fucking time to cut these corners!!

You want to be alive, but they want you dead. We’re a new, well, funded democratic group that thinks you can meet them halfway.

Ursula K. Le Guin writing "Expand this, describe undertomb more, + labyrinth" to herself in the first draft of The Tombs of Atuan is extremely relatable and really quite magical to see, in a way (I'm in the archive today and it's just as full of wonders as you might think)

I did not realize that Mulatu Astatke is still alive and now I really really really hope somebody puts the first issue of 13Tracks in front of him...

Book salespeople of bluesky! I need a publisher sales rep for an event in Spartanburg, SC in Nov. Would be great if they can talk up book club choices / romance / etc for spring 2026. Happy to put them up in a hotel if they're coming from more than a quick drive. Our couple of reps have conflicts.

Put something together yesterday, felt worthwhile sharing the musing: Friends, family, customers have been expressing confusion at the craven and illogical universal canonization of CK. "Wasn't he just some annoying guy?" — yes, he was, but he happened to have the ear of very powerful people. /1

Robert Redford was the only trustworthy adult blonde man. Now there are none

It's pub day for UNCERTAIN SONS by @thomasha.bsky.social. We're blessed to be able to bring you this great debut collection, and to work with Thomas. It's been an amazing journey. Thanks to Vince Haig and @topferarts.bsky.social for the fabulous cover. Thanks to everyone who has bought a copy.

I absolutely devoured @ofgeography.bsky.social's WE HEXED THE MOON. It's an all-timer "summer-before-college" book, with chaotic messy feelings and self-discovery galore but also unputdownable in its pacing (I read it in 1.5 sittings). Plus, it does what it says on the tin! And so well!!

Everybody who is thinking that maybe it’ll be easier to stop ~all this~ once the big man dies bc none of the acolytes have the juice… watch this and realize just how little that’s gonna matter. They’re going for it, lock stock etc.

Karen Attiah, a black woman, got fired for A: accurately quoting what Charlie Kirk said about Black women B: Accurately observing that most white Americans seem permissive of white violence. It's bullshit, but almost expected in this white supremacist country.

I knew we were being surveilled "all the time" but I don't think I realized just how closely and how often: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Well I'll be in Pittsburgh in February! Always feel a little nervous about the cost of these things and whether they're worth it but also I hope I see a bunch of you there.

hey uhhhhh you’re gonna want this book

why does my yard smell like grandmas

Musk is inciting violence on London's streets.Tommy Robinson is financed by US tech bros. These are all very direct attempts to destabilise the British state. Starmer needs to stand up to this. A government that doesn't defend its country's values against these blatant attacks is not doing its job.

Now I get it — he surfed the polarizing algorithm expertly, and now we as a culture are going to pay the bitter price for this widening divide.

I keep finding depths and depths in that new Hayley Williams joint. Great big record.

From an Atlantic editor. I cannot get over how the entire centrist hivemind is attempting to wish into existence a person, and a movement, that does not exist. You are journalists, you are supposed to describe things as they are, not how you want them to be!

You'll never be able to convince me that it's anything but a lack of vision and a general moral failing that literary fiction prize juries rarely consider genre works in their deliberations.

frickin loved this book, you should buy yourself a copy right now

A little shocked to realize that I've finished zero of the books on the National Book Award for Fiction longlist. I do greatly anticipate three of the yet-to-be-released titles and I'm delighted to see one truly weird small press book hit the list but... I dunno, it's been a weird year.

evergreen

It’s an absolute shame that DC fired Gretchen Felker- Martin for exercising free speech and then @bsky.app suspended her account. Every writer here should be decrying this because we have to stand up for each other! This is ridiculous.

Note, today especially, that anyone who asks you to put politics aside is someone who actually can.

Revealing my next novel: THE DRAGON HAS SOME COMPLAINTS! It's about a three-headed dragon with one big problem. That problem is humans.

I guess it has become so reflexive for a broad swath of people now, this habit of obeying in advance.

Thinking, as I often do today, of Richard Nelson's SWEET ANd SAD. The Rhinebeck Plays take a lot of well-deserved flack but that one in particular *worked* and should've won the Pulitzer, should've been more a part of the national cultural conversation.

A man who murders a million people while wearing a suit in a finely furnished room, speaking in civil language to other people in suits, is as much a murderer as if he has personally shot each in the face. Being able to perceive that what he is doing is murder, is important.

anyway

At least here on bsky Obama has not to date expressed any form of prayer or thought re his recently actually politically murdered & attempted politically murdered fellow party members in Minnesota but he has time & thoughtfulness to cry one out for Charlie fuckin Kirk

speaking ill of the dead is cool and good when they’re an evil fascist, I just don’t want any of you sweet angels to get a door knock

Whether or not you support political violence won’t change where we’ve come to, nor where we’ve been for some time in this country. I am quite taken aback by how many people only invoke the term ‘political violence’ when it happens to a person with power. It’s political violence the other way too.

I’d like to stop having hypothetical conversations about our reality.

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