The morally correct answer to the trolley problem is to design better safety into the public transport infrastructure so that people are not getting trapped on the tracks in such high numbers.

The #WIPSnips word for March 6th is "pursue" #WriteSky #WritingPrompts #WritingCommunity

The Problem with Early Warnings, by Charles Rafferty

This is poetry.

This. I do have sympathy for the problems the media is having though. There's no useful analysis that you can do when war and peace are determined not by national interest or political strategy but by whether one man has had his nap today or another man wants to play with someone else's toys

Update from my writing inbox: Absolutely nothing is happening. The person I most want an update from has an out of office that says he'll be away 2 weeks. It's now been 3 months since a top tier publication told me they loved my story and were forwarding it to the editors for final reads. Crickets

Now you know why we are where we are today. Last year, he said we destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities. That was another lie.

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else. We mustn’t let this war do so.

Israel has now killed more journalists than any other government since the Committee to Project Journalists began collecting records in 1992. The Israel-Gaza war is the deadliest conflict on record for journalists, the CPJ found. https://wapo.st/4aJGqBm

From my newest WIP novel - a modern fairy tale retelling about sisters. A lot of sisters.

Did it attract hero voters? No. Did it at least prevent a resurgence of the radical right? Well, also no. But it at least enabled the left and centre to swing in behind Labour? Ha, you're not going to believe this...

The older I get, the more convinced I am that middle age is a time to remember who we were and who we wanted to be when we were kids, and try to find some way to get back to that. For some people, that realisation is a crisis. For others, an opportunity.

I'm not gonna lie, I honestly think maybe I... do like the idea of this? Pretty people shagging moodily in Yorkshire sounds like a solid night out to me?

So.. husband and daughter are away skiing. Shall I take myself off to see Wuthering Heights on my own? What do you think? Good idea or now?

If you’re an American service member who gets killed in a retaliatory strike, your family can take comfort in the fact that it was done in service of making the host of Celebrity Apprentice feel like a big man for a minute, before he moved on to something else and forgets about this forever

Hypothetical scenario: Let's say that an AI and a human being write the same book. Not similar books - the SAME book. Word for word. Each arrived at without any coordination between them. The AI is prompted with an idea, human has same idea. They write the same book. I would argue that... 1/2

✊🏾 🇺🇲 ✊🏾 🇺🇦 #ONEV1 #Pinks 🌸 #Voices4Victory

It is literally false that the Jews being hunted by Nazis were citizens, because the first step toward genocide was stripping them of citizenship and making them stateless. As Arendt reminds us, citizenship is a legal category created to facilitate a machinery of exclusion of the out-group.

Jesus Christ you all were not kidding about Heated Rivalry! How does it start out as basically top tier porn and then episode 5 is the most heartfelt, wholesome thing ever? Yes to all of this.

America couldn’t have done all of this without Trump! Americans’ pensions & lifesavings devastated by inflation, skyrocketing costs, cuts to healthcare & SNAP to give tax breaks to billionaires in the Trump/GOP’s BIG UGLY BILL! We couldn’t have uprooted post-WWII stability or covered up pedophiles!

Finally, someone said it.

Also Bill Gates, another Harvard dropout.

Can I just note that by this definition, Mark Zuckerberg is "working class".

Reckon we've reached the 'invading Poland' stage of the road-to-war timeline. We've all studied this, and we know what happens next. If the line isn't drawn, here and now, it'll be Mexico, Cuba, Greenland... WWIII breaking out as we watch. And I'm scared, for myself and for my son. Scared...

In a similar vein: if, as per US Supreme Court rulings, corporations are to be treated as people, then corporations that commit crimes should be subject to human style penalties similar to imprisonment - cessation of all activities and freezing of all assets.

Paging @unamccormack.bsky.social for this important breaking news content...

Remember how appalled we all were in 2022 when Russia completely unprovoked attacked Ukraine? That is what we’re doing tonight with Venezuela. We are the bad guys here. Everyone who supports this is supporting unprovoked murder. Fuck every last one of them

We’re invading Venezuela?! What the fuck?!

So I submitted a story today and got a same day rejection, which... OK! I respect the clarity. No shade on a magazine who is finally adhering to writers' wish for quicker response times. Not gonna lie, it did startle me for second there, though!

So, I wrote a post about my 2025 writing accomplishments, which I am very proud of, and about persisting with fiction against the backdrop of the world in general. faerypolitic.substack.com/p/a-year-of-...

Possibly one reason the "Bruce Springsteen biopic 'A Complete Unknown' was so disappointing to people is that it was actually a Bob Dylan biopic?

So, I wrote a post about my 2025 writing accomplishments, which I am very proud of, and about persisting with fiction against the backdrop of the world in general. faerypolitic.substack.com/p/a-year-of-...

So this year I’ve decided to do a thing where I post a mention of every book I read. First up, finished today, The Wedding People. Very fun!

Stranger Things series finale was… excellent. I’m emotionally devastated, but in a satisfying way. Gonna go lie down now…

Oh yay! I found a copy of Adrian Mole at Waterstones for my soon-to-be 13 yo daughter. Oh no! The foreword is by David Walliams.

For the record, Robin Ince is a superb comedian, an absolute mensch, a remarkable thinker and the kindest human you’ll ever meet. And the BBC is a genuinely great and globally unique institution that needs to stop being afraid. I think that’s where most of its faults and issues stem from.

I am shook by this. If there is not space on the BBC for Robin Ince, one of the kindest, most humane and gently dad-coded people in British broadcasting, then... what on earth are they for?

Help me with the ettiquette here: Can I just ask my therapist to read my novel in lieu of our sessions? Like, I just sit there in silence while she reads looking up at me every few minutes to say, "Oh!" And I say, "I know, right?" I feel like we'd both get more out of that approach.

Rational brain me, asking people to critique my work: Please identify elements that don't work or cause confusion, help me strengthen the work. What I secretly want: Scratch me behind the ears and tell me I'm the bestest girl! I wrote the bestest book ever! Authors are such needy puppies.

A tense moment after Helena tells Jordy she's separated from her husband.

Also, this. This cannot be real. Surely?

I just want to be absolutely clear that no one, and especially no journalist, should ever take at face value the Trump team's claims to care about "free speech". What they mean by that is that they should be free to say whatever they want and you should feel free to shut up.

Every day I wake up and think "Was all that just a dream?" So I check the news, to ground myself in reality and I confront multiple headlines like this. Surely this is all too stupid to be real?

Just got randomly sad that Terry Pratchett is no longer with us. Live your life in such a way that strangers still mourn you 10 years after your death.

My favourite modern playwright. Brilliant, funny, humane and deeply original. What a loss…

So last week was the awards ceremony for my writing group's annual short story contest. I was pretty happy with the story I'd written for it, but I was kicking myself bc I didn't leave enough time to properly edit it ahead of the deadline. And when I read the other stories they were all SO GOOD! 1/

Have set aside this afternoon to make a start on drafting my third novel. So far have mainly been building my writing playlist or songs in the book's "vibe". This counts as "writing", right?

Helena is shocked to learn her teenage son thinks she's "becoming really successful". Her ex husband, however, is unimpressed.