Today is the 3rd slopiversary of us having to temporarily close submissions. The problem of "AI"-generated submissions hasn't gone away and is still a huge waste of our time. House policy remains the same: #noAI stories, translation, art, or anything else.

Opening up commissions! These are the things I’m most comfortable doing but down for most creative projects. Didn’t put comics on here but always down to talk those too, so hit me up. Using the email on the sheets or DMs on here work fine. 🤘

Almost spit coffee all over my laptop. Then I remembered that spitters are quitters.

TIL 1974 apparently has a reputation as one of the worst years in music. I counter that with: Queen II - Queen Apostrophe (') - Frank Zappa Phenomenon - UFO Diamond Dogs - David Bowie New Skin for the Old Ceremony - Leonard Cohen Verities & Balderdash - Harry Chapin Rocka Rolla - Judas Priest

I'm just about 25,000 words into the novel WIP and it's coming easier now. I'm putting in 2-3 decent nights a week on it, not forcing any more than that, and always quitting while still "hot" (i.e. before the words run dry). This way I'm always eager to get back to it.

2026 basically

US Rep. Lieu on the Epstein files: "Trump appears thousands of times" "Inside those files are allegations of Donald Trump raping children, threatening to kill children. I encourage the press to go look at these allegations." #OpDeathEaters #EpsteinCoverup #EpsteinFiles

A few of the birdies you can find inside

Stephen Colbert says he was told by CBS lawyers "in no uncertain terms" that he could not have Texas State Rep. James Talarico on his program. "Because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this."

Trump’s FCC pressured CBS into not airing Stephen Colbert’s interview of James Talarico. Here it is on YouTube. Worth watching. youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...

Doing the Lord's work.

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

Saw a thing about Kurt Cobain's 50 favorite albums and decided, what the hell, that sounds like fun, I'll make a list like that. Several days later and I've dug through 500+ CDs in various heavy binders and imposed several versions of a set of "rules" on myself to help narrow down choices. Less fun.

I mean, probably.

well i for one couldn’t be more excited for the possibilities of AI. finally a technology that answers the age old question ‘what if clippy was wormtongue’

RIP Bud Cort. How else would you even pay tribute to him.

What movie moment made you exclaim... "THIS IS CINEMA" (continuing the early-to-mid-career Spielberg love)

I used to staple them into little "books" (he did it EVERY MORNING for a couple of years, so I had several volumes). Might even still have one or two in a drawer somewhere.

Totally making this my next D&D character if I ever play again.

“The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it.” ~Carter G. Woodson, father of #BHM

Whenever some grinning racist from the GOP calls Texas "business friendly," this is what that means

Maybe it's all the Harlan Ellison I've been reading lately, maybe it's an increased awareness of how hollow and shitty so much mass media is (and has been), but the thought of sitting down and "bingeing" a show anymore actually upsets me. Any show, even a good one. Just gimme 1 episode/day, if that.

Incredible and exciting!

*GROAN* The Darabont adaptation isn't even 20 years old (and was basically perfect), and there was already a shitty TV reboot less than a decade ago. At best, I predict this will be a competent but unadventurous repeat of what we've already seen, with extra monologues. Who wants that?

Make Art (1/4)

now that is a poem title

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs xkcd.com/3204/

I realize that dunking on the NYT is passé; but, motherfuckers, the reason Americans consume a shitton of weed is that it’s cheaper than the physical and mental healthcare we can’t afford.

Cmon now guys. If any Dem says anything besides shut down until this is all gone then there's no need for federal government at all. These are concentration camps. If you're too scared to say so then you're part of the problem.

The new spiky iguanodontian #dinosaur #Haolong is really exciting, congrats to the team behind it. Thanks to Filippo Bertozzo and Pascal Godefroit for this help with this article... www.discoverwildlife.com/dinosaurs/ha... #Cretaceous #fossils #science #dinosaurs

Anyway do not, under any circumstances, for any reason, give your ID to a tech company or one of their subcontractors

🎵 If they ask you to pay money it's a scam 👏👏 🎵 If they ask you to pay money it's a scam 👏👏 🎵 that is not your favorite author or a stunning book club offer 🎵 They are asking you for money=it's a scam 👏👏

U.K. might lose a prime minister because a guy who worked for him knew another guy who hung out with Epstein. Meanwhile the U.S. opposition party is telling our President, who was Epstein's best friend, that his secret police should get better training so their public street murders look less messy.

“Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States … police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user”

All of this. I am the first of my target audience. Part of this is, if you aren't creating for someone, it's like creating for everyone, which is creating for no one. And as a writer, that someone should be me since I HAVE to reread my work over and over and over 🫠 that's publishing, bay-bee

Well said. I relate so much. My first novel took almost five years to write and it came out very different from how I imagined because of those years of life experience. It’s bolder than anything I would’ve written five years ago and made me see the value of being slow.

"I have to use AI to make art or no one will take me seriously" Punk this is HP Lovecraft's original drawing of Cthulhu

I actually agree that there is going to be a skill gap between people who regularly use AI vs those who refuse to use it, and it's that after the bubble pops the refusers will be fine while the AI-dependent will be missing or have let atrophy basic skills

Rather proving this point: I've just this second abandoned what I'd hoped would be a perfectly serviceable thriller upon discovering the author runs an "AI writing" company Why are people?

Happy Superb Owl day to all who celebrate.

Side-eyeing a lot of those folks who left Twitter because of the Nazis only to start a Substack instead.

1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

Of all the easy things you can do to help the environment, conserve water for communities not corporations, not perpetuate scams, support the labor and rights of creators... *not* using generative AI is the fucking easiest. You absolutely deserve to be shamed for using it for image and text creation

A seven nation asskicking by Jack White, bravo rockstar

For the record, I 100% support an Amazon boycott — I personally do not use Amazon, Prime, or shop at Whole Foods. But a consumer boycott can’t be the extent of it. Workers need to organize, speak out. More protests. Power.

Donald Trump is withholding billions of dollars in New York infrastructure unless he gets Penn Station and Dulles Airport named after him. This is not only brazenly corrupt. It is sick, twisted and egomaniacal. The time is long overdue for sane Republicans to stand up to Trump.

the choice seems stark, do you want to live in this joyful kind of world or the one inflicted on us on parasites and grifters

We're co-sponsoring a talk tomorrow at 3:30 Central about Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer, a Czech-American sci-fi writer who published a bunch of stories in the early pulps. Register to watch it on Zoom here: events.uchicago.edu/event/260646...

Back in the '90s, my dad would print out random dragon pictures from the Internet and hide them under my breakfast placemat every morning (yes, he was/is a great dad). Most of them ended up being D&D and/or Dragonlance related, and this was one of them.