Me: Okay, there's been a thunderstorm, the heatwave should be over now. (New health bar appears) (The sun is now named 'Sol, Starflame of Regret') (Objectively the greatest piece of classical music ever recorded starts playing).

Consider: kategabrielle.threadless.com/designs/kay-...

This is the era of video games that will never be revived as a retro-cool look

@nixonfoundation.bsky.social finally catching up www.austingrossman.com/crooked

I stumbled on Heather O’Neill’s novel Lullabies for a little criminals and it’s stunningly good. I tried The Lonely Hearts Hotel but it’s so drenched in whimsy I can’t deal. But it still has great sentences.

Yesterday I was interviewed by an academic who is writing about world-building in video games. He's talking to narrative designers, and I told him he needs to talk to at least one art director. Who should he talk to?

Trump gives them spectacle. Musk gives them infrastructure. ICE gives them force. Data centers give them extraction. The fight moves local because that’s where the machine touches land, water, housing, and bodies.

Why are video games so goddamn hard nowadays?

Well for some of us that's EVERY fucking summer.

Guy on the NY subway absolutely gripped by the D&D manual he’s reading.

Freedom 250 sounds fun www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

@merriam-webster.com Your entry for SCRIPS includes an erroneous example. "During the four-and-a-half-month program, filmmakers develop their scrips and network with industry professionals." —Elsa Keslassy, Variety, 20 Mar. 2026 Sorry to bother you. My insomnia is bad enough as it is.

I found a dollar at the bodega and handed it in to the guy at the cashier like he was a lost and found. He said "Do you want it?" I said "Yeah, I kind of do."

I had to install Microsoft Authenticator on my Apple phone to get Meta Workplace working so I could use Microsoft Teams. This Future Sucks.

Kafka - The Trial Baker - Cassandra at the Wedding Thackeray - Vanity Fair

book haul from PEN American Lit Gala

Yes, I am porting my book into Scrivener on a Saturday night.

Scrivener makes a lot of things easier but I will never like it.

Palantir are about six months away from ordering their employees to leave audio logs scattered around their offices

Maybe they should have stopped calling him Little Father Time.

I posted the third installment of my journal of taking BEAST MODE from manuscript to publication. A process I am making up as I go along. austingrossman.substack.com/p/publishing...

this feels like a good place to recommend Ennuigi, a free game where you play as a depressed Luigi and wander through a ruined mushroom kingdom landscape smoking and making forlorn observations about his and his brother's lives

The nonprofit that runs the successful, Pulitzer-winning Baltimore Banner is going to take over the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Of all the possible outcomes here, this is likely the best we could have hoped for. apnews.com/article/pitt...

The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), by Hieronymus Bosch, 1480-1505, 📸 by @alexbrandon

Rooms with no purpose, just a chair and a plant and a couple of shelves.

right now the astronauts are calling houston because the computer on the spaceship is running two instances of microsoft outlook and they can't figure out why. nasa is about to remote into the computer

lmao @ this week's popbitch

Origins of Beast Mode, part 2. Pitching it, writing it. open.substack.com/pub/austingr...

My view from a train passing through New London, CT. I couldn’t see where the crowd ends. #nokings

I grew up in Massachusetts, and I only just learned our state motto is Ense Petit Placidam, Sub Libertate Quietem: "By the Sword We Seek Peace, But Peace Only Under Liberty." Explains a lot.

I posted about the new book, and how it came about. open.substack.com/pub/austingr...

Fantasy Lisbon, ND

This is such a stupid time to be writing a book

@chrislkeller.com's essay on Wilco's "Via Chicago" is, well it's everything an essay about a sad 1990s song should be. Bravo. #marchxness marchxness.com#/2ndround-wi...

Done it.

I will finish this manuscript today. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQdw...

I agree although it would be hard to find a video game this stupid.

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Replaying this now. It holds up shockingly well. @harvey1966.bsky.social

I’m only hearing negative! Let’s give Lisa her due!

Maybe Lisa Loeb *wasn't* all that sad in the 1990s, wearing those tortoiseshell glasses in Ethan Hawke's enormous SoHo apartment. But YOU were, and you know it! #marchxness #marchsadness marchxness.com/2ndround-gil...

It's Round Two, and Lisa faces off against another country singer. But sadness knows no genre boundaries! marchxness.com/2ndround-gil... #marxchness #marchsadness

happens every time

It’s iconic, she’s iconic, but what did it all mean? I wrote about Lisa Loeb and Stay (I Missed You) for @marchxness.bsky.social. We’re up against Lee Ann Womack and a worryingly good essay from @amygcb.bsky.social Come and vote and feel your feelings! marchxness.com#/1stround-lo...

“Okay, about the glasses. People roll their eyes at the glasses now, but if you were not there for the glasses you do not understand about the glasses.” Just read Austin Grossman‘s @marchxness.bsky.social essay on Lisa Loeb‘s stay on my lunch break AWP and it was awesome. marchxness.com

Hoping against hope that I wrote this one.

REM vs Liz Phair. This is going to break some hearts.

The original player character was my concept and totally ruled, and probably wouldn't have fucked Clive Barker in the first place so the issue is moot.

March Sadness 90s Edition is GO! You can VOTE on the website and keep up with all the latest news on the Substack. We will try to do lots of Bsky updates as well! marchxness.com#/1stround-di...