Today is my birthday! That means it's also time for my birthday recommendations thread! 🎂 Recommend me something that you really enjoyed this past year - can be anything, a song, a book, a story, a poem, a game, some art, some interesting factoids, anything! 🎂 I will be very happy to hear!

Happy Bday! I was late to the party on these, but maybe you were too. 2025 favs: Ted Chiang Exhalation, qntm Valuable Humans in Transit, qntm There Is No Antimemetics Division. I was not late to the party on the poet Christian Bök who is worth looking up and has a variety of intriguing projects.

Berenice Abbott, Holiday Window Display, Bleeker Street, New York City, 1947

Mohamed Ahmed is back on Bluesky and he and his family could absolutely use support! You probably remember him if you've been following me for a while, he has established a small farm next to his tent in Mawasi refugee camp, and posts pictures of it regularly.

happy birthday <3 I hope there's love all around you! I rec @littlestpersimmon.bsky.social 's art! it always reaches deep into my heart, I find it very special

Happy birthday! This year I read Manuali'i by Rex Letoa Paget and it's excellent. I don't know how easy it would be for you to get the full book so I'm recommending this interview and reprinted poem from it: www.ketebooks.co.nz/en/interview...

Another excellent poetry collection I read this year (this one's a bit older, but felt very relevant) was Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner.

The censorship of Palestinians on here is reaching new heights today. I can barely keep up with the requests before accounts get banned. Such a shame.

It's the Christmas issue of Famitsu, so that means many Japanese gaming industry folks gave their personal Game of the Year lists. I'll update this thread periodically since there's a lot of them once again.

Today is my birthday! That means it's also time for my birthday recommendations thread! 🎂 Recommend me something that you really enjoyed this past year - can be anything, a song, a book, a story, a poem, a game, some art, some interesting factoids, anything! 🎂 I will be very happy to hear!

Just played the episode of Deductopia that's on Steam and that one was cool too! Loving these, on to play the third one (Hill and Dale)

Had an idea for a #writingprompt: Normally "it was all a dream" feels like "none of it mattered", write something where the dream matters/ is all that matters

To those of you who said, Catto's Post Office is a great birthday game, you were right! To everyone else, if you need a fun game on your birthday, I suggest this one (approx. 1hr gameplay). store.steampowered.com/app/2908050/...

Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating!!! Enjoy all the cool holiday things!!

Just in time for Jewish Christmas, we have a new TTRPG 🎲: The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal it Back! TVSTMAWGTSIB is a dreidel-powered heist TTRPG about reclaiming the Temple menorah from the Vatican. Itchfunding a print run till Jan 1! 📆 🔗: jumpgategames.itch.io/tvstmawgtsib

Someone who isn’t me should write an essay on this vid a vis the spate of maximalist weird novels that have been translated into English recently (Our Share of Night, Ice, Solenoid, The Children of the Dead…)

I've learned that the fourth-order Runga-Kutta algorithm I programmed for solving ODEs back in college now qualifies as "AI" somehow.

I was so thrilled when I heard about Where the Winds Meet. Then I heard about the LLM use and immediately uninstalled without playing it. What a shame.

My new phone pretends it's an AI feature that it can display which two items I used last in the control panel. Calls it AI Suggestions like it's an unparallelled feat of technomagical clairvoyance and not something most apps have been able to do for a very long time now, without AI...

This. I have seen the following things advertised as AI: * A weight sensor * A physical thermostat * Markov chains (this especially bothers me because I did a little bit of fun generative art with Markov chains before "Generative" "AI" was a thing) * Procedural tree generation * Procedural textures

This is really awful. As a TA who wanted to sue my university (trans-related, but many years ago & not involving teaching; not my current university), it was impossible to find a lawyer to take it on, and I wasn't even asking for pro bono. I am hoping the legal landscape improved since then.

Someone should take this case on and help this TA sue the shit out of this institution. Not sure how far it’ll get in these courts but my god this is so awful.

My training was very firmly in an evolution oriented EEB dept. As a visibly GNC queer, I have actually found EEB spaces to be a more welcoming home than neuroscience. Working on animal sexual behavior from an EEB perspective really highlights the sheer diversity of ways that sex can be organized.

I develop tools for artists and I’m personally just adding ✨emojis to buttons to keep the MBAs off my case. This year my group got highlighted by the CEO as the model group for AI implementation. We don’t use any AI.

guess it is December so here is my single award-eligible thing this year. fuck AI slop, the baby food of fascism

Alright, it's time to ruin your holiday budget! It's big sales recommendation thread time! I'll be updating intermittently, so check back. This year has had some ups and downs. Income isn't awful, but less stable. If you want to support my work, tips always go to buying more indie games to research

I glitched this game so hard that my save broke, and I'm still not sure if that was intentional or not! Or if it was *really* broken. This is that kind of game 😆

you already know what's up (steam sale rec thread is what's up) as always, i focus primarily on older, obscure, and just plain weird games, as big name titles don't need the help. so, onwards!

omg!! Juggernaut by Alyza Taguilaso is up for best collection of poetry in the Philippine National Book Awards!! and that collection includes "Time Skip" published in our issue 16! read the poem here: psychopomp.com/deadlands/is... or get the collection: www.philippinebooks.com/products/jug...

But if you want to help me as a dyslexic writer, announce submission windows/theme calls at least a few months in advance. Use clear language and short paragraphs in submission guidelines (you can have an arty "what we want" but follow it with the plain language version).

A bit of history that I didn't know most people didn't know until Bogi mentioned it, spelling checkers existed before word processors really got going. My older sibling had a handheld device that did this. It had become a standard feature in word processors by the time I might have needed one.

The @rblemberg.bsky.social story that opens it is exactly what one wants when one is a fan of an author who has a story in an anthology: it is both very much a Lemberg story and a story right for this anthology.

And/or they can be little!

So the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 having its IGA awards retracted for GenAI is huge, don't miss the other retraction of an Indie Vanguard recipient because the company (ModRetro) that made their game carts is making a real life weapon company themed handheld. Like what?? www.indiegameawards.gg/faq

Happy Solstice! Not a fan of the dark, so always happy to reach the point where days start getting longer. Spring is just around the corner for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, so here's a happy chickadee for today's #ArtAdventCalendar

I'll always remember when the French translator for Dark Sky emailed me to ask "is the chapter title 'Explosives And The Will To Use Them' named after the Crime In Stereo album?!" and I wondered how she knew Crime In Stereo, then looked her up and she played roller derby and it made sense.

Fam heads up on a call for submissions: please share with a Black Horror writer who you know would eat this up. Look at that dream editing duo: @mauricebroaddus.bsky.social and @chesyaburke.bsky.social 🔥🔥🔥 Deadline January 14th, 2026...! blog.flametreepublishing.com/fantasy-goth...

Happy Solstice everyone!!

Just back from the LJCC menorah lighting and the Lawrence Times already has pictures up! lawrencekstimes.com/2025/12/20/h... (I am the person who is in both a mask and a turban)

I've been playing this in small increments for the past few days and it is SUPER good. It is NOT on the Steam sale (it just launched) but I'd recommend buying it regardless if you are in the slightest interested in 3D puzzles and just in having a brain-melting waitwhat experience.

Someone asked what's happening here - the watered tree is lit on fire a full 30 seconds before the dry tree, but you can barely tell because it's burning so slowly. The dry tree goes full inferno in a matter of seconds. Water your tree. Make sure you have working smoke alarms in your home.

You might be thinking, "CPSC, does a dry Christmas tree really burn that much faster than a well-watered tree?" Friend, let's find out together by watching this PSA.

Along that note: I updated my Kekedem (renew our days of old) listing to include more options (including a tie-dye crop hoodie!!) 100% of proceeds go to the Transgender Law Center (Bonfire sends them a check, I never touch the money) www.bonfire.com/renew-days-o...

and here I thought SFWA's stance on its Palestine statement - for which I was a board member, and which I voted against due to its toothlessness - would be my only big 2025 disappointment with SFWA

Seconded

Also I should clarify: all art in this, every background, is hand-pixeled/painted. No AI, all by hand. #pixelart

It's not just TomboyX, by the way! Trump's FDA has sent these warning letters to 11 companies that sell Binders. - TransGuy Supply - ShapeShifter Apparel - GenderBender - gc2b - TomboyX - FLAVNT Streetwear - Early to Bed - TOMSCOUT - For Them - Fluxion - UNTAG www.fda.gov/inspections-...

In addition to this administration trying to kill kids, and they're also coming for our binders? OUR BINDERS.

Very sad news :( Inner Worlds is closing...

It's my last short speculative fiction spotlight column of 2025 (my Dec picks will come out in Jan). I have 10 stories to tide you through the long, dark nights and short, cold days. reactormag.com/must-read-sh...