Humans were literally so blessed to be on a planet filled with abundant natural resources, nature, trees, fruit and sunshine but no, we chose debt, capitalism and war.

I deleted my account today - good riddance to a pretty shit site

Yaaay, another publication for 2025! I'm really proud of this article on alchemical metaphors and their function as part of alchemical language use. It's open access, go forth and check it out!

Spellcasting On is out now! Cosy sapphic romance with yarn 🧶 and magic ✨. Available now on all the usual platforms: buy.bookfunnel.com/psfdv1soqy

Want to be clear that the predictable violence against the police wasn't the only problem with yesterday's march It's that 100,000 angry racists gathered in London for the biggest racist march in 50 years, and anyone not white had to steer clear The govt can't see that because they are inadequate.

Ahhhh the North American ARCs for Enchanting the Fae Queen are here, & they are GORGEOUS. I love @wingbuffet.bsky.social's perfect cover art, @lesleyaworrell.bsky.social 's cover design, &all the perfect details of page layout inside (with huge thanks to my wonderful editor @erikatsang.bsky.social)!

Update: we just received a statement from Macmillan/Tor taking full responsibility for failing to register copyright, promising to make us whole and pay us any settlement money we lost out on due to that error, and promising to find & correct the lapses that caused this. Every pub should do this.

Onko niin, että tulevaisuuden sukupolvilla sana ”orpopurra” on kaikkein pahimmanasteinen kirosana? Kielelliseltä rakenteeltaan se kyllä sopii siihen. www.ku.fi/artikkeli/52...

Shout out to everyone only now learning that "Albert Einstein was reclusive at the end of his career, shunning public engagements." Really meant, "For the last *20 years* of his career, Einstein opposed US racism by only speaking publicly at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

My sword teacher's old teacher Guy Windsor giving some good tips on how to write sword fights: www.sfwa.org/2025/09/09/w...

My Genre Grapevine analysis of the Anthropic AI settlement with authors. Overall, most authors got screwed with the settlement payments barely covering 7% of the books Anthropic pirated to train their generative AI system. 1/ www.patreon.com/posts/138349...

What a wonderful starred review of PSYCHOPOMP & CIRCUMSTANCE from @libraryjournal.bsky.social ! I can't believe this novella will be out in the world in just over a month. If you want a discounted copy from B&N, today is the last day of their pre-order sale. barnesandnoble.com/w/psychopomp...

Don't forget about the DRM-free Humble Bundle from Tor (with Murderbot, Witch King, and more), benefiting World Center Kitchen. The donation is now at over 58,000. It would be awesome to get it up to $100,000. www.humblebundle.com/books/martha...

They had to call the police because he wouldn’t leave. That’s how you know he’s nothing without his app. If a real artist was caught faking work like this, they’d simply disappear into a hole in the ground in abject shame.

Turvallista matkaa Global Sumud Flotillalle 🫡

Discworld QOTD, from Men at Arms

I can't get past Peter Thiel naming his company Palantir aka the magical objects in LOTR used by an evil control obsessed entity for weird authoritarian surveillance state reasons It's like an 80s movie villain who runs a company called SwastikaCorp, like its TOO on the nose

When you money off Substack, they take a % of your take, and they use that % to profit transphobes, nazis, and their investors, who then use that profit to further their own interests. But for once, you ACTUALLY have the power to opt out of a portion of the ecosystem that is destroying us.

I saw a comment on .. somewhere where a person referred to people who love AI as “botlickers” and I haven’t stopped laughing about it

A combination of two alien invasive species, sika deer and rhododendron, are killing this beautiful native forest in Lauragh, Kerry. The trees can't regenerate due to the overgrazing, and as they age and die, only the proliferating rhodo remains. Invasives are a *top* driver of global nature loss.

This is an excellent thread that highlights why I have no patience for the idea that generative AI has any place in academia. Academic work relies on community. These communities are shaped in part by randomness - e.g. chance encounters, or new hires at the work place. (1/n)

The use of chatbots reinforces and promotes a cliché that isn't true at all: that research, especially in the humanities, is a solipsistic endeavour. Without the continuous lively exchange between people, there is no research, at least none that would be worth reading. 3/n

I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.

Muistetaanhan sitten, että hallituksen rasismissa ei ole kyse siitä, että ei osata käyttäytyä ja puhua sivistyneesti, vaan siitä, että ajatellaan rasistisesti toisten ihmisryhmien olevan vähempiarvoisia. Ja samalla sitä, että pääministeri ajatusmaailman hyväksyessään on itsekin rasisti.

It's bad enough discovering your fiancé is a cursed prince, but then someone writes a magical musical about it... In Curses & Curtains, musical theatre is the dominant form of pop culture, and I have SO much fun developing and writing lyrics for all the in-universe musicals. #BookSky 💙📚

Franca's been found but Fiasco (the grey one) is still at large, so if you're in Edmonton maybe you can share this / keep an eye out?

Excuse me this bird is MAGICAL

former kids who read too many books and didnt know how to pronounce the words you learned gang say hey

LLM? embedded in firefox? FOR NAMING TABS?

LOOKS LIKE MEATS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS

My new GenAI Grapevine column providing analysis and coverage related to generative AI is out. Includes a deep dive into the Anthropic settlement along with publishers failing to register copyright. Plus info on tension at Worldcon over writers using AI and a book people must read. 1/2

This Cambridge Element is available to download for free in the Writing in the Ancient World series until 4 September 2025: Writing in Bronze Age Crete: ‘Minoan' Linear A by Ester Salgarella (2025) www.cambridge.org/core/element... I mention this because of the exchanges between Egypt and Crete.

Ruin my Sunday why don’t you

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️ it 🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️ 🕯️

Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”

What a gleeful backscroll I've woken up to 😊

Vieläkö muistatte, kun Keskisarjan rasismista huomautettiin julkisesti viisi vuotta sitten? Asian nostanutta historiantutkijaa vaadittiin raiskattavaksi, Keskisarjan ammattikollegoita syytettiin kateudesta, ja Ilta-Sanomat teki Keskisarjasta itsestään jutun todellisen marttyyrin.

I will remind folks those images of Nazi book burnings aren't burning just any books. They're burning the library of Magnus Hirschfeld; a gay, Jewish doctor who created an institute dedicated to LGBTQ sex education and healthcare. And a man who pioneered gender affirming care surgeries.

While defending the luddite argument in Discord, I stumbled into this IMO succinct explanation for opposing generative AI: At every step in the process, it impoverishes us.

Foraging: best afterwork activity

INDO-EUROPEAN #1: *h₁ey, *knh₃ck *knh₃ck INDO-EUROPEAN #2: *kʷo's *thh₂re? IE 1: *Larry IE 2: *Larry *kʷo? IE 1: Laryngeal! 😁 IE 2: ... IE 1: *gh₂ddit? 🤣 IE 2: that was so bad I think we need to all get in our chariots and head out in all directions just to get as far away as we can from you

Obviously the answer to this question is no, but more importantly, I will not take a question like this seriously until it is demonstrated to me that the makers of LLM technology, and their boosters in business and the media, have even the slightest concern for the suffering of actual human beings.

The world has changed so much since I wrote this, but at the end of the day it's still an essay I had a breakdown writing, an essay that took days because I couldn't stop crying long enough to write strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Re-upping this for the afternoon:

What a joy a new T. Kingfisher novel is! I just finished Hemlock & Silver and am very happy. So many things I love in this book, though they're slight spoilers so let me just heartily recommend this for your next fairytale-inspired read! (It's creepy Snow White vibes)

A reminder that genAI processing is so mind-bogglingly complex, it’s a hugely wasteful use of data centres. It eats up massive amounts of processing power that could be used far more effectively for other things.