"Don’t like the Oxford comma? No problem (You’re wrong but we’ll humour you)." 🤣 (from a magazine's submissions page)

Another stranded time traveler. 🥲

You will *never* guess what this is in response to. 🤣🤣🤣 #writing

Favourite personal rejection in 2025: "We enjoyed the concept of a whale-focused spy story but felt that the heavy quantities of Russian, Norwegian, and whale-speak impeded the flow of the plot more than we would have liked." P.S.: I sold that story later. 😎

When a magazine charges you for the privilege of submitting your story, but offers no payment to the selected writers... Very strong "The Producers" vibe, bruv.

My first time at a real conveyor sushi restaurant! I overcame my perfectly reasonable fear of accidentally taking somebody else's sushi, thus setting off an anti-gaijin riot by the sushi-less locals. 😅 The screen in front of me made sure to alert me of each incoming sushi delivery. High-tech, eh. 😎

I will never understand Japanese prices. 🙃 A medium bottle of whiskey (500 yen) costs less than a McDonald's meal (800 yen). A flight from Tokyo to Osaka (7,900 yen) costs less than taking bus or train (15,000 yen). 🫠 ...now I'm reconsidering my plan to buy a 50,000-yen cross-country rail pass. 😅

Just finished reading “A Love Story Told in Nine Lives” by Anna Vangala Jones, and it was wonderful. 💖 It reminded me in many ways of "500 Days of Summer." 🥲 ashortstorylong.substack.com/p/a-love-sto...

A reminder of the stunning rate of scientific progress: it’s only been 101 years that we’ve known the Universe is larger than the Milky Way. Now we know that it’s at least *1 million* times larger in linear size than the Milky Way (and probably 50 or more times larger than that, even).

"We accept all types of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, essay, etc. as long as it is 1999 words or less. Submitting work beyond that could result in global infrastructure failure, famine, pestilence, and war." 🤣 (from Y2K Quarterly's submission guidelines - duotrope.com/duosuma/subm... ) #writing

OKD is open again for free subs until we reach our cap! Learn more about us and submit your best poetry or flash fiction: buff.ly/chQ4jpz Okay Donkey is always open for tip jar ($2.50) or expedited ($4.00) subs! Your contribution helps us pay our contributors and cover other mag-related expenses.

A message for you all to carry through the year

Legend

"I'm so glad I didn't abort you." ...why yes, I am indeed a Chuck Palahniuk character.

Me to the west-coast magazines that have their Submittable set to manual activation instead of automatic:

Happy Public Domain Day, gang! Nancy Drew, The Shadow, Japanese superhero Golden Bat, and Betty Boop (dog version) have all just had their copyrights expire. Go nuts!

Crawled out of my capsule at dusk, only to find every single kiosk at the local subway station closed. I've been in Tokyo five weeks now, but this - this is the most surreal thing I've seen yet. 🤣

This MIT study shows that using generative AI resulted in brain damage: "While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels." www.media.mit.edu/publications...

New bit: pronouncing "phone" as in "Persephone."

Just finished reading "I'm alive but I'm in Asheville" - a beautiful and funny flash story by John Jodzio. Check it out, eh. 🤓 splitlipthemag.com/flash/0525/j...

Live footage of me submitting stories to all the magazines opening January 1. #writing

writing tip: when in doubt, let your character admire a pretty tree or bird (this is also life advice for 2026)

The Invader Zim school of interior design. 🤣

Thread:

Bros before foes.

Wooo, happy new year, y'all! 🥳 (1:22am here in Tokyo.) My 2026 so far: Made the locals laugh at a Shinto shrine. Literally ran away from a very persistent woman who wanted to sell me "massage-massage." 😅

New Year's Eve countdown, but from 3,600.

"Today is a good day for pie."

Submissions for issue 10 are open a few hours early! For this, our last issue, we're looking for stories which explore the theme of endings 🥲 1-14 January: open to authors who are members of marginalised groups only 15-31 January: open to everyone

Worldbuilding: family-owned pharmacy. Homemade sign outside: "cheap medicine." Hand-drawn price tags. #writing

New Year's Eve. Tokyo's party district, Shinjuku. Of the 41 million people who live in the area, at least a million must be out tonight, here, now, mingling, posing, reveling, out in the cold for no reason other than to be outside, on this of all nights. Was every night like this in the ages past?

New Year's Eve, Shinjuku, Tokyo. Food vendor row. Banana merchant. Perfection. 💖 #Tokyo #Japan #banana #art #food

Fascinating. Tokyo's biggest Shinto shrine, Meiji Jingu, has a big pavilion selling 30 different types of charms and talismans. I typed them all up - see the alt-text. 🤓 I invested 300 yen (just under $2) in a D-class divine protection talisman. 😇 #Tokyo

Light echo of the #supernova Cassiopeia A with #JWST NIRCam. Latest image from 2024-12-30. 🔭 Filters: F300M, F360M, F444W from program: www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...

Internet cafe. Free soda! Huh, lime Fanta. ...not my wisest choice. #Tokyo 😅

Just saw somebody refer to Amazon dot com as "Large South American River." 🤣 Takes wayyy longer to write, but a lot more entertaining.

New blog post! 🤓 "Year in Review: 2025" grigorylukin.com/2025/12/30/y...

"Manuscripts are never so much finished as escaped." James D Macdonald #writing 😏📖

Gotta pay the bills. Salaryman Godzilla. Heavy-duty chair.

Nomad woes: Japan's JR Rail raised their prices 2 years ago, making the 7-day pass unwise. (50,000 yen = $321 USD) *But* if I go all in on couchsurfing & spend just 1 day in each major city & sleep on the train & don't get my luggage nicked... This is FOMO, I know, but *maybe* I can make it work. 😅

Shimbashi, Tokyo. Hundreds of people gathered in a plaza watch the Keirin Grand Prix bicycle race on a huge digital billboard. They cheer and boo in unison. This has the same wholesome old-timey vibes as folks watching TV through a store window. :)

I know I'm an outlander here, and some cultures are vastly different, etc... But it still blows my that most Tokyo bakeries and donut shops (>90%) have no seating or don't serve coffee. So many business ideas... 😏☕️

"When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live." Sarah Kendzior

Oi, writer friends! There are some great submission calls over yonder, if you have an as-yet-unsold short story in your drawer. :) publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2025/12/72-c... #WritingCommunity

A confederacy of dunces, if you will. 😏🤡🤡🤡

I'm lounging in my Tokyo capsule, sending out a batch of short stories to magazines... This set of guidelines made me smile. :) "Theme: There is no theme. It's thematic and formal anarchy! Just submit something that's really good!" #writing

This letter pretends it is reasonable and obvious but ultimately is an attempt to excuse a dozen or more ways of letting anti-human, pro-techlord, environment-destroying septic AI into our industry, organizations and processes. But there just isn’t an ethical use of generative AI, full stop.

Nature is so beautiful... 😌

Bored... Blimey, boredom breeds brainstorming, breathtakingly boosted beyond banal boundaries by beautiful, barely believable blathering. Bah! 🙃 Currently looking up how to get a BSc in Physics in Montreal... I'm curious if anything from my 2008 UNR PoliSci degree can even transfer. 😅