The absolute first one was probably Sidney Aptekar aka Thomas Mario, but it was Paul Harrington's HotWired columns in the mid-90s that really cracked open the world of drinks writing for me.

Two hotshot Islay stillmen hide their growing passion for each other while competing to produce whisky with the highest possible phenolic PPM. Peated Rivalry.

Make a List of the 150 People You Feel Most Closely Connected To Dunbar's Number Challenge!

When the legend becomes fact, print the fact and also print an extensive historiography of the legend, with footnotes.

I was thinking about watching this new show "Landman," but honestly that sounds pretty boring, a superhero with all the powers of a plot of land.

I wonder if Eudora Wetly is already taken as a burlesque/drag name...

Words I just typed and sent to some friends: "God = rock. Christ = scissors. Holy Ghost = paper."

How old were you when you realized that "the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing" were mostly tedious assholes?

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains

The Society of the Continuous Portable Micro-Spectacle

It is well worth a couple minutes of your time to read "Linus Shows Up," by Scott Huler. precedenteddays.substack.com/p/linus-show...

Sure, 20. Also, for at least ten of these, I could write a post about how they're still worth using. (Also, as my pal Monica pointed out: MIX TAPE not mixed tape.)

You'll be visited by 3 spirits The three spirits

Lotsa Small Beer Press books (including mine) 25% off for the rest of 2025 when you use coupon code SBP25 at Indiepubs. smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journa...

It strikes me that some of y'all might not have seen the video for "I Do the Rock" lately. Time to remedy that. "It's very stimulating." www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXPC...

"You may choose one person to tell you The Aristocrats joke"

Most interesting (in a not-good way) part of the AWS outage was that none of the affected sites and services I saw put up any kind of "we are experiencing an outage" notice. Things ... just ... didn't ... work. That's as bad or worse than the outage itself.

Thinking about an alternate timeline where Ted Nelson's vision of hypertext and permanent attributions caught on. As opposed to the Berners-Lee implementation and "info wants to be free," which begat some good things, sure. But also enabled LLMs and disenfranchised creators.

This is my mechanical keyboard. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. Is it my best friend? No. Is it my life? Also no. But it is pretty handy, and I'll take mechanical keys and a wire over chiclet keys and Bluetooth any day.

Why yes, I am pondering the utility of adding the fox/hedgehog dichotomy to the ol' pirate/ninja and dwarf/elf matrix.

antifa literally means anti-fascist. that's all it means. it's a descriptor, not a group. declaring yourself against "antifa" means you are the other thing

I talked to podcaster/writer/human extraordinaire Scott Edelman about all kinds of stuff. Give it a listen!

Coming next month on my Eating the Fantastic podcast — you're invited to join @karenheuler.bsky.social and @richardbutner.com at their Readercon lunches as we discuss how they do what they do and manage to do it so well. I hope you'll subscribe to be among the first to eavesdrop. pod.link/1083737796

Sometimes I still really love the internet: "Investigating the Provenance of a Widely Shared Anthony Bourdain Quotation" docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A daily question: Do I have outrage fatigue or outrage fatigue fatigue?

A list of good books you can buy and read. For pleasure, even.

"captive on a carousel of time"

Help keep this historic tradition going: the Fantastic Fiction reading series at KGB Bar.

Christopher Priest, Inverted World

Lunch with Scott Edelman was one of several high points for me at this year's Readercon. Really glad that I returned (my 25th anniversary of first attending) and hope to get back there more frequently. Great to see all y'all who I saw, sad that I missed plenty of others.

My story "Bad Boys" is in the new issue of Bourbon Penn alongside a bunch of other fine folks. Check it out.

People don't use the word "fickle" near as much as they used to.

A subgenre of post I almost always hate: the "can you imagine anyone actually wearing THAT?!?" post, with accompanying runway pix from fashion houses that have been around 50-100 years. Don't worry, darling, you can't afford those clothes anyway.

Not Paul Krugman using AI slop in his otherwise informative newsletter! Ah well. Instant unsubscribe.

AI propaganda that matches your left-wing values is still AI propaganda. You are not a part of the fight for the importance of reality if you are helping to destroy it.

Anil Dash on "The Internet of Creeps." A quick and worthwhile read. www.anildash.com/2025/05/27/2...

It's all about the words and the words in the first 49 issues of LCRW came from the writers whose name are on the cover of the 50th issue: smallbeerpress.com/lcrw/2025/05...

Show us your creative process in a gif

There is never enough time but there's always enough time to read the weekly Field Notes from one of my favorite humans.

Glad to see the W3C being bold about privacy. My browser already blocks third-party cookies and ditches most other cookies when I close it. Which of course makes lots of sites and social media act weird and creaky, but so it goes.

Something I said to one of my oldest friends the other day: The right's power is built on a tripod of grievance, bad faith, and lulz.

Hi all. Every now and then, someone will publish a piece trying to rehabilitate Junot Díaz with a wide-eyed “look what you did to him” shake of the head, and various literary figures will take up the call. (1/n)

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the vertebrate wildlife population of the planet has plummeted by an alarming 73%, per @worldwildlife.org’s 2024 Living Planet Report. We each have the ability to mitigate that biodiversity loss, even in the interstices of city life: livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/

Feeling very much the same, and very much appreciating folks like Molly T.

North Carolinians read the following sentence and laugh and laugh... "For decades, Memphis, Austin and Kansas City have jockeyed for the title of BBQ capital." www.axios.com/2025/04/17/b...

With that "starter pack" slop oozing everywhere, I'd love to see a list of companies that commit to not using genAI, including in "what's the big deal, it's so cute!!!" marketing tactics.

From the "Kill yr idols" file: "Smith, unfortunately, was incredibly rude to the servers. It’s impossible for me to listen to a Patti Smith song today without remembering her reducing a waitress to tears because she forgot to put bread on the table." www.grubstreet.com/article/keit...

Secret Mall Apartment was just the documentary I needed on this Sunday afternoon. If it's playing near you, check it out.

Your last saved celebrity pic is your therapist. (I was surprised to find a celebrity pic on my phone, but here it is. Saint is still with us at age 100!)

I've spent the past few months reporting a feature on the rise and fall of casual dining chains. These 20th century juggernauts are struggling as the middle class's fortunes falter and Americans are turning away from dining rooms. How did this happen? 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/d...