The folks from @gaelcon.bsky.social reached out on our Discord, they need more larp submissions to ensure every slot has one. They'll accept submissions up to a few days after the published deadline to help. Now's a great time to take the writing for a con plunge! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The purpose of Cork Penny Dinners is simple: to provide nutritious meals in a warm welcoming space where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. As always, we’ll be raising money for Cork Penny Dinners during Octocon. You can also donate to them right now! octocon.com/2026/07/char...

Writers! As of today, we're officially open for pitches. 🎉 New Fansplaining has been live for two months: hopefully time for folks to see the ambition of the project, and the kinds of stuff we're hoping to publish in the future. Also...do you actually want to be edited? 😉 (I always do!)

The Force is strong with Secondhand today! A stack of Star Wars Legends has landed: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, Kenobi, New Jedi Order titles and more. Come for “just one”. Leave with intergalactic paperback consequences. May the shelves be with you. ✨🚀 1/2

Marketing scams aimed at writers via email are rampant. Here’s the latest list of scammers: Emmanuel Oluwatobi <[email protected]> [email protected] #bookmarketingscam #author #writing #amwriting #writer #writerslife #indieauthor #amediting #fiction #authors #shortstory #booksky

I can’t begin to describe how important this is. I’m already in the future, picturing a decade’s worth of Locus Year’s Best volumes on my bookshelf. Please help make it happen!

for the england match it's time for irish people to grow up a little and get over the performative hatred of an old enemy it's ancient history at this stage, we're kinda related to a bunch of them too so the posturing that so we're different is a bit crass let's put the viking raids behind us 💙🇳🇴❤️

Sophy Ridge: "If your baby's black, your baby is twice as likely to die. If you live in a poor area, your baby is twice as likely to die"

Governments around the world are moving to free software and open standards. Learn how The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, supports efforts to get away from vendor lock-in: blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/07...

Big day today when Le Pen’s future is decided after she used EU funds to pay for her domestic campaigns. Funny how Farage did exactly this but no UK authorities have done anything about it.

#chatcontrol 1.0 and 2.0 Explained: There is not one proposed “Chat Control” law — there are two, and they are moving through the EU institutions in parallel. This page untangles the two. https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview

Cons people please welcome @darecon.bsky.social (a table top gaming con that takes place this October in Naas, Co. Kildare) to the bluesky fold :)

There's a part in the book "Careless People" where the author beats Zuck at Settlers of Catan, and he is absolutely wrecked by it. Someone pulls her aside to explain everyone else has been letting him win for years. I think about this a lot re: why tech bros think everyone will love AI chatbots.

There’s no deadline for becoming who you’re meant to be. Growth takes the time it needs. You’re allowed to bloom late. You’re allowed to begin again.

What's your sign?

Also my GOD the good that money could do in the hands of autistic autism researchers, rather than a man who wanted to find biomarkers for a "diagnosis" that we do not understand, thereby providing a pathway to do some eugenics on us

This will be a thread of tips for people suffering through their first god-awful heat wave with no or subpar AC. I'm a perpetually broke Southern Californian so my ideas run cheap.

Personally I would have gone with Google wants you to finger them as the headline but I am a naughty child at heart... reclaimthenet.org/googles-new-...

Historically this has not led to good things

Volunteers and communities rescued people from houses and streets being attacked. Safe houses were set up, food, supplies and transport across a burning city came from ordinary people as the PSNI disappeared. [8/n] irr.org.uk/article/doss...

Meet SpudCell, a synthetic cell made from lifeless ingredients that feeds, grows, divides, and experiences selection. If it doesn't have all the hallmarks of life, it has a lot! Here's my story. Gift link: nyti.ms/4vCbTih

Werewolves - Catholic or Protestant? I feel like it's the latter...

Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft over alleged copyright theft newjerseyglobe.com/media/nearly...

KARL: Rs are gonna make you the poster child for the D Party MAMDANI: Let them. We don't have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins. I won last year & over the course of the last 6 months what we've delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible.

Historian Shannon Appelcline is putting together a timeline of Cthulhu #TTRPGs. It charts the extraordinary success of Call of Cthulhu in its various flavours since 1981, and the many and various TTRPGs it has influenced or inspired. Shannon is also currently writing a history of Call of Cthulhu.

This 👇

Just over 24 hours left before our MEGA Free RPG Day Bundle comes to an end!👀 Just under 5,000 downloads - what a response!💥 If you haven't grabbed it yet, now's your chance! Totally FREE or PWYW! Thank you all for your support - we can't wait to bring you even more bundles in the future!📚

Getting an autism diagnosis doesn’t fix anything. It gives you, however, a new context for everything that already happened. That’s not a small thing. It’s everything. Context is how you stop blaming yourself for things that were never your fault.

A lot of media coverage of the ‘AI’ reading of the Herculaneum scrolls really fails to understand what’s happened here. There’s no language processing happening, the AI/ML is not trained on a corpus of texts or language. It can detect ink to see shapes. HUMAN EXPERTS are then transcribing the text.

Wacom recently asked me to talk about why I make queer comics, and given there are multiple bills right now floating around in congress that are effectively "we will kill your livelihood if we get a sniff of queer" I had some pretty strong, simply feelings to relay.

no

A little louder for the people at the back... youtube.com/shorts/sAmcu...

Freya Emerson, 30, and her long-term hyperfixation, dinosaurs, 225 million, have reportedly been growing apart lately, with Emerson unexpectedly developing feelings for Greek mythology.

😂

If anyone has 'Drill baby, drill!' people in their lives, ask them how they explain this European heatwave is the worst ever recorded—people in hundreds of cities are enduring their worst ever heat stress #ClimateChange 🔥 🔥 🔥

Nintendo raises employees' base salary by 10% ➡️ mynintendonews.com/2026/06/26/n...

What will it take for universal basic income to become a reality? Basic Income Action is about taking action—together. You. Me. Us. Every conversation, every share, every new supporter helps move us one step closer. What action will you take today? basicincomeaction.org/sharables/6a...

This is my next book restoration project: a c.1910 revised edition of Mrs Beeton’s Household management. Of no great financial value even in immaculate condition, but of sentimental value to me, binding falling apart so badly that it can barely be handled.

I spent the last week trying to make a confrontation between my MC's people and the chasing BBEG go the way I planned. Problem is, everyone in this situation is clever and well aware that if either side puts a foot wrong everyone dies, so it's stayed a very tense, very polite conversation. *le sigh

Happy 56th birthday to Nick Offerman, who has always understood the assignment.

Dubliners, be on the lookout of any stray Goths struggling in the heat. Their migratory patterns are messed up due to The Cure concert this evening & Goths have difficulty regulating their core temperature in the sunshine. If you can, leave out a bowl of snakebite with ice to help them stay cool.

"We cannot start crowning trillionaires while millions of Americans line up at food banks and millions more live stressed out lives of chronic financial insecurity. Those like Elon Musk exist at the end of a long chain of human achievement that every person who ever lived contributed to."

Ireland, nodding in grave respect. That’s how it’s done. #SpeirGorm

New chapter in my demon-slaying Rosie the Riveter meets #CaptainAmerica fic, over at my Patreon! www.patreon.com/ce_murphy/po...

Someone just asked me what panel I’d be attending at the WUPJ conference. I told her I’m presenting - on disability and queer inclusion. She said: “Oh, we don’t need to go to that. We’re already doing such a great job.”

Neoliberalism’s refusal to recognise interdependence, because recognising it would involve some responsibility, is causing the complete failure on climate and on the infrastructure of research and education. And it is very exhausting how easily it is enabled.

Can we just be real and admit that these bans are about political window-dressing and not child safety? If you were really cynical, you might conclude that they were designed to *avoid* having grown-up, responsible conversations about internet regulation.

Reminder for heat intolerant people in the North West, it's not going to look like it but the temperatures today are going to be in the 20's. It's this sort of deceptive sky that's most likely to gets us with heat exhaustion/stroke. Stay frosty.

I have two horror novels coming out from @titanbooks.bsky.social under the pen name G.L. Powell. UNLEASHED in August 2027 and AFLOAT in March 2028.

Absolutely gorgeous storm just passed over me. Prettiest one I've seen in a long time.