“’Am I not a great man?’ I cried, and then I began pacing up and down the room.” ‘Peter Lebrecht: A Tale Devoid of Adventures’ (1795), Ludwig Tieck, tr. Douglas Robertson. Out in May!

there's a stargate under the greenland ice

“The verse is light and bouncy, preventing the narrative from ever feeling heavy… [Voloshin] insists on always looking on or seeing the bright side—even as that occasionally requires some contortions.” No need to contort this bright review of SIDETRACKED! www.complete-review.com/reviews/russ...

These are the icy mountains of Pluto. It took 9 years to get these magnificent images… and 4.8 billion kilometers.

January 2025

Impossible to Say: A Review of Glantz (2025) — @jayinnismurray.bsky.social thevisionarycompany.net/2026/01/16/i...

Red brick in the sun. East Garfield Park, Chicago. A couple of mysteries here, too.

well if it isn’t the 21st century information economy again

We all live in the desire of a far-off magic

"Find another title. 'Sentimental education' is terrible." (Turgenev in a letter to Flaubert)

Feels very "someday you'll meet a nice LLM and settle down. You just haven't found the right one yet!"

It’s unfair that our galaxy has a special name (The Milky Way) but our solar system is plain old Solar System

Sunday afternoon.

Another apposite Jill McDonald Puffin Post illustration

everywhere i go, there they are

begin to prepare to send us your bad science sf/h flash fiction!

unbidden, seemingly from nowhere, fond memories of Schlitz beer return to me, its many slogans, its delicious silica gel "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer" "There's just one word for beer, and you know it" "No One Does It Like the Bull" "When it's right, you know it"

came across the word "camcorder" there. Remembering when that sounded like a normal word

Small fowls fly screaming over the yet yawning gulf, things of that nature

Tired: Everything evolves to be a crab. Wired: Everything evolves to eat ants.

The universe is a trip a minute

I put the final couple of essays I wrote about translating The End of August up on my website. Happy new year!

makes you think

Today is supposedly #NationalBirdDay but I'm calling BS. The first Bird Day was actually celebrated on May 4, 1894 in Oil City, PA and led to a decades-long movement of celebrating birds in schools. The Jan 5 version is less than a shadow of what they did 100 years ago🧵

When and only when one has learned how to cope in the appropriate manner with certain events in human life, one is already halfway to being consoled for their occurrence. Many people find as much comfort in the ceremonies of dejection as others do in the intoxication obtainable from wine. L. Tieck

The Empyrean Series has been, bare none, one of the best things to happen to lit and for readers in the past five years! Buy these books, each one is an incredible treasure!

At my blog, a brief statement on the past & the future of the Empyrean Series, which will turn 5 years old this April jsief.com/2026/01/05/s...

Lines of scrimmage, MIA somewhere in japan

really old woodcut

James Grauerholz, the overseer of the William Burroughs estate, is dead. Oliver Harris, one of the leading scholars of the novelist's world, pays tribute to the man and his achievement for Rock and the Beat Generation… simonwarner.substack.com/p/obituary-8...

we’ll drink a cup of gladness yet? we will

2026, spending more time with friends (Tr. @unpaginated.bsky.social & Daniel Elkind)

One of the best things that happened to me in 2025 was that we got a permit to visit The Wave in Arizona. Here are some photos from last Friday; needless to say, photos do not do justice to this place

ah new happy year

$4.10?! goddamn.

just dipping into the PKD exegesis casually, as one does

seeing 2025 out by watching a bleakly comic independent film called Vulcanizadora (dir. Joel Potrykus, 2024). dark as pitch. it's on Kanopy. the film marathon continues

As 2025 fades to the merest flicker, we once again come upon the most important End-of-Year list you or anyone else will see. That's right comrades - it's time for the Top Ten Geological Maps of 2025!

New today on the site! @carriecourogen.bsky.social on Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, and the enduring power of A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

I’m not sure abt “favorite” (no clue abt that) but seeing the videos for NIN’s “Closer” (and “Head Like a Hole”, to boot) at abt 11 or 12 yrs old had a profound effect on my personal development

I always tell students if you ask a good question the article will write itself

Year's End 2025

congratulations to Nardwuar, a great music journalist

you know what else is facing a crisis of legitimation? your skeets

People are saying that literature is facing a crisis of legitimation, but I still like to read a good book now and then

a suspicious presence of narratively important plumbing-related floor collapses in both of the bronsteins’ films out this season (‘marty supreme’ (which i saw yesterday) abd ‘if i had legs i’d kick you’ (which i have seen only in part)

just dipping into the PKD exegesis casually, as one does.

"If it's a matter of words, if it's a function of language, if it's concerned with what it's like or not like to be human, it will prove to be some sort of fiction." - Wright Morris, Time Pieces

Son is absolutely roasting my ass