With all respect to Marx, this opiate is hitting so good

So glad the kids are back in school so I can get back to my actual job: checking Class Dojo notifications from their school

Any two people will do many things differently (slice sandwiches, read stories, arrange pillows) When you have children together, the children will have preferences. If they prefer your way, you will hear "Can you do it dad's way?" This means you win, and is the primary goal of parenting

Is this a good time to share my playlist: "Music that sounds like Ethel Cain's aesthetic looks like she should sound like"

What makes the best Billy Joel songs great is they're Beatles songs: bloated franken-songs combining bitter longing with weird bouncy circus shit. But there's no John and Paul, there's only Billy, letting his inner John/Paul wolves at each other's throats

The farther you get into reading a book that feels perfect, the more it feels like watching a no-hitter in baseball. The tension builds. Can it continue like this? Is there anything I can do to avoid jinxing it? The unbroken thread feels too tenuous to continue to the end, but you hold your breath

my ancestors had to kill to eat and survive. they endured subzero winters near the Arctic Circle. no, I am not "enrolled in your rewards program"

As I send out queries during this of all weeks, I flip-flop wildly between "it's so frivolous and selfish to ask for attention for my silly book right now" and "if this work has ever mattered, it matters now."

So I was roasting this article this morning, but it got me thinking: what if un-siloing the humanities is the real cure for male loneliness?

Other writers: My partner isn't a very helpful critique partner because they're just so darn encouraging and not critical enough My partner:

I needed to read this today. Thought someone else might need it too.

It is really really sinking in for me the degree to which LLMs are the ultimate expression of right wing anti-intellectualism. Its proponents are literally mocking the idea that anyone would ever want to learn anything, know anything, develop any actual skill, or have a thought of their own.

Give your kids a disposable film camera and tell them to go nuts

Decided to risk my career today

Recalled out of the blue today how, in 2010 or 2011, I outlined (but never wrote) a short story set in a world where all art was made by robots and a human tried to experience reality like a robot in order to make art

I finished draft 18 of a novel today, and it feels like it might finally be getting somewhere.

Nothing like starting the day ready for creative flow, only to remember that your seven-year-old spewed a mouthful of hot chocolate on your laptop yesterday, and it still needs to be cleaned before you can write anything

Here's a list of books that I, a human, am anticipating: - mine - this one that I'm writing - I've been writing it for years - jk you probably can't read it ever but imagine you did and it was really good, that would be cool

It seems to me that too much of the AI-critique discourse focuses on how it doesn't work very well. But that's not the problem with AI. That's just a funny side effect. AI's *goals* and *ethics* are the problem. They're going to make it work better, and things will be even worse when they do...

Tolkien: the trans woman blesses the journey of the cozy gay men (who I wrote in memory of my queer friends) to go kill the fascist demigod Rowling: you have to sympathize with the creep who bullies a child, because he's an incel that wanted to bang the child's mom WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING

I'm listening to the Twilight audiobook so I can understand my wife's culture and when I jokingly suggested I rewrite it in the style of Cormac McCarthy, she encouraged me, but when I showed her this, she said, and I quote, "Why is it so bad?"

In the 1950s, polling on interracial marriage was at 4% approval in the United States. Loving v. Virginia is 1967. We hit an above 50% approval rating for the first time in the 1990s. In 2021, 94% of Americans approved of interracial marriage.

The average american has three friends

I HATE GENERATIVE AI I HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH USE YOUR BRAIN WRITE A STORY MAKE SOME ART DO LITERALLY ANYTHING BUT PLEASE *BE HUMAN* GODDAMN

My phone broke and it's going to be a few days until the replacement is up and running. If you need me I'll be experiencing true bliss for the first time since the invention of the smartphone

Every day I am more convinced that everything would be better if the Y2K crash HAD happened

Haven't fully fleshed out this thought yet, but I'm learning that if I identify five problems with a piece of writing, they're usually all fixable with one solution. One added scene can tie up a lot of dangling threads, for instance. It feels like it might be a realization about more than writing

Wrote myself a new bio just for @tacobellquarterly.org, but I think I'm going to start using it for everything.

I just watched The Apartment for the first time and I'll be honest, I'm not sure why we needed Mad Men when this movie existed

Coming out of this subculture is wild, because every now and then someone will go viral and you're like, I played pickup football with that guy. I watched The Lego Movie at his house

I'll stop retweeting @tacobellquarterly.org every single day when they stop dropping bangers every single day

I went on a short-story-submitting tear last summer, which means I've been averaging multiple rejections per week for quite a while. Honestly, I hope I can keep it up. It feels like the circle of life. Today's work feeds tomorrow's submissions feeds 2026's rejections. #AmWriting I guess?

Writing mood today

Fuck jobs, fuck cars, fuck everything. The only successful mile marker you need in adult life is having an obsessive hobby that is your passion

What's so surreal right now is I was raised alt-right before that was a term, and we were prepared for all of this to happen. I was groomed to be on the lookout for this playbook. We just thought it would be Al Gore doing it.

The Minecraft movie was honestly pretty good except for the Minecraft parts

You don't lack the talent, you just lack the money and time off work to go on an expensive vacation to insert your whole ass in publishing cliques

We shouldn't accept race reports posted on anything other than angelfire, honestly #BM100

The possibility of #BM100 updates is going to seriously challenge my resolve to unplug every evening

Holy shit it's the fucking Barkleys again already. So glad Keith is on bluesky this year. #BM100

This is the time of year where I find myself saying stuff to my partner like 'sorry I'm late, 'guy with very daring shorts' was due at Rat Jaw and I've been obsessively refreshing all my social apps for the last 2hrs' #BM100

*bursts into the room excited and hyperventilating* THE BOWNCH- THE CLONCH- THE BONCH HAS BEEN CLOWN! #bm100

I'm waiting for my D&D party to log in, so let's talk about why people like D&D and why it's having such a resurgence. Here's why I think it is: 1: It is fun

To preserve our humanity, I think it's important to be offline more. The truth is we can get all the news we need in one or two sittings a day, and then decide what to do about it, one day at a time. Platforms like this one can be helpful, but like everything else in life, dosage matters!

God I can't wait for "try not to imagine what your favorite baseball player's politics are" season

Recommended this a friend recently. They texted this morning to tell me that they made their first-ever call to reps using this app. If you've been scared to call, this can help. If you know people who are scared to call, suggest this. It's never to late to start and we're gonna need all of us.

It's a great day because I added a little sketch AND a story draft card to the board, and finished a row of each

One of the most common arguments you hear from fans of generative ‘AI’ is that it’s not plagiarizing people’s work, it’s just learning like a human learns. So I’m going to break down why that’s just not true, and why it can never be true, with the existing systems. 1/

Big vindication week for those of us (me) who have been saying all along you can't trust a man in a suit