hey Portland: if one of you wants two tickets to the Mary Bronstein retrospective at the Hollywood on Monday, lemme know (it is four hours long, it starts at 7 pm, I start work at 6 am, sleep is necessary; I was not thinking when I bought these tickets, oopsie)

ice cream cake sucks because it's a lie

matcha doesn't taste like grass. it tastes like hay smells. you're just saying it tastes like grass because it's green.

Portland residents, @portlanddsa.bsky.social learned that a local company called Sightline Intelligence is shipping lethal drone tech to Israel. Take 2 mins to click & ask electeds to look into Sightline, which uses PDX area footage in its chilling promo materials: actionnetwork.org/letters/sigh...

People in comics & the British fantasy scene! If you were around in the 80s-90s & are willing to speak on or off the record about Gaiman, please DM me or reach out on email. I will put you in touch with someone working on a longform piece. They are wondering why no one, so far, is willing to talk.

may this current wave of discourse encourage more people to think about all the different ways that American Arts culture is based on a you-should-be-grateful ethos rather than a we-should-treat-you-well-because-you-are-doing-labor ethos

I mean look at this list

this is a foolish, foolish choice. like Maris says, MCD actually had an identity. it also had a rad trim size and a willingness to take risks. this, quite simply, sucks.

the thing is there's a ton of excellent fantasy by and about men right now but they're apparently not the type of men ""mantasy"" is referring to! hm!

This section hit hard and is something I know more of us need to say and say without shame, and I know why we don’t: we know it will likely be refused, we’ll be thought difficult, will lose what we need to do this work.

truly some breathtakingly nasty posts out there today from bookish people who I would have thought understood the notion of invisible disabilities, and that not everyone's brain works just like theirs

THERE'S CHOLULA IN SPACE

hey Portland: if one of you wants two tickets to the Mary Bronstein retrospective at the Hollywood on Monday, lemme know (it is four hours long, it starts at 7 pm, I start work at 6 am, sleep is necessary; I was not thinking when I bought these tickets, oopsie)

very here for the way everyone in publishing's OOO emails have gotten terser. they used to be all "omg, so sorry I'm not here!!!! how dare I, I just really needed this break, sorrryyyy, here are 15 people you can ask instead!!!" and now it's like "I'm out. if it's REALLY important here's one email."

Weir: imagine Weir: it's like regular fantasy Weir: except that you smoke cigars and ride ATVs across the desert King: hey this doesn't sound so bad Weir: and all the fantasy monsters are bacon-flavored King: this sounds great! Poe: yeah it's about time we had a space for guys Koontz: let's do it!

A bright spot in the news. Firmly believe that right-to-repair suits like these are an irreplaceable part of progressive environmental policy worldwide

oh, you're going to write and publish and hype books for men? again? should we tell everyone? should we throw a party? should we invite bret easton ellis

huge congrats to whomstever beat me to that signed/drawn-in West Passage!!!! but also throw some dollars at ARB if you have 'em, fellow book nerds!

David's commentary takes the form of an open letter to Ursula, it's beautiful, it made me tear up, it made me write the sentence, "The way of the artist is diagonal" in like four places. I hope you'll give it a listen!

These are all good questions but the thing I keep wondering is whether the Hulu exec who reportedly pulled the plug is pals with Whedon. He worked at Fox for a long time, as far back as the early 2000s ... it doesn't seem that much of a stretch

And here’s the eclipse photo from Artemis II. I am in tears.

Just to be clear: the President of the United States is threatening genocide. It is unambiguous. What can we do? How can we put a stop to this madness once and for all?

this looks so neat! wish I was going to be anywhere nearby

I mostly don't think about it at all but there's a little part of me that thinks "one of us?" wherein "us" is "the people who kept online diaries at the turn of the century and just absolutely never used capital letters"

This is fucking awful

Yes, oh my god. Character development and cadence please. Super short seasons where every second is a climax is also the literacy crisis in action. Let stories breathe. Let people think about them.

we have been working on this for A YEAR and that's A LOT OF EMAILS and I'm just so happy it's finally going to be out in the world!!!! fair warning: David Mitchell made me cry in the very first episode

I think for my sanity I'm just going to stop engaging with, reading, being mad at, posting about, or otherwise paying any attention to all the headlines about "AI" and books/writing/publishing. It's all shitty and I can't do anything about it, but I feel weird about giving it any more light.

help I can't stop thinking about it

remember when gmail search used to work right? that was cool

if this is true, those editors should get a different job obviously understanding the pressure on productivity/output under capitalism but also. get a different job.

this is a really good question, maybe especially for children's books publishers (who have been doing layoffs right and left, and who have their own bonus existential crisis in AI-illustrated slop on top of everything else). how are they encouraging new generations of readers?

whole lotta weird choices here, from framing an ongoing online discussion as a potential "scoop" to the peculiarly pro-AI turn it takes, simultaneously citing "public revulsion" with AI-generated text while saying authors "are now forced to lie to publishers." just don't use AI. write your own shit.

I don’t see how this goes anywhere good.

I'm sorry, the plot of the Supergirl movie is that they hurt the dog? NO THANK YOU I DON'T EVEN LIKE THAT CGI DOG THAT MUCH AND I DO NOT WANT THAT

URSULA LE GUIN SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN THAT NOBEL PRIZE AND WE ALL KNOW IT

I’m biased, but one of the most singularly wonderful things about writing literary criticism is that one’s analysis unfurls from their singular experience of the text: their interiority, their history, their aesthetic priorities, joys, and distastes. Writing criticism is a uniquely human activity.

some men simply do not know when to stop talking

the mummy returns returns. returningly. why does the rock look like a banjo-kazooie villain here tho.

sorry I'm like this y'all but you have FIVE MORE DAYS, is all, and because I have totally forgotten to mention it, let me just add that one lucky nominator will win a whole pile of books, which is to say the entire 2025 shortlist! could be yours! go forth and nominate!

The Olympic trans athlete ban frames every woman as suspect -because- they are an athlete and because the West continues to frame all women as liars (women are, after all, friends of the snake).

how do I stop being tired, any ideas

your honor, I love them

Wen-yi Lee's When They Burned the Butterfly is a vivid, ferocious Singaporean urban fantasy bleeding with body horror, historical fiction, and women who refuse to be discarded. Read @mollytempleton.com's review:

One week from today! Join us, fans of poignant, smart, & funny sf! Get Will's book & check out the rest of the well-curated stock at Parallel Worlds Bookshop!

it is not that hard to be rightly and truly furious about the continuing horrors perpetrated by JKR without insulting the entirety of children's literature in the process

yes I picked that image on purpose I hope you're happy

We would like to submit Molly Templeton's column Mark As Read for consideration within the "Best Related Work" category. @mollytempleton.com writes on the culture of reading – covering everything from what we read and why to the ways we organize our bookshelves.

we yell at Fetterman a lot (and should continue to), but I don’t feel like I know much about this other guy who also deserves to never again know a moment’s peace

it's the last day to leave public comment on this shit plan to increase logging in oregon