let’s fucking gooooooo

without downloading any new images, where are you mentally?

without downloading any new images, where are you mentally?

🍅🥫

my statement on Ai from the mini-comic I'm making as syllabus for a new class I'm teaching this fall. It's simple, but I pretty much said all I have to say on it - it robs you of decisions and struggle - and the joy of being surprised. It robs you of learning...

That this is happening is not in the least surprising (we all predicted it), but what’s most disgusting is GC/TERF women denying the direct lived experiences of other women as “scaremongering”. Truly, transphobia breaks your brain. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

UK book people! @susancahill.bsky.social is posting her auction offer in aid of medical aid in Palestine in the uk as well as Ireland! Please pledge generously! All the money goes to @medicalaidpal.bsky.social #FreePalestine #Fundraiser

Tracey Tawhiao,artist writer, poet, filmmaker, lawyer who conveys her experience as a Māori woman #WomensArt

A potentially significant report by the European Parliament concludes that #AI training on copyrighted work does not count as fair use. filmstories.co.uk/news/no-gene...

I was just reminded of this wonderful story that they should tell every Christmas www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbea...

“Now we’re fetishising these survival narratives — propagating the terrible idea that you can cure cancer, transcend poverty etc if you just have the right mindset and dream hard enough — or walk far enough…It gives the reader permission to ignore systematic issues or pain or injustice.”

Honestly, I’d just send copies of Mister Invincible out to every school.

Private Eye hits the nail on the head

Carl Sagan on why books are human’s greatest invention:

A German cavalryman watching a plane 1910

Trans is not an ideology unless you think your right to be who you are is an ideology rather than a basic human right. Let people be who they want to be. Let people do what we all do throughout our lives, just trying to work out how and who to be in a world of challenges.

"digital asbestos" is fantastic framing.

"What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and sh*ts quantity." - William S. Burroughs

Visual development art by Paul Felix for Lilo & Stitch (2002), dir. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois

Happy #SherlockHolmesDay! We know @peterbunzl.bsky.social listened to a lot of Holmes audiobooks as a kid, think that had an influence on his wonderful Cogheart series? Elementary!! You can find out more about Peter's writing & book him here: authorsalouduk.co.uk/speaker/pete...

Fucking hell. I know nobody’s in greasy overalls for you to fetishise, Labour, but this is still an industry full of working people on marginal incomes that you are voluntarily destroying, you dumb tech-fetishising goons. You just sold us for corporate strip-mining. Up the workers.

Basically traps AI crawlers and sends them down an "infinite maze" of static files with no exit links, where they get stuck and thrash around for months. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

oh yes!

Working out my book sales from statements this week. Finally pipped over half-a-milion copies of UK sales on all my books!

A man walks into a dentist's office one evening, and says "Doctor, you have to help me! I think I'm a moth!" The dentist replies, "I think you want the psychiatrist, next door." The man replies, "Yeah, but I saw the light."

I wish more people were aware of Barrington Stoke's books, which seem to answer a lot of the problems people are having in finding books their kids will read! Shorter books and chapters! Accessible for all readers! Variety of genres! Fast-paced plots! Stories written for people aged between 12-15!

@pierstorday.bsky.social at today’s protest, on the importance of protecting copyright law in light of the Meta’s scraping of unlicensed works to train their AI systems. #MetaBookTheives #DoTheWriteThing

Off to the @societyofauthors.bsky.social protest to tell meta it’s illegal stealing my books to train their Ai. Meta #DoTheWriteThing and compensate authors for the work they stole. #MakeItFair #MetaBookThieves

A round up from Bologna about the Kidlit graphic novel market www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/... #KidLitUK #KidsGNs #Comics #Graphicnovels #Publishing

On the 3 April we’re organising a day of protest against Meta following revelations of pirated books being used to train their large language models. More information on how to get involved 👇 societyofauthors.org/2025/04/01/s...

Have boosted this already but for those who missed it earlier. An additional piece to add: I suspect male writers of colour who are getting a raw deal from publishing...are not getting that cos they're men. So there's intersections, layers (and it varies by genre/publishing category)

Literally every company now youtube.com/shorts/hL9pl...

🙌🏾This will be a game changer for so many children. ✍🏽It was an honor to be the consultant on this show. 🤎Well done team Mixmups, Rebecca Atkinson, et al. Read the full article, via @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Chatting with meta ai about how it was trained on illegal sources. Weirdly, It seems to have no knowledge of that.

My agent told me early on in our relationship that there wasn't much an author can do to move the needle and I found it oddly comforting. Like...this isn't ON me.

The whole pier

I’ve been searching for the link to write my letter to show how angry I am about this blatant act of theft so sharing it here in case you’ve been hunting too! actionnetwork.org/letters/auth...

Meta stealing copyrighted books for its AI-training isn’t just criminal, it’s dangerous. Several of my older or out of print stolen titles have outdated medical info in them, now being fed into its maw to eventually poo out wrong AI info on critical women’s health, baby safety advice, etc.

Every time I walk past a bank, I face an ethical question. Should I just rob it? It's a stumper.

I am so tired.

Oh wow, Meta's AI not only pirated all 3 of my books, it even pirated them in 10 different languages (plus other books where I had work published too).

Most of my books are on this list too. Used by meta to train their AI illegally. Zuckerberg can go fuck himself. And people should boycott his products, just like Elon and Tesla.

Nice to see that Meta used 23 of my books to train their AI without me being paid a penny 😡