Aye, it's ableist nonsense Even saying you have to have a routine is ableist; I work around multiple chronic illnesses and often work in bed I dinnae need to run marathons to be a writer ffs

It’s a sunny day so I’m now on the margaritas; I’ll be getting out my summer dresses next

In the unlikely event anyone’s made it this far, there’s some prints of all of these available here… www.stuffbymark.co.uk/shop/songs-a...

Getting through the dreich month by listening to this on repeat, pretending I’m in a Cronenberg/Araki mash-up youtu.be/Ngma8HmpjKw?... #Suede

I loved this. It’s a great end to the trilogy and I might have to go back and read Black Sun again just for fun… #MirroredHeavens #RebeccaRoanhorse

Stop exploiting and abusing non-human animals

I’m begging lefties and liberals to stop posting things that erase the reality of how violent the US has been to Indigenous people and Black people (among other US populations) ever since its inception and along the way. PLEASE. Do not copy conservatives by erasing history.

"[it's a] difficult transition from solitary writer to public-facing, multi-tasking author" Great piece by @rainewilson.bsky.social

Nice surprise to come across some @suedehq.bsky.social fan art by Susan Panayotopoulos in the Craftivism exhibition at the Canongate's Edinburgh Museum

back late, wind down the window to smell the night: barn owl deathray screech close enough yr hair stands on end

Quality graffiti down the Cowgate

I am working with undergraduates in Gaza - part of a little group - aiming for UK postgrad places with humanitarian scholarships. All brilliant. If a big publisher came forward with £60k, by my sums, that would pay for one of my gang to do a taught MA AND continue the publishing career they started.

actual self-accountability demands more than acknowledgement of bad judgement or ideas. you have to also take affirmative action to address the terrible things you said and did. you have to do that with no expectations that people you harmed will ever accept or certainly forgive you.

I have an erasure piece in the fabulous experimental crip anthology, Out of Sorts, published by The Remote Body. It’s due out in March and you can pre-order now: theremotebody.bigcartel.com/product/out-... I’m so looking forward to reading all the other contributions ✨

This cannot be emphasised enough: the phrase is itself eliminationist as it sets up being trans as pretense/deception and is calculated to pruriently evoke body parts & elicit disgust.

All the abuse by cis men in the world and somehow people have become obsessed with dehumanising the trans community instead - have seen anti trans activists celebrate Trump too, a convicted sexual abuser and Epstein island loyalty card holder

I loved this book by @klschroeder.bsky.social - snap it up, creatures!

Even after The Hum went silent, pylons held magic for me. I'd look up and see angels in their angles, feel the echo of the electric ley as a tattoo on my psychic skin. Marching under those transmission tower temples had transformed all of us. – Signal-catcher Rose, ex-Pylon Person

I'm currently working on a novel and at the end of an average day, I'm wiped out. The sheer amount of analysis, synthesis, making of connections, layering of prose, deepening of characterization, supplemental research... all the mental work is intense and exhilarating. Which is just to say, fuck AI.

all day it was evening - gloom & glimmer - water pulsing powerfully, wavering & searching, overtopping ditches or flung high in HGV wallow & wash - & yet the fierce winds warm, ripping agri-wrap & testing twine securing gates: a hunker down & wait but a strange version, unwinter

day 11 #ArtAdventCalendar a rare family safe Nope! #foundart #sculpture #teeth

& 16.00 sky breaks itself up (the scrap of heavy weather), corvids turn east all loud & fragile - there is banging of metal on metal & 3 gunshots that rifle over fields; a tawny owl squalls & a pickup slows (you think they have seen the camera blink), then goes on under wedge of light

“Listen Wes, I tried really hard not to be autistic years before I was diagnosed” The comedian Fern Brady will run a marathon for a autistic charity 🏃‍♀️ while Wes Streeting insists that autistic and ADHD people don’t exist www.instagram.com/reel/DSDGthi...

Day 8 #ArtAdventCalendar • Everyone seems to love this #SciArt #anatomy #embroidery, she breathed (2018). It appears on the cover of the anthology Sharp Notions arsenalpulp.com/Books/S/Shar...

❤️

Beautiful Ember Jane. In her former life she was used to produce lambs over and over until she was sent to slaughter last spring for unknown reasons. A concerned citizen rescued her and brought here... where she turned out to be pregnant! 🧵

Great to see that bullying disabled people is a national sport right now

You shouldn’t let your disability hold you back or define you! Disabled sportspeople are SO inspiring! Unless you need benefits to live in which case you must remain indoors and look miserable or else some lickspittle bootlicking jobsworth will cut you off.

There seems to be a view held by far too many people that if you’re in receipt of benefits then your life, sorry existence should be fucking grim and miserable and visibly so.

So beautiful 😍

I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.

The majority of books published lose money and the majority of authors do not earn out their advances if they were lucky enough to get one. If you do the math on an hourly wage, writing is frankly bonkers as any kind of career.

There are a lot of hidden/nonobvious upsides to being transgender, but it reveals how many gender norms are just a weird metagame layered on a neurotypical approach to relationships that honestly even in the alternate reality where I’m cisgender and heterosexual, I would still wanna shrug it off.

I have often seen masculinity, conventional version, as a constant renunciation, in return for corrosive power. All the things you're not allowed to like, enjoy, do, say, wear, but (metaphorically speaking) this straitjacket comes with a gun.

Mat's work is beautiful and would make great gifts 🖤

Beautiful 🖤

If you all MUST do Christmas, can you at least make an effort to buy from small businesses? They need the custom.

Interviewer: “What do you say to trans kids who are starting their transition?” Zohran Mamdani: "We're gonna make this a city that doesn't just protect trans kids, but also celebrates and cherishes them."

Some photo, some bass player.

Our Piper at the Gates of Dawn jumper stirred a bit of Satanic Panic! Thank you, @davidmbarnett.bsky.social, for covering this story for The Guardian. By popular demand, you can get the jumper that got banned from Westminster Abbey here: everpress.com/hellebore-pi...

When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/

Just a normal Monday

FYI: you don’t have to wear a red poppy to show your support for victims of war. You can wear a white peace poppy to remember all victims of war, to challenge global militarism, and signal your commitment to lasting peace.

Or maybe we should provide a universal basic income for ALL humans, no exceptions, no means tests (just take it back from the billionaires at income tax time). Humans shouldn't need to work to live. We are not work machines!

Today is World Vegan Day! If you are concerned about climate change, reducing meat and dairy in your diet is one of the most powerful individual actions you can take. "The effect of our modern meat production on the environment is truly terrifying." Jane Goodall news.janegoodall.org/2017/04/28/w...

#CoverReveal : We're obviously always delighted to celebrate one of our (very!) local literary stars, Muriel Spark, and Hodder has James Bailey's Like a Cat Loves a Bird, "a spiky and delicious new literary biography", coming next April. #books #livres #MurielSpark #Edinburgh #Edimbourg

Pals! Do I know anyone who’d be particularly interested in being a podcast expert on representation of disability in fiction for a rather lovely podcast by and for and about disabled people? U.K. based preferred but not essential!

"A blanket ban on access to gender- affirming spaces does not support healing. It retraumatises. It isolates. It tells vulnerable young people that their needs don't matter." A powerful letter from a parent of a trans child in the National today, calling for the govt. to challenge EHRC guidance.

Edinburgh's Radical Book Fair is less than a month away! 4 Days of bookstalls from 50+ presses 20 events incl DragQueen Storytelling, Community Lunch & 2 Cabarets! Full program is live, hybrid & either £5 or free! 5-9Nov: Join us! tinyurl.com/RadicalBookF... lighthousebookshop.com/events/edinb...