Writers! Vol. 2 of 'The Best Weird Fiction of the Year' is open to your submissions. Please adhere to the guidelines. undertowpublications.com/best-weird-f...

"In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero...This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte...the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death." — Eco

Wife and I have started watching something called Bridgerton. I grew up on the Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a longtime favorite, so to an extent this is familiar territory. To an extent.

Typebar Magazine 2.0 debuts January 26th.

Submissions are open now for our final issue! The theme for this issue is 'endings' inner-worlds.ghost.io/submission-g...

Good thread of stuff that I don't see said often enough.

Full Neolithic novella draft at 31,500 words.

Short story writers — how do you pick markets to try? (All else being equal, e.g. 'takes open submissions' and 'editor not a jerk.') You get 10 points to allocate. Feel free to add categories if you want to play. Me, often: # of readers: 3 Pay: 3 Award chances: 0 Vibes: 1 Hard copy: 2 Community: 1

Sorry but I can't buy the thesis that ancient people didn't feel things the way we do now. Have you SEEN the Venus of Willendorf!?!

Laid up too much treasure in heaven for tax purposes

Watching a caveman-boy-and-his-dog story (lightly edited) with one of the kids. Having a great chat about where people came from and what life was like 20,000 years ago.

This feeling owed thing is real. I can think of a couple of guys I've had to give the 'bud, nobody is actually *owed* publication' talk and a couple more I could or should have.

Favourite way to spend Boxing Day, doing one of Wentworth’s madly different jigsaw puzzles! Made of wood, laser cut and with all kinds of random pieces… like two pieces needed to make a corner. Definitely recommended. 🙂

Our next submission call is right around the corner. Check out our guidelines to learn more: https://bit.ly/3FZcgMA

If any one of you is, or ever was, that masked man dressed in black known as Zorro, reveal himself now!

The 2025 Headline of the Year Nominees 🧵

People, I'm BEGGING you: If you are going to share that leaked 60 minutes segment, INCLUDE SOME COMMENTARY in your post that makes it necessary for readers to have access to the full video to understand the commentary. CBS has a deep black eye over this and the odds that they'll look to punish ppl

Note to self, write some quirky spicy cartoon-cover-art Paleolithic romance. Gonna Clan of the Cave Bear the crap out of this.

A student's paper just described the interaction between Homo sapiens and Neandertals as "a situationship rather than a relationship" and I'm still laughing ten minutes later 💀🏺

"Some people don’t want to write that because they think it’s boring or Victorian to have to describe a room. I think they don’t want to describe a room because they don’t know how to read social texture, and so a room is just a set of mute artifacts to them."

For those who missed it way back when, 10207 lives again! Out in reprint with @daikaijuzine.bsky.social (originally in @elegantliterature.bsky.social). It's one of my oldest stories & the one that got people really asking: who hurt you, emma? #spider #sff #scifi www.daikaijuzine.org/emmaburnett/...

Been in a range of situations where text needed translation, from good budgets to absolutely nil. AI was never required. Someone always got compensated in some way that worked for everyone. There was a workable human angle every time.

Holy shit. LDS Church needing to tell bishops 'please don't use ChatGPT to give members financial, legal, and medical advice; PLEASE don't shovel in the mountain of personal information you have on your ward members.' Belated? Yeah, maybe. They do own $4.5 billion of Nvidia stock so there's that.

Passed 15,000 words on my novella which is, at its simplest and most profound level, a series of scenes painted on the side of a van circa 1973.

Pleased to add to the family shelves a formative piece of militant anti-colonial science fiction.

BCS of 2025! "The Good Life and the Gaze of Staivash" @jonolfert.bsky.social BCS #440 "She'd just tucked three of the gold slips into the hem of her robe, and one into each cheek, when two tall, smiling, sunburned men ducked inside." www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-... #BCSof2025

This post by Olivia Roanhorse has been going around — thanks for flagging it @tiffmorris.bsky.social — and I can't stop thinking how broadly it applies (or needs to apply) to the publishing world.

Best LOTR cover band around.

A Lord of the Rings cover band called Edorascal Flatts. Now opening for Fortress of AngBand.

Playing around with the new Datawrapper free feature set and it's great stuff. Very chill learning curve. www.datawrapper.de/_/G3eio/

A belief system A bike A sword STEM ambitions (paleontology)

Unfortunately the logic tracks clean. Like it or not, it's a major contribution to the discourse.

Did everything about the film work for me, no. Did it leave me unexpectedly nostalgic, mourning, furious, grudgingly won over to its core thesis, yeah, it got a piece of me for sure. Note that Leah also did a spoiler-free review; this one's worth coming at it cold.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No cap? No cap!

To a fellow countryperson sadly stranded in America I have sent a care package of Canadiana: Robert Munsch, Premee Mohamed, Emily St. John Mandel. May it shelter them and their loved ones from... *gestures vaguely* ...just all of that, really.

Unmatched:

BCS of 2025! "Here-and-Now-and-Then" @jonolfert.bsky.social BCS #428: "the memory he needed became clear: young Churchmen trembling around a fire, hands numb from the frosty iron latches on their tithe-purses. He was in three times at once" www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/here... #BCSof2025

Apparently Datawrapper got an overhaul so I gave it a spin on my old Chromebook. Some great options in here, definitely worth fiddling with. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/0eCte/3/

Not to diminish the human impact but seriously, live your life so as to never set yourself up for a gotcha from Aaron Sorkin's fever dream.

A real interesting phenomenon I've seen a couple times over the years: politician in group A stumbling into a reason to be in group B. Rare and beautiful unicorns.

Welcome back to the Churchlands, please reconcile yourself to the divine, all currencies accepted www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/cric...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

Thread worth reading if you're writing

I've long pondered the best way to visually represent Submission Grinder data, and an arc diagram may just be the ticket. Take a journey with me through one-point-five dimensions of obsession! Chart is in R.

Started playing with Canada Council for the Arts data and wow, Alberta and Saskatchewan (15% of pop) get the short end of the stick. Literature funding's the part that interested me for obvious reasons. For sense of scale, in 24/25 CCA gave out $30.4M in lit funding; AB got $1M and SK got $0.4M.

Had excessive fun with sentiment analysis while not completely compos mentis this weekend. Behold! The King! No mask? No mask!

While scraping ice off the car, had an epiphany that solves no fewer than four problems with my current writing project. I'm not saying it's experimentally replicable — I've scraped way more windshields than I've had epiphanies — but further study warranted.

"Individuals can produce good enough outcomes with remarkable speed, only to labor extensively for the additional improvement that marks true quality. This frustrating gap between initial ease and final effort is the essence of the GenAI Paradox: better technology, worse motivation."

Argent, a cross encliparted, a wingding rampant

I regret to inform you there are people still trying to undertake new projects for 2025 Sadly, the legal deadline for new projects was five days ago. Those are now 2026 problems