BOOK #83, 2025 THE GATES OF POLISHED HORN, by Mark A Rayner (2025) A delightfully off-kilter collection. With echoes of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, & James Morrow, this is one of Rayner’s strongest releases, a terrific primer from one of Canada’s most joyful satirists. #booksky♥️📚 @markarayner.com

BOOK #82, 2025 UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, by Robert Tine (1992) Utterly rote adaptation of a fairly rote (but enjoyable) shoot-em-up action flick, devoid of even the mildly diverting humour the filmmakers brought to the ridiculousness of two testosteronies slapping the tar out of each other. #booksky♥️📚

BOOKS #77-81, 2025 FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D. (series), by Nicholas Meyer (1974-2021) Took a deep dive into Meyer’s entertaining Sherlock Holmes pastiche. I can’t say how closely Meyer hews to Conan Doyle’s template, but when the result is this fun, why should I care? #booksky♥️📚

BOOK #76, 2025 HEMO SAPIENS, by Emily Weedon (2025) Greatly entertaining fusion of cop procedural and monster mash. Weedon’s experience as a screenwriter is evident in the novel’s filmic quality, efficiently cutting together several POVs while keeping the plotline humming. More, please. #booksky❤️📚

BOOK #75, 2025 TEN BIRDS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, by Stephen Moss (2024) The title is slightly misleading; it’s humanity’s interactions with birds that has changed the world. But IGNORANCE, FEAR, & OVERALL A$$HOLISHNESS LEADS TO TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES FOR AVIAN POPULATION was too unwieldy. #booksky❤️📚

BOOK #74, 2025 WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, by T. Kingfisher (2023) Creepy take on Poe’s HOUSE OF USHER. Adding ghoulish twists to the narrative, Kingfisher delivers a tight gothic that’ll give you the willies. When a story makes a rabbit unnerving (or a hare), you know it’s working. #booksky💙📚

BOOK #73, 2025 THE WHITE LIBRARY, by Paul Voermans (2020) Strange, exuberant sci-fi fantasy. In alternate history Australia, a librarian invents a travel portal that leads to physical transformation. A strange plot, but Voermans layers further absurdities that eventually overwhelm it. #booksky📚❤️

It's cool to be reading down an article of recent horror books going "Yes, ha ha ha YES" sickos style because they're all bangers and then stumble onto your own among them 🤩 A GAME IN YELLOW is in fantastic company here with BLACK FLAME, BAT EATER, and more 💛 bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3...

I can only laugh so hard.

This ain't it, SFWA. By allowing LLM tools "at any point during the writing process" you are allowing verified social, ecological, and individual harms to be part of the Nebula Awards. Shame on you. www.sfwa.org/2025/12/19/p...

it's so wild that people conflate quickness with quality so they think chatGPT writing a wall of text in 10 seconds means it's good writing.

Currently reading: app.thestorygraph.com/books/2a226e... @haileypiperfights.bsky.social

Viral Tweets That Were Completely Fake in 2025

It gets even more pathetic— x.com/RepBeatty/st...

AI consumed as much water as the water bottle industry this year. It also created as much carbon pollution as New York City, according to a new study. www.theverge.com/news/845831/...

For the first time since 2009, PolitiFact is recalibrating the Lie of the Year — our award for the most egregious falsehood we've seen in a year's worth of fact-checking. This year, we want to focus less on the offenders who perpetuate the falsehoods, and more on those who are hurt by them. 🧵

Currently reading: app.thestorygraph.com/books/f8a3e5... @markarayner.com

Currently reading: app.thestorygraph.com/books/f8a3e5... @markarayner.com

I put together a post about some of my favorite short fiction of 2025. acwise.net/favorite-sho...

A fab list of some good short fiction.

Great point from @cnewman.bsky.social in this thread: Home Depot is becoming the locus point for immense human rights abuses, and it's time for Home Depot to take a side in this struggle. Chris suggests targeting it the same way the targeting of Tesla paid off:

Brown U kids who survived USA 389th mass shooting of 2025 will now pay out of pocket for their healthcare, because USA guarantees guns but not health. Australians who survived the 1st mass shooting in 29 years will pay nothing for healthcare because Australia guarantees health & regulates guns.

Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety. We spent weeks reporting on Miller's real aims. Here's the result. We hope you'll read: newrepublic.com/article/2041...

Elon's little serfs are quite literally begging journalists to come back because every publicly available source of data shows people have fled the platform and young people won't use it. They are literally begging regular people to come back. Don't do it! It is a website by and for actual Nazis!

This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites. The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.

Don’t shop at big retailers this year, give these gifts instead! - mysterious bowl of moss - inscrutable jar of fog - weird old log - large boulder the size of a small boulder - scarf infused with goblin wild magic

The measles outbreak in South Carolina is “accelerating” with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials say.

The Girl in the Room on the Train Who Could Not Title Her Novel: Is your title doing all the lifting it can do? By me. Read it on Medium Cool. www.themediumcool.com/p/the-girl-i...

How can you say no to this face?

All authors have one at some point in their lives, but I’m thinking the writer’s block I picked up at a mysterious back-alley flea market a few years ago may not have been the wisest of purchases…

Life advice: - be kind - tip well - read banned books - stay on the good side of the twig witch - never enter into a verbal agreement with a squirrel - dress like the Muppet you wish to be in the world

All authors have one at some point in their lives, but I’m thinking the writer’s block I picked up at a mysterious back-alley flea market a few years ago may not have been the wisest of purchases…

How can you say no to this face?

As always folks, if you can get a flu shot/COVID shot, it’s not just yourself you’re protecting—it’s everyone who can’t.

The Q&Q team reached out to authors, booksellers, librarians, and reviewers across the country to find their notable books of 2025. Click here for highlights from the year’s books for kids ranging from picture books to YA novels. https://bit.ly/4oFFdA9

“In a very short timeframe, AI has become the high-fructose corn syrup of the digital realm: It’s now in everything, even if you don’t want it there.” Writer and concerned parent @drewmagary.bsky.social lays it all out here 🎯

I'll say it again -- I'm on my firm's AI committee: every canned demo has had brutal, malpractice-level errors, and every live trial has required more time and care to vet the output than to just do it, like working with an unteachably incompetent associate you'd need to sit down for a Hard Talk.

Visa canceled at the border, a Hopkins grad student has been stuck in Canada for months

Npw watching www.imdb.com/title/tt0261...

A reminder for those who are not aware: "remigration" is the process of deporting all non-white people from a country. It includes citizens and is, by definition, ethnic cleansing. And to be clear: this is not fake. I just screenshot it myself.

R.I.P. Udo Kier (1944—2025)

Now watching: boxd.it/rXBe

Not satisfied with just destroying their own brand goodwill, OS companies are now using AI to try to destroy the good names of the apps users install. (Scrivener taking out adds to explain how it has no AI but Apple adds some anyway.)

Unlike most apps these days, Scrivener does not use AI in any way. However, if you’re on a Mac, you may see an AI prompt. . Here’s why, and what you can do if you want to remove this: buff.ly/MlAq0rL