On August 12, 1971, 16-year-old me mailed the first story I ever wrote off on its first submission to my dream market, F&SF. My tale was quickly rejected. On July 17th, 2025, I finally sold a story to that magazine. Here's why I felt I had to withdraw that story. www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/20...

Interesting result for the Why Vote It’s Not Like My Vote Changes Anything crowd

it's not that i ever doubted that being a barista was a skilled position, but my year-long effort to try to produce a half-decent latte at home has convinced me that a good barista is easily more skilled than virtually every c-suite executive on the planet

I published TTRPGs back in the 90s. In retrospect, one of the things I'm most proud of in Gatecrasher? Orcs and goblins as player characters. Because why wouldn't they be? www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Mezzo is fully prepared to forgive everything if only we go home. Sadly, I'm about to haul him into the rodentist office. #petRats #rats

if you put it in the louvre he’ll never see it

We have arrived in Indianapolis for Mezzo's 9AM appointment with the rodentist. The accommodations do not meet with his approval. The thumb-beast does not meet with his approval. NONE OF THIS IS ACCEPTABLE. #petRats #rats

incredibly funny that Joyce Carol Oates owned Musk so hard he's started trying to post like a regular person with normal interests

SCOTUS somehow refused to reopen gay marriage? 😮but also: YAY! www.cnn.com/2025/11/10/p... Also: to hell with Kim Davis

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard. We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions. We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

Live look at GOP HQ, moments after getting Dem proposal to end the shutdown.

As someone who has previously been a starving writer treated like a disposable tool, this is both hilarious and hitting very close to home.

My theory about Joyce Carol Oates is that all her bad posts are her charging up like Godzilla's spines until she lets loose with a radioactive blast that leaves the world's richest Nazi a pile of ash

am i doing this right

If you’re wondering what a “least weasel” is, they absolutely live up to the name. This is the least amount of animal you can have that can still meet the bar for “is weasel”

BSDCan 2026: www.bsdcan.org/2026/

weird bird looking at me

I feel like we have the opportunity to turn David Lynch's quote into this moment's "Keep Calm and Carry On" and it's a far better rallying cry too.

I think we need to stop calling it empathy and go back to calling it decency. It isn't a favour you're doing someone else, it's you proving that you aren't a fucking ghoul

Holy shit, that's a great story and I will never again be performatively irritated by that awkward name.

We just won a court order blocking the Dept. of Ed from violating the First Amendment rights of furloughed federal workers, whose out-of-office emails were changed – without notice or permission – to include partisan political language.

For the public: last month's Patronizer-only "See the Sausage Being Made" post. mwl.io/archives/24462 In which a Nice Ladyᵀᴹ on the airplane is very happy for "People Like Me."

My mum just said to me "You should be hung like a horse". When I challenged her over saying such a thing, it transpires she thought it was a punishment horses got. Turns out she's been incorrectly using the phrase since the 90s in various settings

Doing your best and failing to fit in 😔

Me: I'm gonna be productive today because I have to write this book, I have to do it My brain: lol, lmao, also,

"let me snuggle your finger" -- a story in three photos. #petRats #rats (image descriptions: cute pet rat gradually sneaks his chin out of his hammock onto my finger and rests there.)

If you aren't seeing skeets from some of your fave people, they might have been labeled "Rude" by bsky mods. Idk what they are thinking, I don't need a mommy to tell me who to be buddies with. Anyway, go into Settings > moderation > bluesky moderation (advanced) and turn Rude off.

The new @assemblage23.bsky.social album has escaped, full of righteous rage, glittering heartbreak, and hammering hope. Today is officially cancelled. I'm busy. assemblage23.bandcamp.com/album/null

Day 2 of the 2025 FreeBSD Vendor Summit is in progress at NetApp in San Jose. Today’s program features discussions focused on release engineering, platform security, and the future of memory safety on FreeBSD, along with lightning talks and closing remarks. 👉Watch Day 2 live: buff.ly/qJhjjkL

I've pretty much made it my entire personality to avoid ads of any kind, never click on any that manage to find me, and specifically leave platforms that are spamming me with AI ad content. www.tiktok.com/@404.media/v...

Re-upping this:

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

Indie books that've rocked my world. When disparate flavors work, they *work*. Instead of sailing to Valinor, Tolkien's elves headed to Detroit. "Generations later," says author @mwl.io, "orcs followed." A prohibition story on one hand. An immigrant song on the other. Tasty as hell reimagining.

A new #60SecondsOfWIP is out: "That Version of GRUB," from #openzfsmastery. at mwl.io/archives/24459 or your least abhorred podcast pusher.

"did you even read the article???? the headline is bad but the article is good!!!" buddy if I see a restaurant called Dan's Fecal Stew i am not gonna go in there to see if maybe they printed the sign wrong

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

I've seen this go by a few times on TikTok now and I have to say, I love this idea. We need a way to convince people to keep running even if they don't win, maybe building the loss into it as a troll move is the secret.

Me: I'm gonna write #openzfsmastery in order. No bouncing around in the manuscript, just clean text from beginning to end! Also me: My test host needs the new compatibility flag for the root pool. I guess I better jump ahead four chapters and write that. 😡 #sysadmin #writing

time for a sequel to this one

Similarly, Bradward had one brain cell bouncing around like a screen saver, when it hit the edges of his skull it told him he was hungry. Thats about it

This is the best anecdote I have seen in years

May the Peace of the Rat be upon you. #rats #petRats

Me: I run my bloom.host bare metal server with virtual per-service hosts, packet filters, and integrity checking! My Internet presence has achieved its final Pure Geek form! bloom.host: We're putting everything behind Cloudflare Magic Transit. Me: 😞🫤

it’s nine PM on the east coast and polls have closed bring me the head of andrew cuomo

Omg I’m dying 😂😂😂…so…So Emily Austin, a right wing 'influencer' who works for Bibi and the GOP, launched 'Hot Girls for Cuomo'. Guess who didn't bother to register the URL when she did that? What do you think Hot Girls for Cuomo dot com leads to now?... 😄 Enjoy. [ HotGirlsforCuomo.com ]

If you’re in line to make the joke about staying in line, STAY IN LINE

Old but vital #petRats content: 🎶"Nobody likes me Everybody hates me I'm going to see momma to eat worms..."🎶 With Ambert, Beemster, and Cremet! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzRM...

Waiting for the Teen Vogue team to go Teen Rogue and start their site so we can all subscribe.