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 read so many books last month, and I wrote about them here: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/11...

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.

Some thoughts on recent discussions in the arts and entertainment.

If Missouri wants to control the KCPD they should have to provide all the funding.

'New research coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC has found that AI assistants – already a daily information gateway for millions of people – routinely misrepresent news content no matter which language, territory, or AI platform is tested.' 1/2

I wrote about Public Access from the perspective of a repeat player: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/10...

Canvas is out so I'm just staring up into the fluorescent lights at school A (where I have conferences with students about the assignment that they just turned in) and thinking about how I have to turn in midterm grades at school B. #adjunctlife

Another Wednesday, another post. Some excellent books in this round of reviews, including Ada Palmer's 'Inventing the Renaissance' and Vajra Chandrasekera's 'Rakesfall', both well worth reading.

and when you just can't get enough Public Access (it's so good!) you can check out Volume 4 of Sprigs & Kindling for even more Analog Horror! Two whole issues of it! sprigsandkindling.com

Got a big ol' book round up here, featuring a bunch of trans horror novels that I got from the library: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/10...

So, I'm grading papers, and I'm getting students who are shocked that I open up the document that they're citing and search for the original context of the quote -- often finding that it simply doesn't exist.

I went vegetarian at the start of the year, and it's honestly been much easier than I anticipated, despite living in a city renowned for barbecue and being allergic to one of the main components of "Beyond" meat. This led me to a question: why do we want what we want?

I've been reading James Maffie's book on Aztec Philosophy, and something that came up in that was the phenomenon of the Inamic relation between two ideas -- I think it has a broader applicability, so I wrote a piece about it.

We are adults. We are responsible.

I'm tired of talking about the news. Have a slate of book round-ups: including some theory-fiction from Reza Negarestani, Rosewater from @tadethompson.bsky.social, and Cuckoo by @scumbelievable.bsky.social, among others.

Have any of the known perpetrators of political violence this year completed a four year degree at a university

I'm stoked that this is out, and I feel very proud to be included in this collection!

*watching innocent people rapidly acquire the cursed knowledge that has driven me to madness* oh no

Got another book round-up over at Broken Hands: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/9/...

I didn’t know about this, and if I didn’t know about this, then you probably didn’t either. This should be my entire feed and it’s not and that’s a problem  This sit in has now been going on over 48 hours and I am just hearing about it now 1/

We've only had "creativity" as an ideal for two hundred or so years -- the idea that someone can create something new without reference to what came before. This can be a major stumbling block, so maybe we should just try to imitate better.

I don't have the brainpower to pick where my attention goes right now, so I've written a couple thousand words on Twin Peaks, reception, and tragedy.

This is wildly inspirational. I honestly find today’s writers are … completely boring and anesthetized. It’s not just that we’re flattening culture and writing, but people’s personalities too.

I'm getting to really hate "lore" as a thing that people obsess over. Usually it's just a distraction, but it's getting to the point in some quarters that it's actually antithetical to good writing. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/8/20/against-lore-explanations-are-unnecessary

Building online classrooms this week has got me thinking about how the people who use a tool, the people who make it, and the people who decide what tools are available to use are three circles in the venn diagram with statistically insignificant overlap.

a thing that drives me totally cuckoo bananas bonkers is these center-right motherfuckers go around NEEDING everyone to think they are "the left." they're only doing this to present their viewpoints as the leftmost acceptable position and i cant believe so many people fall for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This should get WIDE circulation: MIT stating that it “has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper.” gizmodo.com/mit-backs-aw...

every “ancient tradition” was invented between 1848-1870 and every “modern perversion” is so ancient as to predate writing

Got another book round-up, pals: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/8/...

hey @bsky.app why was @scumbelievable.bsky.social suspended? considering the timing (she just put a new book out) it feels like someone is weaponizing your safety features in a targeted manner

They come up in Fossil Capital by Andreas Mälm, I think, and there's a book called Blood In the Machine by Brian Merchant that's supposed to be good. I think they also come up in a James C. Scott book (weapons of the weak?) but I haven't read that one.

A collection of book reviews -- including John Crowley's Little, Big and a few more recent works.

I like how the first thing I have to do when my phone does a security update is delete all of the random games it downloads onto my phone without my permission.

Wrote a while piece about this a while back: www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/exiting...

A piece about how bureaucracies chew through knowledge and produce something completely different.

I just spent the day walking through a national park, so I have nothing clever to add to this.

Sliding in right under the wire to qualify as "posting on Wednesday," here's a book round-up. www.brokenhandsmedia.com/blog/2025/7/...

Somehow I missed the perfect post when it first came out.

A brief analysis of the TESCREAL bundle, the people who embrace it, the problems with superintelligence,and how the end result of this is the invention of the coin-operated yes man.

First evening I've noticed cicadas in Kansas City. Summer's on the downhill. Can't end fast enough for my taste.

I think it's significant that the Missouri legislature does nothing but fight against its own people -- and I think that shows a fundamental problem with how our political system is set up.

Here's my longer explanation of what's going on with guys like Peter Thiel. www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/silicon-va...

Today's Classic Cover is for Robert Zelazny's Lord of Light, illustrated by Howard Bernstein. Bernstein wasn't a regular SFF cover artist, and most of his work was on album covers You can read more about his art here! www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2...