am I going to regret not getting this pair of A2 crying children embroideries for £50

Illustration is not graphic design, graphic design is not motion design, motion design is not web design; they are all separate entire skill-sets, stop advertising jobs that ask for all four but offer the entry-level salary of one.

Insomnia! At the Beachside Cabin

It is a universal truth that you never, ever sit near quiet people when you desperately need a quiet train ride.

Looks like nobody’s clicking past the headline to read the part where it’s not going to be part of Bluesky (which: good) - but it does feel like they’re taking the long and expensive way around to re-inventing an RSS feed you don’t even get to curate yourself.

#dragrace theory: Jane Don’t is the queen on the team most likely to openly question the entire concept of mocking Karens as misogynistic (which it is, I said what I said) and probably voiced her discomfort to production and that’s why this episode ended the way it did.

Heartbreaking: Doom: The Dark Ages was £20 in the Steam Sale, but I knew myself well enough not to buy it when I'm meant to be looking for a new job and/or new clients, and now it's back up to something silly like £60.

Session zero on a new D&D campaign; this time I’m a Dragonborn who, during a mid-life crisis re: their ice-clan heritage, nurtures a brief fire hyperfixation by getting into ceramics, and accidentally sculpts an idol inhabited by an extraplanar fiend. Who knows from where I got the idea!!!!

luv too do a feminism by insisting all women undergo a eugenics test before they can ride a bike

got a tip that “social murder” is going to be the new “emotional labor” online (will be used by the extremely off-putting to describe nobody wanting to hang out with them)

Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People https://theonion.com/archaeological-dig-uncovers-ancient-race-of-skeleton-pe-1819565415/

God gives his shiniest bald spots to his curliest locks. [Friends fear he shall be cutting his own hair tonight.]

[OpenAI Offices] Me: [chanting] pop, pop- Other creatives: pop, POP Secretary: [pounding every enshittified commodity within arms reach] POP, POP, POP!

Doing a favour for my mum and AI art has really decimated the bereavement card watercolour artwork market, huh. Nothing says "you'll be missed" quite like one of a billion nearly-identical gummy-textured vaguely-Blair-Witchy Christian Cross Stickers with Flowers.

Have spent a surprising amount of time today sitting between two different groups talking a fair bit about AI and fortune tellers and I'll tell you this much, the folk going to the fortune tellers have more wits about them with regards to what they're being sold.

“She sharped out of bed and put on a sharp shirt, her nipples sharply showing through the sharp fabric. She breasted sharply to the stairs, and sharped sharpwards.”

Me this week with literally every obligation, client, dread and responsibility.

Deleted a politics post. It’s after midnight. Nothing good about politics has ever been posted after midnight. (With a possible exception made for for The Obituary that has Yet To Be Written. You know the one.)

It's a Preoccupations: Bunker Buster on repeat sort of day. youtu.be/ZOLIHJKCu8M?...

None of these time-tracking apps understand the ADHD brain. “This app will completely block all distractions so you can focus on work” Great! “Although, in an emergency you can enter your access code and—“ [I am already on Google, checking Nicholas Lyndhurst’s height for a reason I’ve forgotten]

Have once again tricked myself into thinking it’s worth getting pasta delivered, when it is in fact the most does-not-travel food ever invented.

Those “Where the hell is my husband” and “I look fucking fabulous” songs are two of the most diabolical ear worms recorded in the last ten years and despite being good songs I would gladly never hear them on the inside of my head ever again.

Turns out one sunny day talking to close pals over coffees and interesting strangers down the pub can, in fact, fix me.

Our Lady of Perpetually Online

Idling in Waterstones and listen, if every book shelved in the fiction section with speculative elements got moved to sci-fi and fantasy, there wouldn’t be a fiction section to speak of.

"My Former Friends" is a new eight-page comic drawn by @pauljonmilne.bsky.social and written by myself. You can read it in full below or purchase a high-res .pdf for a price of your choosing at the link (process files available for purchase for $6USD): hagaipalevsky.itch.io/myformerfrie...

Ooooh go on, you know you want to bully Transport Scotland into pulling down part of the M8. You do! Fixing or replacing the viaducts will commit us to having a motorway carving up Glasgow until we all die and long after, probably. Strike the first blow, now, while it’s weak!!!

Love a [sic], it's so bitchy.

Are you home alone of an evening, bored of brain rotting and doom scrolling? Do you crave low-stakes stimulation away from a screen? Do you have in your possession some not-very-absorbent paper, some ink, and a pair of broken wireless headphones? May I suggest: making a FUCKING MESS?

Remembering the ancient ways

Applying for jobs is so tiiiiime consuuuuming. These people you see saying they apply for upwards of 100 a month are lying, right? Or they're spamming their CVs at anyone that's open? They're certainly not writing personal statements tailored to the post more than three times a day. Right? RIGHT?!

Have we tried turning it off and off again.

Plantfans! What are these warty-leaved things? I don’t mind them taking up so much real estate in my wild garden if they’re going to turn into something astounding, but if they’re going to continue lounging greenly, I’ve a mind to dig ‘em up and throw down some bulbs.

Sasebo Burger Boy, a burger-headed sailor, promotes the Sasebo Burger, a popular dish from Nagasaki.

T’was an unexpectedly slow day, so I wrote about four of the oldest cover designs in my portfolio. Read on for tales of youthful hubris, creative smart-arsery, and a brutal reader’s digest of a kid-lit classic. www.ryanvance.co.uk/four-old-fri...

Instagram algorithm has presented me with a guy takes high def photos of bookshelves with books all on a theme then prints the photo onto vinyl at scale and mounts it, so folk can purchase the image of a bookshelf of books they’d like to read, instead of actually owning or reading any of the books.

T’was an unexpectedly slow day, so I wrote about four of the oldest cover designs in my portfolio. Read on for tales of youthful hubris, creative smart-arsery, and a brutal reader’s digest of a kid-lit classic. www.ryanvance.co.uk/four-old-fri...

A favourite.

that feeling when you work in a healthy creative ecosystem

El Peru (Waka') is a Mayan city located in present-day Guatemala. In the collapsed tomb of a early 7th century ruler, an interesting set of 23 figurines depicting a royal ceremony was found. Among them are a figure of the king accompanied by his animal spirit and figurines with detachable helmets.

Gave the Book Manuscript to a pal to read, and they said they really enjoyed it, which they're of course sort of expected to do unless it's actual garbage, but they're absolutely not expected to stay up to 2:30am reading the dang thing in one sitting, so that's a wee confidence boost of a Wednesday.

see? here's the thing. A lot of people are like, the earth is fucked, it's beyond salvation, it's hit the tipping point, but time and time again we see that if we just fucking fixed the problem, it rebounds so incredibly fast. Imagine what could be done if people actually cared

not the main takeaway, obvs, but shout-out to whoever on Mamdani’s team decided they should only use a flattering/nostalgic soft-focus 35mm seventies-tint on all direct-to-camera broadcasts, in opposition to Trump’s pursuit of high-tech hyper-definition (which flatters no-one, least of all him).

Two recent book cover designs confirm my 2026 quest to wean myself off pink is, uhhhh, well, um, you see, uhhhh, it's complicated, you know?

A delightfully insane question in a job application form.

Quite unfair being partner to a musician means you get to listen to them make art in real time when they play you snippets while songs come together over weeks, while being partner to a writer means watching them quietly go gremlin mode for years and years. An unflattering min-maxxing of talent!

Meredith saying something I’ve spent a lot of the last couple years thinking about:

why are bees doing brutalism

My wife and I are wired very differently. Twice this week she has forgotten about pastries/chocolate in the fridge whereas the status of every single piece of confectionary in our house constantly flashes in my field of vision like an ammo counter in a first person shooter.

Dreamt we’d gone to a funeral held outdoors on a tropical island, without knowing who had died, but everyone recognised us, and everyone had to give speeches, but the ceremony kept getting interrupted by a GORILLA ON ROLLER-SKATES. Suck on THAT, Jung.