A wonderful piece promoting bookstores that promote or require masks! A couple other bookstores that require masks (they can both special-order!): Moments Cooperative in Oakland: www.momentscooperative.com/shop Comics N'More in Northampton, MA: www.comicsmongers.com

“A showpiece for Griffith’s lyrical prose…especially an excellent novella, ‘Many Things in Dumnet’, which is original to the volume [and] serves as a moving paean to the power of music…A revealing and rewarding self-portrait of one of our most important—and most outspoken—voices.” I’ll take that 😎💕

Tomorrow, free, online: virtual book launch event for Vonda McIntyre’s final novel, _The Curve of the World_. May 16, 11:00 am to noon Pacific Time. Register in advance to get the Zoom link. vondanmcintyre.net/the-curve-of...

Brief audio interviews with two Democratic candidates for California’s 4th congressional district—Mike Thompson (the incumbent) and Eric Jones—conducted by a high school student I know. (Two 5-min audio segments, joined into one 10-min podcast episode.) (Published in March.)

The colorblindness app is approved and free on iOS! There’s also a new share function that lets you quickly eyedrop any image. This was like 100% built in concert with this community, so thanks a huge amount for the input, testing, and dopamine. Personally, I continue to use this every day.

I made something, mostly for my own amusement, but maybe y’all will like it: treacheryof.pics Make your own Magritte-style “Treachery of Images” image.

Bookseller wanted! Are you in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada? Do you love queer science fiction and fantasy books? Do you want to sell them for a living? Come help me create a welcoming, friendly space for queer nerds at Other Places Books. Please send your information to [email protected]

Kickstarter officially banning adult content now. Knew this was coming, but it still sucks to have yet another part of the internet that I've been explicitly evicted from. Digital gentrification is exhausting.

NOTICE: Do you have an elderly or disabled neighbor in NYC? Be a good neighbor and let them know about the free air conditioner program. If they earn $3473 or less a month, NYC will cover the costs of an A/C. Remember…last summer we had 95 degree weather. Look out for them

we should just start referring to newspapers as "[their owner]'s newsletter", the jeff bezos newsletter does not deserve the prestige of the name he bought

Email spam subject line of the day: “Tase The Cheesecake Factory's New Menu”

peak neoliberalism is driving your party of "electability" to an electoral rejection so disastrous that in order to cling on to your personal power you're ultimately forced, years into your governance, to lay out some actual values that you claim to have

“ California’s $20 an hour fast food minimum wage, instituted in 2024, did not reduce employment. It led to only the most modest of price increases — barely noticeable to a consumer. ” capitalandmain.com/despite-apoc...

“Free COVID/Flu Test Kits for Schools, Clinics & Organizations” “We are donating test kits that are approaching their expiration date… Because this is short shelf-life inventory, please plan distribution and usage accordingly.” ihealthlabs.com/products/ant...

Extremely worth noting - the Black Zine Fair was a masks-required event! And hundreds of folks came and wore masks and had a great time! This is a doable thing, y'all!

My adventures in recent months with making sourdough—first in a bread machine, then in an oven. www.kith.org/jed/2026/05/...

Neat (long) post responding to a set of criticisms of the TTRPG _Blades in the Dark_. I’m out of touch enough with modern TTRPGs that I’ve barely heard of BitD (aside from the flashback mechanism), and I had to look up some of the acronyms, but I still found this really interesting.

“Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited” (Article from March 29.) www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/u...

A bookseller that’s selling 124 books from David Hartwell’s collection, many of them signed by the authors. Seems to be priced for collectors—prices range from $100 to $2,250. www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/searchResult...

“Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free” (Article from 2019.) www.propublica.org/article/insi... I had previously heard that Intuit had lobbied against free online filing, but I didn’t know the extent of it. Ugh.

“The ‘broadcasting ban’ on 11 Northern Irish organizations including Sinn Fein [from 1988 through 1994] prevented British TV networks from broadcasting interviews with Gerry Adams… So the broadcasters found a workaround: they employed voice actors to dub over the interviews.” 1/2

“Court Finds Border Patrol Violated Federal Court Order During Sacramento Raids” “agents conducted stops without reasonable suspicion” (Date on article says April 2, 2025, but that’s a typo; it was really posted April 2, 2026.) www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

“Spinning or not?” 1-min video of a nifty marble-rolling epicycles thing, plus open-source 3D-printable design files to make one yourself. (Posted April 3.) Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlVS... Files: makerworld.com.cn/zh/models/16...

“Ukraine’s Second Miracle Year” Fascinating, and sad, overview of the current situation in Ukraine, where many soldiers on both sides are being killed, but Ukraine seems to have an advantage in terms of low-cost “semi-autonomous” drones. (Article from April 20.) www.thebulwark.com/p/ukraines-s...

EXCLUSIVE: A Long Island school district has settled a lawsuit with a former student for $125k after they erased her artwork in the school parking lot of a watermelon and a keffiyeh, both symbols of Palestinian solidarity. But what she really wanted—a public apology—ultimately eluded her. My story:

No masks. No state or local coordination with ICE. No searches without a warrant. We can applaud these necessary steps to make it as difficult as possible for ICE to operate here. What we’re doing in NYS should be a template for the nation as we fight to abolish this rogue agency once & for all.

Coming this fall to Mountain View: “the Makers Market Downtown, a new pilot series designed to turn Castro Street into a vibrant hub for the local creative economy. This initiative provides a low-barrier platform for artists, makers, and micro-entrepreneurs to showcase their work” 1/2

People have been saying this for weeks but it's no less true: federal immigration agents have continued to abduct people in the Chicago area since the end of Midway Blitz, just with less fanfare. And with spring here we're seeing a marked increase in ICE activity compared to the winter.

By the way if you are ever having a day that you don’t have the spoons for writing ALT there are people around to help you with that! -

One of the 3 systemic presentations of bias I always train people on is how the convenience of the abled is always more important than the inclusion of the disabled. This leads to us creating systems where the convenience of the powerful is always more important than the inclusion of the vulnerable.

Ok so the thing about the screengrabbed bit here, is we are out here, needing you to do alt text for real. Does he want us to ask individually every time? What is the plan here? Except full offense I know what the plan here is- disabled people vanish so he doesn't have to think about us.

20% off everything on Dover Publications' website when you use code CM65, no minimum required. Why not MY Dover titles? store.doverpublications.com/search?type=...

LA Times summary of last night’s California governor debate. www.latimes.com/california/s...

The Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Artists and Writers is now open!! No submission fees No rights encumbered 1st Place: $1500 (the art contest’s prize money as part of the Monu Bose Memorial Prize) 2nd Place: $750 3rd Place: $400 Submit by June 8, 2026 1/2

Voting in the #HugoAwards, as well as the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer is now open until August 8, 2026 at noon PDT. Votes can be submitted through our online balloting system, NomNom, or by mailing in a printable ballot.

This week's post is for all the non-passing girls. Everyone hates a brick until it’s time to build a house or throw things at cops. margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/brick-pride

Democratic strategists: These right-wing influencers offer solutions people can understand, unlike the left's impenetrable jargon. Right-wing influencers: So to understand my unified field theory of man-osity, you need to grasp the often-overlooked difference between Xi-cucks and Epsilon-cucks.

fyi it started this week!

i remember learning "there is no silver bullet" in my cs classes and it's bleakly hilarious that all tech speculation now is "what if we made a silver bullet? we will add the line 'you are the silver bullet' to claude's code"

Register for @wiscon.bsky.social so you can join us for the live Otherwise Auction! otherwiseaward.org/2026/05/join... Evening of Saturday, May 23rd (US Central Time): laugh (bidding is optional) as we auction off collectibles, wacky experiences, and more. Any donation gets you a virtual gift bag!

"Never hallucinate or make anything up." yes, you can just demand that the LLM not make errors that's definitely how the technology works

If you know people in NYC, can you please help us to spread the word that Black Zine Fair is on Saturday and that they should register to come? pools.events/event/WFzHwJ... - It's free but donations are always appreciated. We have 4 days to let folks know about it.

Dubbed the “Working People’s Met Gala,” the event features current and former workers from Amazon, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and more walking the runway in designs by immigrant and BIPOC designers and embracing a vision of fashion that represents people’s power and identity.

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the growing number of people deluding themselves into believing their computer software has attained human-level consciousness:

Pre-order my P&P Regency space travel thing because you always thought what Pride and Prejudice needed was more clockwork animals. USA: bookshop.org/a/96356/9781... or Canada: www.indiebookstores.ca/book/9781834... (click “shop local”) or see linktree in bio. 💙📚 #RegencyRomance #ButInSpace #BookSky

Dawkins notwithstanding, CS people should know better since this was documented 50 years ago.

During a 2-week period when it’s important that various software tools keep working, and it’s important that I not accidentally delete stuff, I have refrained from the following: * Clicking update-this-app-to-the-latest-version buttons in those apps. * Emptying the trash on my computer.

Morning Joe put together a supercut of Sen. Blumenthal asking Trump's judicial nominees who won the 2020 election, and each of them refusing to acknowledge that Trump lost

And on to year 3! Presenting the Queersar not an award for excellence in queer SFF 2022. Ten more brilliant titles! Nothing from the Tor mothership! Majority indie pubs! Gay, bi, lesbian, trans, and ace characters galore! ...and the single best novel I've read in the past decade. Dive on in.

I’ve learned the answer to a question that has long puzzled me: Why did Fawkes want to blow up Parliament? It turns out that he was upset about the protectionist Lentil Act of 1605, outlawing the cooking and eating of certain foods that were considered foreign. 1/2