Treachery?!? Shall we, gentles, tolerate this vile slander pon our names and honour Do we consent to be so treated by such misbegotten wantwit rogues and addlepated fools? IT CANNOT BE BORNE!

"I don’t believe in writer’s block!"

Writer friends, can you ease my mind—the packages that came in the mail from Anthropic, and I’ve already filled in the form online, does that mean the papers in the envelope are basically just a reminder telling me I need to do the thing I already did? Because as far as I can tell, that’s true.

It’s almost Christmas, so #TabletopTuesday today is me offering up some notes from one of my #StarTrekAdventures episodes—specifically, the Donatu Sector—which might be of use if you’re playing @modiphius.bsky.social's awesome Trek #TTRPG.

this needs an overwhelming amount of genuine signatures. canadians pls add yours

We have sworn to be happy. We're militant about it. Art is a tactic. Joy is a weapon.

Pre-order on @boldstrokesbooks.bsky.social. Love Is A Contact Sport, a Black, Queer, Second Chance, College Reunion, MM romance comes out June 2026 on Bold Strokes Books. Browse for other great queer novels on BSB. www.boldstrokesbooks.com/books/love-i... #Romancelandia #BlackBookSky #LGBTQBooks

Eternal mood, but I have never so seriously considered giving up as over the last year or two.

Ok listen Hallmark made a legitimately amazing Hannukah movie. It’s called Round And Round. It is nerdy AF. It has D&D and comic books and time loops and Groundhog Day references the acting and writing is good and it’s very Jewish and I watch it every year and I highly recommend it.

I don’t know how to identify a bad parent anymore. But sweeties, you’re doing great!

As a multiple language speaker it's also frustrating to see people using AI for translation because the English speaking world tends to treat translators like workers for hire instead of co authors of text and this feels like more of it. Translation at the literary level is creative work. (2/?)

Deep breath Ok I'm going to try and stay calm But I'll point out that AI translation is literally causing translators to be fired (see the whole Harlequin line in France) (1/?)

@thedogwalker.bsky.social has taught Libi to hi-five 🥰🥹

Oh, @$%@! Doomed again. This is where it all starts. "No more graphic novels for a spell!,", I say. "My to-read pile(s) threaten to crush me." I pause. "Oh, it's the Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast, The Stampies: Best Comics of 2025 Part One." "Now my to-get list begins again. Again....!"

We also stopped mass lead poisoning, stopped burning holes in the ozone layer, and massively reduced acid rain. So much is actually possible. Even in the broken world we live in, absolutely gargantuan goals against "necessary" realities were accomplished.

Looks like all the Treks are leaving Netflix Canada soon. That’s… well. *sigh* Maybe I’ll be wrapping up the whole "watching episodes of Trek for TTRPG ideas" sooner than I thought.

Worked hard to get this into Guardian Oz & big props to @fiercemum.bsky.social for setting it up & Melissa Davey for publishing it. She will doubtless get loads of hassle from transphobes for it, but it needs to be out there. Puberty Blocker bans harm trans kids, no-one should pretend they don’t.

The British Medical Association appears to be fed up with Streeting and his TERFy nonsense: www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-s...

Almost at 10k, folks.

And honestly, I think its long past time to have some awkward, messy *cough* straight about "representation" cookies being collected by media that isn't necessarily being made for, by or even really about queer people. Not saying it can't be done - but let's keep it real. And own the trade offs.

It’s #StarTrekAdventures Saturday, which means an episode of Trek. This week? "Arena." Don’t get attached to any red-shirts. It inspired a bit of musing on borders and tactical specialists, which I tugged out for scenario seeds for @modiphius.bsky.social's awesome Trek #TTRPG. #TTRPGs #Gaming

There is no trend or epidemic of kids being trans or non-binary.

I talk about this in my writing with an eye to queer inclusivity talks—queer is a great umbrella term and I love it, but there are always going to be nuances; L isn’t G isn’t B isn’t T isn’t Q isn’t I isn’t A isn’t P… and so on. Even within the community we don’t always know what we don’t know.

With all the discourse of idea generation, may I point you once again to this wonderful tool I use over and over, especially when it’s time to prep for a gaming session? The various decks from @storyenginedeck.bsky.social have yet to leave me without something to work with.

"My darling girl, when are you going to understand that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage!"

Magneto was right.

THIS. *They stole your fellow writers' FUCKING HEARTS' BLOOD to power their fancy-ass text-based writer-imitation machine.* You wanna get all NUANCED about that? Your easygoing take on that issue will sooner or later (most likely sooner) be used to steal *your* stuff. Let's see how *you* like it. 🫤

So, SFWA is very much not my circus, not my monkeys, but here are my two general thoughts right now: 1) clear rules excluding AI-created content are important to hold the line, especially for publishers who would want nothing more than to toss their editors into the drink.

Makes me proud every time! Did you know we’re shipping whistles anywhere in the US? Email whistlerequests [at] proton [dot] me for your free 3D printed whistles. We’ve sent over 30,000 so far in December!

This. The moment I see any sort of "hey, I’m a new AI feature!" popping up on any program/OS/what-have-you, I’m off trying to figure out how to shut it the hell off.

Comment thread under this one is 💔 Parents, get your children vaccinated against All The Things. And stay on top of the ones you still need to get as an adult. And for the love of sanity, don't bring your measles-infected kids to a cancer centre. How does anyone even DO something that horrible?

Last re-skeet: It can take a few minutes for the confirmation to arrive in your in-box, but your signature doesn’t count until you’ve clicked that, so hit refresh a few times.

3yo: “daddy’s phone is in his pocket!” me: “that’s true!” 3yo: “why isn’t mummy’s phone in her pocket?” me: “… buckle up, kiddo, we’re gonna discuss five hundred years of fashion and misogyny”

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

It’s #StarTrekAdventures Saturday, which means an episode of Trek. This week? "Arena." Don’t get attached to any red-shirts. It inspired a bit of musing on borders and tactical specialists, which I tugged out for scenario seeds for @modiphius.bsky.social's awesome Trek #TTRPG. #TTRPGs #Gaming

What are your top 3 absolutely essential, feels-like-Christmas songs? 1. Christmas Wrapping, The Waitresses 2. Soul Cake, Sting 3. Drinking White Wine in the Sun, Tim Minchin

Not in a box. Not with a fox. I do not want it, Sam Am I. I do not want your gen AI.

The best thing would never have been to make that decision in the first place. But I’ll credit the reversal as listening and understanding "we fucked that up, big."

Seems like a good time to reshare this resource: www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyo...

Six days to Christmas! I remind y’all: I write queer holiday romances and stories. Most recently? "Upon the Midnight Queer," holiday tales retold queerly. Includes the new Village story "Folly," a novella-length queer romance based on "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas." Link: books2read.com/b/4X5Mk6

*deep sigh*

So, I’m listening to the second of three (straight) holiday romance novellas via #KoboPlus, and they’re by three different authors and they involve three siblings and they overlap/share scenes. If it was queer, it would be entirely my catnip. Also, it makes me want to try shared world again.

Randomly remember how every hear for the holidays, we’d stick a box of treats in the back room of the bookstore so staff had something to reward themselves with when a customer demanded they check the back for something that sold out ages ago.

Six days to Christmas! I remind y’all: I write queer holiday romances and stories. Most recently? "Upon the Midnight Queer," holiday tales retold queerly. Includes the new Village story "Folly," a novella-length queer romance based on "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas." Link: books2read.com/b/4X5Mk6

So. Wet. (Be careful out there, #Ottawa — rain on top of remnants of ice, and when the temperature plummets this afternoon… that’ll be even worse.)

Nothing recent, but if you go to jeffrey-ricker.kit.com and sign up, you’ll get a free ebook of stories, and who doesn’t like free? I know I do. #WeeknightWriters

Ooooh! THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, containing my post-Stand story 'Hunted to Extinction,' is on sale for $4.99 today at Kobo Canada! Perhaps elsewhere? This is very cheap for 800 pages of book 🤩 www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/...

Authors, remember that you CAN insist on human translation for your foreign-language editions and have it written into your contracts. You can no longer just assume you're going to get a human to work on the book whose every word you wrote with intent.

Remember how I said I have it written into my foreign-language contracts that my work has to be translated by an actual human? This shit is why. Those book translations are gonna suck. They'll save money putting out books that are going to be painful to read. That's not a great long-term strategy.