Sorry to be a downer, but: if you're on Bluesky, if you have a VPN, if you are familiar with torrents—you know at least the broad strokes of what's up with CECOT. The issue is the millions of less-online, motion-smoothing-enabled folks who aren't going to see or believe it if it's not on the TV.

Always a treat to see what's been jumping out to the critics this year.

putting together ARB's contributors' top picks of 2025, and golly is it disheartening that two of the most-lauded books this year (Allan's A GRANITE SILENCE and Swift's WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN) don't even have *pages on their publishers' websites*. Quercus, respectfully, what are you doing.

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Chicago lit scene undefeated

happy henge-calibrating, everyone! remember to use actual local rise/noon/set times, and lift with your legs!

Coming for north central, too—rivers still orange from mine drainage, fracking wells all over the place, and now getting eyed for data centers.

For Fresh Cup, I wrote about the @bbiunion.bsky.social campaign, their recent strike action, and what the rumoured sale of Blue Bottle Coffee by Nestlé might mean for the union's future. #CoffeeSky freshcup.com/nestle-may-s...

Good news! We’ve extended the application deadline to exhibit at TCAF 2026 or suggest programming. We know life, art, and admin can be extra hard to juggle before the holidays, and we want to ensure everyone has a little more breathing room. Apply by December 29 at 11:59pm ET www.torontocomics.com

today in "cursèd AI use" crossing my feed

My friends, I say this with all the love in my heart: Right now might not be the moment for “But we should be TOLERANT and NUANCED about the plagiarism machines!” Your tolerance and “nuance” will be weaponised by the grifters and their apologists. Please respect yourselves more.

A bio of Charles R. Saunders, an important but sadly too often forgotten Black writer of sword and sorcery fantasy (which he called sword and soul), early critic of racism in fantasy, and journalist is coming out in January. The author, Jon Tattrie, will be on @mealofthorns.bsky.social, too!

Imagine a world where authors don't have to agitate our own organizations to do the very basic bare minimum things like advocating for fellow writers in the midst of a genocide or not supporting the use of stolen work

One for those 'most anticipated books of next year' lists. Allan on Priest on Ballard and everything in between.

An elegant environment is one where everyone’s opinion is shaped by the opinion of others. If it is shaped by the opposite of others’ opinions, then it is a literary environment. - Marcel Proust, “Snobs”

Vajra Chandrasekera, author of "Rakesfall" and winner of the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize 2025 shares a nifty piece of advice for speculative fiction writers. 🔮 - #SouthAsian #SpeculativeFiction

"Cleverly troubles the boundary between metatextuality and paratextuality—or, perhaps, parasociality—and gently captures a very modern kind of self-resisting solipsism. The post's narrator can't directly ask: they can only wonder. I wonder too."

The turn from sentence one to sentence two says everything that needs to be said about the state of literature today.

Restaurant evaluation hack: downgrade if any menu items are described as being "perfectly" roasted, baked, seasoned, etc.

Really enjoyed this episode and wish I knew what could be done about the structural racism affecting international fandom (visa denials and banking seriously hurting the Rwanda Worldcon's chances); it's good to at least have it laid out so clearly.

This is what being a continental philosopher feels like and that’s why the analytics hate us

need a new word for this blend of boring, unintentionally funny, and horrifying the Venn diagram between Pinker and Douthat specifically is just the dream of the thousand-year reich

extremely niche pet peeve of mine, that I try to give grace for, is the person who insists they're a visual thinker but then when you ask them to visualize something extremely basic in their head they say "no I need to see that"

reshare if you agree wall adapters with a single USB C port have a surface area differential ratio that looks weird

Worldcon was one of my best shows this year. But that being said, I'm used to comic conventions with typically stricter AI policies in place. I wish they would follow suit.

take a moment and recall the best falafel you've ever had

This a travesty, and a failure on many levels.

impossible to pick a fave but this is the first place my mind went

obviously if we ever claw back from the brink we need to arrogate all international military powers back to the legislature AND I propose: no action permissible if even one affirming member fails a snap quiz on the relevant geography

There never seems to be a good time for anything online lately so I'm just going to throw this out here now: I am looking for more work! I don't mean writing (though that too, sure!), but in the vein of the work I do for the Le Guin Foundation: organizational, practical, assistant-y, bookish work.

With a little over a month to go before the deadline to become a Hugo voter for 2026, I'm sharing some of my recs! SFF fan culture is deep and wide, and there are so many creative folks out there deserving of recognition by their peers! #HugoAwards 🔗 ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/2025/12/15/w...

her shield stops the quick strike, while the slow blade may pass

long shot here, and a vague idea, but: scholarly folks, do you have any reading suggestions for work looking at conceptions (pop, psych, or phil) of time re: grammatical usage? Things like the present-tense fiction trend, lit discussions as present vs past, dif between simple past & past perfect use

Uni admins by and large really seem like the model case for "leaders who hate and want to destroy the actual thing they're in charge of" There are exceptions but the frequent disdain—for students, for profs, for arts, for sciences, for the actual role education plays in society—is so palpable

The success of these shops, Raha particularly, is really wonderful

I prefer to believe that Michael Dorn really is a Klingon and that the pretense that he's a human in makeup is all a Big Conspiracy.

Announcing the National Book Critics Circle 2025 Longlist for Criticism

Was really fascinating to read this (first time for me) and find the basic shape of dark academia laid out so clearly, even with the magical elements so extraneous. Tune in for some Vague Class Theorizing:

this is what every podcast i don’t already listen to looks like to me

Being a southerner living outside of the south is a constant war against people deploying the laziest stereotypes imaginable without ever living in the south while also realizing you used to know a guy who used a homemade spear to kill wild boar that came in his front yard.

THANK YOU @casella.bsky.social you are truly my no. 1 fav critic in SFF 🚀 “A total of 3 originally non-English works have made it to finalist for Best Novel. 2 for Novella, 3 for Novelette, 1 for Short Story, 1 for Related Work. The Hugos do not have a good history of recognizing translated work.”

Real PA birch beers are delicious (carcinogens scale to authenticity, alas) Cherikee Red, pretty good actually, name/design an obvious veto tho Crystal Beach Loganberry is truly an abomination imo, and it should never be discontinued

you oppose the apartment building because of neighborhood character; I oppose it because it would cause the tutelary deity of the neighborhood to consume everyone’s immortal soul. We are not the same.

walking around my house pointing out how many things we have on shelves that are not books; possibly a non-winning marital maneuver

Remember when folks were using safety pins to signal that they’d protect each other (and then capitalists started selling gold safety pins)? Well, this thread is safe for Palestinian fundraisers. Post your links here, or go to www.gazafunds.com if you want to help someone survive this winter. 🧷