Fun fact: the art the NY Post used for the illustration of Mamdani is from a 1962 Soviet poster: Glory! to the Soviet People, the Pioneers of Space! by Vadim Volikov.

Fascinating book that takes a lot of very classic SF ideas (far-future! Human cloning & mutations! Psi! AI!) and delivers them with humorous, literary panache & ambiguity. Great to talk about this with a researcher who's thought & read a lot about AI & reproductive technology.

honestly this is what the Impossible/Beyond Meat guys should be working on. passably-goat-tasting-but-plant-based birria should be treated like the fucking Space Race

plutocrats I do not regret to inform you that there IS a monster under the bed, hell yeah

Do you love the Chicago Public Library? Do you not want to wait weeks for books? Do you still want to be able to go to programs? Send a letter to electeds ! In the budget, Brandon Johnson is proposing 89 cuts to positions, and cutting our book budget in half. actionnetwork.org/letters/no-l...

More like Oldstranger amirite

you can win without billionaires supporting you you can win without party leadership endorsing you you can win unapologetically standing with every persecuted minority pundits say are too politically toxic to touch we could do everything about this process differently if we wanted to

not the lesson everyone will grab onto tonight but this proves soundcloud rappers are the future of electoral politics

have some dusk

Bizarre thought that occurrs to me is that, if Cheney had personally killed half a million people—if he'd stalked Kansas City with an axe until it was awash in gore, empty of all but his snide laughter—*that would be better* than what he did. You can arrest that guy, or shoot him, and it's done.

on my long list of achievable utopian goals, jotting down "arts grants program specifically to offset the cost of physical galleys"

i hope to see enterprising democrats announce their intent to retire schumer and gillibrand over the next two years.

Fascinating book that takes a lot of very classic SF ideas (far-future! Human cloning & mutations! Psi! AI!) and delivers them with humorous, literary panache & ambiguity. Great to talk about this with a researcher who's thought & read a lot about AI & reproductive technology.

Gang, Archita Mittra needs our help. She's a vital critical voice, a great writer of fiction, and more importantly she's part of the community we've built and are building here. Let's help her reach a place where she can carry on being all of those things, and write whatever she has for us next. 🙏

okay I chuckled

As part of my visit to Chicago one month from now, I will be joining the InterCcECT community (greatest logo/acronym) to discuss readings in technofeudalism.

It’s truly tragic how many of these US war criminals like Cheney never face justice and die in their peacefully in their homes in their 80s and 90s. I want to be happy he is dead but I am not. The million people he killed didnt get the luxury to die how he did.

Calls for reviews & essays: February 2026

Not trying to bum anybody out but the thought of an animal this close to us, only knowing confinement, a horrific crash, a few days of brwildering freedom in alien landscape, then shot dead for existing is going to bring me close to tears whenever I think about it going forward.

Don't remember how much I paid for this one (<$5); astonishing how often it turns out the scratch awl is useful—cleaning up threads, poking at some scale or rust or whatnot in a fitting, pilot holes etc.

"He was a butterscotch baking chip kind of a person. Sweet enough, but, ultimately: why did he exist?"

RIP Adam Greenberg He was the superb cinematographer who shot Near Dark (watch it!), Terminator 2: Judgment Day and, of course, The Terminator, which means he’s responsible for one of my favourite shots in cinema that also coined a new genre for its film:

Reminder: There’s no such thing as “a substack” and definitely no such thing as _your_ substack. www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/d...

don't know the right metaphor for this article being topped by an ad for paramilitary spree-killer hardware

One of the major fruits of research is delight. Think of how often you’ve read about a discovery and really enjoyed it. Often the most pleasurable kind of news. Public delight isn’t discussed enough as one of the major outputs of funding research.

My pitch: a tv show where the writers understand, even roughly, how much money the characters would have, and how much money things would cost

Our latest link round-up is live! Reviews, essays, some events and CFPs from around the web for lovers of speculative fiction and criticism: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/11/01/w...

GDT's Frankenstein: pretty good. You mileage will vary quite noticeably depending on your "love for del Toro's whole thing". A shame that it feels like 3-4 script edits would have ratcheted this into absolute top-tier stuff, but still fun.

it's me, unnamed critter from bosch's triptych of the temptation of anthony!

As if by magic, this review (the Swift one, aka read this everyone) is now online. locusmag.com/review/when-...

just brewed a nasty old potato cup for myself, managed to convince myself I wasn't smelling it. trick or treat, indeed

I've gone back and forth on whether to post about this -- part of me that is so, so tired of flaying open the details of our grief just to beg the world to care. They killed my friend. They fucking killed him. His wife is struggling immensely to feed their children. Anything you can donate helps.

Holy shit this is one of the most gloriously unhinged things I’ve seen in a while. It’s… beautiful. It’s magnificent. Its creator is knocking on the door of perfection. youtu.be/Mw3SV6U_p0Q?...

So did we ever get an answer on why all the AI logos look like buttholes?

two vast and trunkless legs

Weird thing about living in ever-widening gyre times is occasionally seeing really clearly, in unexpected places, that it's a centrifuge.

Have never been able to decide if this is awful or genius advice: one of my first bosses, trying to pass on management tips, told me "If you think of something you need to do, either do it right then before you forget, or be comfortable with the fact it may never happen."

oh my god

SHIT: a poor craftsman blames his tools • classist • sexist • defeatist • really seems like it should depend on the tool LIT: WHAT IS THE RIDDLE OF STEEL • introspective • inquiring Croms want to know • cascading barbarous vibe • THE ONLY DOOM TODAY SHALL BE YOUR OWN, THULSA

went to catch the sunset off the breakwater yesterday and spotted a mink doing the same thing

Once upon a desert sandy As through winds the trav'ling man he Spied the face of Ozymandy Lying, simply lying there Suddenly there was some writing Pon the plinth that he was sighting That the sand and time were blighting Quoth the statue, "Now despair"

I want a niche, only mildly insulting term for the behavior where people act like they are one end of the chain, rather than a link in between.

2. The novel being on a Men's Health sci-fi booklist delights me. If their audience dives into a novel with queer women senior citizens, a gender ? AI who runs on altruism, a book gently pushing revolution through acts and empathy, well. I can ask for nothing more. www.menshealth.com/entertainmen...

Read Nieva's "Dengue Boy", translated by Rahul Bery, a manic romp through far-future climato-biological chaos. It's gory and horrific in many ways, but as @casella.bsky.social sez, "what might read as depressing and upsetting is instead a bombastic, energetic ride."

Do yourself a favor and check out this review: very cool discussion of a book I need to pick up, and also an extremely concise and persuasive manifesto on translated SFF's place in anglophone fandom (and why we need more of it).

do you like ebooks do you like ebooks about haunted architecture did you ever wish THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE was more ... SFnal? just in time for the height of spooky season, my ROSE/HOUSE is on sale for only $2.99 at all ebook retailers! until November 2nd! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

went to catch the sunset off the breakwater yesterday and spotted a mink doing the same thing