Allowing third parties to curb trans people's rights to participate in society opens up everyone's manner, clothing, physical appearance to intrusive scrutiny and potential challenge. History also shows allowing erasure of rights for one group soon sees others targeted. This is not a 'them' issue.

And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.

The Mowing-Devil, c.1700-1720

Fascinating review of Muskism from Nik at Geese, my favorite new magazine. Nik makes an affirmative case for the "woke mind virus" as an "oppositional collective intelligence" coordinated through network technologies www.geesemag.com/articles/the...

This is a neat summary of the effects of gen-AI related Enshittification that I hadn’t seen before

Many years ago, when I had far fewer followers, I asked the universe for help identifying a panel I clipped from a comic during our first trip to the UK in 1977, but had no luck. Being a romantic, I carried it in my wallet until it was in tatters, and would love to replace it. Can you ID the comic?

I’ve been hearing so much anger and disappointment from frontline workers about the BBC investigation into fraudulent asylum claims. One of the most damning responses has come from one of the experts they interviewed, solicitor Ana Gonzalez. It’s really worth reading her response in full:

1970s TV couldn't afford monsters. So it made the corridors terrifying instead. Philip A. Suggar on liminal dread, power cuts, and Mr. Primrose's thresholds. @felipeazucares.bsky.social @titanbooks.bsky.social

Listen to this, listen to this, pay them money and listen to this (You can get the first series free, but apparently people need to stay alive to make art, so you can say 'Thank you for that, please continue to live' by paying for the next one)

I enjoy a read that becomes more engaging as you progress, and oddly, this happened with Terminus @irny.bsky.social Started as a general read. Ended my read really wanting to run this system-neutral horror adventure for very specific reasons. Available from www.allrolledup.co.uk?s=terminus&p...

Even in a world where LLM never existed this is solid mentoring

For the 21st edition of Science & Magic I wrote about Dream Cemeteries, my 21st Magnetic North missive from the city of lost souls. There’s also an interview with David Keenan in this one. @reversediorama.bsky.social Plus lots more! You can read it here: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-...

This is great. At the core of the Wicker Man, I only noticed recently, is a fable about the lies told by capitalists. It’s political. It’s about an Industrial Revolution businessman who creates an agricultural revolution by giving his workers their agrarian myths back. Howie can’t fathom it.

Hey folks! If you're in the mood for a bit of Scottish sea going sci-fi adventure, you can pre-order The Packet now. (You don't even need to read it, just enjoy Vincent Sammy's outstanding cover art!)

Gen A.I. barons want us talkinge alone on our phones to a demon thei created, and not goinge places and being wyth each othir yn art and joy and communitye. Thei want cinemas to shut downe and broadwaye to go darke. Thei want wryteres to stop writinge. Thei want to build hell and have us pay for it.

This is the company the UK government has embedded in the nation’s services. Seriously, fuck everyone who is excusing this.

Does what it says on the tin: open.substack.com/pub/rojospin...

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer. 🧵 1/5

Is there some kind of obvious name for the category of things that fail both fast and quietly that I haven’t thought of? Now I’m thinking about it it seems so obvious that the major problem with the AI is not that it fails – which we all do – but it looks EXACTLY the same as when it’s right.

Never a big Narnia guy but this 6 seconds typifies everything I love about British television.

Next week, 25th Feb 6:30pm, you can see @tomtoner.bsky.social / @caspargeon.bsky.social - Philip K. Dick Award-nominated author of THE IMMEASURABLE HEAVEN - at Waterstones Worcester's SFF Author panel exploring Character Creation! Click on the link below to book your ticket! https://bit.ly/4qQH9Hh

I recently came across my first drawing for this story in an old sketchbook. I scanned it and colored it for fun. Here's the only "The Adventures of Thing Thing: The Blue Cheese Affair" concept art (2009)

douglas adams was our most accurate futurist

Starmer's racist policy, only created to satisfy far right voters in the Red Wall, is going to affect over a million people already living here. Your friends, neighbours, loved ones. #PoliticsLive

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

The robot apocalypse hasn't happened yet, but still I can't escape the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong... Cartoon for Dutch newspaper @trouw.nl. More of my work for Trouw: www.trouw.nl/cartoons/tje... #ArtificialIntelligence #creativity #work #GenerativeAI

This:

Union workers solved the trolley problem, you're welcome

Our Winter Sale continues, with 30% off across our backlist until February 28th... Including part obsessive cold-case detective story, part occult history of London in the 1950s Dead Fashion Girl by Fred Vermorel. strangeattractor.greedbag.com/dept/~winter...

Reading, 1888 #impressionism #morisot

Octarine

This this this! 👇👇👇

Rocky Cove II - 1929 https://botfrens.com/collections/173/contents/3104378

If you like your horror artful and beautifully crafted, Remains is brilliant.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

The former editor and publisher of Black Static and Interzone has a new magazine of horror short fiction and novellas, REMAINS, beautifully illustrated by Richard Wagner! 3 issues so far, new one forthcoming. Get them here: weightlessbooks.com/category/pub...

This five year old is still in jail

The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions. It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.

Too right! Signal chats are for Sec Def to show off to his brother by bragging about the highly classified details of ongoing US military operations, not for the mums at the local school to warn one another when a heavily armed convoy of masked thugs might be arriving to terrify their children.

I think about this post a lot

I hurt my arm and was sitting for hours waiting to be called for an x-ray. Finally a doctor came out and said, "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" No wonder I'd been waiting so long, I was in the bloody Burns unit.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb.

Before Brexit and Trump, I could be a loyal Brit, enthusiastic European and strong pro-Atlanticist. I never had to choose - they were multiple, overlapping layers of my identity. I had friends and connections in all three places; admired different aspects of each. Which one matters most to me now?

Whoah yes yes yes

George Ault, Bright Light at Russell’s Corners, 1946, oil on canvas 19 5/8 x 25 in.

I don’t make a habit of listening to speeches out of Davos, but this is genuinely one for the history books: a clear-eyed acknowledgment that the old international order was partly a fiction and is now a lie, and a call to act collectively to build resilience and sovereignty in the face of hegemony.

It's once again backup day! Repost to remind a friend to back up their writing, art, etc somewhere and check your existing solutions still work!