Found a bookstore that stocks your novels

Was chatting w/ a friend from Western Mass today and got thrown when she kept referring to her doctor as "they." I assumed nonbinary doctor until I realized this was a Boston They. I forgot that ppl from western mass do not specify the gender of anyone who is not immediate family, spouse, or BFF

A quick UK public service announcement. #GeminiAndMercuryRemastered spotted for half price (£25) in the Waterstones and Amazon Boxing Day sale!!🚀 Best be quick - who knows, but was one day only when Apollo Remastered was released. WTS: tinyurl.com/3h47cmvt Amazon: tinyurl.com/4hhjjymc

Hard for Christians and ex-Christians to grasp sometimes, but "secular" and "culturally neutral" are not the same thing. I can celebrate a secular Purim with just cookies and gift baskets and costumes. It's still *Jewish*.

It’s Tamizdat, people, not samizdat. When it’s published abroad — as in Canada in this case — and then is smuggled back into the country that had repressed whatever is published. “Tam”=“there”; “izdat”—“publish.”

New Hampshire lake like a Japanese print.

my wish for adult sff in 2026 is that it will trust its audience to grasp subtext and nuance

At a rough estimate, there are two million+ people in GB with an Irish-born parent. The Irish state defines them as Irish from birth. Any of them may now be at risk of deportation. (1) Good luck with that, morons; (2) if we're not welcome, maybe we'll walk. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Nearly four in ten people in Northern Ireland hold Irish passports. So if any of them get done for possession or shoplifting or drunk and disorderly the Tories are gonna put them in a van and chuck them over the border into Monaghan or Donegal? Hahahaha, thickos. factcheckni.org/topics/europ...

"This war has made Russian culture meaningless," says N, "because it was all about compassion. All of our great writers... had their experience of Golgotha – & all of those deaths and sufferings were in vain: what was any of that for, if it didn't save anyone & didn't teach anyone anything?"

And the everyday experiential world ushered in by that development - never really knowing if any given cultural artefact was actually written/designed/composed/produced by a human, even if a human claims it was - will be endlessly disorientating, demoralising, and fundamentally horrible to navigate.

It seems like science fiction that this is even necessary. But it is.

If you see this, repost with your model of positive masculinity.

Sadly I'm pretty sure the third category is just "weird."

If there were a secret third category between "neurodivergent" and "neurotypical," my life would make a lot more sense.

Whatever else it can do, this tech adds work and erodes trust. The extra work is time-wasting and wearying, and I resent the erosion of trust most deeply. I cannot believe it is healthy for society to be ever less sure that anything you encounter is the real thought or expression of a fellow human

Great catalogue even if (like me) you've never been to California.

Very interesting. I know what Eastern Orthodoxy would say: "the church is a hospital for sinners."

I think that must have been in one of the Gnostic Gospels.

Less a Hellenized Jew than a Judaized Hellene, I wonder how I ought to feel about the complexities of Hanukkah. But I am strongly in favor of candles.

If you can spare the time, this is worth reading in one sitting. Trust.

Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind

Cyber Monday is here and deals are going fast! These deals are diaphanous. They are receding even as we speak, becoming mere memories of deals, prices longed for but lost, hints at what could have been had for less. A golden slant of sun through window falls on an empty countertop. Act now.

At last! An independent longitudinal qualitative study getting to heart of why artists do what they do and how, identifying barriers & brakes & how ACE’s institutions favouring policies >2010 impacted + conditions for artists’ emotional, environmental & economic resilience. DM for pre pub copy.😊

Santa knows when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake. Judah Maccabee knows if you've been assimilating into the surrounding culture and he is NOT going to be okay with it

Getting actively tired of being asked where I'm from. I've been here since I was a teenager, twenty-five years now – and I know I'll never sound like a local, but do you have to remind me?

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

I heard there was a secret verse That David used to make AI worse But you don't really want to pub that, do ya

I’ve seen a worrying number of readers angry when a book is not exactly what they expected, which is a way to trap yourself permanently.

So hard to depict the launch of a Space Shuttle in a literary novel without the tone going all techno-geek. Focus on the subjective experience of the protagonist, yes, but you also can't assume that the reader remembers what it was like.

Enceladus in the E Ring - From Val Klavans (valklavans.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/fpHjw2

Well this is quite genuinely disturbing

New winter cheer concept.

I think this is an underrated source of the extent to which Bluesky is in a false consensus about public AI hatred. If you are a power user on a microblogging site you are basically by definition not going to see the "take the effort out of reading and writing" machine as being useful

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Slept dreaming of, woke up thinking about the extraordinary What Resembles the Grave but Isn’t by Anne Boyer

Book post! Work by poet friends @kitfryatt.bsky.social and @pairedaeza.bsky.social

Came across this again by Ruth Lepson … must look for more of her work.

Your yearly reminder that “holiday” celebrations that only include Christian traditions are not, in fact, inclusive even if you don’t use the word Christmas, so tbh I’d rather you just say it’s Christmas.

They're also responsible for one of the best emails I've ever received, when the college office sent out a plea for sightings of Professor Biscuit while conveniently forgetting to mention that he was a cat...(I won't comment on how often a similar email might have gone out about human Professors...)

Today’s random find in the #ASPLibrary: a Russian book of Ephemerides of Minor Planets for 1994. 🔭

Thrilled to finally be able to share this! Both because I'm happy for Erik and because I read this novel almost exactly 2 years ago now, loved it, and have been waiting impatiently to be able to recommend it to other people.

You may not realize it, but what you need in your life is an epic poem about the migration of eels. I'm serious, it's amazing. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2024/03/26/e...

Excited for the time, around 30 years from now, when we start publishing people's DMs in lieu of the fact we don't write letters to each other anymore

What brilliant television.

Applications are open for the only non-NYU workshop I’m offering in 2026. It’s fully-funded, including transportation if you’re coming from the US. Link for more info: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

Major achievement of the day: finally opening a jar of M&S vegan n'duja paste (highly recommended) after days of wailing and gnashing of teeth every time I wanted to eat pasta. I don't know why that lid was on so tight, but it was worth it.