moby-dick, his eyes enormous: from hell's heart you STAB at moby? for hate's sake you spit your last BREATH at moby? oh! oh! the great shroud of the sea for ahab! the great shroud of the sea rolling on as it rolled five thousand years ago!!!!

I do not use LLMs in my writing, nor do I ever intend to. (I hope you didn’t think I did, either, but just to make it absolutely clear…)

Taps sign: HERE is my only use for LLMs in my fiction. (Text in alt text. This is part of the novel, that's the joke.)

"City of Dreams". A commissioned illustration I drew for @niedermeyer.online a while ago. Still one of my favorite pieces! Haven't shared it here on it's own yet and thought I should! Closeups will be in the comments.

It may be April 1st but there’s no fooling about the brilliance of Ballad Hunters, the GUMSHOE game of folk songs coming to life in the gritty Regency era. 61% funded on Kickstarter! bit.ly/4sjufm8

Princess Anne walking into that grotesque White House ballroom like

Woooot! UK readers, this month only, you can snap up the ebook of Enchanting the Fae Queen for just 99p! Enemies-to-lovers, banter galore, and a lethal fae tournament await... www.panmacmillan.com/authors/step... #romancelandia

Inspired by a discussion of Tolkien and making medieval fantasy more “realistic,” Liz Bourke (@hawkwinglb.bsky.social) tackles the question of what Aragorn's tax policy would look like—and why such a thing wouldn't really be possible in a place like Middle-earth. reactormag.com/aragorns-tax...

This is online tonight and you can still grab a ticket! Me and @tkingfisher.com talking Wolf Worm, White Rat, paladins and roadrunners. Join usssss

"The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." I made a "Yellow Wallpaper" piece back in 2017, but I re-read the story over the weekend and wanted to try again. Much happier with this version 🖤

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Cadbury to be hatched? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We're in our last 48 hours of the Trophy TTRPG anthology kickstarter! We aren't printing a lot of extra books, so back this while you can. We're getting close to 400 backers!!!! That's a lot of doomed treasure hunters :D www.kickstarter.com/projects/fir...

TTRPGs for Trans Rights Idaho is live! Get over 500 games for as little as $5 (or more, if you're able)! All proceeds benefit @tccidaho.bsky.social & @transaffirminc.bsky.social 🏳️‍⚧️ itch.io/b/3525/ttrpg...

Dr. Joyce Brothers grew up in a Jewish family in NY, had a PhD from Columbia, a husband in medical internship making $50/month, a new baby, and no income. In 1955 she decided to go on a game show. Not because she wanted to be on TV. Because they were, in her words, "hungry." #EternalLight 1/10

Fantasy Hive drop one of the first reviews of MORTEDANT's PERIL and i think they liked it... "Mortedant’s Peril is a shining demonstration of an author going from strength to strength...an absolute triumph of a page-turning fantasy murder-mystery." (Possible minor spoilers.)

I have stolen 12T of KitKats that were in transit and which you were probably hoping to buy in Poland forgive me the world is stressful and I needed a break

"The senior government figure acknowledged that some hospital trusts had been slow to adopt Palantir’s software on the basis that they did not find it useful."

Some analysis of the implications of J. P. Morgan's estimates of arrival times for the last deliveries via the Straits of Hormuz before the current fuckery began. It's grim reading. https://substack.com/@snarkygherkin/note/c-234844710

A lot of writing is fighting a blank page. When writers buy notebooks & never use them I like to think of it as giving a round of the fight totemically so you can automatically win the next round in reality. In this way buying & not using notebooks is actually smart & part of the creative process.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

1/ The world is facing a 'ticking time bomb' from its supply of oil, according to a briefing note from JP Morgan. Physical scarcity of oil is about to unfold across the globe, spreading sequentially through April from east to west, causing major economic disruption worldwide. ⬇️

Is it just me, or could that lede-sentence ideally have been... *phrased* a little differently... just to prevent misunderstanding of what the desired end state is? 😏

New York’s public hospitals dropped Palantir this week. Is it time the NHS did the same? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/26/new-york-hospitals-palantir-ai

New theory: British Summer Time is one of the Master’s most successful ever ploys for messing with the Doctor. (I want - okay, technically will want - my hour back. Bah humbug.)

so @josie.zone has asked me in passing to discuss the impact Star Wars has had on my faith, and I thought it would be neat to copy over a thread i wrote about this on Twitter a lifetime ago. Nearly a decade, even, since it was right after ep 8.

Purple velvet was a popular choice for #1930s evening wear, and in this piece the velvet is broken up by sheer panels in geometric motifs and ruffled to frame the face with a small standing collar #AugustaAuction #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay

PIG AT A WEDDING is a one-page TTRPG where you must sneak a pig into a wedding and release it at the most traumatic possible moment. PDF, text-only version, and a largely unrelated dev diary here: www.patreon.com/posts/pig-at...

I got an unexpected book deal thing and ROSES IN AMBER is currently FREE at Amazon! "There is a story of a beast, and a merchant’s daughter, and a curse that must be broken. This is not—quite—that story." www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZIH3Y...

Well, I am not sure what my analysis here is worth, but here is my 7,500 word primal scream of a military historian's take on the War in Iran. My best summary: this war is dumb as hell. acoup.blog/2026/03/25/m...

Since the Indigo Girls came up, reminder that they once did a full production of Jesus Christ Superstar (released on record as JCS: Resurrection) with Amy as Jesus and Emily as Mary Magdeline, in case you need something to do this Palm Sunday: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eflg...

You may recall the serious allegations by Reform about voting offences at the Gorton and Denton by-election. This detailed thread sets out what happened next. All too late, and this won’t get the same circulation as the original allegations.

Safely at Manchester and on train about to head for Leeds. (I’d better not have just jinxed it.)

At Madrid airport, checked in and through the security gates, just having a coffee before heading to my gate. All okay so far (touch wood).

A Lithuanian equivalent to “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” is nemokamas sūris tik pelėkautuose. It means “the only free cheese is in a mousetrap”

Having a last morning in Madrid (my plane is late afternoon) and doing some idle wandering. It’s amazing how many specialty ham shops are called “Museo de Jambon”. (Or maybe it’s a chain?)

Julius Caesar introduced a coin with his name, image, and the title DICT PERPETVO; dictator for life. It was created in February of 44 B.C. and stopped being minted in March of 44 B.C., for some reason.

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

El Angel Cairo. This 1878 statue of Lucifer by Ricardo Bellver stands 666m above sea level. (In El Retiro park, which is next to the museums, and is gorgeous. Beautiful weather, too.)

Secluded Manor

Went to look at the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Almudena this morning. Much more sober and severe (and recent) than the Basilica de San Francisco El Grande.

The return of ReceptioGate to the news is a useful moment to think about the role AI is having in creating truth for a lot of internet users. I posted this update - the clear plagiarism verdict against Rossi - on another platform… /1

Visited the Temple de Debod this morning. It’s on a hill which overlooks most of the city. It’s a temple to Isis and Amun which was brought over from Egypt stone by stone, gifted to Spain by the Egyptian government for help restoring temples in upper Egypt.

Hey friends, do you like CATS? Do you like MECHS? Do you like SPACE? What about CATS* in MECHS in SPACE? Well, if that sounds like fun then do I have some news for you....

May Morris was born on this day in 1862 Morris was a leading embroiderer and designer of the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. After studying at the South Kensington School of Design, she took over the embroidery section of her father’s company, Morris & Co., in 1885, aged 23.

you know that the engineering project manager was rubbing his hands together with glee like, "right, five minutes for feeling sad and then every goddamned hand that can lift a hammer is coming in tonight, boys, cause we're going to town"

Crypto donations to political parties to be banned. Good. Farage claims this is aimed directly at Reform. Good. He also says that him publicly promoting Harborne’s crypto company had nothing to do with Harborne giving Reform £9M. You’d have to be a v special kind of useful idiot to believe that.

This is not just a mic drop, it’s an M&S mic drop.

Today is Quintidi the 5th of Germinal in the year 234. Germinal is the month of sprouting. Today we celebrate hens.#JacobinDay More information on hens