me reading Tender is the Flesh: ok, but I didn't think this book about cannibalism was going to be UPSETTING

Remember this? Remember this?

Well everyone knows that you can’t base a functioning society on unproductive speculation, but what this economy presupposes is… maybe you can?

retro nostalgia plus AI slop… a new nadir for our culture

SpaceX remains committed to traveling to Never Never Land even as it sets its sights on the more near-term goal of Narnia.

So if these were Blood Bowl teams, who would they be?

Sleigh Bells in a GLP-1 ad… huh

the thing i'm waiting for with the ai romance novel lady is for another scammer to figure out that purely ai-generated material w no human authorship is generally not considered to be protected by copyright in the US rn, and saving themselves the 45 mins per book by reselling hers

sometimes I worry that the religious disputes in my fantasy novel will sound absurd or improbable but then I remember that there was a time when fierce controversy raged in England over the question of whether the altar should have rails

I still can't get over that the fact that in "Morpheus Laughing" by Skinny Puppy, the sample of the phrase "they appear to me as if in a dream" comes from a Wayne's World sketch. Bruce Willis, a senior, is unveiling the new cool word for the year ("sphincter").

19th century gamergaters foaming at the mouth because Ragged Dick and Little Goody Two Shoes have gone woke, starting a subscription to make a politically incorrect Mother Goose anthology

my novel manuscript just hit 10,000 words

I miss how when I opened up twitter I would get posts about literature, culture, and critical theory. When I open up BlueSky it's often just MSNBC liberal stuff from big follower accounts.

Merriam-Webster has a new feature that automatically compiles sources for words or phrases to show current usage, and two out of the three that show up for the expression "look lively" are the wrong meaning.

I can't imagine writing fiction without also reading a lot.

People are mad at @samuelmoyn.bsky.social but this is a good piece from him and @ryandoerfler.bsky.social on need to accept that SCOTUS has become functionally illegitimate. Key point is legitimacy does require the public to think the court operates in good faith: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I never thought I would live long enough to see nu metal rehabilitated in the popular imagination but here we are

o rly

imagine thinking you are genetically gifted with special intelligence because you can make observations such as a bank with $1 can lend out $8 or 9, Jesus didn't write the gospels, nobody can explain the soul, and women are really intuitive.

I did think the guy with the giant Gramsci head was a pretty cool touch for the opening ceremony.

there's nothing the internet loves more than unearned condescension

the president is days away from posting an AI video of himself beating up Barney

it's pretty shameful that our president's excuse for sharing a racist meme was that he was just putting the heads of his political enemies on the bodies of characters from the children's cartoon The Lion King. even if you *believed* him, it would be a profoundly depressing and infantile thing to do

once more the Trump regime seems strong because it's hard and unyielding but it's actually just brittle.

nobody has to constantly remind you that you're obligated to like Mamdani

It is with deep sadness that I have to report the passing of Chip Berlet. He was one of the few people to consistently research and organize against the U.S. Far Right from the 1970s through the '00s. His co-authored 2000 book "Right-Wing Populism in America" unfortunately remains all-to-relevant.

After Epstein, I think someone is going to have to develop a structural theory of elite cultures of homosocial predatory behavior that isn't conspiracy theory.

It’s as if True Detective ended with someone saying, “It’s not a crime to party with the King in Yellow in Carcosa.”

breathtaking

how many pop psychology narratives are actually thinly sourced claims about the history of consciousness?

JUSTIFIED “FUCK ICE” CHANTS #AEWDynamite

talk to people like you think they could democratically run the means of production

Using AI as a company just makes you look cheap and scammy. I can't tell if everyone in tech is pretending not to know this or they just really have their heads so far up their asses that they can't see the obvious.

just going to get in a little podcast while I drink my morning coffee... ten minutes later, the coffee is finished but the introduction and announcement portion of the show continues...

I'm honored that Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right appears on this list.

This rings true.

people used to say “how now“ to everyone. now, only brown cows.

Does everyone draft using Google docs now? Am I behind the times?

Homer had a real advantage in that he was writing in Homeric Greek, a language that must have been perfectly suited to him

no, i don't have time for that *plays a city-building game for 30 hours*

I don't care who Elon Musk would cast as Helen of Troy. I'm sorry, but we're all going to die someday. Do we have to have this argument for the thousandth time? There's no way to make it interesting or productive.

Got a new sign for my office door.

I’m watching an adaptation of ”Pickman’s Model,“ and every time they mention Thurber the protagonist’s name I feel like they’re referencing the New Yorker cartoonist, like this was his origin story

Republicans in 2016: Democrats are eating at a restaurant that serves “cheese pizza,“ and do you know what else has those same initials?? Republicans in 2026: Look, it’s not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.

an HP Lovecraft adaptation where all the characters sound like Peter Griffin

Almost signed an email “beset,”

this is the Wikipedia image for "gram" as a unit of measurement

this meme came to me in a dream: date yourself by posting the academic buzzwords that were popular in monograph titles when you graduated (people in the dream responded "kinship," "public sphere," "vibrant matter")

My treadmill wants me to think the scripted workouts are AI-generated. only a massive data center could come up with a 25-minute routine with an alternating rhythm of fast and slow paces on different inclines.

AI's seeming ability to look human is less a testament to the power of technology and more a testament to the our ability to ascribe human intentions and personalities to non-humans