9pm, two days after harvest

Power Lines Drawing #14 (Hamtramck) Original drawing for sale at my store 8" x 10" black ink on paper $200 USD marcusmerritt.bigcartel.com/product/powe...

Friday

Politicians, whatever their views on trans rights, should be concerned about this. A small group of dedicated & influential campaigners, bankrolled by a billionaire, are aggressively going after the rights of a minority group, & after anyone who dares question their actions. Wildly anti-democratic

I hate this fuckin country what a terrorist shithole of a nation

😬

we should obviously strive for clarity in our work but a not insignificant percentage of your readers will always (erroneously) assume one of your characters is a horse, and no amount of explanation or exposition will prevent this

You can be upset about this OR you can happily use AI. You cannot do both.

bees?

i do not trust harlan ellison with ice cream flavours you know

I wrote about The End of Everything & I think the paywall is down so: observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Biddeford. Bloody hell. One of my home places. I was there just a fortnight ago eating icecream in Sweetcream Dairy and strolling the aisles in Mardem's. Fuck ICE. Fuck them.

Man shot, killed by ICE agents in Biddeford Witnesses described one person being shot in the head. www.pressherald.com/2026/07/13/s...

I can't believe, in the middle of another heatwave, the Government is seriously considering letting a new gas field go ahead. Ed Miliband must block this plan. Agree? Join me and add your name to this new petition against the Jackdaw gas field: 38d.gs/fhc5

The BBC News app just push alerted the existence of chilled red to 10million phones, love it.

The Odyssey (1980)

RIP Bonnie Tyler. And RIP Tandi Iman Dupree. This remains the best stage entrance by a drag queen of all time, even some 25 years later, and the best use of Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” ever. youtu.be/IHQA5vqn6rw?...

Transport of a balloon from Lake Neuchâtel to Lake Biel, 1915. Museum Burg Zug www.burgzug.ch

Five very vocal fledgling spotted flycatchers in the garden this year, three still bearing stars of down on their crowns <3

I watched a Bloomberg TV segment where a corporate analyst said one of the appeals of SpaceX was the potential for "unlimited cooling in space" and the laws of thermodynamics would like a word

This whole auction oh my god www.sothebys.com/en/buy/aucti...

Oof

Absolutely adore shit like this where it’s both so specific to the editor and you can feel the work that went into it. AI could never.

Oh this is such a pleasing thing!

People who spiral out overusing LLM chatbots are really just experiencing the kind of brain-damaging stream of unconditional validation that’s always been the norm for the hyper-wealthy, which explains a lot.

Ugh

I remember a couple of what were then proto-terf columnists doing a bit of quiet Mary Whitehouse Had A Point back in about 2015. It felt weird at the time, and it was the ripples in the glass of water on the dashboard announcing the approach of a giant, roaring Fuckyousaurus Rex.

any person with a public library could print this screenshot, manually scale it up on a copier, add the URL, run off 50, and post these all over town. anyone w university access could flyer in buildings. (easy and cheap to redo if they're taken down)

Last rays of sun yesterday evening. I looked up, saw this, hissed “Jesus Christ, Bagpuss, no.”

important to revisit the words of the Founding Fathers on this day

I do love an information panel

I would kill or die for Larry

Appendix B. "Reading is how you learn new words." They do not want to encounter any friction whatsoever when reading. They want their books to be fast fashion. They want disposable, forgettable, ultra processed books. I do not know how to explain this any clearer.

every fucking time I go back to thinking about a civil war battle I inevitably think of this post. cursed forever

Best book haul today (and yes, the Read was not very cheap but I lost my copy years ago and am so happy to have replaced it)

some amazing things happening over on threads — ever since they “shut down CERN”

Opening up a judgement free zone but what's the smallest thing that discouraged you from entering into a vast cultural landscape that others have found vastly rewarding. Mine was discovering that the hero/protagonist of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was called Hiro Protagonist.

Tonight’s earworm is “My name is” but not the Eminem version. Jetlag, what the hell?

'Try this food,' it said. 'You might not have eaten this before.' 'Don't be ridiculous,' Marnie said. It's haddock and chips.' —M. John Harrison, "The End of Everything"

He's killing the ducks. He's killing the birds. He's killing the wildlife of the people who live there.

So an excellent non-binary friend in Sri Lanka is looking for remote work writing/editing/similar. Let me know if you have need and I'll put you in touch x

The palpable social agony of someone snoring incredibly loudly in the quiet room of an airport lounge.

Still wearing a ridiculously soft grey sweater “made of plastic bottles” that I bought in GAP in Hampstead in 1992? 1993?

I can't imagine what lunatic vandal was running the Modern Library Twitter account back in 2018.

Route 9, Maine