Great post, & not just for the phrases "plausibly deniable nudity" & "from zero to penis" 😆

So today at work I decided to go through my drawers & throw out old notes etc. Discovered to my combined joy & bafflement that one of the notebooks had actually started as a non-work one & is almost a historical artifact. This quote dates from between 2005 & 2008. @stevejwright.bsky.social

Right, time to get ready to go out and do A Thing. If you'd like to see the Thing being done why not pop along.

Some excellent suggestions in the replies here 😊

And FUNDED! Thank you, everyone! 🎉🎊🪅🍾 www.kickstarter.com/projects/191...

Unless you're boycotting, this is a good time to buy from indie authors on Amazon. October's the last month with sales paying out in 2025. Payments hit on Dec. 29, giving your faves some much-needed end-of-year income! Suleikha: www.amazon.com/stores/Sulei... Kali: www.amazon.com/stores/Kali-...

This. Transphobia is a moral panic that has been heavily funded and weaponized by a lot of powerful & wealthy people over the last decade, and it's scary but NOT inevitable - and *certainly* not the fault of their victims.

I think I just found a generational difference of interpreting words thing... Every time I get shown this ad I think "Why would someone living in a squat be asking Copilot's advice on how to decorate it?"

A motel owner who plans to murder his AuDHD guest while she showers is growing tired of waiting for her to actually get in the shower, it has been revealed.

An exposé of The Daily Tism by The Daily Tism uncovered that the brand-new line of wearable goods features in-jokes from the website, like the one about a manic pixie dream girl being a regular autistic woman, above a strategically placed logo designed to make bystanders say: “What’s a Daily Tism?”

“The Hindus of Eastern India and Bangladesh generally, celebrate Diwali by worshipping the goddess Kali.” Really, Wikipedia? Lol. No. Kali Puja, which is also today, is NOT a Diwali celebration.

My scifi novella All That Is in the Earth is up for preorder at @lunapress.bsky.social & the usual ebook places. This is my reflection on facing death, wrapped up in an adventure with flesh-eating monsters, corporate mercenaries, & a green-skinned alien. www.lunapresspublishing.com/product-page...

All of this. It was *charming*, I need to add. Like, it all felt on-brand somehow, but also very "the more I look around, the more I see."

> GO UP LADDER I do not understand 'go up' > USE LADDER Use ladder with what? > CLIMB LADDER You climb the ladder > LOOK You are in a museum gallery. It is dark, but a display case glints in the dim light. > EXAMINE DISPLAY CASE It's full of jewels! > PICK UP JEWELS You take the jewels.

If you handcuff a penis, is that like a cock ring?

‘The exceptionally limited edition book.’ (My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books)

The @wtpress.bsky.social Kickstarter campaign has a lot of fun stories from Welsh history and mythology. They are best read in order, so I am going to make a mega-thread of them, starting with @julietemckenna.bsky.social on why she used Welsh folklore: www.kickstarter.com/projects/191...

Being autistic is channelling your energy into something you feel extremely passionate about. Yes you could be doing some serious house chores that are badly in need of being done but doing this for hours on end where you lose track of time just feels far more important, at least in my head anyway.

The first line of a blog post is not as important as you think. The final line is what counts. www.girlonthenet.com/blog/first-l... NEW blog, a rare foray into trying to write about writing itself.

gotn once again asking the questions that everyone else is too cowardly to ask

There's a superb anthology here that's very close to funding. www.kickstarter.com/projects/191...

This is the best feeling. First time I found myself in a room with a bunch of strangers & realised their default assumption would be that I am queer* was life changing & went a huge way towards giving me the confidence to be more open with who I am. *an LGBTQ History Month event

Collected my "reading" glasses today - actually got them for making it easier to do scale modelling & use magnifiers etc. They help make the phone screen sharper too, but I need to get used to lifting them off *before* I look up because oh fuck no that sends my whole head funny 😆

🧵

NEW COLUMN: An acquaintance asked to be introduced to the kink scene. He thinks it’s a bad idea; his friends are pushing him anyway. ASK DR. NERDLOVE: My Friends Want Me To Introduce Someone New To My Community. I Think He’s A “Missing Stair!”

Indeed behind the scenes, even back in 2020, this was seen as the biggest "secret" win (and why there was a focus on trade vehicle upgrade schemes). You can't stop white van man banging on angrily about a muslim mayor. But you can force him to do it while driving a lower emission van.

Rascal just found out I put jam on my toast this morning, not butter.

We used to have textbooks that could do that, except they didn't make up shit and get it wrong more often than not, and we still needed professors, because you need someone who actually understands it and who can help you learn to think for yourself.

In my experience most people need a guru/teacher, someone to direct their learning in some way. Often the question being asked isn't the one that needs to be answered. It takes someone who knows more than you to see that and to point you in the right direction.

Autistic burnout isn’t a nap. It’s watching your life collapse while people ask if you’ve tried yoga. Not just fatigue ethier. The body hits limit after years of pretending everything’s ok. You don’t recover by “resting more,” you recover by rebuilding safety. That’s the part no one talks about.

Okay. So. Amazing scenes playing out at the vets when i arrived to pick up Napoleon. Names changed/removed. But get ready for a lost kitty story with a happy ending. It starts late last year, when the elderly neighbour of a young couple went into a care home /1

Also it's worth noting something about the scene where Scotty tries to talk to a 1980s computer in Star Trek IV. When he realises it ISN'T a talk-to-it computer, he proceeds to type INSANELY fast. You know. Like someone who only talks to computers when he wants simple shit done. Not complex shit.

Thread

Should add really that if you're a smol newsletter bean who would dearly love to NOT be on Substack, then I will happily roll (and manage) a Ghost install for you for cost + a small maintenance fee. I'll talk you through setting up your own mailgun and stripe. Do that and you keep ALL your revenue.

Fun marketing thing: I set up a promo for UK people so when they can't access #AudioPorn because of the #OnlineSafetyAct, they get a magic Patreon discount code. It is the most heavily-used discount I have ever run, so the OSA is technically making me a little bit of dosh.

Adorable & lovely & just you wait for the end...

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Should I Admit That I’m A Virgin?

Remember your "first me!" moment? That time you bumped into a character who you connected with—who felt (even in part) like you? How awesome it was? You might never know it, but you’ve probably written one of those for someone else.

I just cleaned out my desk. It's been a while. I feel really good about it. So anyway - if anybody out there wants 300 free hours of AOL I can totally hook you up.

Who doesn’t love a skinny, tattooed, 56-year-old alcoholic former coke addict with a bad knee and occasional erectile dysfunction? Ren Francis is clearly the ideal book boyfriend. Meet him in my alter ego's latest novella, NOBODY’S BARGAIN. #romancelandia Buy links: books2read.com/u/bxD0no

Don’t give your fantasies to the relentless, soulless, data-munching machine. Resist. www.girlonthenet.com/blog/please-...

Like, no wonder the Soviet Union fell a few months later. What POSSIBLE counter could they have to Cher in fishnets on the USS Missouri? If that's what you're up against you've lost.

I love my husky a lot, as is likely obvious. But one of his true strengths is how he can yawn and breathe aggressively. Like, he has this way of yawning that’s 100% "So, you may be doing a thing, but I am not currently doing a thing, and it would be better were we to be doing a thing I wish to do."

There's a whole thing about the externalization of memory that fascinates me. What's crazy is that it isn't new. Just a continuation of a long tradition of progress that started with the birth of writing.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that trans healthcare in the UK is fucked, but what if it wasn’t? What if trans people could actually expect our basic healthcare needs to be met? This week's newsletter asks whether I'm lying to myself about bottom surgery: www.genderbent.co.uk/am-i-lying-t...

The autistic experience of being misperceived as complaining when all you’ve done is just describing something you’ve experienced. How else am I going to accurately describe something that has happened in a way that’s not complaining if my emotion free descriptions look like complaining.

The Uncanny Valet

“More than half of the work done by women in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries took place outside of the home, and around half of all housework and three-quarters of care work was conducted professionally for other households” [England] phys.org/news/2025-10...

‘Doublethink*’ alive and well in the U.K. Government. Given the U.K. Government’s statement to the United Nations on 10 October 2025: www.gov.uk/government/s...

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com