obviously today is a huge embarrassment for Matt Goodwin and for Reform, which is something that we absolutely ought to celebrate, but we must also remember it's a huge embarrassment for Morgan McSweeney and Maurice Glasman and all the Blue Labour weirdos, and that's important to celebrate too :)

I think I've forgotten how to process good news. I keep reaching to denounce something. Then I remember I don't have to. Such a good result. #greenparty

The extremism and racism of Reform (and the Conservatives) should not obscure that the most immediate issue is the vindictive, retrospective and entirely unnecessary/self-defeating nature of the government's own proposals. More details here. ukandeu.ac.uk/remigration-...

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Roses are redde Violettes are blue Hieronymus Bosch lobster violin, birde yn robes, partye yn a shoe

Countries may fall, but their rivers and mountains remain: when spring comes to the ruined castle, the grass is green again. - Bashō putting Brexit in context.

And now I'm crying first thing in the morning

I do not fear the rise of superintelligence. I do, however, fear the rise of billionaires, organizations, and world powers who seek to use computing to maximize their power, influence, and control.

Reposted for David Graeber's birthday. www.unemployednegativity.com/2011/09/i-ow...

The very first episode of In Our Time with its new host Misha Glenny doesn't mess about: he's tackling JS Mill's On Liberty. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Make Art (1/4)

i love thinking about bagpipes as auditory heavy weapons

PURE DRAMA. (Yes, that's the town's name, and bonus points for the post's gratuitous Smiths / Morrissey reference.) "Grimsargh residents left in the dark over when broken streetlight will be fixed "There is a light that never goes on in Grimsargh and a councillor wants action..."

A year ago today I published my essay on Thaddeus Tuleja's Tibetan historical fantasy(?) novel LAND OF PRECIOUS SNOW (1977). It's obscure as hell, pretty fascinating, and I even tracked Tad down and interviewed him about this book!

This morning free write will go no further: Luke flexed his fingers and imagined himself a gunslinger. "Cool hand", his sidekick said to him admiringly. "Thanks", said Luke. "Hey, that's a good idea for a nickname." And that is how he came to be known as Luke With The Flexible Fingers.

Hopefully the kind of disaster that pushes us to a Green Party future with @zackpolanski.bsky.social 💚 🚦 Green for going forward to a brighter future.

Nothing here to contradict my thesis (they’re just personally repellent, horrible people).

this labour government man . . .

#Trump #Epstein #EpsteinFiles

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Strange Horizons stands with immigrants in the US as they experience intensified anti-immigrant operations. We have the opportunity to lend our strength as a global community. Read our full statement: strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

I wrote a thing about short stories, why they get rejected, and what you can apply to your own work. clhellisen.beehiiv.com/p/a-view-fro...

Got told, again, to keep politics out of my posting here as it will affect my book sales. Fuck that. My readership mostly knows my politics and doesn't give a fuck. And if you're a nazi cunt, or want to appease nazi cunts, you're not going to like my books anyway.

LABOUR: "We must defeat Reform by stealing all their anti-immigration policies." LABOUR: "We must defeat the Green Party by ignoring all their pro-immigration policies and calling their leader weird."

The amount of time I spend fretting and hesitating, "Oh, I don't know if I can make that change to the story. I should ask someone." before remembering that it's my freaking story and I can change whatever I want, is frightening. #writersky #writercommunity

This should be the first line of a poem.

We have our next editor's meeting coming up shortly. We'd love to hear from you if there's anything you would like for us to discuss or if there's something you'd like to see more of on the pages of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine!

man I spent decades going "evil is ordinary, that's part of why it's terrifying, who knows which one of your neighbours would be willing to sign your death warrant?" then these chucklefucks showed up like HI WERE PAEODPHILES AND WE HATE RIGHTS CHECK OUT MY OGRE-AFFIRMING SURGERY

Bluesky proves today what a force for good it can be in a darkening world. Our friend Alan @alan678.bsky.social is posting a daily #WinterRobin #ForJanet after my lovely wife left this world last week. He also invited others to join in. Here is our Roberto who Janet loved. #birds #EastCoastKin

BTW, I did finish writing about the whole game (6 posts) if you want to read it bluerenga.blog/tag/adventur...

Funny how themes clump randomly. Putting together links for a random reading blog post, I was hijacked by plain text . For example, The Register featured a command line browser. 1/ www.theregister.com/2026/01/02/b...

He's demanding control over a sovereign nation because they didn't give him THE NOBEL PRIZE. Why the actual fuck do we have a 25th Amendment?

If you think this technology isn’t eventually being used on you, you’re kidding yourself. Either we smash it or destroys us.

This hits on something that a friend said to me that I think is absolutely right: people who are not grasping the gravity of the situation & meeting the moment, where politicians have utterly abandoned us, are doing it because of the fear of confronting that there are no guardrails anymore.

I'm fully confident literary magazines will survive the AI apocalypse. There is no better time to become a creative writer. You already have an inside track because most people have never even heard of these things that can never die. We will be here with the cockroaches and Taco Bell

From a discussion today about tech bros and SFF: "they always read these dystopian visions and think YEAH! THAT WILL BE A GOOD THING! or they read Lord of the Rings and think Yep! I'm going to call my company Sauron's Arsehole -- that's cool"

In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties. The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized. Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.

kemi badenoch has just discovered [checks notes] population density

I have to agree with @rubenerd.bsky.social: Xfce IS great! A nice clean linux desktop environment that is not intent on 'innovating' its way to a confusing over-featured mess. rubenerd.com/xfce-is-great/

Let me tell you: some of our countries aren’t where we left them. Jane Zwart, from her luminous collection ODDEST & OLDEST & SADDEST & BEST #smallpoemsunday

Love this poem.

The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same

It's almost as if years of relentless media saturation bombing of flat-out lies, demonisation and blaming don't help the public to understand what is actually happening.

Accidentally fallen into a new practice with a writing pal. It started as a trick to get him out of a block. We each mail the other 100 words a day. Can be anything. I'm churning out little chunks of something that looks vaguely novel-like -- but mainly it's good to just show up every day.

If you're thinking of writing something fresh this year, you could do worse than subscribe to Toby Litt's A Writer's Diary. This year he's writing (and podcasting) a craft book on drafting from scratch and daily - awritersdiary.substack.com/p/were-start...

"Freedom of assembly is not a gift governments grant their citizens; it is a right that protects citizens from their governments. Look to Hungary. Britain should not have to learn that lesson the hard way." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My last reminds me that I've started undernotes - occasional blog posts about procrastinatory grazing. The latest seems to have turned out quite audio/political, which might say something about my mood this season I guess. www.inflatableink.com/holiday-pod-...