and if you think you can't review because you can't afford to buy? check it out of your library (and request they get it if they don't have it!) and then review. AND keep raving happily about them for whatever you already read that made them your fav. (and you left a review for THAT already, right?)

yikes. as if the so-called ai thing and the increased need for a/c as summers get hotter weren't already slamming us, electricity-wise.

i need a bookshelf of holding i need a tardis but it's just time and relative dimension in holding my books i need a narnia inside my wardrobe but it's just a fanciful land of my library i just need a home big enough for my (increasing) books (or a library big enough for my bed and desk)

The immediate mockery!! 😂😂😂

A spokesperson for The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, Lemon, said: “What you call kisses is me trying to tenderise you.”

Grateful! For comforting weight. For decreasing friction. For marshmallows.

This can't be reformed. It can only be ended.

oh. yeah, ok. going to mull this over as i think about beta readers. (though, tbf, mine are typically not neurotypical, cis, het men, so maybe that will help)

There is a very solid argument to be made that this idea stems from writing from a position of privilege where the idea of individual choices having tangible effects on the world around them is second nature and not a rarity.

oh, so timely. nice to see this when one of my current novels isn't about the "heroes" (i've been writing it as i knew it wanted to be, but also wondering if anyone else would want to read a story about not-the-heroes)

Study finds that despite broad COVID vaccine availability, COVID still deadlier than #flu in hospitalized patients A #COVID diagnosis was associated with 76% higher odds of death within 30 days. www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...

happy birthday, boss. hope it's rock & roll (and lectroid-free) and i guess happy boxing day to the rest of you

Grateful! For the sensible and the snuggly. For special snacks. For sticking to routines.

thread about last night rip hero

can someone let the companies who are replacing human support with chatbots know that, among my many other reasons i hate that, i don't trust the answer i get. with LLMs being well-known to deliver incorrect info up to 80% of the time, there's no way i trust your chatbot to be right.

i cannot cosign this hard enough these things are going to get stuck in your head, and knowing they are true means they are going to hit differently than the fiction you consume that you are sure must be worse

Loads of reasons a listener might not understand a song's lyrics. But if you're the performer? How are you not taking at least a few minutes to understand the words you are going to sing? I just...Argh! Looking at you, all you trying to make Hallelujah a Christmas or Christian praise song.

Ben Espenson, 35, had intended to make an effort with his extended family over Christmas dinner, but his social battery was unexpectedly drained by the impromptu visits.

Grateful! For a wee morning murder. For stars brighter than light pollution. For forced perspective.

i was quietly sulking about a dearth of queer holiday films, but then i remembered 'happiest season' and i am so appeased. and now i think i'm recalling that 'bros' has some scenes that make it count. think that means my night is set.

This is one of our favorites!

co-signing this thread

some of the choice seasonal media this week has included: * tiny fairuza balk tells us about the church pageant that one december * kate bush tells us about having a serious cuddle with a snowman

i know literally one case where someone who has gone no contact with their (amazing) family is the person who is the problem. the rest are all justified, and that their families won't see it just highlights the issues also, "less contact due to eg better boundaries or life changing" ≠ "no contact"

A racist, sexist and homophobic aunt has announced plans to branch out into ableism in time for Christmas, according to sources.

“To be honest, I’m a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for rampant consumerism. I start out empty and hollow, people pack me with rubbish to try to fill the hole, and at the end of the day I end up used and discarded, as vacant as I was before.” Full article on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/145433...

🧵 for writers and for anyone else who cares about books

Grateful! For flexible traditions. For warm beverages. For dancing through it.

Gov. Ferguson Backs Millionaire Tax After Ghost of Christmas Future Shows Him Losing In 2028 If He Doesn’t: tinyurl.com/ye25s9zp

NEW: A variety of military and intelligence contractors have already signed on to help ICE's immigrant bounty hunter program. A review of procurement data shows 10 companies stand to make up to *ONE BILLION* dollars from the program by 2027. theintercept.com/2025/12/23/i...

emphatically agree the rage i feel when someone delivers that "advice"... flames side of my face etc

Every single day we get a new piece of incontrovertible evidence that the president is a world-historic child predator and then we just go to our jobs and send our emails

Here's a gripe that sounds minor but is going to end up mattering: everything you don't like is not "slop." that is a word with a definition and we'll need to be exact with it. Stop calling everything annoying or bad "slop"

I like to imagine that there is a rivalry between two top ham-sniffers: one, a meticulous keeper of precise traditions, the other a brash bad-boy with a colossal nose.

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Grateful! For cosy deliveries. For generous intentions. For source material.

i remember when i was a (misguided) snob about emoji use. and now i find that there are emojis from slacks i'm no longer on that i actively miss, like a word forbidden in my vocabulary, or some where i know i HAD the perfect emoji but can't even recall what it was (like a word erased from my vocab)

i'm too tired to even post a performative "shocked face" emoji at this point

as a person who watches the credits, how did i never-until-today see the very last thing in the hardware credits? which is that the film is based on a 7-page 2000ad comic. which someone posted scans of online, so i have now read it and feel redeemed-ish. (it's shok! in case you too need to search)

The Trump administration is censoring information. If you come across something before it’s censored, save it, download it, print it. Thank you to everyone preserving and sharing records, the censored Epstein files, and to Canada for helping us access Inside CECOT. Don’t let censorship win.

...y'know, sometimes i AM a fan of incompetence. get you some holiday reading, i guess

treat yourself 🧵

multiple links/options in the replies to this post as well

🥩😏

We hoped Gisele Pelicot was a horrific anomaly, but I think a lot of us knew that it probably wasn't. All kinds of TW around this.

hard to imagine anything topping this as my "favourite thing i read today"

And here’s something I wrote about research, learning, and genAI over the weekend.

More on the issue of why research is about so much more than just finding the right way to phrase your question.

i think my fav things about watching the bishop's wife (cary grant as an angel; i liked it) was deciding to believe it was written by a neglected wife and imagining the fics people were mentally composing after they saw it "and then i bought her a hat" was def a provocative line in one of those

Grateful! For avoiding artificial pressure. For easy solitude. For sharing recipes.