“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Submissions are open! Delighted to be a judge for Natasha Carthew & Octopus Books’ Common Ground Nature Writing Prize, for writers self-identifying as working class. 1,000 words or less, in any form & great prizes! Further details & link to submit, here: www.octopusbooks.co.uk/landing-page...
if you find yourself overwhelmed by constant terror at the state of the world, may I suggest becoming a bird person? it doesn't really fix anything, but it at least lets you go "oh hell yeah" whenever you see a raven flying past with sticks for a nest in its beak or whatever
instead of watching the new harry potter trailer, why not pick up some horror books by trans and nb writers for the trans rights readathon?? there are so many good options.
For example, check out some of these writers:
BREAKING: @aoc.bsky.social and @sanders.senate.gov are introducing a ban on AI data centers and other hyperscale data centers.
The ban would remain until Congress passes new AI legislation.
That legislation must ensure AI is safe, benefits workers, and doesn't raise electricity prices.
He writes 8 solid hours a day five days a week and has a staff of 35. Someone cleans his house, makes his meals, handles his admin, and does his laundry. One cannot compare oneself to Sanderson levels of output 😆
What the cost of the Iran war could cover if used differently Select services and how many more people they could support with funding equivalent to what is being spent on Iran war Table with 6 columns and 6 rows. People covered by Medicaid for a year Children receiving free school lunch for a school year People housed in Section 8 for a year Children covered for year of child care Adults with free tuition at community college for a two-year associate degree $25 billion Estimated likely cost of war as of March 26, 2026 3,106,000 29,614,000 3,147,000 1,780,000 2,865,000 $200 billion Reported likely request for additional war funding 24,850,000 Every child in the United States, with >$170B left over Every eligible person, with >$60B left over 14,237,000 22,917,000 One 30,000-pound bomb 625 5,925 625 350 575 One Tomahawk missile 275 2,600 275 150 250 One THAAD missile 1,575 15,050 1,600 900 1,450 One Patriot interceptor 500 4,850 525 300 475
New from me: by the end of the week, the war in Iran will likely have cost $25 billion, with Trump poised to ask for $200 billion more
Below is a writeup, but the meat of it is this table, which shows what an equal amount of funding could cover domestically
www.americanprogress.org/article/by-t...
I still can’t believe that the two of the best movies of the year were about how if the song is good enough, musicians can protect their communities from supernatural evil.
I use linkedin to source villain dialogue.
"I think of the Mississippi Delta as a living, breathing archive, a landscape where the river’s curve mimics the spine of a people who refused to be broken. In the quiet theater of our lives, we often look for mirrors, but what we truly need are portals." @shereereneethomas.bsky.social on SINNERS
Starting a list of MOSTLY random speculative poems from 2025, partly for Hugo Award consideration, mostly because we could all use a touch of beauty:
Bella Chacha's "Orbit Decay," a poem that might be about a relationship, or might be about a star, or both:
www.heartlines-spec.com/orbit-decay-...
The book this is based on is really cool and I'm excited to spend more time in the world it introduced!
The problem with techno-optimism (I say this as a former techno-optimist) is that it understands the exponential trajectory of computing without understanding the identical exponential trajectory of the climate crisis, and ignoring the causal relationship between the two
This whole line of reasoning has always been so absurd. "If you don't integrate AI into your processes now, you won't be in the same boat as everyone else when the prices get jacked up and it's suddenly way harder to operate without it."
Uh. Okay? You can keep it lmao
I think about this a lot.
Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling
There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.
It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.
It’s very strange that many headlines today are a about war making petroleum more expensive rather than war killing people, harming people, destroying the environment.
Scavenging ravens memorize vast tracts of wolf hunting grounds, a new study has found. The birds don’t just follow wolves, they clock kill patterns and create mental maps to support future food quests.
u.afp.com/SLTd
Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking across a microscope slide. 🫧🐻🧪
Just a friendly reminder to support and appreciate your local library ghost.
Very same. I'm still going to write no matter what -- the writing is a given -- but PUBLISHING has so many costs (not monetary) that my mental health accounts have started to tip over from red into colours never perceived by human eyes.
I'm a novelist.
I can very confidently say that readers absolutely do not want to read AI slop. Even in that genre people love to disparage. Yes all the genres people love to look down their nose at.
What's more, every sign points to readers wanting *more* human engagement, not less.
this is a SEVERELY misunderstood element of people working against environmental racism: their technical and organizing expertise, and political analysis is transferable (and sometimes sought after when white communities realize they’re not safe either).
It takes a certain kind of…narcissistic nihilism to look across the country at people self-organizing against something that is generally a fairly good material symbol of the intangible class warfare that has alienated them and say, “what a silly distraction from what *really* matters.” And yet…
A little offended Grammarly didn't make a sloppelganger of me
Gonna start bringing these cards to cons and festivals just in case anyone needs one
"So, I'm writing a fantasy -- am I allowed to -- "
"Hang on one sec" *scribbles* *hands card* *card reads IT MADE UP, DO WATEVER U WANT, U R FREE MY CHILD*
Here you go, everyone can use this one (it's signed by an authority)
Basically, take the amount of money you think your favorite author gets, halve it, and then halve it again, and you have a number that's probably a lot closer to their actual earnings from writing.
"But I don't think they make that much!"
Halve that. Halve it again.
oh good i was worried it was white supremacy and capitalism
