writing a novel is hard, but every time I write, I’m more and more convinced that this is worth it.

Love to learn mere hours before the tax deadline that my tax situation is way more complicated than I had realized, my taxes for the last 3 years have been all wrong, and I need to hire a CPA stat

portland commute

This past week’s sci-fi novel research:

1) Made a force diagram for a tumbling disc during re-entry when one face has much lower atmosphric drag
2) Researched US military designations for hypothetical autonomous weapon systems
3) Brainstormed pony names

We did it!

US STRIKES SUSPECTED IRGC SOCIAL MEDIA BUNKER IN ISFAHAN
Trump: Iranian Memeing Capacity “Completely Obliterated Until Next Tuesday At The Earliest”, Describes Operation With Loudest Possible Explosion Mouth Noises

WARNING: this content has been flagged as shadows projected on the wall of the cave

ME: sorry folks - one sec, having gamera issues

CHAT: lol gamera. gamera issues. mfer said gamera

[I enable a secondary camera feed showing the infamous kaiju Gamera attacking me]

CHAT: oh fuck

but you see, if we ban professionally berating children in a healthcare context, telling them that they’re broken, disgusting, and detestable for an hour every week, that COULD establish a precedent that might be used to go after churches and abusive parents someday

and that’s unamerican

scotus: we’re just saying that you have to treat it like any other form of healthcare that corners children for an hour a week to tell them they’re defective, disgusting, everyone will hate them and they’ll probably go to hell. iow it’s presumptively fine, basically just like church

Unfortunately formatted hand written sign at the March 28th No Kings protest in New Haven saying "War crimes don't hide sex crimes", but it also can be read as War don't sex. Crimes hide crimes"

WAR DON'T SEX

CRIMES HIDE CRIMES

same goes for my book about an autistic- and queer-coded teenager discovering her own identity and values in contradiction to the ones she was raised with in an alienating, ignorant alternate United States, while also crushing on her increasingly bi roommate. that goes without saying

rest assured that my book about an autistic-coded teenager discovering her own identity and values in contradiction to the ones she was raised with in a violent, oppressive near-future United States has no political subtext whatsoever.

I would watch the hell out of an animated comedy jaws movie from the point of view of the sharks

They get onto land and lose all perspective

“We’re gonna need a bigger truck”
“Jesus Christ Orin, no you do NOT. What are you going to do with a bigger truck?!”
“…Aaron has a bigger truck.”

Okay but I would watch the hell out of that movie

I recently came back to cursive after a 30 year break. I use fountain pens so I benefit from cursive. Still, I only use it for longer form writing and use print 40%+ of the time. If schools teach cursive, it should be part of a more general note taking unit that applies to handwritten and digital

To believe in American values in 2026 is to long for the villains to face their richly earned consequences, regardless of the cost to ourselves

It’s not just schadenfreude. We endure gladly because we know there is no happy future for us until justice visits

See, if I’d played my cards right, I could have finished my nearly 7 year old “extremely queer magical college that’s a neurodiversity analogy, with trans characters discovering their true selves via romance” novel already, and then I’d have a great book to recommend right now

Currently thinking about what age verification, content controls, and the consolidation of internet services in the hands of politically connected billionaires mean for the average kid‘s experience of the internet in my 2036 setting, and I do not like the conclusions I’m coming to

“utterly extraordinary”

(don’t say it)

(do NOT SAY IT)

(and Cuba doesn’t count)

I suspect he’ll try, but Iran has little reason to agree and even less reason to stick with it, and everyone knows it. We killed Khamenei’s whole family. Iran is making *more* oil money than they were before the strait closed. No reason they wouldn’t JCPOA out at the first provocation

Mr. Furious: I seem to remember there being a little controversy around his death.
Bowler: That's right. The police said it was an accident. He'd come home late one night and fell down an elevator shaft. Onto some bullets.
Blue Raja: You know, I've always suspected a bit of foul play.

But it feels so natural to do this, even though I want nothing more than for American ideals to flourish and an age livelihood for everyone. Things can’t go on like this. We will have to sacrifice so so much, but the villains have to face consequences, no matter how much we have to sacrifice

It feels weird rooting for an AI crash that will take down the economy and make my life hell. Just like how it’s weird to hope the war in Iran becomes a nightmare, or that the world gives up on my country and carries on without it, leaving it a marginalized pariah state.

What if the year of the Linux desktop finally ends up happening because the company that produces Windows closes up shop

🎵 Gen AI will never, ever replace human expertise, and everybody knows it 🎵

Even if LLMs turn out to have practical and cost effective use cases, which is a HUGE fucking if, the enshittified slopgen AI will metaverse so hard that I wouldn’t be shocked if we see Microsoft scale companies go belly up

No one’s going to miss the fact that the Fuck ICE position beat out reform ICE, or that opposing the Gaza genocide was a strength and not a liability, and AIPAC’s threats to primary Dems criticize Israel are increasingly toothless. Hell, their aggressive targeting of Kat may have even HELPED her

While I obviously am disappointed that we won’t get the best case scenario and get @katmabu.bsky.social into Congress this year, I am so grateful for her campaign. She’s an inspiration, and ran a powerful campaign that proved that people are hungry for bold, progressive candidates

“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.”