Love the tabbys.

In part that's because it's quite a useful word in English that can be used to deliver different meanings depending on the context and attached adjectives.

Cheerful grin
Wolfish grin
Humorless grin
Mischievous grin
Sheepish grin
Sultry grin

In modern English a grin is a smile in which the teeth are visible. From Old English "grennian". Old Norse had the cognates grenja "to howl," and grina "to grin", but it's possible Icelandic didn't retain them or the meaning drifted. Poignant is Latin-based, so no help for that.

😄

Just sayin'....

I'm more concerned with younger writers who leveraged chatgpt to write their assignments and term papers in college. The notion that they're going to set aside those tools in writing or in editing jobs and fall in line with an honor system they've already violated seems unlikely.🤔

Hopefully involving teams of clockwork robotic spiders tasked with taking the battle to the rats' home ground. #writing #sciencefiction #writingprompt

Dragons, Sex and the Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year

Romantasy and The Bible held the line.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/b...

Yarros.

According to the NYTimes, Romance in the US was barely up last year, but only on the strength one author. It would have been down if said author hadn't published in 1995.

Gallery Place Metro Station. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

Jack Nicholson in the finale of Chinatown

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

\o/ (Woooh!)

Hoping to write on the role that Chinese (and perhaps other non-Western) satellite companies are playing both in the Middle East crisis & more generally. Keen to hear views from anyone who deals with them & uses their imagery, and how they compare to US providers.

Tried to get some gravitas on the black market but do you have any idea how much a gram of gravitas is these days on the street

Grumpy crow statue

Momma said that there'd be days like this.

Oof! Apologies for that.

I dropped the first few questions into DM as a sample. Happy to send the rest, though I expect you'll find "world's hardest" to be hyperbole. (I did terribly. It's been a while since I watched.)

The World's Hardest 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' Quiz Test your knowledge of the long-running series Star Trek: The Next Generation

Looks at @emmanewman.bsky.social 🤔

www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...

I'm not sure it ever left.🤔

😄

That'll do. Good night, Blue.

Photo of a rustic, open faced berry pie.

Berry galette.

Current reads:
"Unforgiving Places" by Jens Ludwig
"Children of Strife" by @aptshadow.bsky.social

They do have several runs in the DC Metro area. Thanks for the tip!

It may be. I'll look them up and see if they're in DC.

Well done! I wish they had a weekly like this in DC. Something to suggest to the Parks & Recreations folks.

How do we reconcile this with the notion that it's wrong to criticize others based on the books they enjoy: that a book may be "not for you" but that doesn't give you the right to shame or judge others for reading it and liking it?

The "araneus ex machina" plot device, in which a seemingly hopeless dilemma is resolved by the unlikely intervention of mechanical spiders.
#writing #writerslife #sciencefiction

Heh!