“Sarah’s Laugh” by @eqreader.bsky.social from @lightspeedmagazine.com, “The Smokejumpers” by @sierrabibi.bsky.social from @escapepod.org, and more short fic recs from @mariahaskins.co

Escape Pod, Cast of Wonders, and Lightspeed: Review by Maria Haskins

Escape Pod 4/9/26, 4/30/26 Cast of Wonders 4/20/26 Lightspeed 5/26 The two original April stories in Escape Pod are both love stories of a sort. In “Gods and Spirits Our Witnesses” by S. C. Mills, …

locusmag.com

Fully forgot I had a Bluesky account. Hey everybody.

I'm here all weekend! (I have got to get better at this promotions thing.)

WisCon on Bluesky@wiscon.bsky.social · last yr.

You can still register for WisCon! Panels, workshops and readings all weekend. Pay-what-you-can. wiscon2025.sched.com Coming up on FRIDAY (5/23): -Asexual representation in SFF -Moving beyond Western structures of storytelling -Author reading at 4pm CDT And more! Register via the link above ^

I keep forgetting to check this app. *waves* What's going on?

It's so strange, as a Black person, to go to events about our culture in non-Black spaces. I'm at this thing about Wu-Tang Clan and when the speaker(also Black) brought up the 36 Chambers not ONE person hollered "Wu-TANG!". I'm not sure if I'd be more offended if they had. 😂

I will never enjoy those posts that are like "hi, I'm (xyz ethnicity), can I do this (Black cultural thing)?" OMG go make a friend.

I'm not a "putting this in the universe" kind of person but I would really love to write a limited streaming series about Bill Pickett sometime in the next 5 years.

It tickles me that the village in Kimberly Lemming's Mead Mishaps series is called Boohail. They be hailing the hell out of some boos, for sure.

Hero.

SO MANY REJECTIONS LATELY. SO MANY FOLLOWUP SUBMISSIONS. And yet I continue to write. If this behavior were transported to any other part of my life, it would probably be considered a kink.

Me, staring at a crunchy filthy draft covered in notes and wrong verb tenses, hoping it'll become a well-wrought story someday...

a drag queen is speaking into a microphone and says filth is my life .

ALT: a drag queen is speaking into a microphone and says filth is my life .

media.tenor.com

"America likes its angry Black women best when we are poor and husband-less and mourning. I’m simply angry and Black. I apologize if that is not enough." Nicole Chulick WROTE this. Thank you for the words. www.midnightandindigo.com/police-offic...

There is a Police Officer in My Foyer | Nicole Chulick

This essay by Black woman writer Nicole Chulick is an apology, a lament, a plea for understanding as she grasps hold of the anger that always slips from her fingers. Exploring, in a whisper, the compu...

midnightandindigo.com

I don't know how I stumbled on this essay, but I love it. "My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour."

Here’s what we did today

Leontyne Price is still living, and today is her 97th birthday. If you don't know the name, pause your day and look her up now.

In 2002-ish, I started writing interconnected short stories about different ways of resistance in a future America that had become a fearful wasteland of company towns controlled by religious fascists.

Might be a good time to donate to Wikipedia. Gift article (The Atlantic): www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Elon Musk Wants What He Can’t Have: Wikipedia

Musk and other right-wing tech figures have been on a campaign to delegitimize the digital encyclopedia. What happens if they succeed?

theatlantic.com

I just found out that Joseph Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22. It's called Closing Time, and it's still in print. It's also set in the 90s, while Catch-22 takes place in WWII. Not really in the mood to read war satire right now but will keep an eye out for it.

If I had a dollar for every time in the past 6 months I read a really good story in Lightspeed that explored the idea of being a temporary, uncomfortable vessel for the gods... I'd have two dollars, but it's cool that it's happened twice. The stories in question...

I've been telling other Americans for years that a country's government is not a business. Now we have a bad businessman running the US. I'd be frustrated if all my years of being Black and smart and qualified hadn't prepared me to deal with perpetual top down incompetence and fallout consequences.

Re:US politics at present-- I have cycled past horror, disbelief, rage, grief and an attempt at practical hope and am now at "Look I have too much shit to *do* for it to be a dystopia right now."

GEORGE LUCAS IN 1999: a trade embargo is going to spark the galactic reckoning and collapse ME IN 2025: ah, okay

I have been trying to get through Emilia Perez for like 36 hours and while it's not *bad* exactly, it feels like something that should be seen in a cramped basement room at the Edinburgh festival, not on a Netflix screen.

This is what I like to see.

Ariella Elm@ariellaelm.com · 2y ago

The Inspectors General refuse to leave until the action is taken legally, which they do not believe it was, and neither do senators like Chuck Grassley. This is what not backing down looks like. static.politico.com/b3/3e/5baf92...

@5calls.org is a GREAT app if you want a guide for contacting your local US legislators.

1st--post in forums and personally annoy every British person you know trying to find a very old children's story *you* read as a kid. 2nd-- just frickin' Google "old kids story about conkers" and find out it's by Enid Blyton, it's very well known, and the internet isn't dead after all. *sheesh*

Oooh look what just arrived...

I wrote a thing for my fellow sensitive dreamy reader people in the US who don't know where to start with the govt right now.

[Hear Me Out] Keep Reading and Carry On–But Also Take Action

Fellow American readers! I just…*gestures broadly around*. I mean, have you seen the *points wildly*. And don’t even get me started on the *enraged wall slide facing the general directi…

equalopportunityreader.com

So I've made a decision. Every time I see something scary, I make myself take positive action. Whitehouse.gov is propaganda? Sign a petition. ICE raids? Donate to ACLU. News of anti-trans, homophobic bigotry? Beef up mutual aid fund, send to folk. (DM if you want to know how to donate.)

So...just looked at whitehouse.gov All educational, historical and informational content has been removed. All that's there is Trump-Vance propaganda. The links to contact the White House have been removed as well as links to internships, White House Fellow applications, and former presidents.

The White House

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are committed to lowering costs for all Americans, securing our borders, unleashing American energy dominance, restoring peace through strength, a...

whitehouse.gov