At some point, AI boosters are going to have to engage with the fact that the people who have most fully and prominently bought into this product are also the stupidest, most evil people on the planet.

PBS News@pbsnews.org · 6d ago

The State Department said ​it takes "full responsibility" for "hastily" altering and then presenting a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference that mislabeled every single country it highlighted. An analysis by Reuters found a watermark in the map image that suggests it was made with OpenAI.

Toi Aro d/Deaf and/or Disabled Artist Development Residency! I held the Toi Pōneke version of this residency earlier this year and it was an amazing opportunity. If you're a Wellington region artist and meet the criteria I'd really encourage you to apply. www.toiaro.nz/residencies

I would like to propose the Taco Bell Principle When a person/institution Did A Problem, & IMMEDIATELY fesses up & takes proactive steps to solve it That's exactly what we want them to do? So how bout we let them live ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 3w ago

A quick word on Taco Bell: That's where we found the suspected lettuce, and it's not bc Taco Bell is gross. It's bc Taco Bell is REALLY GOOD at tracing product! Keeping track of exactly where they got their ingredients, & exactly what restaurants each shipment of ingredients went to!

did someone say sadder

Deeny they/them@geraldinepiche.bsky.social · yesterday

I bet the inventor of the microwave was like "no. Sadder."

A stunningly brilliant book, one of my favourite recent fantasy books. There are very few queer people on earth who don't, in dark moments, wonder what life would be like if they'd been a bit more brave or, on the other side, a bit less reckless. This book distills that ache to its essence.

Elias Eells- Bar Cart Bookshelf@eliaseells.bsky.social · yesterday

NEW VIDEO ALERT! Today on Bar Cart Bookshelf we're talking about A TASTE OF HONEY by Kai Ashante Wilson. An achingly tender story of love and duty, the end made all the hair on my arms stand up. Queer, lovely, immensely powerful. This is a truly VITAL novella. Our drink is Olorum.

Book Review: Wickhills by Premee Mohamed Manticores, vampyrs, and spies challenge a magical city @klaxoncomms.com has our review at the blog www.nerds-feather.com/2026/08/book...

Book Review: Wickhills by Premee Mohamed

Manticores, vampyrs, and spies challenge a magical city   Premee Mohamed’s Wickhills is a John le Carré-style spy story that manages to bot...

nerds-feather.com

Out today! As my review says, it's a really good time.

Eddie Clark@dreddieclark.bsky.social · 5d ago

My review of A Trade of Blood, the latest fantasy mystery in Robert Jackson Bennett's Shadow of the Leviathan series, is up at @nerdsofafeather.bsky.social. Like the first two books, great fun and expert character work combined with genuinely interesting social speculation. Great stuff.

Review folks, do see below re offer for eARCs of McDermott's forthcoming Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti. I have galley and think it is really rather good. McDermott has a fine history of inexplicably under-read literary SFF & Aqueduct press have a nose for quality too. Worth checking out.

J m McDermott/joe m mcdermott@jmmcdermott.bsky.social · 2d ago

If any reviewers are hopescrolling at home, I have eARCs now and would love for reviewers to have the eARCs so reach out?

I love the Roy Morgan Cinematic Universe.

Dan@danxduran.bsky.social · yesterday

This would be a pretty funny election night outcome www.roymorgan.com/findings/102...

The frustration of being near the sea in Dunedin watching everyone ten metres above you getting snow.

Eddie Clark@dreddieclark.bsky.social · 2d ago

Kaori snow, right down in the valley. There's our once a decade dump.

Review folks, do see below re offer for eARCs of McDermott's forthcoming Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti. I have galley and think it is really rather good. McDermott has a fine history of inexplicably under-read literary SFF & Aqueduct press have a nose for quality too. Worth checking out.

J m McDermott/joe m mcdermott@jmmcdermott.bsky.social · 2d ago

If any reviewers are hopescrolling at home, I have eARCs now and would love for reviewers to have the eARCs so reach out?

Kaori snow, right down in the valley. There's our once a decade dump.

The McDermott - Wind of Earth, Wind of Tau Ceti - Not entirely unexpected - is a lovely, naturalistic mosaic novel including two existing shorts that's basically "my life as a space colonist in increasingly incoherent vignettes as I die of radiation poisoning at 85“.

One thing I've not seen on many review folks' radar is some quite exciting things out from Aqueduct press in the next few months: a new J M McDermott later this year and a new Sarah Tolmie early 2027. I have an ARC of the McDermott and it's *very good*. Review folks, do consider requesting ARCs!

Yeah, sorry, but some folks on here just got straight-up outrage farmed by the Verge. This is fine!

Scoiattolo@scoiattolo.mountainherder.xyz · 2d ago

Good lord I wish some of you could read on this text based social media website.

Excellent, I'd sign up to pretty much all of this. And the identified pathology is related to an online phenomenon I particularly hate: people have to be goodies or baddies - people one dislikes have to be ~harmful~ & people you like can't be. Nah. Sometimes you just don't like someone.

Micaiah Johnson@micaiahjohnson.bsky.social · 2d ago

I was beaten to it by the amazingly generous @mollytempleton.com but yes! The blog I was nervous about yesterday is a reality today. She’s free. She’s long. She contains multiple cat photos. www.patreon.com/MicaiahJohns...

Far from a blowout – costs of $55m in 2019 and $69m in 2025 is not even an increase in real terms. Disappointed to see UNZ's Neil Quigley's take being "the sector could probably cope with a cut to its income from foreign PhD students". Really coming out fighting there.

Te Ara Paerangi Com - Research Advocacy Capability@te-ara-paerangi.community · 2d ago

MSc and PhD students are the workforce in the engine room of our public research system. They are very, very cheap labor by policy design. This talk about a 'cost blowout' is utter rubbish. We frown on company owners that charge people to get a job. We should be doing the same here. #NZPOL

One thing I've not seen on many review folks' radar is some quite exciting things out from Aqueduct press in the next few months: a new J M McDermott later this year and a new Sarah Tolmie early 2027. I have an ARC of the McDermott and it's *very good*. Review folks, do consider requesting ARCs!

this is an interesting interview and if i were clipping it for social media i would have excerpted "We're still a place where we don't downrank links. We love sending traffic to people. We send two million clicks a day to publishers" rather than the part that'll just piss people off lol

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

Think I feel more warm about the shortlist than Dan, but agree there's couple of things at least that I'm surprised aren't on there & deserve recognition. (In particular Slow Gods is a high point amongst a universally very good oevre from Claire North & other than the LeGuin awards have ignored it)

Nerds of a Feather@nerdsofafeather.bsky.social · 2d ago

The Arthur C. Clarke Award 2026: A Shortlist Discussion Dan Hartland ( @danhartland.bsky.social ), who is Reviews Editor at Strange Horizons, joins our @chloroformtea.bsky.social for a meaty discussion of the shortlist: www.nerds-feather.com/2026/08/the-... #blueskybooks #booksky

The effect was that it felt quite often like picking up a book you didn't realise was the back half of a duology, & events unfolded a bit fast. Instead we get an awkward standalone with lost potential. A pity, & both are big SFF pub titles; if they're not giving proper editing support, who is? :-/

Thing is, I think this is as much an issue with editing as with writing... as I said, both books quite good, but I think one of them at least had the possibility of being excellent if better edited. Started in media res but then relied a lot on backstory not depicted on page for character dynamics.

2 back to back books read for review which were quite good, held back by imo being significantly undercooked plot-wise: not enough of a skeleton to hang the ideas, character, and worldbuilding work off. One needed a good hundred pages more connective tissue, the other a whole nother book.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

More than 80% of kids still using social media despite ban, new eSafety report finds

The report provides more evidence Australia’s world-leading social media ban isn’t going to plan.

theconversation.com

'Getting violent' here was a bad taste pageant with absolutely zero physical violence to anyone. So Winston is agreeing speech is violence. I look forward to his support for hate speech regulation then.

Dr. Cassandra Mudgway@legallyfeminist.bsky.social · 3d ago

Are you joking? Winne started a homophobic disinformation campaign against a non binary MP knowing full well what that would translate to online. Threats, harassment and other online violence. So serious, that MP left. Unbelievable #nzpol

Hello I have made this due to a mutual having issues with some folks on here forgetting this fact and shouting at him for it. Feel free to use it as a handy PSA x

Given very favourable media coverage, NZF doing its best to chase every person who isn't a conspiracy minded straight white dude away from the coalition, & Luxon's spinelessness: a) "TOP in Parliament" chances looking better every day b) If they don't do it in *this* environment they never will.

Really good piece. It's struck me that the one group I've not seen up in arms about this is librarians, accustomed as they are to weeding collections. Pat's navigated a route between the fact that pulping is a normal part of the publishing cycle and that there are issues with this specific pulping

Patrick Stokes@patrickstokes.com · 3d ago

Me in ArtsHub on destructive scanning for AI training. We probably need to avoid fetishising books, and warehouses full of Max Walker memoirs and WordPerfect For Dummies aren't the Library of Alexandria. But even for non-rare books, destroying them *purely to maintain legal cover* is just perverse.

2 back to back books read for review which were quite good, held back by imo being significantly undercooked plot-wise: not enough of a skeleton to hang the ideas, character, and worldbuilding work off. One needed a good hundred pages more connective tissue, the other a whole nother book.