English teachers assigning a summer reading list. (To be clear, Nick is 100% right, if you want kids to like reading, then for heaven's sake ask them to read something fun.)

The Dude and Walter: World of Pain

Alt: Walter in The Big Lebowski, holding up a gun and saying in a matter-of-fact way, "You're entering a world of pain." The Dude is next to him, looking uncomfortable.

static.klipy.com

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway.com · yesterday

Having ranted about school curriculum books, I’ve just seen my son’s summer reading list, and all I can say is “I was right”. A more depressing collection would be tricky to assemble. Are we actively trying to convey to kids the idea that reading is dismal and arduous?

Mars Attacks card by Topps, 1962. humanoidhistory.tumblr.com/post/8240356...

The day that Ray Bradbury died I was on book tour and that night I read "There Will Come Soft Rains" to my audience instead of the usual reading.

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · yesterday

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude

Had a T-shirt clear out today. Some great memories, but no shirt lasts forever. 🥲

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

RIDER OF ROHAN: I'm telling you, near as I can tell, those little fuckers broke the walls of Isengard with their bare hands. We found two of 'em sitting having breakfast in the ruins, and there are no-one else but trees.

If you’re a Gondorian soldier your experience with hobbits is a tiny guy shows up with a wizard and is immediately taken in the Steward’s counsel. He saves Faramir when the Steward goes mad. A second tiny guy arrives with the Rohirrim and kills the Witch King. The first one then goes on campaign …

I wrote a whole essay in some poor person’s replies again. This 🧵’s for teachers who deal with group projects and creative fields in the age of the capitalist plagiarism hagfish slime machines.

Captain Awkward@captainawkward.bsky.social · 5d ago

As a prof this is how I dealt with the person in the group project who everyone else complained privately about because they did no work come presentation time: “Nice work, everyone! For the Q& A, why don’t you start us off [Obvious Fuckup Name]! Can you tell us a little about [creative choice]?”

your apartment, the sport of basketball, and the Republic of Korea are all social constructs. mere recognition of this fact does not actually make the question of whether you are standing in your own apartment, playing basketball, or a Korean national up in the air until settled by op ed editors

If somebody came to one of my writing classes with a novel about a “24-year-old wunderkind” on Wall Street called Leopold Aschenbrenner who graduated from Columbia aged 19, looked and dressed exactly like this, and crashed the stock market, I’d advise them to tone it down a bit

Tony Tassell@tonytassell.bsky.social · 6d ago

Quote in this story: “The real question is how did anyone invest so much money, and then lend so much money, to a . . . kid with no personal experience and no infrastructure?” as.ft.com/r/5f7537a7-0...

Neuromancer is chillingly relevant today because it asks: what if a guy would rather Die than stop Going Online

They were stealing what now? This isn't a "nerds will be nerds" thing. I have a PhD in computer science. I've spent most of my life in very nerdy spaces. My response to "I stole some breast milk" is "Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

AskAubry 🦝 🐆@ask-aubry.com · 6d ago

Ah yes, the classic gamer tragedy: Blizzard stops letting weirdo game developers from stealing breast milk from nursing mothers, adds a Jimothy pet option, and suddenly the universe is collapsing and they are unable to enjoy a playing.

I still have a "3 in 1 printer/scanner/copier". I use exactly one of those modes. The two which involve printing things are worthless.

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 6d ago

No. One, they're a pain in the ass and a scam. Two, nearly everything I do is able to be done electronically. Three, if someone wants me to sign a print contract I tell them to print it out and send it to me. Four, in the rare instances I need to print something, the local library has a printer.

This is like a scene from a sci-fi movie, in which they demonstrate how evil the villain is so the audience hates him. Not, like, a subtle sci-fi movie. We're talking Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element here.

Gary Oldman as Zorg: My Favorite

Alt: Gary Oldman in a ridiculous sci-fi getup saying "My favorite"

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regular meghan 나영지 🇵🇸@ruemcclammyhand.bsky.social · 6d ago

oh my god a Y Combinator startup called LemonLime threw a party, brought in a tattoo artist offering free tattoos, and then said they would give an immediate job interview to anyone who got a tattoo of their logo what is wrong with these people.

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

Mad Max Doof Warrior Playing Flaming Guitar

Alt: The Doof Warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road. A man in a red jumpsuit and mask, standing on a truck stacked high with amps, playing an electric guitar that shoots fire.

static.klipy.com

Ann Leckie@annleckie.com · 6d ago

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

This hasn't been around for a while If you haven't seen it, Run to it this weekend It's excellent cinema *Check out Run Lola Run on Hulu!

Run Lola Run

Lola's boyfriend is an errand boy for a local criminal, and has been given a simple job to do as a test. He needs to deliver some smuggled goods and return with the payment, but he accidentally leaves...

hulu.com

As @jacklyttle.bsky.social has highlighted in his Discord, a repeat of I, Claudius is starting on BBC4 tonight. I’ve also noticed it’s up on BBC iPlayer in its entirety too. It’s a masterpiece. Even though it’s studio-bound and feels like a play (maybe even because of it), it still feels epic.

I pretty much never post about my job on here, but we're hiring soon and I'm sure there are people in my network who would be interested. I'm a Principal Scientist at a small startup in Cambridge, MA called XGenomes. We're building a brand-new DNA sequencing technology!

This. Story arcs are fine, but what about space and time? Where are these people? How are they moving? Both within a scene (position of bodies in a fight) and between scenes (journeying from location A to B)? Games need to get this right. Some expensive film productions have got it very wrong!

Roger Giner-Sorolla@rogerthegs.bsky.social · last wk.

But seriously, you can trace the failure of things like Rings of Power and Star Wars VII-IX to a screenwriting culture that deals in beats, arcs and puzzlebox reveals, rather than working with the inherent logic of strategy and action scenes - for which game design is a better teacher.

I once knew a guy who insisted the Guernsey model was a good template for Scotland. What is Guernsey, you may ask? It's a small island in the English Channel. I have family there. It's lovely. But its setup of "protectorate of country 100x bigger which is scarcely aware it exists" would not scale.

Dennis Lytton@dennislytton.bsky.social · last wk.

At *best* COFA is a protectorate status for tiny micro-states too isolated for tourism or big industry. For which we have residual post WWII moral obligations. In reality their affairs, of all but the most local issues, are dictated by Washington. COFA, IMHO, is not a scalable or just arrangement.

If I'm on a plane and someone tries this, I'm going to stand up and sing Monty Python's Lumberjack Song as loudly as I can until they give up.

Hemant Mehta@friendlyatheist.com · last wk.

Evangelist Whitney Lynn says she preaches on planes because she loves “a captive audience.” She's not alone. It's becoming a trend. If spreading your message requires listeners who can't escape, maybe it's not as compelling as you think. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/christian-...

Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again: "If the headline is phrased as a question, the answer is no."

Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.

The 'singularity' refers to the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and becomes difficult to control.

Once upon a time, variations on the Westminster machine-readable font were the preferred way to indicate The Future. The comic is from 1984 but I remember it up to about the early 1990s. 😀

Westminster (typeface) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Comics Covers@comicscovers.bsky.social · last wk.

Great recommendations in the replies. Another one: The Ice Harvest (2005). John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have a plan to steal some money and get away clean, but are doomed by their own ineptitude.

Stella Sacco@antlervel.vet · last wk.

hey what are some other movies a la Fargo, Love Lies Bleeding, etc where someone tries to commit a crime (murder, theft, etc) and not a single thing goes right and it escalates way beyond the initial scope of the crime?

Great recommendations in the replies. Another one: The Ice Harvest (2005). John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have a plan to steal some money and get away clean, but are doomed by their own ineptitude.

Stella Sacco@antlervel.vet · last wk.

hey what are some other movies a la Fargo, Love Lies Bleeding, etc where someone tries to commit a crime (murder, theft, etc) and not a single thing goes right and it escalates way beyond the initial scope of the crime?

Hello everyone! Many of you likely saw this image recently with the Apple TV+ 'Neuromancer' promotion. Some know, others don't, but this artwork is mine, created alongside actor & post-production artist Milton Menezes, as a personal project and a homage to the original Neuromancer romance

I'll never get over how the best line in all of noir – "I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead, and the rest are bourbon" – doesn't come from Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but Calvin and Hobbes

This. I've had a lifetime of people not knowing how to pronounce my name and I'm used to it. But wasting my time with so-called fixes that make the situation worse is not cool.

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · last wk.

on the other side of this, when I was on the Hugo ballot they made this whole song and dance about do recordings of your name and send and then they didn't use any of them and ngl making me waste my time like this annoyed me more than whatever was done to my name during the show