This is a must-listen for the policy nerds

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 3d ago

Today on Volts: the new federal permitting bill is 417 pages long. Some people love it, some hate it, some are just confused. With Daniel Palken, I methodically walk through why it's happening, what exactly is in it, & the political rationale for doing it now. This one is epic & fairly technical.

I want to see empty exhibits in British museums, that contain only the story about what they once contained, and why they had to be sent home. The space would be no less profound for me www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Oxford ceremony marks return home of kiwi feather cloak

The kahu kiwi, given to a British doctor in 1900, was "crying to come home", Māori campaigners say.

bbc.co.uk

It has been years since I last finished a cross stitch pattern. Feels good. I’d make different choices about how to make a bookmark, how to make the colors show up on the stripes, and whether to do a cross stitch pattern that fills in all squares, but I can make those choices next time.

i would like your help with a social art project this post is the project the goal is for this post to receive ZERO likes… only replies, reposts, or quotes once it's liked, replies are immediately disabled, thereby finishing the piece this is take #39 dame.is/creating/ratioed/39

dame@dame.is · 2w ago

i would like your help with a social art project this post is the project the goal is for this post to receive ZERO likes… only replies, reposts, or quotes once it's liked, replies are immediately disabled, thereby finishing the piece this is take #38 dame.is/creating/ratioed/38

Annual town pumpkin fest is this weekend. Oldest kiddo helped decorate their high school’s entry in the decorated giant pumpkin contest (apparently that thing’s 181 lbs. it’s not quite as tall or long as I am, but not far off). The eagle is the school mascot.

We promised you regular new reviews of older SFF - and here’s the first of many! Paul March-Russell on 1956’s Tiger! Tiger! (or The Stars My Destination, depending who you ask) by Alfred Bester: a picaresque, a revenge tragedy, a quest, a romance. Edited, of course, by @kateem.bsky.social.

The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester

It does not have a conventional linear narrative, but instead proceeds episodically, loops back almost to its starting-point, and finishes not on a revelation but a suspension.

strangehorizons.com

I've been immersed in research on Reconstruction in Lousiana and it's a very difficult truth to absorb that the white terrorist movement in the South was among the most successful terrorist movements in global history. Took 10 years but it won a total & complete victory through murder and atrocity.

In Europe and America, public executions were gradually moved behind prison walls during the 18 19th & 20th centuries. Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish begins with an execution spectacle and examines the historical movement toward less publicly visible forms of punishment.

This is a moral atrocity and it needs to be loudly condemned as such. There is a reason that democracies *don't* do publicly televised executions (and why many don't execute people at all): it inculcates and rewards bloodthirst, which corrupts the spirit and corrodes the foundation of the polity.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 4d ago

The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan

This is my Tom Holland "Umbrella" lip sync.

Taco Bell Quarterly@tacobellquarterly.org · 8mo ago

Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands by Felix

I think the commentary on this post is thoughtful, and also I hope at some point to be as clear-eyed a hater as Le Guin was. overcast.fm/+ABWly9ng534

Amanda Nelson reads “Against Eisenhower” — In Your Spare Time: From the Blog of Ursula K. Le Guin

Amanda Nelson reads post 26, “Against Eisenhower,” from June 12, 2011. You can read the original blog post here: www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/26-against-eisenhower Amanda’s website is www.theamandanelso...

overcast.fm

9yo described to me how WoF went around her school: a friend of hers was reading it, so she got into it, and now all of her friends read them and talk about the characters and plot, and more kids see WoF and are interested and it *spreads*

Sense and Senisibility by Jane Austen but now you can offend a mummy and become cursed for the rest of your miserable short life

that kind of discovery requires a different world of in-depth reviews and critical essays in a sphere of independent magazines and bloggers &c. in the absence of a robust bookish internet of this kind, what you get is books that vanish into the dark and can at best hope to be "rediscovered" some day

this is true of basically every object and social interaction and teaching this to kids (and others) is incredibly important

K.A. Doore@kadoore.com · 5d ago

Y'know, I used to laugh at the incredibly cheesy 90s "let's shrink some kids and look at the inside of a computer!" school videos but at least it showed us that computers were machines and there was logic in how they worked, not magic.

Look I made you some content danielkayhertz.com/buildings/

Having grown up in Minnesota and only recently moved to Maine, I really enjoy Troy Jackson’s accent. It doesn’t sound like home, but it rhymes enough.

Another idea: bookshop.org/p/books/a-co...

A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School

A boundary-pushing fantasy that blends magical realism with dark academia, perfect for fans of Bunny by Mona Awad and Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth.In the oppressive heat of a small Tamil Nadu town, ...

bookshop.org

Bookshop.org@bookshop.org · 6d ago

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

if you need a suggestion:

The West Passage

THE LADIES REIGN. THE PALACE ROTS. THE BEAST RISES.Five starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, BookPage, Library Journal, and Shelf Awareness.“The West Passage is a dangerous book of secrets.” —Travis...

bookshop.org

Bookshop.org@bookshop.org · 6d ago

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

It’s dark. Sam asks for a tale. Strider tells of Tinúviel: ‘It is a fair tale, though it is sad, as are all the tales of Middle-earth. ‘The leaves were long, the grass was green, The hemlock-umbels tall and fair, And in the glade a light was seen Of stars in shadow shimmering…’

The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai" today, our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...

The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai

"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...

wrongquestions.blogspot.com

I believe this and also would’ve assumed the effect goes at least as strongly in the other direction. (For fiction, I basically never end up outside of genre shelves unless I’m actively looking for a particular author)

Anton Hur@antonhur.com · 7d ago

QT'ing this instead of replying because I don't have too much to contribute to this discussion but it does remind me of something I encountered in the *marketing* of my novel, which is very SF but marketed on the literary side, for purely *marketing* purposes: litfic audiences actively eschew genre.

🚨ACQUISITION ANNOUNCEMENT!🚨 'Let justice be done, though the world burn.' We've snapped up @gautambhatia88.bsky.social 's @theignyteawards.bsky.social winning SF legal thriller THE FIFTH INFLECTION for the UK! UK/BC rights acquired by @alrutter.bsky.social February 2027. Preorder geni.us/5thinfl

I kinda wonder about “group tea party” scenes in this context. I’m rereading Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy and there’s a lot of “a few people with different agendas revealed through conversation” which shows up in plenty of non-SFF and also gets used by someone like Cherryh to explore alien-ness…

Jake Casella Brookins@casella.bsky.social · 7d ago

... & more into a kind of tough criticism of SF itself, where & why it couldn't or shouldn't be considered literary. I don't think genres are bad, they're useful, but thinking harder about why Atwood & Whitehead & Vonnegut & maybe VanderMeer are shelved where they are might be a worthwhile gadfly.

What is a movie that came out before you were born that you’ve watched the most times? Chariots of Fire (though I suspect there’s a Bond film or 2 that would give it a run for its money)

Chariots Of Fire: Eric Liddell Running

Alt: Chariots Of Fire: Eric Liddell finishing “not the prettiest quarter … certainly the bravest”

static.klipy.com

Jenny with a Green Ribbon Around Her Neck@readingtheend.bsky.social · 7d ago

what is the movie that came out before you were born that you've watched the most times? Harvey (1950)

I don’t think I’m ever going to get the appeal of pivoting to video for podcasts. I’ve been listening to podcasts for 20 years, and never once have I thought, my God, I need to SEE these people! I’m on a walk or doing the dishes, I don’t need video. 

Sheep snuggles are a nice way to start the day.

My memory of Ancillary Sword is that I read it once, enjoyed it, was surprised by what I got after Ancillary Justice, that there’s a fair amount of “comedy of manners” and that figuring out the “actual” gender of the Radch characters is more relevant than in Ancillary Justice