That HWA pro-AI lady has an AI-powered "writing coach" app she just launched and lol btw I will be your writing coach for free with no AI! Here: Turn off Bsky, you creep closer to death every day so WORK ON YOUR BOOK NOW--the discourse will still be here in the morning. You're welcome! 🥰

Also medicine HIV was pretty much a death sentence in 1986. Now it's a treatable chronic condition. Neurological conditions. Mobility aids. So many cancers. And the thing where people no longer smoke everywhere

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 21h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

The DOJ is now 0-20 in court trying to access states' voter files. They've lost in: Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Illinois Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Virginia West Virginia Wisconsin

I'm open to animation background design/layout and paint gigs. ✌️

I just gave to this because Westword has been part of Colorado since I was young. (But I really wish more places that asked for donations accepted Paypal. When I have to give with credit card that requires going and getting my card and sometimes that's enough for me to X out and not give.)

Denver Westword@westword.com · yesterday

We're working to raise $25,000 by August 9 to support the reporting our community depends on. Reader support is playing a larger role in funding local journalism and shaping what comes next. If you believe independent local journalism matters, support us today: bit.ly/SummerDriveBLSKY2026

BTW for the nosy, my skin is an ABSOLUTE, TOTAL, COMPLETE gong show right now -- red, lumpy, flaky, zitty, and with a lot of dark purple-brown post-inflammatory pigmentation -- and I am not wearing concealer, only drugstore (!) foundation (this one)

It also smelled like burnt rubber for a while this morning which was awful. I had to mask up to walk the dog.

Chris Bianchi@bianchiweather.bsky.social · yesterday

All of Colorado's 64 counties are under an Air Quality Alert through at least 9a tomorrow. Been a while since that's happened. Wildfire smoke from Utah + Pacific Northwest is gonna make it rough out there today + tomorrow. #COwx

"Why can't you just appreciate how revolutionary the job-taking, environment-degrading, information-shredding, technology-hoarding, economy-swamping machine is?" My brother in Christ, there may indeed be a revolution in part because of "AI," but it might not be the one you wanted.

Maybe this is why portal fantasies are coming back. We’re all like, sure that sounds better than here.

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · 2d ago

The Fae: so we’re going to take you away from here and— Me: I accept! The Fae: and you won’t remember anything and you will not return for a century— Me: I ACCEPT HARDER

This is where the individualization of health leads. But "individual choice" obscures the network underpinning our abilities to make those choices. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

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...

My Favorite Thing: The Cat That Hates Me + That One SFF Author Who Hates Everyone (Thoughts on Exile) | Micaiah Johnson

The first time I fed Sasha she sliced open my hand and bit my leg so hard it bruised. The second time I fed Sasha she hissed and swiped, but

patreon.com

My name is Nilah and I'm here to say I'll illustrate your picture book any time you're looking for an illustrator to do that, just hit me up! Look I'm an illustrator, not a poet. Hire me to DRAW! My portfolio: www.nilahmagruder.com/portfolio/ #kidlitart

This, too, is a coin trick. Extending rights to *nature* reliably makes the world better, but extending rights to *constructs* makes the world *far* worse (Exhibit A is corporate personhood) (obviously). 36/

I'm on Day 3 of my doing-nothing-but-copy-edit-review writing-cave work period to finalize my second book and I'm fixing up little bits of tone and wording and the absolute best I can do to describe how I know if a sentence needs to get fixed is when it makes my brain itchy. Language is weird, man.

🔹 AI-generated media, ‘deepfakes’ must be clearly labelled as such 🔸Chatbots and virtual agents must explicitly state they aren't human 🔹You must be told when AI is actively analysing you, like biometrics, emotion tracking → link.europa.eu/gTvhRX

I’m astonished by the ability of my fellow humans to forget the events we all just lived through. Folks remember the masks and the remote school. The million US dead are rarely mentioned. Folks, we lived through a plague.

Wake up, babe. Bree just dropped a new cult(ure).

Bree (half of Kit Rocha)@mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 4d ago

I wanted to easily just get all the bits I needed so I bought this a couple weeks ago and now I need to get this gallon of milk out of my fridge so we're going in.

Worse: every fake AI project that produces real results (because it's not really AI) adds credibility to the AI true believers, who view these projects as proof that AI can do anything, and therefore demand to know why *everything* isn't being done by AI. 58/

At *best* these are just traditional tech consulting contracts, like migrating a database from Oracle to Snowflake, with some kind of ornamental AI usage around the edges so that the person who commissions the work can claim to be "procuring AI-enabled services" for the business. 56/

The spectacle of AI that *does something* galvanizes corporate leaders who feel like they're the only bosses who can't find a revolutionary use for AI in their businesses. 50/

Dear God.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4d ago

To add verisimilitude to this sham, they write circular processes in which one chatbot prompts another, and then the process repeats itself in reverse, for the sole purpose of consuming AI tokens to score a high rank on corporate "token leaderboards." 43/

Suresh and his team at Hermit Tech now have a policy of not even asking about ongoing AI projects. They've learned that by the time an AI project has begun, no one will discuss it honestly until it reaches a crisis point. 33/

Suresh says he's *never* seen a successful enterprise AI project: "Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half." Not one of their clients would face a business challenge if OpenAI went out of business tomorrow. 27/

(Contrast this with what would transpire if Trump directed his tech giants to switch off your country's Office 365 access, or to brick your Android and iOS phones, or to killswitch your John Deere tractors.) 6/

Libraries are the best.

Andrew Jack@andrewjack.bsky.social · 5d ago

Every writer I know, and for my sins I know a lot of them, is absolutely 100% delighted for you to get their book out from your local library.

But I had gotten *in the door.* And to get further, I knew, I was going to have to *work harder at being better* than some of the other people did, just to be able to compete. That sucks. But it's not insurmountable. You can pursue pretty much fucking anything. How you get there will be different

So uhh I have multiple pairs of these USB rechargeable hand warmers that just got recalled for fire and burn hazards that killed someone and some of you might too

OCOOPA Direct Recalls 1.5 Million Rechargeable Hand Warmers Due to Risk of Serious Injury or Death from Fire and Burn Hazards; One Death Reported; Imported by Shenzhen Street Cat Technology

Consumers should stop using the recalled hand warmers immediately and contact OCOOPA Direct for a full refund in the form of an OCOOPA gift card or the original form of payment. Consumers will be aske...

cpsc.gov

Years ago I attended a conference session where you read each others' work and then provided feedback. One of the authors there had written a good story with the exception that they'd contorted themselves to avoid ever using the word "had". My feedback was "Really, it's okay to use sometimes."

Ann Leckie@annleckie.com · 5d ago

Don't try to figure out how to deform your work to make it "more salable" or whatever. Just write, and submit your stories. It's the only thing you can control. And you are not going to scuttle your career if you put 2 spaces after a period or have the wrong sort of main character or whatever.

I know this isn't going to come across, like, at all, because it's writers I'm talking to, but for Mithras' sake, don't catastrophize! Don't spend all your time worrying about whether or not someone is going to like your work, whether editors are likely to buy it, whether it "sounds like AI"