This is, I think, the very first SF story I read, in maybe 2nd grade? It struck me so hard that I hand-wrote out a copy of it, word for word. (I am old, no copiers back then.) I suspect an awful lot of my work is still, at least in some small way, in dialogue with that experience, those feels.

Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · yesterday

Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:

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!

There is nothing like having to write a bio to make me feel like the least interesting human being on the planet. #WriterProblems

(Chaser after long post: oooh, a bug!)

When someone is described as "often controversial, never boring" in 2026 it just means: full nazi but also part of the establishment.

New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo

She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.

Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

wapo.st

Everything said within: 100% My one quibble is with the headline framing, which gives “these two guys bravely stand up to buck the trend“ energy, when they speak for almost* our entire field, writers, editors, artists, readers. (* always a few turds in the punch bowl, amirite?)

The Register@theregister.com · 3d ago

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Finished reading ODE TO THE HALF-BROKEN by @zanzjan.bsky.social a while back and keep thinking about. Such a wonderfully funny, deep, and thoughtful book PLUS a giant robot with a (sort of) robo dog? SO much my jam. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/787289...

Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer: 9780756419585 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

"A refreshing ray of hope in the darkness." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) As seen on LitHub's "May’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books" In the abandoned New York Botanical Gardens, forty...

penguinrandomhouse.com

Ok too many heavy thoughts today, have a butterfly pic I took in Indiana on my road trip:

Post your hottest music take: There is absolutely no better band, emotionally and psychologically, for driving into Boston to than the Hu.

Daniel Collette@danielcollette.bsky.social · 5d ago

Post your hottest music take. Chumbawamba is in every way more punk rock than the Sex Pistols

Maybe this is just the AuDHD talking, but ISTM that if you inflict harm on a friend (of the handsy, not-respecting-no variety) there is no statute of limitations where you can just show up & leave chatty comments on that persons posts as if nothing ever happened, when you’ve done zero work. 1/x

Is there anything better than sipping your favorite drink from a dorbs Locus mug while reading an amazing story? NOPE! Get yours by backing The Locus Best #ScienceFiction and #Fantasy of the Year on Kickstarter! Visit http://kck.st/4wtYJ6... or the link in our bio #SFF #books

I am so exhausted by everything right now.

The reporters don’t even report it as a negative

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5d ago

The fact that it’s poisoning Black people is not seen as a negative to these folks.

This is a factual sentence: Amid an outbreak of explosive diarrhea and with measles cases at a 35-year high, America’s top health official, who has an affinity for roadkill and guzzling raw milk, will soon start hosting a cooking show. My column, tragically: www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Move over, cyclosporiasis. RFK Jr. is hosting a cooking show. | Opinion

America's top health official, who has an affinity for picking up roadkill and guzzling raw milk, will soon start hosting a cooking show. Barf.

usatoday.com

Exactly this:

Chuck Wendig@chuckwendig.bsky.social · 7d ago

Increasingly, Soylent Green serves as one of the best metaphors for AI -- it's taking all that we are, as people, chumming it up, and feeding the slurry back to us. We're told that we need it, it's nutritious, it'll save the world, even as it damns it and us.

Meta is spending $600 billion+ to build out its AI model. That model is being aggressively integrated into platforms used by 3.9 billion people. This week, Meta announced its AI will be trained on content from Newsmax, the far-right website with a history of promoting pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

In other news, still no casual opportunity has arisen in conversation for me to just drop in, "Let's make like sasquatch and absquatulate", and yeah, the universe is letting me down.

Representatives for Taylor Farms called the White House to try to delay a recall tied to one of the largest foodborne illness outbreaks in U.S. history www.wsj.com/health/taylo...

Taking away someone's food and medicine makes you responsible for their death

I hobbled as far as I could over to the Goodyear Blimp in hopes of playing the “I’m an award-winning Science Fiction writer” card to try to get a ride, but couldn’t get close enough to talk to anyone )-:

July 22nd, 2026 Happy.

July 21st, 2026 There are worse places I could be.

Someone called the cyclospora outbreak MAHA Blast and I'm cackling like I'm 13 again.

...yes

Darby@darby3.chickenwing-gingerbreadman.xyz · 3w ago

me: i just gotta read all these books and then i can read those books new books: *come out* me: fuck

this is where your money goes when you buy harry potter stuff. rowling isn’t shy about it. amnesty wrote an even-handed report that laid out what anti-rights groups do; rowling uses her billions & clout to suppress it. when you give rowling money; she spends it on stealing people’s human rights.

Miffythegamer@miffythegamer.bsky.social · 3w ago

In my opinion, this is litigious thuggery. Amnesty spoke their truth and it hurt the feelings of the anti-trans brigade. TERFs destroy everything they touch. I mean, imagine suing Amnesty, of all organisations?

I had such an awesome time at Readercon. As per usual, left with a lot of food for thought thanks to excellent panels and great conversations, and with my need for socializing definitely met for a while. A big thank you to everyone there for, well, being you. <3

I find the story of Hegelochus unreasonably funny. Imagine dying and the only trace of you millennia later is the time you accidentally said you saw a weasel in a tragic play in front of a packed audience, because people mocked you about it for centuries. (Thread for ease)

Hegelochus: The Ancient Greek Actor We Only Know About Because He Really, Really Fluffed Up His Line

Around 400 BCE, Hegelochus really messed up his line. We only know about the actor because he was mocked about it for centuries.

iflscience.com

Two year anniversary of when I first posted this comic

We are SO close to our next stretch goal - doubling the size of the anthology! Help make this book happen and launch a new annual series for SF and fantasy. Thank you all so much! Locusmag.com/anthology (link in bio) sharing helps tremendously :) #backthebook #SFF #booksky