Hey listen: a fancy degree doesn't mean you'll be good at a job. I'm pretty sure I've got a better handle on American law from re-watching BOSTON LEGAL than JD Vance does with his Yale law degree.
I don't care that Markwayne Mullin doesn't have a fancy degree. I do care that he's a dick.
James Talarico: "Our economy is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. And that's because the most powerful people in the world want it that way. The real fight is not right vs. left. It is top vs. bottom."
Spotted in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood
The King is mad
When she’s right, she’s right, and she’s rarely wrong.
Meet Roz Ray, Winner of the Black List's Unpublished Novel Award for Crime and Mystery!
debutiful.net/2026/02/22/m... @writerinworkboots.bsky.social
The Mentorship Program at SFWA. Applications now open! Apply to be one of our mentors or mentees for the 2026 cycle. Applications due by February 21 at 9pm PST. sfwa.org/mentorship-program
SFF creators, take note!
SFWA is now taking applications for the next round of our three-month Career Mentorship Program! Mentorships help writers tackle the tough questions of growing their career. We seek mentors and mentees.
Non-members welcome! Please don't self-reject.
Learn more here: 👇️👀
List of excerpts from Charles Darwin's letters: "I hate every wave of the ocean." "Oh my God how I do hate species and varieties." "I am very tired, very stomachy and hate nearly the whole world." "I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything." "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees." "I am languid and bedeviled and hate writing and hate everybody."
To all the writers and researchers in the trenches today: you can hate everything and everybody and persist entirely out of spite. It's okay.
Done and done. Sent.
Sent.
I recommend Minnesota Public Radio live. I’m learning a lot I’m not getting elsewhere.
Get into the comments on this one. "2 Buck Chuck" is the best nickname for the minority leader I've heard yet.
And yes. Blinding. White-hot. Intensity.
This is one of the stories I've tried to convey for a while now:
The Trump administration and its allies have long invoked faith to justify policies, appeal to certain groups, etc.
But the president's religious critics have *also* long been numerous, and increasingly loud.
Just a reminder that he’s only president because republicans allow it.
I went to Minneapolis last week. What I saw was horrifying and inspiring in equal measure. Gift link to my latest column: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/o...
WE'RE NOT GOING OUT OF BUSINESS, a 📚🧵
STUDENT JOURNALIST: How has your business survived after e-books?
ME: 🤦
STUDENT JOURNALIST: I mean, real books smell great, but the market has really changed, hasn't it?
ME: We're actually not much affected by that.
(1/11)
This thread tho.
You're most welcome!
Manuscript Wishlist and Query Tracker are good resources. I would pay for a month or two of Publisher's Marketplace. PM will give you a good window into what agents have actually sold, and for approximately how much. They also have a good tool for finding agents on the website.
Ah! Okay, so I've gotten two agents from the slush pile, one wasn't the right fit for me, the other is stellar. In my experience, there's no stigma around who accepts unsolicited queries, so you can set that worry aside.
What's the biggest pain-point? (I mean, there're tips and then there are *tips*)
I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows. I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.
Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...
With arms linked and snow falling, Minneapolis ICE protesters dance as ICE agents retreat back. "Nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!" WATCH ⬇️
She is so worried you haven't filled out your expense reports correctly.
YES PLEASE.
What? The AI companies have misrepresented what they're doing and how it was done? That's unpossible!
Right. Also they're awful? Like, we don't need another reason to be on the right side of history here.
MOOD.
Dude. Are you really tone-policing the mayor of Minneapolis right now, man? Stop it with that.
