No, that’s New York Cider Co! Blackduck is the anarchist cidermaker on the other side of the lake from the nudist colony lol. Both excellent.
I remember you telling me about the pawpaw beer, so thought you might appreciate.
Good discussion, but you should have named names!
🚨 SOUND THE PODCAST KLAXON!
A new episode of Critical Friends has just arrived, fresh-faced, in your feeds. Paul Kincaid and @yukondawn.bsky.social talk to me about style: what is it, what place has it taken up in SFF, and why is it so fraught?
Come for Le Guin and Vonnegut, stay for police raids.
Attn: @michaeljdeluca.bsky.social @scott-h-andrews.bsky.social
A brown bottle with a label that looks like a cassette, with a hand-written name: Paw Paw Cider. Next to it, a glass of cloudy cider. Both on a wooden table.
Had a fascinating bottle of Paw Paw Cider from Blackduck Cidery (Ovid, NY) yesterday. Great tropical notes from a great native North American fruit.
Ithaca Irrealist Readings A boozy reading series featuring authors of the fantastic, the surreal, the absurd, the speculative, and the odd. Vajra Chandrasekera Writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka, whose novels The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall have won the Le Guin Prize for Fiction, Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, Crawford, and Otherwise Awards, and been selected as New York Times Notable Books of 2023 and 2024. A 2025-2026 Fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Debbie Urbanski Author of the novel After World-named a best book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Engadget, the Los Angeles Times tech, Booklist, and Strange Horizons-and the story collection Portalmania. Published in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Granta, and Conjunctions. Liquid State Brewing Friday, March 20 - 6 PM irrealist.org
The Ithaca Irrealist Liberation Front reemerges from a period underground to resume its revolutionary literary activities with a reading at Liquid State Brewing on March 20th, featuring @vajra.me and @debbieurbanski.bsky.social! Join us!
My dad worked the NY Waterway ferries in the harbor and up the lower Hudson Valley. I (poorly) trained on them for like six months when I was 17. Still think about that life sometimes.
How are the Fossoways making cider in years’ long summers? How are those trees getting the required chill hours? That’s my question.
Happy to have sold another story to @lightspeedmagazine.com. “And all will be well, friend(s)”, a kind of fabulist story about consciousness, animism, and where we go when we die (in every moment). Forthcoming sometime.
Workers hold up a sign that reads, "Necesitamos Mas Enfermeras, Menos Millonarios."
Workers hold up a sign that reads, "Mount Sinai, we find a way to pay our execs, but we can't find a way to fund health insurance!" It features pictures of executives with their multimillion dollar salaries displayed below each.
Workers hold up a sign that reads: Hochul betrayed nurses! No License? Hochul Yes!
Workers hold up a sign that reads, "Se Necesitan Mas Enfermeras para la Atencion Segura del Paciente."
Rank-and-file nurses, now on week 4 of their historic open-ended strike in New York City, organized an action on Monday targeting state governor Kathy Hochul over the executive order that's allowed hospitals to bring in scab nurses from out-of-state. Photos by Labor Notes Organizer Sarah Hughes
We're horrified & outraged: Immigration agents have once again committed cold-blooded murder of a public observer who posed no threat to them.
This time, they've executed a fellow nurse, Alex Pretti. We demand justice and accountability. Abolish ICE, now! https://bit.ly/4big77u
My next-next-next book is about the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 so I've been reading about it, and to a lesser degree other general strikes, and some things struck me in the research. I'm not a historian or any kind of expert, but here are a few of the things that struck me. +
$5 fiction sale!
No coupon code needed. Offer ends tonight at midnight PST.
Crawling back from a very nasty bout of flu by posting some of my favorite stories I read last year. Is it a perfect list? No, there's a ton of amazing stuff out there. But I am happy with it and I hope you can find something in here for you <3
If you're in the Ottawa area, please come out to our rally at Carleton University on Jan. 22 at noon, in support of AI protections for education workers. You absolutely don't have to RSVP to come, but if you feel comfortable, it helps us plan. Dress warm, bring a sign, bring a friend:
The second smallest domino is “Prose doesn’t matter, just ‘the story’”
Trump holding his ear when he said “Wow, I’m hearing this for the first time.”
Interesting discussion of short fiction collections and story order in here. As a reader, I definitely jump around, but when I’m reading for a review, I go in order.
Good listening while I put my bookcases back together (including maybe a hundred collections, though many only lightly dipped into).
Can’t wait for your debut late style.
This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather
Sheinbaum knows what continent she is on and who is going to be on the next list of targets. Though outside of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, this is unfortunately not a good time for the prospects of a united front in Latin America.
Early statements from the EU are practically supportive. It’s grim.
These imperialists will burn down the world if we let them. Today it’s Trump, but it didn’t start here. U.S. domination of Latin America (and the broader Global South) must end.
Spongebob looking suspiciously at a flyer for a wanted maniac.
Loved this one-sentence piece.
Incidentally, when misfortune strikes, I also cycle through three or four different culprits before realizing who's really to blame.
Big thanks to everyone who joined me this year on A Meal of Thorns, and to everyone who listened along and supported us! Feeling like a thread as we leave 2025 behind us: a chance to boost these again. Great guests & great books—take a look, and take a listen wherever you find your podcasts!
This piece is a tour de force. A great read.
Another special week of reviews was our focus on spec fic in translation via US small presses. thank @willmcmahon36.bsky.social for prodding us to do this: some great, clarion-call pieces.
@casella.bsky.social channelled his 68er: "Beneath the pavement, need I remind you: the beach."
