Charlie Stross

yup!

Yes, but it's a good start! Alas, FOOF is just too hard to get hold of.

Also a wedding ring, obviously. A magnesium one.

"Yours, where my regards have spaghettified in Sagittarius A*. "

"Yours, gingerly inverting a half litre dewar full of liquid chlorine trifluoride over my regards (behind a blast shield, using a VERY long pole, breathing air from a tank, while wearing asbestos overalls and a good pair of running shoes)

One of my fave niche history facts is how many loaded pistols your average highwayman had during a hold up.

We're talking four minimum on his saddle, then at least two in his belt. Ideally three or four.

Because fuck trying to reload a 17th century pistol on horseback that's why.

As someone who enjoys a soak in the evening, if someone like LUSH were to release a "Jean-Paul Marat bath bomb" I would absolutely purchase one.

Signed, "Yours, turning up the bunsen burner flame under the stoppered test tube full of my regards"

The Hamburg cell did *indeed* win: they spent 19 lives to mire the USA and the west in two colonial wars that lasted decades and cost actual trillions of dollars (both in expenditure and lost economic productivity). Like a single wasp sting putting a human in the ICU with anaphylactic shock.

Hark to the plaintive cries of a tormented subeditor demonstrating malicious compliance in the only way they know

I have no idea what any of that means. Saturday morning kiddie cartoons?

Bathroom rug mimic in the making.

What skill did you master that you will never, ever use again?

In the late 80s I qualified and worked as a pharmacist, in both community and hospital practice.

I used to mix a mean Brompton Cocktail. (It was still prescribed for terminal illness.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brompton_cocktail

covid appears to be like if you shotgunned exhaust directly from the tail pipe of a 1976 chevelle though, doesn't seem great for a virus that drops your iq two points to just be doing unfettered laps around the population like a mastiff with zoomies

The British mass media are all owned by the same far-right billionaire oligarchs as the US press. So the similar symptoms shouldn't come as a surprise.

Danger Rug, Danger Rug, Nuthin's Stranger'n Danger Rug! 🦈🦈🦈

Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services

High-volume propaganda campaign promoting pro-Russian narratives:

https://about.iftas.org/2025/10/05/coordinated-pro-russian-propaganda-network-targeting-activitypub-and-atproto-services/

GitHub - grimthorpe/clbre: A fork of Calibre called Clbre, because the AI is stripped out. A fork of Calibre called Clbre, because the AI is stripped out. - grimthorpe/clbre

Hot damn, you’re right!

github.com/grimthorpe/c...

It exists and it's called "Clbre". Because they took the AI out of it.

Great. If this is correct we're about to get The New Management from @cstross.bsky.social's Laundry Files series. The character has some aspects of this one.

You noticed US defence policy is now openly and officially pro-Russian and anti-EU, since yesterday?

Turns out Yuri Andropov plays the long game.

"I like that kid V. V. Putin from the Second Directorate. I think he's got potential. Let's try him out to head up the Novorossiya Plan. Oh, and set up a meeting with the Project Orange team: they've got an asset I think he'll need."

The USSR was just the Russian Empire under new management. It's Russia being Russian: always has been, except for a brief spasm circa 1917-1926 when Lenin and Trotsky tried to make a difference.

So, it looks like Russia finally won the cold war.

to malka.older Let's get one thing straight before anything else: You’re not some hobbyist typing in the dark. You’re a London-born storyteller who built entire emotional ecosystems before most writers learned how to outline. Hundreds of stories. A decade dominating MM fanfic awards. A career shift in 2012 that turned your “tribe” into a readership. Drama degree, seasoned craft, musical theatre pulse, Tudor geekery, and two judgmental cats supervising every chapter. That’s not a résumé that’s a literary arsenal. And then you drop The Quarterlands, a 442-page detonation 4.8 stars, 113 ratings, fan quotes full of tears, gasps, and “why is this over already?? 😭”and somehow Amazon still treats your page like it’s whispering into a pillow. Ridiculous. Frustrating. And honestly? A little insulting.

@kjcharleswriter.com I just got another one that's for someone else (although they didn't put the writer's name on it)! I don't think I've ever had knowing contact with this writer? I wasn't born in london, I don't have a drama degree, or any cats!!!

Well I guess I am no longer upgrading Calibre

I just got a "Decomputing" talk accepted by a very tech-focused business conference (as a Keynote even) and a labor rights organization who wanted me to propose a talk instantly went for the "The Luddites were right" suggestion. Two things that a few months ago would not have been possible I think.

I really do not understand at what point we forgot that this is how it works.
People are championing and enforcing these immigration policies now who are *products of this immigration ladder of excellence themselves*.
Did they never eg speak to their parents/grandparents?

my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing.
they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors.
their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen.
their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.

Similar story here, except they arrived a decade later and their children included 3 soldiers (one killed in WW1), started 2 businesses employing about 300 people by the 20s, and by the 60s one was a cabinet minister and another went to Hollywood to produce movies. (I'm an underachiever.)