Jenn Bennett

Newcastle pubs ban AI art from breweries to protect local creatives As two pubs in Newcastle ban AI art, artists discuss the impact it can have on creatives.

"If I was to use ChatGPT for my designs rather than our designer Sean, that's taking money out of the local area into the hands of a multibillionaire ... removing value from the local community and local artists [and] into the hands of some of the richest people in the world."

#AIslop #refuseresist

The Disappearance of Young Adult Books and Services in Public Libraries: Book Censorship News, February 20, 2026 Teen collections in public libraries are disappearing. So, too, are professionals dedicated to serving this demographic.

Book banners are trying to create a world in which no one is able to imagine living lives different from their own

reading

Post from Julia Fine that says, "Write the book you want to read because you will have to read it 75 times."

#writerslife

for those of you who werent adults during iraq, its hard to overstate how much the media loves war porn. they salivate over pentagon spin briefings. they love stories about all the bombs and how supposedly infallible they are. they love the notion of the commander in chief, in the situation room etc

What the FUCK is going on and why is everyone with a soul not calling for a war crimes tribunal. Fuck impeachment, this is solidly Hague territory

The balancing on the email mechanic is completely fucked. You're meant to reply to emails, but when you do so, you're punished by almost immediately getting another email in response which then needs to be replied to. The player is disincentivized from engaging with the core gameplay loop.

I've written up a brief script for anyone who wants to call or write your representatives regarding this bill (yes, even the ones you think won't care). PLEASE DO THIS IF YOU ARE ABLE. This bill *cannot* pass.

You can find your representatives here: www.congress.gov/members/find...

House Republicans have just introduced a bill that would result in a NATIONWIDE book ban. Oh, the bill is also specifically transphobic. Contact your House Rep and ask them to publicly oppose this legislation. A few more thoughts in the thread about this action. bookriot.com/hr7661-book-...

Gawain the green knight opening a letter sealed with wax

Little Alex Horne in his studio chair with the caption "so a simple task: land a fair blow anywhere on the green knight. One year later meet him at the green chapel, receive the same blow yourself."

A cut to a wider shot showing Greg Davies in his throne turning to Little Alex Horne subtitled "Well surely no one just ran up and whanged his head clean off."

Cut back to Little Alex Horne subtitled "Let's see Gawain first."

Looks like the original has been swept away by the sands of time.

Criterion releasing K Pop Demon Hunters is a net benefit for everyone - those who like the movie will get a really good home release of it, those who don’t care about the movie will benefit from Criterion having a certified money maker that they can use to help fund more obscure/niche releases

They think punk means *acting without consent* not *acting in defiance of power*

The Disappearance of Young Adult Books and Services in Public Libraries: Book Censorship News, February 20, 2026 Teen collections in public libraries are disappearing. So, too, are professionals dedicated to serving this demographic.

The disappearance of YA book collections in public libraries–and the parallel winnowing of YA librarianship. Where are young people supposed to BE young people?

That, plus an extremely long roundup of censorship news: bookriot.com/the-disappea...

the actual story of what happened at the National Endowment for the Humanities last year is even more infuriating than we thought

Ho-lee Shit. This is phenomenally good news. Department of Education rolls back— for now— its attempts to destroy Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility initiatives. Keep an eye on them, of course, and watch for the hidden knife, always, but for now: Fantastic news.

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland.

And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

REMEMBER: All the "Don't use em-dashes" "don't use rule of three" advice because it makes your writing "look like AI" is because they stole actual writers work, and their "predict the next thing" stuff just simulates what WE FUCKING DO. Keep writing well. Use every style and trick you have. Fuck AI.

This happened several months ago. Spotify or Voices or InAudio or whatever—it keeps changing—was just allowing infinite AI slop audiobooks to get out there & libro.fm quite sensibly said absolutely the fuck not. To avoid being overwhelmed, they shut it down. Unfortunately, legit stuff got banned too

With zero respect: if you think This One Summer has adult content, there is something wrong with you, and you should not be allowed out in public.

Anthropic AI safety researcher quits with 'world in peril' warning It comes in the same week an OpenAI researcher resigned amid concerns about its decision to start testing ChatGPT ads.

Anthropic head of AI safety quits, warning of "world in peril" & announces plan to study creative writing, as my college charges ahead in deal with Anthropic, which trained its tech on at least 25 books taken without permission from our Creative Writing faculty. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

"Trump’s Gallup approval rating as of last December [less than 37%] was among the lowest the organization had found since it began taking the poll in the 1930s."

photo of Pam Bondi testifying in the foreground as a group of 7 women and 1 men raise their hands

Likely-historic photo by NBC News of all the Epstein victims asked to raise their hands if they've not yet been asked to meet with the DOJ as Bondi testifies in foreground

Literal end of an era.

Harlequin Is Ending Its Historical Romance Line After Nearly 40 Years - Reactor The publisher's decision to end its historical romance line in 2027 comes on the heels of controversial changes to its international publishing tactics

After 40 years of publishing, Harlequin will end its iconic historical romance line in 2027:

#Booksky

16 homemade rolls straight from the oven, nice and golden, rounded tops coated with honey butter

Homemade rolls brushed with honey butter

The autistic community is a large, growing, and heterogeneous population, and there is a need for improved methods to describe their diverse needs. Measures of adaptive functioning collected through public health surveillance may provide valuable information on functioning and support needs at a population level. We aimed to use adaptive behavior and cognitive scores abstracted from health and educational records to describe trends over time in the population prevalence of autism by adaptive level and co-occurrence of intellectual disability (ID). Using data from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, years 2000 to 2016, we estimated the prevalence of autism per 1000 8-year-old children by four levels of adaptive challenges (moderate to profound, mild, borderline, or none) and by co-occurrence of ID. The prevalence of autism with mild, borderline, or no significant adaptive challenges increased between 2000 and 2016, from 5.1 per 1000 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.6–5.5) to 17.6 (95% CI: 17.1–18.1) while the prevalence of autism with moderate to profound challenges decreased slightly, from 1.5 (95% CI: 1.2–1.7) to 1.2 (95% CI: 1.1–1.4). The prevalence increase was greater for autism without co-occurring ID than for autism with co-occurring ID. The increase in autism prevalence between 2000 and 2016 was confined to autism with milder phenotypes. This trend could indicate improved identification of milder forms of autism over time. It is possible that increased access to therapies that improve intellectual and adaptive functioning of children diagnosed with autism also contributed to the trends.

Increasing autism rates over the last 25 years may just be kids with mild forms getting diagnosed. Rates of moderate to severe impairment due to autism have actually fallen slightly.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Uh oh.

Amazon Plans to Transform Publishing with New AI Content Marketplace www.itp.net/digital-cult...

removing a symbol of pride from a small park in the middle of the west village is really an enormous fuck you from the worst people on the planet