N.L. Bates

Eating squash: 10/10. Do recommend.

Cutting/peeling squash: 1 star. Would not repeat, except I want to eat the damn squash.

I'm glad! While I'm at it, I'll add I've enjoyed other things of yours. I think my favourite might be "Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge."

(I'm also an Uncanny fan, if you hadn't figured that out yet...)

I did! I'm an absolute sucker for anything that plays with formatting/medium, so...

Damn, 2800...🫡

For a moment I thought this post was just a tease, then I realized that no, this is an actual story that exists and whoops, now I'm not revising anymore.

Amazon announced 14,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $40M last year.

UPS announced 48,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $24M last year.

Intel announced 20,000 layoffs. Its new CEO's pay package is valued at nearly $69M.

This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.

some other familiar grocery store names that are brands for producer-owned agricultural co-ops:

Blue Diamond
Bob's Red Mill
Land O'Lakes
Tillamook
Welch's

Starts tomorrow!

Just for my own edification, if you are BIPOC and living in Canada and write gothic horror do you mind saying hi to me on this thread?

Off the bat respectfully I know of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Premee, Nalo Hopkinson, I love all of their work and have their books.

It really has--just a wild year in all possible ways. But yeah, so far doing pretty good 😅

haha I suppose so. Some days it feels more like the minimum lol

THEN YOU PURCHASE THEM AND DO NOT USE THE PROPERTY OF OTHERS

Goodness, I hope not! I'm too young to grow up 🤣

In between gaming, dancing, music, general life hecticness, and accidentally becoming a militant labour activist, I've been inching along on revisions of the most bizarre story I've yet written.

There are at LEAST two puns in this manuscript. Two! I don't even know who I am anymore! #amwriting

RE starbucks picket line--the relevant detail is "picket line, do not cross." Pass that along. Proclaiming that you are in no danger of doing so because you are too aesthetically pure to let Starbucks coffee pass your lips is...unhelpful and does not give the impression you perhaps imagine it does.

They're continuing to starve them on purpose

What’s really going on with AI and jobs? Record-breaking layoff reports, Amazon's mass firings, and a slump in entry level employment. Is AI behind it all?

How is AI *really* impacting jobs?

Henley Chiu, the CTO of Revealera, a jobs data analysis firm, analyzed 180 million jobs listings in 2024 and 2025, in an effort to find out. Chiu found an:

-8% drop in all jobs postings
-~30% drop in art, photography, writing jobs
-22% drop in journalism jobs

Climate change is increasing the risk of bird flu for marine mammals

I'd say something like, "I look forward to the day when we have adults in politics again," but I'm increasingly uncertain that we ever did.

anyway fuck genai.

anything you can do to help folks identify what they're looking at, and why its bad for the world is a net good.

dont generate new stuff to do it though.

It sounds like something Trump would have said when he was well enough to speak at the level of a high school graduate.

JFC, this is an official statement from the CPC.

Hi [redacted] I’ve had the opportunity to review your work, and it’s clear you have a strong command of storytelling and a distinctive voice. Your writing shows real potential for a broader audience. For this reason, I’m recommending you reach out to [agent name redacted], an independent literary agent known for her discerning eye and commitment to helping authors build lasting careers. [agent name reacted] represents a wide range of genres in both fiction and non-fiction, and has collaborated with authors such as [redacted] and [redacted]. She’s currently open to queries and can be reached at submission.[agentname]@gmail.com. When you contact her, mention that I referred you this will help ensure your work receives proper consideration. Best regards, Chiara Chiara Bianchi chiaraforauthors@gmail.com ChiaraForAuthors ...

Possible new AI-driven impersonation scam spinning up: someone contacts you out of the blue w/ praise for your work, recommends you contact a (real) literary agent & provides an email addy--but of course it's fake & results in a referral for editing or marketing. Example below 1/2

If you need the block list for the gov't propaganda sites migrating over to Bsky, here's a good one:
bsky.app/profile/did:...

Speaking at the UN Climate Action event.

Speaking at the Techonomy Impact event.

Standing in front of the SDG wall at the UN.

With Johan Rockstrom at the UN.

Final tally from #ClimateWeekNYC: 48 meetings, events, talks, panels, receptions, meals, and interviews in five and a half days 😅

I always bundle travel to cut carbon and save time, and Climate Week makes it easy!

Lengths of Fiction

Flash: Under 1,000 words.
Short Stories: Longer than that, but still short.
Novelette: *Frantically checking a magazine's guidelines*
Novella: Too long ~and~ too short.
Novels: Just one more moleskine. This will be the one.

The real issue isn’t left vs right.

It’s not white vs black.

It’s not citizen vs immigrant.

It’s not gay vs straight.

The real issue is that a lot of powerful people have a vested interest — and a lot of money invested — in dividing us, and it’s working.

2025 National Book Awards Longlist for Nonfiction The ten contenders for the National Book Award for Nonfiction

Omar El Akkad's One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is hands down the book of the year.

www.nationalbook.org/2025-nationa...

timeline cleanse

she so badly wanted the stick my son was sitting on

The credulousness around large language models, diffusion models, et al. is just so exhausting.

Bonbolapti - Twitch I am a meat popsicle. my name is Bonbolapti. Streaming is really just an excuse for me to play the things I just can't stop playing. like OVERWATCH for example. I like to think I'm good at it, but mos...

So I'm doing a thing. For a while I have been trying to think about what I can do to help out my parents who have had their home destroyed by a wildfire, (being two provinces away.) and I'm going to Marathon stream at twitch.tv/bonbolapti. For however long I think it's going to take.