Zoe Tongue

North Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh oil depot is ablaze tonight after it was targeted by multiple US-Israeli airstrikes. Apocalyptic scenes filmed by Iranians driving on the nearby highway. Local reporters saying firefighters can’t put it out. This depot is critical energy infrastructure for Iran.

From the first trailer of "Kindred Spirits", the new animated feature film by Tomm Moore & Cartoon Saloon (Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers) + Folivari. Coming in 2028.
Full video >> www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn9...

Verso celebrates International Women's Day For over a century International Women's Day has been a site of workers’ strikes and collective action.

For over a century International Women's Day has been a site of workers’ strikes and collective action.

We're celebrating by offering 30% off a selection of key texts on radical feminist theory and history.

Photograph of a cinema screen with 'THE BRIDE!' in large orange letters, with the names of Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale above it.

I went to a preview screening of The Bride! last night. It was fun, but for a movie that is trying so hard to be feminist, the central message is essentially that a man can successfully lie and manipulate his way into a relationship.

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

"In a UK survey of over 4,000 trans people, TransActual found that 99% say media coverage has harmed their mental health, 99% have heard politicians express transphobic views, and many have been refused non-transition healthcare simply for being trans."
transactual.org.uk/trans-lives-...

Fungi in SFF Special Issues call for non-fiction submissions

Strange Horizons is open to non-fiction submissions for our March 30th special issue which will be all about Fungi in SFF!

More information about our submission guidelines and how to submit ⬇️
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Absolutely horrifying.

I reviewed the virtually perfect first season of A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS, a story of decency and cruelty on a small and elegant stage.

www.patreon.com/posts/151431...

Photograph of the second printing edition of the It Ain't Me Babe comic book. It has a green background and features the characters Olive Oyl, Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel, Little Lulu, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, and Elsie the Cow.

Photograph of part of a comic strip. The main panel in focus shows people running out of a hole in the wall with a news headline in a box reading 'Extra!! Extra: Supergirl breaks into women's prison - prisoners flee!'

The first US underground comic book written entirely by women published in 1970, featuring a story satirising mainstream women comic book characters - including Supergirl breaking into a women's prison because she gets sick of Superman's shit.

Aside from the fact that the contemporary academy has structured the term "activist" to indicate that a given academic and their work should not be taken seriously, the rise of the "activist" in the academy, and activist fields, is coextensive with the opening of the academy to marginalized folks.

I am ABSOLUTELY reading this as HARD PROOF that Romans farmed ichthyosaurs.

It is fact now. Sorry.

A colorful graphic bearing the Direct to Open (D2O) logo.

We're happy to open 39 titles in our Spring 2026 list via Direct to Open. Our thanks to the libraries that have pledged their support! To reach our funding goals and those of partners Goldsmiths Press & Duke UP, the commitment window is open through Feb 28th, 2026: mitpress.mit.edu/the-mit-pres...

The whole idea that calling a plant milk 'milk' is deceptive to consumers is bogus in any case. Consumers aren't morons. The legal battle is garbage: it's nothing more than powerful vested interests rigging the market in their favour. That the politicians & courts go along with it is depressing.

* glares at a can of coconut milk *

Research leave notice outside our office door. Underneath key info for students, we have placed the meme of the wizard pondering his orb, to illustrate research, alongside him orbiting his pond- flying weirdly over a little blue pond - to symbolise conferences and field trips

oh shit boi research leave

@whiterxbbit.bsky.social too!

time to ponder some orbs and orbit some ponds

That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film by Payton McCarty-Simas 2025, y’all.

"As readers & critics, we naturally bring ourselves to the experience of a text. I study folk horror & keep a reproductive medicine garden. I also live in America & I’m pregnant with a daughter at a time where those are increasingly dangerous prospects, due to forces that exist outside of my body."

We are excited to open applications for a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages.

Find full details, including fee and residency requirements, below.

Application deadline: 15 February, 2026

buff.ly/yibsATf

Some tools for thinking about AI in a time when the companies making them are trying to destroy teaching and learning itself...

1/n 🧵

Help us make hope normal again.

Join the Green Party now.

Technology, Health, and Law in Life and Death This book brings together leading global scholars to examine the legal, ethical and social implications of biotechnological innovations in healthcare throughout…

I have a chapter on ectogestation and reproductive justice out in this new edited collection on Technology, Health, and Law in Life and Death 👇 www.bloomsbury.com/uk/technolog...

Calling published SFF authors!

I’m researching the work lives & well-being of science fiction and fantasy authors for my doctoral dissertation, and I'm looking for participants!

If you’re a published SFF author interested in participating, then DM me and I can provide details

Screenshot of email that reads: “This status will remain in place until the University receives notification that you are no longer participating in that action. During this period, any work undertaken will be regarded as voluntary.”

Well that’s me locked out. No pay for the foreseeable future, all because I refuse to reschedule lost teaching, for which I have already lost pay as part of the strike. Please donate to support @sheffielducu.bsky.social members like me at www.gofundme.com/f/heubvb-sup...

Sauúti Terrors Has Arrived! Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's wishing a happy book release day to all of us who made this happen, especially those of you who preordered the book or even picked up copies of…

Sauúti Terrors Has Arrived!

Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's…

That's a happy-looking cow all right. I would be too, if I could finally scratch my own butt after not having the appropriate tools my whole life.

France exonerates women convicted over abortions before legalisation Between 1870 and 1975, more than 11,660 people were convicted for performing or seeking an abortion, according to official estimates.

France exonerates women convicted over abortions before legalisation

'For humanities departments to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it. Indeed, the most useful lesson the humanities have to offer today is a profoundly countercultural one: Difficulty is good, an end in its own right.' 2/2

self portrait of the artist seated at a kitchen table with her head resting on on the table and her arms hanging limp with exhaustion. Two goblins approach her curiously.

Burned out.

Politics can be complex but on the heels of a weekend marked by dreadful murderous attacks in public, and against the background of ongoing killings in Gaza and South Sudan, Russia's war on Ukraine etc., let me please remind you: there is no contradiction in siding with all victims of violence.

I’ve been seeing this cover over and over and I just…

In the original you’re aware of the horror of falling, but the body positions of the workers are solid on the beam. Here, most of them should be falling off, yet they don’t, because they live in an unreal, consequence-free space.