Max Gladstone

Django Wexler on The Thirteenth God As prophesied, or, well, mentioned anyway

This is an interesting convo between @maxgladstone.bsky.social and @djangowexler.bsky.social about, among other things, the publishing industry, and it brings up an angle - the bestseller being a market correction - that is my personal explanation for the romantasy phenomenon. (1/2)

Writing Doesn't Always Look the Way You Think A couple days ago Penny Arcade posted a great scathing comic about an ad for an LLM; the ad promised that new users could “start writing for free!” Of course...

The mighty @maxgladstone.bsky.social is very smart about making things and you should read his newsletter.

buttondown.com/MaxGladstone...

None of that's gone away, some friends still use Alexa to set kitchen timers, self-executing smart contracts are good for some applications, VR is better than it's ever been (though still Not There Yet)—but the Immediate Transformation hasn't come to pass

I see a lot of it as fatigue over the last ten years of Next Big Thing tech boosterism: everything's going to be a voice assistant, everything's gonna be blockchain, everything's gonna be metaverse / VR, everything's gonna be AI

Perry: When is it OK to compare aspects of what’s happening in Minnesota to Nazi Germany? Gov. Tim Walz has made some such analogies in relation to ICE and has been criticized for it, David M. Perry writes.

Historical analogies are arguments. So when someone makes an analogy between today and the Holocaust, or today and anything, think about they are really arguing for. What is the analogy trying to get you to do?

New at @startribune.com

That's awful, I'm so sorry. You did such great work there.

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

sports coverage is not about box scores anymore. it's about power and politics and corruption and sovereign wealth and real estate and the use of taxpayer money and the most publicized labor disputes in the country and yes, sometimes about ball go in hoop

Donate to Washington Post 2026 layoff fund, organized by Rachel Siegel On Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, The Washington Post laid off hundreds of journalists. We ar… Rachel Siegel needs your support for Washington Post 2026 layoff fund

We at the @postguild.bsky.social are raising money for the hundreds of journalists the Post just laid off. This goes to the people who are hurting, not the Post. Or if you'd rather, go subscribe to an independent journalist. Support is hugely appreciated.

www.gofundme.com/f/standing-t...

Alright, speaking of which—page is calling

if ever there was a song made for a Muppets version

also, of course, it is *fun* & helpful to talk about & try to share the bits of sense we've gleaned from doing the work! it makes us all feel less deranged, which ain't nothing

Makes sense! I've come to think that 'talent' is mostly code for 'whether you're bent in a way that helps you put in the work'

i didn't even have to make this one post i could have just linked vin diesel's "500 fights" speech from knockaround guys

(Which is hard when any feed is full of 9000 other people's finished work, of course!)

And more patience with ourselves.

Much online discussion about Writing is not unlike Fitness Content. You don't need a new workout, you need time and consistency. For most of us—including myself here!—what we need is just... more time with the page.

Fine, structure, Aristotle, McKee, freytag, you can save the cat if you want, snowflake method, gardeners vs. architects, even Gardner (though I love Gardner), okay, you can get 99.9% of the way there just by writing more, and at some point starting to reread and think about what you've written

Writing also has one of the lowest possible barriers to skill acquisition—all you have to do is write more

Today's Penny Arcade gets it

ahahaha make ‘em fucken miserable then don’t let ‘em drink about it 👏🏼 masterful

"I'd like to share a story from a local paper in Coldwater, Michigan dated to the 9th of April, 1945. It tells how the US Army, under General Patton--the US 3rd Army--came onto what you might call a detention center just outside the village of Ohrdruf, Germany. The US Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A US Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes, without muttering a word, that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was (quote) 'done by a few people, and you cannot blame us all.' And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said, 'this was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.' The morning after the tour, the Mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don't know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, 'how is this my fault? I have no jurisdiction over this.' Maybe he would have said, 'this site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?' But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew--as we do--that we are all responsible for what happens in our community. I urge the council to take action to stop, or stall, or at the barest minimum to think creatively about how to exercise oversight over this proposed ICE facility. Thank you."

This is brilliant. I'm so grateful for this testimony. I've transcribed it to use in letters I'm writing. Sharing the full transcription here (see alt text to copy/paste it):

Bearing witness against ice with @bearingwitnessice.bsky.social, at the field headquarters behind the Burlington mall.

1/?

maybe I'm reading it wrong but it looks like kids are getting the others to back off

couple of kids pulling guard there, the guy in the grey hoodie getting his hooks in, the dude going for the rabbit punches in the base of the skull at the end, i'm impressed with the group's restraint that they let him go

This took me 3 years, drew it as a teen, it’s 10 ft long drawn freehand (no rulers, I draw straight lines by looking at edge of the paper & pretending to trace it while my pencil is at a different coordinate— how I get symmetry too). Even if not eligible Im glad someone thought it was worth awarding

Beautiful, thank you

The Iskari Rectification Authority approves of this message. @maxgladstone.bsky.social

3 yrs ago I started writing a book that is in stores TODAY. It's narrative nonfiction, anti-fascist spy thriller set in Trump era. It's timely as hell & I'm proud of it.

A thread of what people are saying abt it & why I hope you'll help make it a bestseller www.simonandschuster.com/books/To-Cat...

Love to take an invigorating nap by leaning back in my chair with my feet up on the desk, secure in the knowledge that none of the king’s prisoners (especially not the one with the oddly charming rodent confederate) will notice or attempt to misappropriate the ring of keys hanging from my belt