P H Lee 🪬

tech companies keep making those LLM buttons bigger and bigger, i guess in hopes that more people will press them by accident and the number will go up?

i am not a pure stoic! but "do not take criticism from anyone you wouldn't go to for advice" is an incredibly sage piece of wisdom. and it applies to the average ranking of 100s of strangers over the internet as much as it applies to individuals.

i mostly write things because i like them. sometimes other people like them. sometimes a lot of other people, sometimes a little. i cannot hang my art on that or i would become a nervous mess.

i really think that there's an unbridgeable cultural divide here: how much weight do you put on aggregate, anonymous public judgements? of yourself? of others?

but also, how much weight do you put on the judgements of others, at all? which others? what judgements?

someone said "you shouldn't talk yourself down like that" which was clearly meant kindly. but i did not know how to explain how little my self-worth depends on my goodreads scores.

i still struggle with explaining it, a bit.

i thought this was a great idea, and said so.

i did note that it was somewhat self-interested: everything i write tends to be under 3.8 on Goodreads.

i remember an exchange i had a while ago on reddit-- it was a discussion of categories for their "bingo" reading challenge (a great thing) and one of the proposed categories was "something that got under 3.8 on Goodreads."

i saw this movie as a child! someone in my household (me or my parents) confused it for "The Flight of the Navigator."

i remember almost nothing about it but it is fascinating to read about.

Cover of "Foundling Fathers" by Meg Elison: a blue book featuring a polaroid-style picture of a white man in a powdered wig wearing white sunglasses and AirPods. Background: the Jefferson Memorial, desaturated, with figures on the stairs.

Foundling Fathers, by Meg Elison

Hamilton meets The Boys from Brazil
1776 meets Clone High
All the Presidents' Heads meets Jurassic Park

6.23.2026

It's the satire America deserves for her 250th. tachyonpublications.com/product/foun...

one of my favorite books

it's less "dark academia" and more "dark having a mental breakdown and failing all your classes."

Also, honestly, the chances of my emailing you out of the blue are super slim. In the past, oh, year or two I've only ever sent a "you don't know me but I love your work" sort of mail to Jenna Katerin Moran, and that was because The Night Bird's Feather was just that amazing.

(yes, this pisses me off.)

not only does "consciousness" not have a rigorous, testable definition, almost no one who likes to pontificate on the topic cares to attempt to provide one. thus: "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" is more rigorous a question than "does a traffic light have consciousness?"

unless "consciousness" has a rigorous, testable definition, it is impossible to determine whether or not any given system "has" consciousness, because quite literally we do not know what "consciousness" means. it's just vibes (or, rather, it's just a secular version of "the soul.")

(and yes, i realize that there are companies claiming to actually offer this "service" now. for the sake of god and all that is good, i hope that they are lying.)

Compassionate Simulation - Uncanny Magazine (Content Note: Abuse) Static. Startle. Wait. Wait. You’re—wait. You? “—your grandfather always said it was okay to talk to yourself—” Yes. You. You are. You are floating. No, not floating—numb. No, no...

link to the original:
www.uncannymagazine.com/article/comp...

Compassionate Simulation by Aster F our company mission to provide grieving families with accurate, compassionate simulations of their deceased loved ones--

link to the hypertext version: pieartsy.itch.io/compassionat...

review of Compassionate Simulation

review of aster f's hypertext version of my and rachel swirsky's story compassionate simulation: essy.neocities.org/reviews/comp...

my brother was absolutely obsessed with "rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead" and used to make me play "questions" with him over and over.

but for me it was "arcadia."

fantastic play. you should all see it.

tom stoppard was a huge inspiration to me. seeing "arcadia" live (at... i want to say 15?) opened up so much of what is possible in art.

Monstrous Angels: An Anthology of Religious Horror Monstrous Angels: An Anthology of Religious Horror [Sherman, Arwyn] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Monstrous Angels: An Anthology of Religious Horror

Freshly released from purgatory two days ago! Bask in the horrific religiousy goodness! www.amazon.com/Monstrous-An...

(just saw someone having a very bad opinion about narnia.)

it is completely possible to have a metaphor next to the real thing in fantasy. it's not "breaking" the metaphor. in fact, it often deepens it.

example:
discworld has metaphorical alcoholics (vampires) next to real alcoholics (sam vimes.) they don't like each other.

Introducing my YA debut, THE HOUSE OF GARDENIAS (Dutton, Fall 2026).

Congratulations!

the lion in winter is the only christmas movie.

A stack of 25 paperback copies of Asunder on a wooden coffee table.

Approximately six months, three lost deliveries, over 100 emails, and more refreshes of the UPS tracking page than bears thinking about, I have my author copies!!!

<3