Thad McIlroy

The One Book Every Editor Wants to Publish The Commercial/Literary Spectrum and the Invention of the Upmarket Book

Excellent analysis of the state of fiction publishing today: @dearheadofmine.bsky.social dearheadofmine.substack.com/p/the-one-bo...

Guest post: Forget pickles and ice cream. I published a fake paper on pregnancy cravings for prime numbers Image generated by Google Gemini I had grown weary of the constant stream and abuse of spam invitations to submit manuscripts to journals and to attend fake conferences on the other side of the wor…

This one is fun: "Accepting the challenge, I decided to submit a deliberately nonsensical, AI-generated manuscript in response to observe how the individuals behind these supposed journals operate." retractionwatch.com/2026/01/30/g...

"We imagine a world where AI models can think at the level of humans without ingesting half the internet." flappingairplanes.com

From the horrorlit community on Reddit: Shy Girl by Mia Ballard. Does anyone else think this was written by ChatGPT? Explore this post and more from the horrorlit community

The "Shy Girl" (Mia Ballard) controversy "I called it quits when she called Farrah Fawcett 'Farah Faucet'” www.reddit.com/r/horrorlit/...

What you need to know about Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary Multimillion-dollar documentary focuses on Melania Trump in the 20 days before her husband’s second presidential inauguration

"So: Will Ratner’s film be a warts-and-all chronicle of the First Lady? Or will it be a portrait of a woman who has gone out of her way to avoid contributing anything of cultural significance to a nation that is currently being terrorized by her husband?" www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/film...

"Chat is still the interface but no longer the product."

"Here’s what using Claude Code initially felt like: cooking with ingredients from a stranger’s fridge..."

Re Claude Code: "The problem is not that your friend is horribly uncreative. It’s that most people’s problems are not software-shaped..." @jasmine.bsky.social

Garner is such a great reviewer: "Peel the dust jacket off “Departure(s)” and what’s left is a slim, black volume, like a hymnal. Where there was fire, there are now mostly ashes."

A Briny Englishman (and Booker Prize Winner) Says Farewell

The woman, Jean, says to him, in a line Julian Barnes might also have uttered: “Happiness doesn’t make me happy.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/b...

Why Europe is rediscovering the virtues of cash In a world of payment apps and digital euros, the coin is staging a modest comeback

And: "Europe, or at least its northern bit, is the land that cash forgot. In Norway and Sweden coins and notes are vanishing into the past alongside Vikings and discontinued ikea bedspreads." www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Saudi Arabia has its first boozy new year—sort of Who exactly is allowed to get sloshed?

The Economist, droll as ever: "Your monthly allowance buys 200 bottles of wine or 50 litres of whisky, which is a lot for anyone not named Churchill or Hemingway." www.economist.com/middle-east-...

China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You’re Still Alive Are You Dead Yet soared to the top of app-store charts and became a magnet for investors. In an exclusive interview with WIRED, one of its creators says they’re changing the name anyway.

China's “Are You Dead Yet” app asks users to tap a button once every day, and if they fail to do so for two consecutive days, it automatically sends an email to a designated emergency contact, urging them to check on the user in person. www.wired.com/story/china-...

Review | A woman’s life among black bears taught her a lot about being human Trina Moyles’s memoir, “Black Bear,” examines her experiences in wilderness and her contentious relationship with her brother.

I see we've got the latest addition to the canon for 2026: "A xxx’s life among xxx taught her/him/them a lot about being human," in this case, black bears. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/0...

In the Aftermath of Victory, by Vince Passaro Malcolm Cowley and the dream of the American canon

"In a vigorous literary culture, the annual conference of the AWP would demand the presence of the National Guard, but in reality it only creates a staggering need for tote bags." harpers.org/archive/2026...

‘Heated Rivalry’ Author on ‘Listening’ to Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams Film Their First Sex Scene, Wanting 12 Episodes for Season 2 and How the Show’s Success Is Helping Her Fight Parkinson’s 'Heated Rivalry' author Rachel Reid talks about Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie's first sex scene, her hopes for Season 2 and fighting Parkinson's.

New interview with Rachel Reid in Variety: “I’ve been asked to speak at the U of Cambridge,” Reid says. “I write hockey smut. I’m not Kurt Vonnegut. They were like, ‘We’ve had Robert De Niro and the Dalai Lama.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, and me — I fit right in there.’” variety.com/2025/tv/colu...

Link?

'Heated Rivalry': How a Hockey Romance Novel Became a Smutty HBO Hit People’s latest TV obsession is an NSFW Canadian romance series about two hockey players secretly in love.

“...hockey is a sport they don’t have a lot of knowledge about, so it’s kind of relaxing. It’s almost like science fiction — it’s a sport that doesn’t seem real,” Reid says. www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...

Why it's Wise to stay on X:
• Crucial to stay well-informed about Palantír
• Understand the arts of the Enemy
• Let's be real, rag-tag band of furries and elves has no chance
• If you can't beat them join them

Talking With Paul Kedrosky So, about this AI thing ...

"This is the first bubble to have all four. We’ve got real estate, loose credit, a technology component, and a huge government component... So all of those forces together means people are looking at it through four different lenses... It's the sum of all bubbles." substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Talking With Paul Kedrosky So, about this AI thing ...

"Part of the problem is the technology industry itself isn’t used to anyone saying no, they’re kind of like a petulant toddler." substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Yield Giving Established by MacKenzie Scott to share a financial fortune created through the effort of countless people, Yield is named after a belief in adding value…

"The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

"We are the ones we’ve been waiting for."

yieldgiving.com/essays/we-ar...

Discoveries Across Disciplines 2025 Explore groundbreaking interdisciplinary discoveries & forge future innovations in 2025.

Discoveries Across Disciplines 2025: Includes "Using AI to trace the emotional patterns in literature and explore cultural archives." eventbrowse.com/event/discov...

Great post. Thoroughly thorough!

The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...

"One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 billion in 2024" english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Big Ideas in Publishing: Jonathan Woahn on AI Licensing Infrastructure New interview: Jonathan Woahn on how his startup Cashmere gives publishers control over their content in AI systems. As Jonathan puts it, they provide tools to manage entitlement, security, access, re...

New interview in the newsletter: Jonathan Woahn on how his startup Cashmere gives publishers control over their content in AI systems. As Jonathan puts it, they provide tools to manage entitlement, security, access, reporting, and turn-key RAG infrastructure. open.substack.com/pub/pubtechr...

Predatory Opt-Outs: The Speculators Come for the Anthropic Copyright Settlement - Writer Beware The enormous, $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright class action settlement is reputedly the biggest copyright infringement recovery in history. With such a high-profile case, it’s inevitable that eligible...

New #WriterBeware blog post: the minute the humongous Anthropic copyright settlement was announced, it became inevitable that unrelated third parties would seek to benefit...in this case, by convincing authors to opt out writerbeware.blog/2025/11/07/p...

"With less than 5% of titles on Amazon available in more than one language...." @steviebonifield.bsky.social www.theverge.com/news/815987/...

Bitcoin falls below $100,000 for the first time since late June Cryptocurrencies retreated Tuesday as investors continued to flee risk-on assets.

“Bitcoin and the broader crypto market is exhausted... Bad news is very bad for crypto right now … and good news barely moves the needle.” www.cnbc.com/2025/11/04/b...