Jake Casella Brookins

Man, Ebo Taylor, what a loss—constantly on my rotation, what a titan. Leaving behind that many decades of great music.Do yourself a favor and look him up if you're not familiar. Never fails to improve my mood.

The Panican Brief

Egan is such a blast to read—really enjoyed revisiting this one with Eden. We somehow didn't make the Ted Chiang comp, but: if you are hungry for more like EXHALATION or STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, pick up some Egan post-haste.

does anyone else keep opening tabs with interesting articles and then discovering that you have just absolutely no capacity to read them

honestly with thermal underwear and two layers of flannel and a hoodie and fingerless gloves and a scarf and a hat and thick socks and slippers and special alpine anti-chilblain cream and a space heater and a lap blanket—this cold snap's no big deal

One thing that AI author article really crystallizes for me is how much the “they’re crap books” portion of any discussion of both the creation and consumption of crap books gets glossed over because books & reading have this sheen of inherent virtue to them

the latter, I would never get mad at how well a sauce works

kind of hate how well pomodoro works for me

Really great piece, thank you for writing it—really enjoy biographical context for literature when it significantly sheds light on both sides of the equation, isn't just color; and the idea of failure as maybe sometimes essential, an integral break, is one I'll be thinking about for a while.

“There’s no such thing as unskilled labor” is problematic because it excludes bassists in punk bands

GM: Charisma check.

Mamdani: [rolls natural 20]

GM: that’s a d6 how did you

Mamdani: [direct to camera] Did you know you can check out board games at your local public library? 😊

You'll Have To Pay The Price: The Real Warren Zevon Story

touching my cat’s stomach gives her a reason to attack. sort of a casus belly

I wrote a piece on Corey's THE MERCY OF GODS for @typebarmagazine.bsky.social a year or two ago that I'm still pretty happy with, about this pernicious fantasy of "internal resistance" to evil. More and more obvious that it's external, explicit resistance that we need.

I wouldn't want to speculate too much on intention—this is a while back and I'm just going on memory & vibes—but I think there was a mix of thinking they could preserve quality & mission, and yes a cynical awareness of the reality & perception of the situation & likely developments.

Whenever I see “what should be a proper gateway text to sff” discourse, I’m torn.

On the one hand, I agree with the consensus that you wouldn’t want to drop either the dated sexism of an Asimov and Heinlein onto a 15yo or even something as heavy as a LeGuin.

the number of meetings and emails I had to endure about how the JAB buyout wouldn't change anything— L, I say, O L

screaming

Came here to say this!

The Litany Against Embroilment

Eyebrows trying to run all the way up over my head, possibly to hide

Who would I invite to my album about computers? Obviously Garcia & Corea & a murderers' row of Heartbreakers/Jefferson Airplane etc members

It's wild how Transverse City is simultaneously a platonic sketch comedy about the cyber-dadrock bit and also...good

YouTube video by Warren Zevon - Topic Run Straight Down (Remastered)

This is your periodic reminder that Warren Zevon did one of the best albums of the era where everyone was legally required to do a cyberpunk album www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obp4...

My SFF criticism hot take is that I wish the sexy war criminal romantasy trend (which some authors are getting seven-figure advances for! there is BIG big industry money pushing this!) got a even fraction of the attention that cozy fantasy seems to when we talk about normalizing fascism in the genre

I'm trying to be delicate here, but it is hard not to imagine a room of the whitest scholars you can imagine brainstorming a poster that says eg "Oh, Wyrd!"

what...is going on...behind that distinction

Criticism, yes, should be part of the cultural conversation.

Perhaps that's the real loss, here -- not book reviews/coverage themselves, but people's ability to understand that books aren't simply products to be sold. They're tools to help us unlock ideas, arguments, fantasies, and deep meaning.

I wrote a piece on Corey's THE MERCY OF GODS for @typebarmagazine.bsky.social a year or two ago that I'm still pretty happy with, about this pernicious fantasy of "internal resistance" to evil. More and more obvious that it's external, explicit resistance that we need.