CW: CSA mentioned, bad moderator behavior.
Okay, so.
I had a book come out yesterday (BUTTERFLY EFFECTS, available now from a bookstore near you), and as is often the case, I went out last night to promote it. Bookstore event, whee.
Writing is like 80% walking around coming up with it and 20% feeling like Sisyphus in front of my computer and the 20% feels like 80%
A porcupine perched on a tree trunk that has been partially uprooted by the wind, so it’s nearly horizontal
You may need a thing about now that isn’t awful. Here. Have a porcupine in a tree that I spotted near the St Lawrence River. I talked to them for a while and told them they were cool. I hope they got the vibe.
I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.
State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.
www.wired.com/story/gramma...
I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
"Anica Mrose Rissi has written one hell of a book about the way trauma shapes people and what it takes to rebuild yourself and your life on your own terms. Destiny’s story of abuse, addiction, neglect, and her sheer will to survive by creating a world where she can thrive is at once elegant and bruising, bone-sharp and filmy as gossamer. I loved every exquisite sentence.” —Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
“Anica Mrose Rissi has crafted a haunting, bold portrait of a young woman whose world has reached fever pitch, whose grief has taken on a life of its own. Unputdownable and exquisitely written, Girl Reflected in Knife is chilling yet beautiful, fantastical yet all too real, as we follow one girl through the looking glass. I will be thinking about this book for a very long time to come.”—Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be and The Way I Am Now
“Anica Mrose Rissi has written a mind-warping gut punch of a book. I raced through this one with equal parts dread and curiosity, desperate to see how Destiny’s story would explode and unravel.”—Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After and An Arrow to the Moon
“Girl Reflected in Knife is simply jaw-dropping. It is brave and unblinking, imaginative and revelatory. Here is a true fractured fairy tale in every sense, showing the immense power in the stories you tell to yourself and the stories you need to believe in order to survive.”—Nova Ren Suma, New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us and Wake the Wild Creatures
GIRL REFLECTED IN KNIFE comes out in 4 weeks, and 5 authors whose work I admire read it & said nice things. Thank you, @kathleenglasgow.bsky.social @ambersmithauthor.bsky.social @exrpan.bsky.social @novarensuma.bsky.social & @shauniedarko.bsky.social for these generous words that make my heart beam
What’s fucking enraging about this is that every lovely turn of phrase the AI churns out is human-authored. Google each fragment of the below - “forged in dying stars,” “created in stellar furnaces,” “the universe is not indifferent to us,” “implicated in something vast” - and you’ll find a source.
It is really weird to me when people don’t like reading and books.
I get not having enough time to read. I get wanting to read more, but there are just too many distractions around you. Obviously, I get having disabilities that make it difficult to read.
But just not liking books? Who are you?
You know how you order a book (*coughazon*) and they just throw it in a box and it arrives with damaged corners or worse?
I have *never* received a book more lovingly packaged than from MZS.press, and their library is incredible! Support their store!
Brilliant 🏆
Isata Kanneh-Mason absolutely tears through Rachmaninoff’s fiendish Piano Concerto No. 3 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
“Be kind, be involved, believe in your art,” he said. “At a time when people tell you art is not important, that is always the prelude to fascism. When they tell you it doesn’t matter, when they tell you a fucking app can do art you say, if it’s that important, why the fuck do they want it so bad? The answer is because they think they can debase everything that makes us a little better, a little more human. And that, in my book, and in my life, includes monsters.”
Love this from Guillermo del Toro
When I go out drinking with the other reporters and we start designing the outlet we’d make if someone handed us a check, the two recurring things on the wishlist are more court reporters and a revival of the Arts and Culture section
"And regardless of the wearer’s intention, much of the footage being recorded by the glasses is being sent to offshore contractors for data labeling, a widely-used preprocessing step in training new AI models in which human contractors are asked to review and annotate footage."
"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
Book banners are trying to create a world in which no one is able to imagine living lives different from their own
reading
Post from Julia Fine that says, "Write the book you want to read because you will have to read it 75 times."
#writerslife
for those of you who werent adults during iraq, its hard to overstate how much the media loves war porn. they salivate over pentagon spin briefings. they love stories about all the bombs and how supposedly infallible they are. they love the notion of the commander in chief, in the situation room etc
What the FUCK is going on and why is everyone with a soul not calling for a war crimes tribunal. Fuck impeachment, this is solidly Hague territory
The balancing on the email mechanic is completely fucked. You're meant to reply to emails, but when you do so, you're punished by almost immediately getting another email in response which then needs to be replied to. The player is disincentivized from engaging with the core gameplay loop.
I've written up a brief script for anyone who wants to call or write your representatives regarding this bill (yes, even the ones you think won't care). PLEASE DO THIS IF YOU ARE ABLE. This bill *cannot* pass.
You can find your representatives here: www.congress.gov/members/find...
House Republicans have just introduced a bill that would result in a NATIONWIDE book ban. Oh, the bill is also specifically transphobic. Contact your House Rep and ask them to publicly oppose this legislation. A few more thoughts in the thread about this action. bookriot.com/hr7661-book-...
Gawain the green knight opening a letter sealed with wax
Little Alex Horne in his studio chair with the caption "so a simple task: land a fair blow anywhere on the green knight. One year later meet him at the green chapel, receive the same blow yourself."
A cut to a wider shot showing Greg Davies in his throne turning to Little Alex Horne subtitled "Well surely no one just ran up and whanged his head clean off."
Cut back to Little Alex Horne subtitled "Let's see Gawain first."
Looks like the original has been swept away by the sands of time.
Criterion releasing K Pop Demon Hunters is a net benefit for everyone - those who like the movie will get a really good home release of it, those who don’t care about the movie will benefit from Criterion having a certified money maker that they can use to help fund more obscure/niche releases
They think punk means *acting without consent* not *acting in defiance of power*
The disappearance of YA book collections in public libraries–and the parallel winnowing of YA librarianship. Where are young people supposed to BE young people?
That, plus an extremely long roundup of censorship news: bookriot.com/the-disappea...
the actual story of what happened at the National Endowment for the Humanities last year is even more infuriating than we thought
Ho-lee Shit. This is phenomenally good news. Department of Education rolls back— for now— its attempts to destroy Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility initiatives. Keep an eye on them, of course, and watch for the hidden knife, always, but for now: Fantastic news.
I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland.
And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.
