Jeff VanderMeer

This was a situationally-appropriate reference this morning to a scene in @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social's novel Authority.

bsky.app/profile/xybu...

Great idea.

three unknown orcas were spotted in vancouver harbor the past week. mysterious, unidentifiable, possessed of advanced cognitive and navigation skills, no doubt seeking yachts

Grammarly declined my request to interview CEO Shishir Mehrotra today. But it told me that in response to criticisms, it will allow experts to opt out of the feature by emailing expertoptout@superhuman.com.

I've decided that instead of wasting my own time to see if Grammarly has stolen my name and writing for use their business, I'd just email them to opt out and make them waste some time cleaning up their own goddamn mess.

www.platformer.news/grammarly-ex...

This one from last summer completely realligned my mood! 🐕

James Elkins' five-book series continues with Stories, Like Illnesses, book three, in September. Can't wait to read it! These are among the most ambitious novels I've ever read. I would say the second was the most unconventional, but hilarious, profound, beautiful, absurdist, and so, so fascinating.

Veep x 10

We've reached the point where you actually have to opt OUT of an author impersonation feature.

Let me tell you the weekslong process my company just went through just to be able to send marketing texts to people. But monetizing a product you're pitching as author coaching? Ok!

love the soundtrack lol

So apparently grammarly stole my fuckin identity

my lord, please direct me as to how my book can serve you. shall it be made into a waffle, to feed thee, or shall i melt it from a steel box into a ploughshare, that thou shall till the land, or should this one that is a stark raving porcupine with wings be made into a rumba? speak now or shaddap.

A black and white night photo taken with my camera trap. It shows the wall of the house in the background with a railroad tie step on the left of the frame and small landscaping rocks in-between the steps. A hose pipe is coiled unceremoniously on the right side of the frame. A raccoon is standing up close to the wall, perhaps even against the wall. It is facing the camera with its front paws held close together at chest height. Its black face mask and nose are visible. A tiny part of its bushy, ringed tail is also visible.

Same spot as the first photo this time the raccoon has its two front paws held down past its chest, it's looking up to the top left. Its teeth are visible through a slightly opened mouth.

Same spot as the other two photos as these are consecutive shots from the camera. The raccoon now has its mouth open wider, it is still standing up against the wall as if in a Police lineup.

You guessed it, same spot as the other photos, the raccoon is still standing, back against the wall (or very close to it) as if in a lineup. It looks like he, or she, has done this before.

This masked bandit looks like he knows the Police lineup drill. 🤣

Taken with rapid fire photo mode on the Browning Strike Force FHDR camera

#mammals

Appreciate cogent, well-written analysis in this day and age.

Problem Child | Eli Cugini Pixar isn’t just dithering about diversity—it has become visibly scared of children themselves.

very excited for this to be out in the world: i wrote about repressed queerness in Elio, child surveillance in Inside Out 2, the post-Lasseter crisis, and the figure of the child in Pixar for The Baffler

thebaffler.com/latest/probl...

Leonora Carrington, The Lovers, 1987

why do people call out fiction when i make a comment pertaining to a real-world situation? like, i'm not saying i'm writing this as a novel. i'm making a joke that i hope people will build on. just curious.

That's a fictional movie.

how long until the headline "my AI friends started making plans and going places without me"

*wakes up screaming in the pod*

community, compassion, caring

this shouldn't feel out of the ordinary

it should be normal

yes, trees exist

i'm glad you realize this, but we have no leeway to crowdfund cryptids. i'm afraid they're on their own. also, it's clear to me their physiology is not up to surviving the future, as it's always blurred and messed up.

there is no sasquatch

let's push for helping squid attain an average life span of 75 years, not 4. this will undoubtedly help advance their civilization far enough along to sort out our problems as a way of curtailing future problems for them, too. i think we probably crowdsource this to completion in a couple days.

even the most corrupt raccoon would be content with goldfish

the worst and most incompetent people at the most important time in human history

well, it's time to start supporting the rise of the squid and the raccoons

When he turns from the water, it is no longer winter but spring. The apparition has performed a kind of sorcery that makes King gasp. The trees on the crags are in blossom and the ridge awash in low-stemmed wildflowers in purples and yellows and pinks, and there is the sun, like a honeyed apple coveted by the wide blue smile of sky, and in that light, there can be nothing ominous in the breeze lingering across the shore or the wavelets that runnel there, nor how the patter of the shorebirds, the stenciled pattern of their tracks, makes of them tiny fey folk, with their large eyes and delicate beaks, the way they celebrate the surf by mirroring its wash and withdrawal, their steps precise and perfect to shadow but not interrupt, as if practiced for twice a thousand years and these same birds here all those long centuries, even as the oystercatchers with their stern line and stillness feel so solemn to King he doubts not the truth of a sudden spring but laughs from a driftwood bench at the stoicism and how they shall not abandon their duty to what in all other beings in that season is a quickening and a frolic.

passed 90,000 words on the novel today

Alone in Berlin AMC+ Drama 4.4/4/5 103 min 2017 A group of soldiers fight off an alien invasion Included with your AMC+ subscription Man in dark hat and overcoat looming on the right hand side.

I watched almost all of Alone in Berlin waiting for the aliens to show up...and they never did. Thanks, aberrant description. Thanks a lot.

Just a couple days left to register! Join Jeff VanderMeer and Leanne Dunic at 2 p.m. ET on March 11 for a conversation all about CRYPTIDS, moderated by McKayla Coyle and presented in partnership with our friends at LitHub.
orionmagazine.org/event-worksh...

Jeff on left and Enrigue on right behind a small table with big mics. The back of the heads of three spectators in front.

Really loved being Álvaro Enrigue's in-conversation partner at @powells.bsky.social tonight, to celebrate his new novel Now We Surrender. It's one of the best books I've read in the past few years. Poignant, brutal, funny, exciting, important. A must-buy. (photo by @sallyfisherprice.bsky.social)

A pink camellia and green leaves.

Today in the garden. These early bloomers (starts in January) usually get decimated by February ice or snow. Not this year!!