Strongly encourage all academics, novelists, reporters, bloggers, whatever to just email this account and state that you want to opt out of this idiocy.
Overload them with emails and make them regret they ever tried this shit.
expertoptout@superhuman.com
The seed of a future composition usually reveals itself suddenly, in the most unexpected fashion. If the soil is favourable- that is, if I am in the mood for work, this seed takes root with inconceivable strength and speed, bursts through the soil, puts out roots, leaves, twigs, and finally flowers: I cannot define the creative process except through this metaphor. All the difficulties lie in this: that the seed should appear, and that it should find itself in favourable circumstances. All the rest happens of its own accord. It would be futile for me to try and express to you in words the boundless bliss of that feeling which envelops you when the main idea has appeared, and when it begins to take definite forms. You forget everything, you are almost insane, everything inside you trembles and writhes, you scarcely manage to set down sketches, one idea presses upon another. - Pyotr Tchaikovsky in a letter to Nadezhda von Meck
Tchaikovsky's description of his composition process is pretty much how writing works for me as well. Also why it doesn't work sometimes. :)
No respect out here for Juan de Fuca
Frederick & Nelson! One of the great department stores! youtu.be/vCOEuKGeh1M?...
To be left dead by attacks is the natural state of the Middle Easterner, while in the Western culture (also Israel somehow) being killed is a major taboo.
Screenshot of a Twitter post I found on that reads: there was a spring in second grade where every single recess I would walk out to the most remote part of the playground, “die” dramatically, and lie motionless for the entire 20 minutes. I was trying to trick a Turkey vulture into coming down to eat me so I could grab it as a pet.
porting over my “banger novel openings” thread from the bird site
People are making fun of this but at the end they open mouth kiss and it's actually kind of beautiful. They're clearly doing hand stuff too but they don't show it.
Margaret Kennedy believed that “true novelists are responsible only to themselves and their readers, not to any cause that might be pursued through politics or religion or anything else that has not been transmuted by a novelist’s imagination.” —Edward Mendelson
It’s actually FEWER Misérables
She's like an old samurai whose great battles are behind her but every once in a while she kills a man with piece of paper just to prove a point
the reason people sometimes act madder at democrats than republicans when republicans do impossibly evil shit is the same reason why, if you hired an exterminator to handle a roach infestation and he showed up to feed and play with them instead, your first instinct wouldn’t be to yell at the roaches
James Franco being executed by hanging. "First time?" he asks, as though he's been hanged before.
hey gen z welcome to republican governance
All world leaders should have to wear hats with the name of their country on them
Complicated time to be teaching Persepolis to high schoolers…
My endless diuretic.
brief me, daddy
Calling each other warriors.
If FIFA did, for some reason, regularly give out a Peace Prize, you’d think #1 on the list of criteria for potential winners would be “do not start a war with another nation in the World Cup, directly before the start of the World Cup”
Imagine turning in a jazz record to your label and saying, "This album is called 'The Shape of Jazz to Come.'" That's like Shohei Ohtani changing his name to Studderton Hitpitch in his first spring with the Angels.
[doing backing vocals for Sam Cooke] Science Book
At one point I must have groaned or something, because my wife looked over and started laughing at the face I was making. Also thought it was funny that Mary Shelley couldn't get the spotlight to herself without her big brother showing up.
I agree so hard. I was baffled by the choice. It totally undercuts the stakes.
2026 taking "Kafkaesque" to a new level
Ben Rosen Follow @ben_rosen REPUBLICANS: we're having the military throw protesters in unmarked vans DEMOCRATS: mark 5:23 • 23 Jul 20 the vans
This, basically:
I don't have a new angle on every cop union issuing its own version of Nick Swardson I Was Murdered Dot JPG after two cops got hit with snowballs while wandering NPC-style through a snowball fight. I guess I'm most curious about who called the cops to say "they're throwing snowballs in the park."
It was one of those days when you can see the ghosts of all the other lovely days. You drink a bit and watch the ghosts.
🦅
"The Value of Not Understanding Everything" -- Grace Paley biblioklept.org/2026/02/24/t...
