Shade
Writer (mostly SF, currently in July–August 2025 Asimov's; forthcoming there and elsewhere), reader, former teacher, parent to three grown women. Interests include film, religion, history, many sciences. he/him ho-hum
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Shade
Are they shooting at the raccoon god?
Priests and doctors must debate: Does Trump have chronic venous insufficiency or is he just chronically venal?
Glad to help. These BIG (never-sourced) stories from these real-ish sites keep showing up in my friends' feeds, so I've gotten accustomed to spotting them.
He knew they wouldn’t be happy until everyone had participated in a massacre for 15 minutes
It’s a banger
Fake. It keeps showing up in those bogus Facebook feeds.
Vonnegut wrote our future(s)
Turning every hand into a fist
It's a rough time for artists, writers and other creators. If you have the means to do so, consider helping out a creator this weekend. Possibly sign up for their Patreon, or buy a commission, or buy their book. If not, maybe just help spread the word about one of their works. Everything helps.
The True First People
It’s the demon dolls that add the extra zeros
“The South” has risen again.
That's her amp turned all the way up to 7.1.
“You are godlike. I foresee no problems.”
That's not crazy enough for him
Trump: You bumped into Barron? RFKJr.: Oh, that was *your* kid?
Ohhh, he means their aura. Yeah. Groovy.
Because of a FB post, I was just now thinking about it in terms of people who buy every used edition of some favorite book, thus depriving others of those copies. But yeah, billionaires too!
All the blank space crying out for a reasonable distribution of materials across a plane is freaking me out.
It’s one hell of a system
Right, right, I wasn't thinking about the "Fall of the House of Usher" ending. The film dialed way back on the fantastical. The miniseries at least had the animated hedge animals.
I frequently taught the movie in my Language of Film class, and I came to see that Kubrick's decision to abandon "the alcoholism was the evil" in favor of "this character has always hated his family/powerful white men dominate and kill and 'overlook' it" was the right move. But the book terrified me
Tossing screenplays submitted by King was a good call. I was a King fan at the time (so the changes to The Shining bothered me back then), yet I thought the modifications to The Dead Zone worked.
🐝Hivemind🐝 Do I know anyone who's a specialist in the history of the memoir, or can recommend any work about it? Looking specifically at military memoirs, but welcome any info about the format - I'm interested in how conventions might have shifted during the 19thc.
The Dead Zone, for all its SF/horror elements, has the strength of those books in its middlebrowness (like Tryon's The Other), leading to an effective and pretty powerful adaptation.
I think I first heard it in college in the early '80s (NU). I don't think I heard it growing up in Pennsylvania.
There it is! I had to click the ellipses (which I hadn't noticed) following the description. Thanks!
Keeping the floor from rising into the sky.
Except the source comic, about which I was speculating.
3-D Man?
Let's get crazy Third member of this wild triumvirate: Steve Railsback
Glad to see it made it over the border.
You need a glove-sharing arrangement with an odd-number-handed friend
But at least now you've got three hands.
Hero
A classic
This is why we can't have lupine things
c = ceiling g = ground Think I learned it from a comic book.
He’ll be driving a mobile McDonald’s.
“The evil that men do lives after them…”
So this is now Reacher’s job?
Look how they’re lightly touching
Texans SHOULD remember the Alamo. That's when the "Texians" who wanted to maintain slavery in the state got their asses whupped.
Great stuff!
Some Latin expression that gets mangled: post hoc effing doc
A Facebook friend from the UK asked why such a statement was necessary; I found your university's "AI" policy from two years back. The link to "acceptable use" of digital information is from . . . 2012. Yowza. tech.msu.edu/news/2023/08...
This is the way.
This image needed a warning. Wow.
You know this story is going to be a good time because my editor told me the first draft had too many instances of the word "poop" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/s... 🧪 (featuring Leo Uesaka, @ruthedunn.bsky.social and @movementecology.bsky.social)
What the what
“ . . . the same [dying] breath.”
Still some Dixiecrats left.
Three possibilities: 1. He has never voted. 2. He’s confusing going to the DMV with voting. 3. He dreamed this.
July–August was in B&N about a month after the announced date. That's the one folks I know would like to order. Odd that F&SF's new ish was announced on Asimov's site but not on its own. Between those sites and the social media sites, there's a lot of coordination that I hope the new folks sort out.
Fittingly, will call him on the red phone
I feel much safer knowing this.
Welcome to a morning that feels like fall. No, it won’t last.
As I said to a friend the other day, the gospels' primary agenda is not disseminating the ethics of Jesus [note: he's Jewish; he tells people to follow the Law at a radical level]; they're more concerned with making a convincing case for why he's the messiah.
Still haven't found a place for my friends and family to order the print July-August Asimov's. B&N seems to have dropped that availability. Looking forward to a better system (and the return of F&SF).
Everyone’s talking about him at every first date
Cellini and the Other Cellini
Doing this feels quite big: as well as moving from Substack to Ghost I've taken my entire writing archive out from behind the paywall. 100s of 1000s of words. My hope is that, if people do want to/can support, they will (£10 per year option is the lowest)... the-villager.ghost.io/author/tom/
😂
Maybe they’ll venture into the museums and learn something.
Dear Fellow People Who Love Imaginative Play
Ah, the origin of “short-fingered vulgarian.“
Would that note have been more bitterly structured or less if he had started with "questionable taste" and then said, "And you need a new ribbon"?
Needs current polling data
Putin: We will spill the pee. Reporter: You mean tea? Putin: That works, too.
The famed "Bridge to Nowhere" is now a Bridge to Russia.
WTAF
Heroes
I keep encountering people (outside my family) who are embarrassed or apologetic about what they're reading, and I try to not amplify that feeling. I find that when I tell them I write science fiction, they usually feel more okay with their choices.
It's like reading the notes from the Wannsee Conference.
It’s a trifuckta!
I think "Battle Lines" from DS9 season one is horror.
That won't fit on Woody's guitar
It's George HW and the War on Drugs kickoff again
An infectious tune, for sure
The Dunning-Kruger Presidency
Back when America was great, before we bought Alaska
That same site does list DC as the highest when it's treated (incongruously) as a state. www.statista.com/statistics/2...
Hey, how about the J6 folks?
The Nazis banned the use of Fraktur in favor of Antiqua, but yeah, “Germanic.” These a-holes.
So many "They killed Kenny!" moments.
I often wonder whether guys like this are constantly thinking, "I totally deserve this job, and I'm great at it" or, "I shouldn't have this job or probably any job and I certainly shouldn't be paid for what I'm doing but, hey, I'm one lucky idiot."
It rotted while on the branch.
Smash things, (don't) apologize.
Ah, I see! (I'd say Fringe is the show that truly pulled that off.) This makes for great reading to someone who lived (and died . . . and time-travelled) through it.
Having not watched ANY of the series since it ended, I have to say, this brings back the excitement and confusion of watching and the subsequent confused anger at how this show strung us along with its ramshackle storytelling and outright incompetence. Thanks!
Of course. I would never think otherwise.
I knew they had, yeah, though I don't think I saw any of it. (Hm. Maybe an ep or two.) When I went looking for Diana with her unhinged jaw, some Morena Baccarin images came up. For its time, that original miniseries was a blast.
I'd say "a club of a certain height," but now we've entered the philosophical problem of "How many of this item makes a heap?" YMMV. Your mouthsize may vary.
A Dagwood
I thought it was marking the spot where Marilyn Monroe shot that scene.
