iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 13h

George Saunders on using AI: "Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that?"

Have you spent time trying to write or revise with AI? Is there an experiment that would be interesting enough to try?

I have not. Not for a second. To me, this whole idea of using AI to write is . . . anathema. A thing to be most radically avoided.

Writing is the most precious way one person can communicate their essence to another person. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get better at making myself present in my writing. Why would I want to sacrifice even one iota of that? Not even in an email and certainly not in a short story or novel.

Who are we ceding our authority to, exactly, when we let AI write for us? And why? Why surrender our agency (that amazing ability we have to reach across time and space, with our strange, idiosyncratic phenomenon, and land within the sensibility of another human being) to something that, by its very design, pushes the individual sensibility aside? And in the name of . . . what, exactly? Ease, I guess? Efficiency? The person who chooses to write with AI has also sacrificed, from the start, the opportunity of experiencing difficulty, of struggling to say what he wants to say, of making himself evident in his prose, of trying to find out what he believes. By this, he sacrifices a chance to know himself and his mind better. To me, that’s a shame. And it’s dangerous, because, as we are now finding out, it affects the brain and lessens our capabilities. Thanks, but no thanks, get thee behind me, etc.

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 10h

hey reminder if you're thinking of attending @montrealworldcon27.bsky.social, rates go up tomorrow

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 11h

I’m guest editing the next issue of Agita; send me your weirdest <1000 word stories about weird art. Authors from marginalized backgrounds encouraged and prioritized. No AI bullshit. The weirder the better. agitamag.com/submissions/

Issue 3: Ekphrasis
Between October 17 and November 17, guest editor Zachary Gillan will accept submissions of weird flash fiction that features ekphrasis.
Ekphrasis is the verbal representation of a work of visual art.
Weird fiction is a verbal representation of the world, in order to unsettle it.
We want stories that live at the intersection of the two. Pieces that emphasize the eerie power of weird art, whether fully ekphrastic or embedded within a traditional narrative. How does the weird seep in as reality is doubly estranged from these two layers of representation? Cursed paintings, uncanny statues, haunted mezzotints-send us your stories of weird art.
Publication date: February 1, 2027

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 12h

maybe they'd still be around if they'd been tryharderlobites. do-or-do-notobites. succeedo- [a wave of Ordovician ghosts so numerous they appear as a solid wall of light sweeps into the room and vaporizes me]

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Benjamin @benjaminschneider.ch · 17h

Werner Herzog will be the last human being whose next word no language model can predict

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 16h

My third novel, HERO COME HOME, officially has a cover! Preorderable from the usual places us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

The cover of my third novel, HERO COME HOME. Four human figures centred, the main image being that of a bearded man looking back over his shoulder (that's Oro, the protagonist), with a circle of symbols behind him. We can see a swan and a key. In the foreground are three people: two women, one with a mysterious marking? scar? who knows!? on her cheek and the other carrying a sword, flanking an older, balding man holding up a pistol. The possibly-scarred woman looks ever so slightly amused, and that is certainly very like her. Everybody else is not happy to be here, or indeed, anywhere

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 16h

long story but I fell down a fact-checking rabbit-hole and am now obsessed with this Shonisaurus drawing, good job Dmitry Bogdanov

A drawing of a large silvery icthyosaur (a dolphin or shark-shaped extinct marine reptile) kind of a chonky boi, with a sharp beak and a jaunty air.

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Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 18h

New column up, this time of a book I had an unqualified great time with. I sometimes find books that are just enjoyable in this way hard to talk about, so this is a little of an attempt at explaining exactly what it is that felt good to me.

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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

5 potatoes cubed is still 5 potatoes because potatoes are root vegetables

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I don't get *that* many bookslop emails, but enough that it's annoying. I'm thinking about starting to use a little copy-paste response like "I don't have much influence in the publishing world, but you have earned my animosity & disgust should I ever see your name mentioned in other contexts"

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Andrew F. Sullivan @afsulli.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

when a two star review truly understands your soul better than most five stars. make it the blurb. THE MARIGOLD.

No. Noooo no no, did not like. Characters meh. Didn't care what happened to them. Glacial overwrought pace. Prosey AF. Felt like I was wearing a grey sludge patina over my soul for days while reading. Nearly DNF. Need several dozen hot showers and a good fantasy novel to shake the feeling of being sunk neck deep in neverending dull Scottish muggy moors for a week under a doomsday sky, alone. Not even birds. If soggy ancient grain bread were a novel.

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's hard to pick just one favorite part but I have to go with "QR code, doesn't work"

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

you grow up thinking your triumphant gilmore girls moment is going to be rory saying "you wrote a book!" but then it's tj saying "i am in escrow!"

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

it's weird that we don't have an emoji that's the equivalent of the "simple/gentle no", like when you shake your head with a mild frown

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Stelliform Press @stelliform.press · 29/09/2026

Still recovering from our big book weekend! Thanks to everyone who visited Stelliform at Word on the Street and Little Ghosts Fest, and to the volunteers, organizers, booth neighbours, & friends who made it possible. Extra love to the horror community for welcoming my kid for their vendor debut. 👻

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

a timeline where American democracy is destroyed by a reality show contestant does imply, weirdly, a timeline where Regis Philbin saved it

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Mike Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Honestly replace two of the three debates with quizzes

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

if the situation is "Person A promises to kill one person you love, but Person B promises to kill three people you love", it's enraging and enragingly stupid that centrist Dems think we're going to Trolley Problem ourselves into enthusiastically raising money and votes for Person A

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

really a tangent but a brilliant physicist friend of mine was very fond of exclaiming "there's no sucking in science!" after he failed to explain gravity to me again, and I think that would be a good poster, perhaps with pictures of lab-coated milkshake enjoyers

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

NY-21 is the big region of far Upstate NY that incumbent rancid maga freak Stefanik is *not* running in again; unusually blatant "I'll sacrifice a vulnerable minority in a fucking obviously doomed attempt to snag a few bigot votes"

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joe @shariauncle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

increasingly feels like my Perfectly Fine liberal arts education was an artifact grabbed fleeing a burning temple

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Molly Templeton @mollytempleton.com · 28/09/2026

hi, have you read this book? because you should read this book. also, Christopher Caldwell's introduction here is just wonderful.

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Really dug this double-review: setting up lines of thought about place, climate, and change over time. Good stuff.

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

small side thought re: the bizarre discourse around having heard/not heard "Choosin' Texas": I wonder how much losing a default audio monoculture means losing the ability to use, in the future, today's music as a period cue

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

every once in a while the fact that I live by freshwater inland seas really strikes me

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Paz Pardo @pazsays.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

the child: when is this book from? me: the nineties the child, solemnly: almost a hundred years ago. at the beginning of electricity

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Arizona Green Tea palette is so powerful

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Rachel Cordasco @rachelcordasco.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

For my new followers: I run the website Speculative Fiction in Translation www.sfintranslation.com, which tracks the latest SFT and posts reviews, news, interviews, lists, and a giant spreadsheet.

sfintranslation.com

Speculative Fiction in Translation – Your guide to speculative fiction from around the world

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

JD: With these things there's no telling We'll just have to wait and see ICC JUDGE: ... JD: But I'd rather be working for a paycheck Than waiting to win the lottery ICC JUDGE, to aide: do you think we can set up a double guillotine

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Circ @tinyicecat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This news is important because all the fucks out there actively attempting to wreck the world want you to think that the work is hopeless and just mitigating the worst case scenario. It's not. Fucking keep going.

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Amy Jo (AJ) Cousins @ajcousins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I was birding Wednesday morning and there was a wild number of raptors around. 3 Cooper's Hawks and I *thought* 3 American Kestrels chasing each other around. Then I looked at my photos and realized it was 2 Kestrels and a Merlin! I haven't seen one for 2 years. SO COOL. #birds

Photo of a Merlin swooping in to dive bomb a Kestrel who had been perched peacefully on a bare branch. The Kestrel has just leaped into the air and has its head craned to look down and behind itself casually, like, "Dude. Rude much?"

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daryl "crimetime after primetime" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

do not, my friends, become addicted to lasagna. it will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Fitzcarraldo rules and if I walked into an interview in an office that looked like this I would assume I was about to be a first act victim in an A24 film

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Kip Manley @kiplet.myatproto.social · 26/09/2026

The tragedy of our commons: I want to read discussions about a thing, and all I can find are places to buy the thing.

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Elizabeth Bear @matociquala.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Happy Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov Saves The World day to all who celebrate.

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

talking myself down from a super-emo "Of Old the Fate of Arda Marred" tattoo

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Brendan Keogh @brkeogh.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It was actually a lot of fun and I don't regret it. Overcommitting to a big complex narrative is good. Reading trash is good.

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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

new favourite Smaug dropped

the 1968 "pleasure in reading" edition of the hobbit featuring an adorable bright pink Smaug torching the inhabitants of lake town

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

on the one hand, I'm not getting a lot of follow-ups, but on the other, have managed to keep my true name from them

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Tricia Lockwood @tricialockwood.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

putting thom yorke in my new novel as the creature of the heath

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Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Cry "haddock" and let slip the fish of war

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

reality TV show called "Urban Heat Island" where a diverse group of attractive, talented, and dramatic people are brought together to plant shade trees, encourage permeable surfacing, construct community-friendly splash pads, etc

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GT 🫪 @granitetide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

they've started doing ad reads for Claude on @99pi.org and I'm devastated - a podcast dedicated to the beauty, meaning and intention of the human-designed world is now being paid to suggest cutting that human element out completely

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