iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Every time I try to use Google Maps for cycling around London I'm certain it's plotting my death.

Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

Leaf Journal: On Writing for Young People @leafjournal.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

We're so excited to be joined by the wonderful @clarefurniss.bsky.social and @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social for 'Practical Process' as part of On Writing for Young People, the online conference, 20-21 Nov. Last few tickets left: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/on-writing... #ukkidlit #academicsky #booksky

Purple leaves surround a text. The text reads 'On Writing for Young People. Panel 4: Practical Process. Online Conference 20-21 Nov 2025.'

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Ever felt ready to HOWL? I'm thrilledddddd to reveal the UK cover for my adult debut novel FEMME FERAL, coming April 2026. Hyper-competent Ellie thinks she’s going through perimenopause, but discovers she’s actually turning into a werewolf. More: www.sambeckbessinger.com/upcoming-fem...

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

I love this city with my whole heart.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

it’s London in September and I’m leaving the house for an hour, better pack sunglasses, a cardigan, a brolly, SPF50, a hat, raincoat, thickest woollen socks

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

OH MY, what's this, a pre-order link for my perimenopause werewolf novel, OUT IN THE WILD??? U.S. @barnesandnoble.com Premium and Rewards members, use PREORDER25 at checkout for 25% off if you order before tomorrow: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/femme-fera...

barnesandnoble.com

Femme Feral: A Novel

A hyper-competent tech leader who thinks she’s going through perimenopause discovers she’s actually turning into a werewolf in this feminist, dark-comedy debutThe head of a company she sta...

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

A collection of extremely good medieval dogs painted on tiles: williammorristile.com/medieval/med...

Medieval dog licking its own testicles. Somewhat sheepish expression.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Writing a description of a boujie London neighbourhood, but nothing I could invent is as funny as the real nonsense I've seen walking around Chelsea: "Boutique Fitness Cafe", a "face gym" (face massages + electric stimulation of your cheeks), an on-demand therapy centre for "self-improvers".

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 21/05/2025

I covet MANY things up for grabs on the Genre for Trans auction, but I really, really want sweet revenge. @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social is offering the chance to immortalise your worst (male) boss in her upcoming menopausal werewolf novel all about that rage. www.32auctions.com/organization...

32auctions.com

Name a novel character after your worst boss

Auction item 'Name a novel character after your worst boss' hosted online at 32auctions.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

81% of kids in South Africa can’t read for meaning by age 10. In countries like Norway? Just 6%. Streetlight Schools is proving that low-cost, high-quality education is possible. They’ve already brought the cost of excellent education down to a fraction of what the government spends. [1/5]

streetlightschools.org

Support Us — Streetlight Schools

WELCOME TO OUR HIGHSCHOOL NURTURING VALUES, BLENDING REALITIES, INSPIRING FUTURES

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 20/04/2025

From my latest piece. The true motivating energy behind the anti-trans activists of today.

Ultimately, Freeman’s column isn’t pitiful because it rubs salt in the wound—it’s pitiful because it lays bare the true aim of the anti-trans movement. This was never about policy or bathrooms or youth sports. It’s about a cohort of people who feel culture shifting beneath their feet, who were raised in a world where casual cruelty toward transgender people was normalized, and who now find themselves resentful that society has moved on. Rather than reflect or grow, they double down, demanding that their revulsion be seen as virtue—that their discomfort be not only accepted but celebrated. Freeman’s yearning for social validation, cloaked in the language of righteous indignation, reveals the movement’s hollow core. The title of her piece says it all: this isn’t about the law, it’s about the isolation that comes from being wrong. And no court decision—no matter how cruel—will win back the friendships lost to hate, or rescue those who chose the wrong side of history from the consequences of that choice.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

As an author, logging onto Goodreads feels like hiding in a bathroom stall to try to eavesdrop on people gossiping about you.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Love and solidarity to my trans sisters in the UK today.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Extremely random question for my novel: when they're just sitting on the shelves, before you light them, do fireworks have a smell?

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Obsessed with this poem. "I am falling in love and I don't know what to do about it | Throw me in a haunted wheelbarrow and set me on fire" thespinoff.co.nz/books/13-05-...

thespinoff.co.nz

The Friday Poem: ‘Monica’ by Hera Lindsay Bird

The most exciting new poet in New Zealand letters takes on her most complex subject yet – Monica Geller, from Friends.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Many things freak me out about AGI/superintelligence, but this extremely plausible and well-researched (albeit annoyingly US-centric) scenario about how misaligned AGI could wipe out all life on earth by 2030 is probably the freakiest: ai-2027.com

ai-2027.com

AI 2027

A research-backed AI scenario forecast.

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Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Copyright law is clear. If you want to use a creator's original, copyright work for any purpose, you need to get their permission and agree payment. Copyright law does not need revising. It needs enforcing. #DoTheWriteThing

Graphic for the Society of Authors' day of action against Meta.

Compensation for creators.

Meta must #DoTheRightThing

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Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Today UK authors are protesting against Meta for stealing our work to train their AI model. Authors earn an average of £7000 per year, we are not rich, and yet a trillion dollar company decided it didn’t want to license our work fairly as it was “too expensive” Theft is not a valid alternative.

META BOOK THIEVES - They Must Do The Write Thing

The Society of Authors are protesting Meta’s HQ today

This image shows illustrations of authors holding placards saying “make it fair” and “do the write thing”

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Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

1. One of capitalism’s greatest successes is to shut down our imaginations. With the help of its favoured tools - neoliberalism and fascism - it persuades us that “there is no alternative”. Our first task is to re-ignite our moral imaginations and name our alternatives. 🧵

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Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

Titan Books @titanbooks.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

We had a great time last night celebrating all things Women in Horror with Neena Viel, @vlatinalondon.bsky.social, @beckbessinger.bsky.social & @catrionaward.bsky.social! Thank you to everyone who came out and asked such great questions, and to the team at Waterstones Covent Garden for having us! ✨

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Horror fans! Come join me at Waterstones Covent Garden next week chatting with fellow Horrible Women @catrionaward.bsky.social, Neena Viel and V. Castro: www.waterstones.com/events/women...

Women in Horror: Wednesday 19 March 6pm at Waterstones Covent Garden

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

SO PROUD to part of Bloomsbury's new SFF imprint, Archer, joining the hunt with fellow fierce and phenomenal writers Samantha Shannon, Natasha Siegel, Sarah Mughal Rana and Alan Moore 🏹✨: www.thebookseller.com/news/new-sff...

thebookseller.com

New SFF imprint Bloomsbury Archer 'out to make some real publishing magic'

Bloomsbury Archer, the publisher's new SFF imprint, is set to publish "across the constellation of speculative fiction", led by publishing director Vicky Leech Mateos.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

A brilliantly clear, cogent explanation of what South Africa’s new land bill actually says.

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Colin Yeo @colinyeo.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

1. Quick 🧵 on the change to policy that, on the face of it, bans refugees from ever acquiring British citizenship. @sonial77.bsky.social has published a short article on Free Movement: freemovement.org.uk/good-charact... And I've done a follow up on my Substack: open.substack.com/pub/wewanted...

open.substack.com

New change to Home Office policy permanently blocks refugees from citizenship

Change is bad in principle and breaches the Refugee Convention

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Reposted by Sam Beckbessinger

Mushtaq Bilal, PhD @mushtaqbilalphd.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Meta illegaly downloaded 80+ terabytes of books from LibGen, Anna's Archive, and Z-library to train their AI models. In 2010, Aaron Swartz downloaded only 70 GBs of articles from JSTOR (0.0875% of Meta). Faced $1 million in fine and 35 years in jail. Took his own life in 2013.

“Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

A photo of Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) when he was 19.

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Broke my self-imposed ban to check out the memes happening on South Africa TikTok right now about the "white genocide", and my god, I love my country 😂😂😂

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Such a helpful summary of the last two weeks of chaos from @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social: "Trump is acting like a king because he's too weak to govern like a president...The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don't believe him." www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8QL...

youtube.com

Don't Believe Him | The Ezra Klein Show

YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Feel very seen by this @isobeldixon.bsky.social poem. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood so I lay down and took a nap."

$Tumbled in fractious, scratchy grief, let me lie in the undergrowth, feel sorrow pass from me into the earth. Hold, receiving soil, and give - my aching shoulder, this eroding spine, the bruised cage in which these organs heave. I don't know how or why they carry on, except they do, and bear the weight of me with them. Two roads diverged, and I lay down, for what else could I do. Sink to my knees and stretch out long, heart-tattered, in a lap of salving green. Let braver travellers venture on. Let me succumb and dream among the leaves as if I were a child again and no one there to call me in. I saw a painting once like this, of ink on silk: moist emerald, a shaded world. The trees rise silently, and a skein of weasel threads the white-starred forest floor: a weasel paused among fish mint, wild strawberries. This is that pause. A forest bath, soul-tunnelling. A time to sleep among the beetles in a cloak of rain and fragrant asterids and wake, May-dazed, to a softer path. An apple-green music, pale vanilla light, a cup of stem-steeped early summer wine.$

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Let's talk about $TRUMPcoin. Imagine that I have 100 dried kidney beans in my kitchen cupboard. I come to you and say, "See these kidney beans, they're magic! They're magic because I'm magic, and I've enchanted the beans. Each of these magic beans is worth $1-million!"

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

I watched the US inauguration because if there’s a crocodile swimming towards me I want to keep my eye on it, and I now feel physically nauseated, but BOY did it feel like a pointed comment from the universe when the national anthem would not play

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

I've been thinking a lot about rage, recently, and other ugly emotions. Some very unresolved, tentative thoughts about this over on my blog: www.sambeckbessinger.com/since-feelin...

sambeckbessinger.com

Since feeling is first

Thoughts on rage and other gnarly emotions

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MrsEmilyFinch @mrsemilyfinch.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Mary Oliver bringing truth this morning. @maryoliverdaily.bsky.social

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Emily McGovern @emilyscartoons.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Get thee to a nunnery ✝️

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

I'm pushing through the final few days of the next draft of my novel, and my partner just plonked a bottle of wine on my desk, kissed my head, and backed away slowly. This is the way.

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Merrill Markoe @merrillmarkoe.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

I wrote a review of A COMPLETE UNKNOWN: the brand new Bob Dylan bio pic. And I guarantee you it is totally unlike any other critique of the film that you are ever going to run in to. merrillmarkoe.substack.com/p/a-complete...

merrillmarkoe.substack.com

'A Complete Unknown': The Ballad of TOSHI

And INTRODUCING 'THE TOSHI AWARDS!'

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Mary Williams @PlantTeaching @plantteaching.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Solstice sunrise in 20 minutes in London, half an hour later in Glasgow. In two hours the Earth will sloooowwwwllly make the turn towards more daylight here in the north. Time to celebrate! Read more www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ck...

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

I think I have been very restrained only adding a single Boney M song to my xmas playlist this year: open.spotify.com/playlist/7J4...

open.spotify.com

Xmas

Playlist · Sam Beckbessinger · 127 items

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Every time I think I'm finally starting to understand the UK, after living here for five years, something like "soggy sandwichgate" is reported on the FRONT PAGE OF NEWSPAPERS and I realise I still do not at all understand this country.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Looking for gifts for the tots, teens or inbetweens in your life? How about getting them ... (surprise surprise) ... a BOOK?! Here's an utterly biased list of my favourite children's books of the 21st century, if you're stuck for ideas: www.sambeckbessinger.com/favourite-ch...

sambeckbessinger.com

Favourite children's books of the 21st century

Delicious reads for tots, teens and in-betweens

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Rachael Scotson @rachaelscotson.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Girls of Little Hope by @beckbessinger.bsky.social and @dalehalvorsen.bsky.social is a thrilling and creepy, Lovecraftian body-horror YA novel, set in a rural Californian town in the 1990s. I’ve not read much body horror, nor any Lovecraft, but this has inspired me to delve more into the genre.

The book, Girls of Little Hope, by Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen, lies on a desk. The book cover is a milk carton with the faces of three teen girls on the side. The carton is splashing in a puddle of oil. The background is a garish pink. The book is surrounded by notebooks and other books about feminism and Medusa.

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Padmaparna Ghosh @padmag.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Midday visual break: A bunch of amusing octopuses sumo wrestling (bottom centre), breakdancing (?), playing intruments. Edo period woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), who was one of the three principal 'Ukiyo-e' artists that includes Hiroshige. (British Museum Collections)

Colour Japanese woodblock print of octopuses sumo wrestling, dancing, sword playing, playing instruments.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Wicked was even better than this unabashed-lifelong-musical-theatre-dork could have hoped for

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

This is so depressing, and we have to do better.

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The world is yelling at you to BUY BUY BUY things today. If that's making you feel as annoyed as it's making me, join me in rather sending some money to GiveDirectly, Medical Aid for Palestine, Gift of the Givers, the Red Cross, or a local charity of your choice. giftofthegivers.org

giftofthegivers.org

Gift of the Givers Foundation

The Gift of the Givers Foundation is the largest disaster response non-governmental organisation of African origin on the continent. 45 COUNTRIES, 30 YRS

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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

This is one of those videos that you could work on forever, but suddenly it felt very important to make it, so I finally did: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Pn...

youtube.com

Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

YouTube video by vlogbrothers

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Sam Beckbessinger @sambeckbessinger.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

I wish I took more photos of the #Kitschies SFFH Awards last night, but I was too busy having the absolutely best time with a room full of fellow dorks and weirdos. Here's Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi accepting the Golden Tentacle Award for best debut novel (The Centre)!

Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi holding a golden tentacle, looking (rightfully) very pleased!

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 26/11/2024

Hey London, you should try to catch the brilliant @shubnumkhan.bsky.social at her UK book launch tonight for her superb Durban Gothic historic Indian immigrant love story / current day bookish teen coming of age novel, The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-djinn-...

eventbrite.co.uk

The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan London Book Launch

Creative Writing Workshop and Book Launch

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