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The Big Idea: Warren Tusk
Jan. 7th, 2026 06:49 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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Life isn’t fair. But it also isn’t unfair, it just is. As author Warren Tusk puts it in his Big Idea for The Goetist: the cosmos are indifferent. Follow along in the Big Idea for a philosophical journey through one’s sense of self and the meaning of being you.
WARREN TUSK:
The despairing man calls forth a demon, and binds it to teach him, so that he can stop feeling so empty and start finding something worthwhile in his life. And, once the formalities are done, his first question is – What is magic?
…this is weird, right? On the face of it, anyway. It’s weird because his question doesn’t obviously address his stated problem. He doesn’t lack for magic; he just summoned a demon. He lacks fulfillment and joy and meaning. He should be asking about those things.
The trick is that – at least within the goetist’s mind – it’s all the same stuff. He experiences the hollowness of his days as an absence of magic, and his own sorcerous power doesn’t change that. When he tries to fumble his way towards an escape from his unhappiness, he instinctively reaches out towards magic.
Which is not insane. At least, I hope it’s not insane, because I do the exact same thing. And so do lots of other people. When we look around at our world and find it bleak, and try to understand the nature of that bleakness, we call it disenchanted. We jump eagerly into the fake worlds of fantasy literature, not because they’re happier or more fun than the real world, not even necessarily because they’re more interesting – Lord knows they’re not always interesting – but because they’re magical, and that in itself is a thing for which we hunger.
How can magic actually help?
Hard to answer that if we don’t understand what we’re talking about, if we don’t define our terms. So let’s go back to the goetist’s question. What is magic?
The old answer, the obvious answer, is that it’s about power. Doing the impossible. Magicians can accomplish things that other people can’t.
Except that, in an age of technical wonders, the old obvious answer is no longer tenable. Doing the impossible is no longer something we associate with enchantment; people do the impossible all the time, these days, and there’s nothing remotely enchanted about it. The mighty mages of our fantasy stories use a lot of their power to replicate the effects of…cell phones, and security cameras, and airplanes, and modern medical treatments. (To say nothing of guns and bombs.) And we have all those things for real, and they’re wondrous and we wouldn’t know how to live without them, but their presence doesn’t leave us feeling like the world is filled with magic. Quite the opposite, much of the time.
The demon has a different answer. As he explains it: magic is what you call it when the world truly, deeply cares about who you are. About you-as-a-person. About the particularities of your virtues and your vices, your talents and your interests.
The magic sword is magic because only a true hero, pure of heart, can wield it. The magic sacrifice is magic because it works only when you give up something that genuinely matters to you.
Technology doesn’t care about things like that, because physical reality doesn’t care. You don’t need to be a true hero to fire a machine gun; the laws of thermodynamics don’t change based on emotional salience. And as we spend more and more of our lives integrating into large impersonal systems, it becomes increasingly true that most of the social world doesn’t care about our individual particularities either.
(I could spend a long time talking about how the intricacies of the self are stripped away by jobs, by dating apps, even by the effort to market a constructed “self” as a brand. But you can fill in all of that yourself.)
It’s easy to complain about modern anomie. The truth is, though – this modern condition is just an exaggeration, an exacerbation, of the way that things have always been. Physical reality, and social reality, have never answered to the complexities of anyone’s internal experience. The sun rises and sets, the crops grow, the village resolves its disputes, and all the elaborate patterns of your selfhood just come out in the wash.
There will be no magic unless someone cares. And the world won’t care. So you have to care. The shape of your soul has to matter to you, even if external reality will never notice. If you’re lucky, maybe you can find some other people who will also care, and you can care about the shape of their souls, and you can build some relationships in the face of the indifferent cosmos. But whether or not you’re lucky in that way – if you can believe that it matters who you are, without any feedback or validation, then you can enchant the world.
The Goetist is a wisdom book, which is to say, a book composed entirely of Big Ideas. It has crammed as many of them as possible into a short text, by jettisoning things like “plot” and “having more than two characters.” It goes through a lot of topics, and tries to pull philosophy out of all of them. But the very first Big Idea, on which all the others are built, is: Magic is the foundation of a meaningful life, and magic consists of caring about who you are. Not instrumentally, not as a means to an end, but as something irreducibly precious. The rest of the book is really just discussing a bunch of different ways to act on that principle.
It’s a principle that matters a lot to me, personally. I hold onto it tightly, because the wider world really is indifferent, and that’s a hard thing. And if you want to know why I wrote The Goetist in the first place – well, that’s why.
You can summon a demon with magic because the demon will see you for what you are, and you will see it for what it is, and you will matter to one another. Kind of like with a writer and a reader.
The Goetist: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Apocryphile Press
You can see more of the author’s work at Paracelsus Games.
My First Keeper Song of 2026
Jan. 7th, 2026 04:23 pmscalziwhatever_feedI understand it came out in 2025, mind you. But I’m hearing it for the first time in 2026. It’s a banger. Definitely going into my DJ setlist.
— JS
dinosaur comics presents: people comics
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January 7th, 2026: With the right classification scheme, classification is EASY! – Ryan | ||
The Big Idea: Nicole Glover
Jan. 6th, 2026 07:09 pmscalziwhatever_feed
When you find there to be a lack of magic in your world, make a new one. That’s exactly what author Nicole Glover set out to do when crafting the whimsical world of her newest novel, The Starseekers. Come along in her Big Idea to see how the ordinary can be made just a little more magical.
NICOLE GLOVER:
I always found it a severe disappointment when I realized as a child that I was living in a world where tea pots weren’t enchanted, ravens didn’t linger on fence posts to give me a quest, and that dragons weren’t snoring away in caves. I didn’t need unicorns or griffins as pets and I never had the urge climb a beanstalk, I just wanted a touch more wonder in the world.
So I did the only thing any reasonable person can do: I started writing fantasy.
From riffs on fairy tales, to tales of travelers seeking a library hidden in a desert oasis, to my current series, in my stories I explored what a world could look like with an abundance of magic.
And with each story I found myself most intrigued by the quieter uses of magic.
The spells in my stories warmed boots, provided a bobbing light for the overeager reader trying to read one last chapter, or put up the groceries for a weary shopper. I found joy in writing about enchantments that made tea kettles bubble with daydreams or devising cocktails that made a drinker recall their greatest regrets. The magic in my stories didn’t include epic quests and battles, and if there were curses, they probably had more in common with jinxes and weren’t nearly as difficult to untangle.
Everyday magic, is the word I like to use for it. Such magic is small spells and charms, that are simple enough for anyone to use and often have many different uses. In contrast to Grand magic which are spells that only a few can ever learn because they are dangerous, and just do one thing really well and nothing else.
Magic that’s in the background, in my opinion, is more useful than Grand spells that could remake the world. (After all what’s the use of a sword that’s only good for slaying the Undead Evil Lord, when the rest of the time it’s just there collecting dust in a corner?) Grand magic is clunky and troublesome, and can be like using a blowtorch when a pair of scissors is all that is needed. You ruin everything and don’t accomplish what you needed to do in the first place. It’s also very straight forward as the magic leaves little wiggle for variation or adjustment without catastrophe. And if a writer isn’t careful, duels involving magic can easily devolve into “wizards flinging balls of magical energy at each other.”
Magics with a smaller scale, leaves room for exploration. It can even allow you to be clever and to think hard of how it animates objects, impacts the environment, creates illusions, or even transforms an unruly apprentice into a fox. Most importantly, Everyday magic are the spells and enchantments that everyone can use, instead of magic being restricted to few learned scholars (or even forbidden).
Everyday magic allows a prankster to have fun, a child could get even on the bully, let’s an overworked city employee easily transform a park, and have new parents be assured their baby in snug in their crib.
It’s also the sort of magic perfect for solving mysteries.
The world of The Starseekers, runs on Everyday magic. I filled the pages with magic that creates staircases out of books, enchant inks and cards, brings unexpected utility to a compass, lends protection spells to bracelets, and even store up several useful spells in parasols. There is an air of whimsy to Everyday magic, giving me flexibility to have it suit my needs. Magic seeps into the surroundings, informing how characters move through the world and how they think about their acts. It allows me to consider the magical solutions to get astronauts to the Moon, how a museum may catalogue their collection of magical artifacts, or what laws on wands and broomsticks might arise and if those laws are just or not.
Embracing Everyday magic is what made The Starseekers possible, because making the everyday extraordinary is one of the many things I aim for as a writer and a lover of magic.
The Starseekers: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-a-Million|Bookshop|Powell’s
1000
Jan. 6th, 2026 12:00 pmsavagelove_feedIt’s the 1000th episode of the Savage Lovecast. We started in 2006, when George W. Bush was President. And look at us now! We packed this show with as many quick questions as we could. (One minute or less.) And Dan answered as quickly as he could. And! We invited long time friends of the … Read More »
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Some Of The Best Products I Bought In 2025
Jan. 5th, 2026 07:29 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Things are tough out there. Money is tight, groceries are expensive, and day by day products are getting worse and worse. These days, you get far less bang for your buck.
You go on Amazon or Etsy to buy something, and everything is from a “brand” called QvorTply, and they sell the most suck-tastic dropship items. More and more often people tell me they’re buying things from Temu and Shein and that it’s all crap and a complete waste of money.
So, what is worth buying? Which brands can you trust, what products are worth buying, and which brands aren’t total bastards? Well, I don’t have all the answers, but I did buy a lot of stuff in 2025 with some mixed results. Today, I’m here to share some products and brands that I really like, and what I felt like was worth my money and a good purchase.
This will be a pretty interesting assortment of stuff, and while they’re in no particular order, I will be mostly trying to keep things of the same category together, like a big section of fabric/clothing items, then a section of food items, etc. Anyways, I hope you find something you like!
I’m going to start off with a brand I’ve actually talked about on the blog once before: Geometry. That’s right y’all, I liked it so much that I’m telling you all about it again just in case you missed it the first time!
Geometry is a home goods brand that specializes in towels, but has also recently branched out into blankets, linens, table cloths, things of that nature.
I never thought that I could love a dish towel so much, but Geometry’s Kitchen Tea Towels are the quite literally the greatest dish towels of all time. And to think, I was so hesitant to buy one of their towels because of the $18 price point, but now I can’t stop recommending them to all my friends.
So, what makes Geometry’s tea towels worth eighteen bucks a pop? Well, without even getting into the brand’s sustainability efforts and partnerships with artists, the towels themselves are huge in comparison to a regular dish towel. They are extra thin, making for quick drying time and way less musty-ness. They wash and dry so easy, and are even super wrinkle-resistant. I never knew how much I hated wrinkles in my dish towels until I saw Geometry’s come out of the dryer wrinkleless.
Whatever vibe you’ve got going for your kitchen, there’s a towel to fit it. You can filter the towels by styles such as retro, coastal, floral, abstract, or by color if you’re trying to stick to a specific color scheme. There’s so many different prints to choose from, and all of them are from real artists.
One of my favorite designers they have partnered with is Julianne Haness. They even have a little article over her and her art! I also quite like Ceyda Alasar, Rebecca Bobko, and Janna Sue Design. In a time of AI “art” and brands not wanting to pay artists for anything, it’s so nice to see a brand that respects the artists’ they partner with and provides tons of different designs from artists all over the world.
Aside from their tea towels, the only other product I’ve tried is their table runners. I bought three back in November or so, all of them in their large 16″ by 120″ size. I really like them! They’ve got a real nice heft and thickness to them that makes them feel like a quality product. I got two for the holidays, this Cedar print one, and this Doodles for the Holiday design. The third is for the summer, and is called Summer Air. I especially love this one because of the baguette.
So, I love the products of theirs that I’ve tried, and I love that Geometry partners with real artists. For my final trick, I’ll tell you about their sustainability efforts that really seal the deal on them being a cool brand. All of their products are made from recycled materials, and they say that a tea towel saves 3.5 water bottles from going into the landfill.
Geometry also has a recycling program called the Take Back Bag. Basically, you purchase this bag from them for $20 (stick with me here), you fill the bag with your old (clean) towels, linens, other textiles you no longer want, send it back to them, and you get $30 to use on Geometry products! A whole free ten bucks to spend on great tea towels just for recycling and making a positive impact on the environment.
So, yeah! Try a tea towel or two. Let me know what you think. In a perfect world, their membership program wouldn’t be full right now, and I’d be in it, but alas.
Continuing with fabric type goods, the next brand on my list is Fresh Clean Threads. How many times have you seen a shirt company advertising that their shirts are different? How many claim to be more comfortable, softer, and fit better on bigger bodies, so you take a chance on them, only to realize they’re not really as special as they claim to be? For me, the answer is a lot! There’s a lot of brands that had big claims, but only Fresh Clean Threads has delivered.
I absolutely love Fresh Clean Threads shirts, hoodies, crew sweatshirts, and joggers. To be clear moving forward, they have a women’s collection but I have only ever bought from the men’s collection. I’ve not tried any of their women’s stuff.
Anyways, a standard t-shirt is $23 and a long-sleeve is $25. The hoodies are just under $60 and the crew-neck sweatshirts are about $50. To me, this all seems pretty standard pricing, but they do have sales like, all the time. They even have a whole tab for just sale items if you’re feelin’ frisky. Like usually a pair of joggers is almost $50 but this two-pack is $30 right now?! Crazy deals to be had, I tell you what.
You can also build a bundle of five items and get a discount and it doesn’t even have to all be the same type of item. Pretty cool.
Their sizing is from S-3X for guys and XS-3X for women, and they have a “tall” option for men, too. I personally wear the 2X in men’s for all their tops and bottoms.
Fresh Clean Threads has, in my book, made the most comfortable shirts of all time. Like they actually nailed it. Even though I wear the men’s shirts and hoodies, everything fits so comfortably and no part is too tight on me. Especially the sleeves, I hate when sleeves are too tight or too short on my arms. They have perfected the sleeve game.
Plus, the hoodies are actually hefty and warm! Very soft inside. And best of all, none of their products come with scratchy tags. You don’t have to rip off any plastic tags or have anything itchy inside your shirt. I really value that in a shirt.
I swear every single shirt I own has shrunk in the dryer, but I’ve washed and dried my Fresh Clean Threads items a hundred times and they don’t shrink even a little bit and they haven’t worn out at all even through constant use. These are just really solid shirts, y’all!
You can wear them out and about as is, use them as a comfortable base for layering, and honestly the t-shirts are so comfortable I actually sleep in them on an almost nightly basis. They’re just really versatile, excellent staples, and I highly recommend them.
I’m also in their membership program, which is $19 a year and gets you 20% off every purchase, free shipping on every order, and early access to sales and new product launches. I can’t tell you how worth it it’s been for me to be a member, because I have ordered over twenty-five items from them (about half of which were gifts).
Finally, you know I have to mention their sustainability efforts. Fresh Clean Threads is partnered with the Coral Reef Alliance with a $50k minimum pledge each year, all of their factories are WRAP certified, and their packaging is 100% recyclable. Solid stuff!
For our next clothing brand we have the ever-popular Bombas. It took me far too many years to realize that the quality of your socks actually matters. I used to think that any ol’ sock was just as good as any other sock, it was of no importance to me the fabric of the sock or how thin it was. Well, now I know better! And Bombas are the best socks I’ve ever owned.
I actually didn’t buy Bombas for like, a solid year because I could not get past the price point. Between $15 and $20 for a pair of socks?! Who has that kind of money for socks? Well, after years of buying cheap packs and running holes through them and having to buy more cheap packs, turns out I do spend that kind of money on socks, so why not redirect it towards actually quality ones so I can stop buying the cheap packs?
I have been wearing the absolute heck out of my Bombas and they are literally just as intact and just as comfortable as day one of having them. I’ve not gotten any holes or threadbare spots or anything, and they feel nice and thick without being constricting or making my shoe too tight.
Personally, I really like their women’s half calf socks with this cute retro stripe design.
Bombas whole thing is that they donate an item for every item bought. Whether it’s underwear, shirts, or socks, they have given over 150 million items to 4,000 different community organizations in all fifty states. I honestly had a hard time believing they were really giving away a pair for every pair bought, but a couple months ago someone I know told me that her family member goes to a low-income dentist in Dayton, and they have a big basket of brand new Bombas free for the taking in their lobby. Turns out, Bombas was impacting my community and I didn’t even know it!
If the price point is really getting to you like it did to me, you can use code COMFORT20 for 20% off your first order, and there’s free shipping when you spend $75. Trust me, it’s a good investment long-term.
Moving on from textiles, I’d like to briefly mention AppyHour! The reason I say briefly is because I have already done three posts over AppyHour this past year (which you can see all three of here), but I just wanted to mention that I liked them enough to put them in this recommendation list.
AppyHour is a subscription based service and purveyor of fine meats, cheeses, and accoutrements that are shipped to your door so you have everything you need to make a yummy and impressive snack spread for you and your guests.
I think they’re a really nice small business with good customer service and are providing good quality products for a good price! I would say really the only thing to keep in mind is if you get the boxes long-term there do tend to be some repeats of items. Honestly this isn’t too much of an issue for me because the repeats I’ve gotten are some of my favorite items, like the Prairie Breeze Cheddar, and I’m plenty happy to put them on a board again.
And of course I’m still super grateful that when I posted about them in the past, y’all used my referral code for twenty bucks off your box, and all these months later I’m still working through the credits I got from that. I have enjoyed many a box paid for entirely by y’all signing up.
So if you’re in the market for some charcuterie goods to entertain visiting friends and family, definitely check out AppyHour! They’re pretty cool.
Branching out into jewelry, this next brand is the most new to me on this list, as I only found out about them during their Black Friday sale in November.
Nominal is a jewelry brand founded by a Palestinian Muslim Arabic-speaking woman and her husband, and each piece is inspired by the rich culture of the Middle East. Every order donates to Palestine relief aid, with over a million dollars donated so far. My favorite of all their jewelry is in their Palestine Collection.
I bought the Olive Leaf Earrings, the Palestine country map necklace, a super cute dainty watermelon bracelet, and watermelon studs.
All of their gold-plated jewelry is 18k gold with hypoallergenic stainless steel underneath. They say you can wear your pieces in the shower, sweat in them, wear them daily, and not worry about them tarnishing, fading, or causing skin irritation. I think Nominal has so many beautiful pieces for an affordable price, and has an amazing cause behind it. It’s something I feel good about purchasing and wearing on the regular.
Finally, I’d like to feature Le Creuset, as I am truly a ride or die customer for Le Creuset products.
Le Creuset is probably best known for their enameled cast iron Dutch ovens. While there are many brands that also make these types of products, Le Creuset is truly the cream of the crop. Yes, they are expensive, but if you have the money, you won’t find anything better.
Le Creusets are beautiful, come in a wide array of colors, and are going to be your new favorite pot to cook in, whether it’s on the stove-top or in the oven. Hefty, reliable, beautiful, their Dutch ovens are the best of the best.
But what about their other products? Well, aside from owning four of their Dutch ovens (one in Sea Salt, one in Marseille, a red heart shaped one, and one smaller one in White), I also have one braiser (with a glass lid (in Sea Salt)), a tea kettle (white with pink and red heart print), a set of mugs (in Shell Pink), two of these square baking dish sets (one in Sea Salt and one in Marseille), a heart shaped spoon rest (in Chiffon Pink), a baking sheet, this salt crock, two mini coquettes (one purple with a flower lid, one white and pink/red heart print one), and a pink pepper and salt mill set that I can’t find in their pepper and salt mill section so you’ll just have to use your imagination.
I love Le Creuset. So much. Their products are so wonderful and beautiful and you’ll be proud to showcase them on your stove or serving up soup to your guests at a dinner party. My wishlist of items from this brand are never ending. My self control is at a breaking point around these damn Dutch ovens. Plus, they have some crazy sales going on right now.
So, there you have it. Six brands I bought from in 2025 and think they’re worth recommending to others. Brands that supply you with actual quality products, and that are worth your money. Because there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t worth your money out there, and I am personally sick of wasting money on bad products.
I hope you found something you like amidst my recommendations! What’s a brand you’ve recently discovered that you’re a big fan of? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
Patrick Nielsen Hayden Retires
Jan. 5th, 2026 03:32 pmscalziwhatever_feed
He’s announced it, so I can talk about it too: Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my friend and also my editor at Tor Books, is retiring. He steps forward from a career that includes editing hundreds of books, including twenty of my own, and a ridiculous number of professional awards and achievements, including several Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy award. In addition to editing, he was (and continues to be) a notable figure in science fiction fandom, helping to run conventions, having been guest of honor for several, and got his first Hugo nomination for the fanzine Izzard back in 1984. He also teaches, including a long stint at the Viable Paradise writing workshop.
The short version of this is, he’s one of the editors most responsible for how the science fiction and fantasy field looks today. Inasmuch as it’s in really excellent shape, creatively and commercially, that’s something to be very proud of.
Also, Patrick is responsible for changing my life, when he made an offer on Old Man’s War, some twenty-three years ago (The offer was made the last week of 2002; the book came out January 1, 2005). It’s difficult for me to overstate how much my life is different now than what I had expected and planned for, prior to Patrick telling me he wanted OMW for Tor. It’s unlikely I would know (at least!) half the people I know or had the half the experiences I’ve had in my life. Certainly my bibliography would be very, very different. I occasionally wonder what my life would have been like had Patrick not offered on OMW, but not too much. I like this life, the experiences I’ve gotten to have, and the people I get to have in it, including Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
I don’t want to go on too much at this point, since as Patrick notes, he is not dead, nor will he stop being part of the science fiction community. He’ll be around! He’ll just get to other things. He plays a mean guitar, so maybe there will be more of that. Maybe he will travel. Maybe he will fight crime! We will see.
Whatever he gets up to, I hope he enjoys it and I hope he tells me about it the next time I see him, probably at some convention or another. I expect a lot of catching up and hanging out, like we’ve always done. He’s stopped being my editor. He’s not stopped being my friend.
— JS
(PS: For those of you curious, the person now editing my novels at Tor is Mal Frazier, who, as a member of Patrick’s editorial team I have already worked with on the last couple of novels, most notably The Shattering Peace, which the sharp-eyed among you will note is dedicated to them. Mal is smart as hell and doesn’t put up with any crap from me, which is exactly the sort of editor I like, need and appreciate, and I look forward to continuing to work with them. I’m not just saying that because I owe them a book, like, now.)
new year, new me (threatening)
Jan. 5th, 2026 12:00 amdinosaur_comics_feed| archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about |
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January 5th, 2026: Welcome to 2026! Will THIS be the year that all our problems get solved and we gladly stride into a new and endless utopia? Gosh I sure hope so, that sounds great!! – Ryan | ||
Quickies
Jan. 5th, 2026 12:00 pmsavagelove_feed1. What if I’m turned on by my own trauma? What do I do with this? You do therapy with it. And then after you’ve worked through your trauma with the help of your therapist (which includes unpacking your feelings about being turned on by your trauma), you can — taking the tiniest of baby … Read More »
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Sunday Secrets
Jan. 4th, 2026 12:05 ampost_secret_feed
Read 100s more secrets at the PostSecret Digital Museum of Secrets.
I found your sex toys.
I ate a food I was allergic to in order to get out of class.
I’m much happier in my marriage since I fell out of love with my husband.
I enjoyed the voicemail secrets. I think I’ll call my son today.
I thought I had all the time in the world. Turns out I didn’t.
The post Sunday Secrets appeared first on PostSecret.
Classic Secrets
Jan. 4th, 2026 12:03 ampost_secret_feed
Dear Frank,
The other day I was using a search engine to try to find an old secret that I had found very moving. While looking through the images I found a link to a blog containing my secret that I had sent in a little over year ago. My secret was: “being able to survive it doesn’t mean it was ever ok…”
The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: “This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way.”
The meaning has changed since I originally wrote it. At the time I was angry because people seemed to think that surviving meant beating it; they didn’t recognize that it was a struggle I was still enduring. Those who knew what I was going through praised me for surviving it or said they were sorry for what I went through. I didn’t want praise or pity, I needed support because it was a battle I was still fighting.
When I originally saw my secret posted on your Web site I suppose I thought I was going to find closure. Yet the real closure came a year later in this response. I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.
Thank you,
Heather
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A Brief Note on Current Events, January 3, 2026
Jan. 3rd, 2026 03:14 pmscalziwhatever_feedI don’t have a whole lot to say about what’s going on in Venezuela at the moment because like most people, I’m still finding out about it. The one thing I will say, and this rather emphatically should not be construed as a mitigation or an exculpation, is that the folks suggesting this is a line that the US has never crossed before should probably reacquaint themselves with the U.S.’ history in South and Central America. We have done this before, both overtly and covertly, lots of times.
“But this is different!” Sure, because every one of these times is different in the details, and likely to be different in its consequence. But in principle it’s much the same, going back to the Monroe Doctrine. The US believes this half of the globe is its own. Again, this is not mitigation, or exculpation, or the suggestion that individually or as a cohort, we throw up our hands and just accept it. It’s just a reminder that we’ve been here before, not all that long ago, and not all that long ago before that.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feedOriginally, I wanted to write a post on December 31st that talked about how I feel 2025 went for me personally, and how I was planning to go about growing in 2026. Then, I didn’t, and it was New Year’s Day. Of course, that’s the perfect day to post a fresh, welcome to the new year post and talk about how the last year went and speak about 2026. But I didn’t do that either!
And so, here we are on the second day of 2026, and I’m finally getting around to doing something I meant to do last year (ha, get it?).
Bad joke aside, it really does bother me that I didn’t write what I wanted to write when I wanted to write it. Procrastination is so annoying and benefits absolutely nothing and no one, and yet so many of us struggle with it to a point of detriment. It’s a lifelong issue and I definitely have no idea where it comes from.
Anyways, I’m here now, and I’d like to talk about some of my intentions moving forward.
While I’ve never been a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions (especially ones regarding hitting the gym, waking up at 5am, and cutting out treats), there are some things I’d like to work towards and improve upon as I go through 2026. In that same vein, I was never a fan of “setting intentions.” It sounded fake and not worthwhile just to say the things you want. Manifesting and vision boards sounded like hippie-dippie mumbo jumbo.
It took me a few years of unlearning cynicism to see that there is genuinely value in writing down and speaking about the things you want. It’s good to make it clear to yourself and to others in your sphere how you feel and what you want for yourself and your life.
It also helps to know that the words you say aren’t a prison. Your hopes and goals for a better you should be a guiding path, not a cage. You will never get better through punishing yourself and putting Current You down in hopes to get to a Better You. Better You is Current You after you give yourself time and love to get there.
Inspirational poster sayings aside, here’s my hopes for 2026.
I’d like to work on being a better friend, and deepen the friendships I have, emotionally speaking. A lot of my friends are going through big changes in life, like marriage and kids, and even though our paths don’t look the same I still love them and want to be there for them. It’s been a challenge to be supportive to my friends who have very different life situations than me, but I’m hoping to grow and mature and find ways to show up for them more.
I want to be more than just a fun hang, I want to be someone that my friends can trust and depend on for anything. Inconvenience is the cost of community, and I really want community.
I’d like to continue working on my mental health journey. Though I’ve been in therapy every week for six years, I never wanted medication because I was convinced that one day I’d just magically be better. I thought I was “strong enough” to overcome it on my own, that I could somehow beat my anxiety and depression just by hoping it went away. But I only ended up getting worse, and finally in August last year I got prescribed 10mg of Lexapro.
I was hesitant to take it and scared of side effects. It felt like my mental illnesses were winning, and that I was having to use medication as a weapon in a war that I was losing. Turns out, I feel a lot better! Wild how that works. In fact, just last month I went up to 20mg of Lexapro because I’m no longer scared of taking it and the higher dose makes me feel even better. Who knew!
While it is obviously not a 100% perfect cure and I still have my moments and episodes, boy am I doing better and looking forward to further addressing and working on my mental health. Yippee!
Part of why my mental health has been absolutely ass for so long is in no small part because of my magic little screen that fills my head with dread. My doom-scrolling has always been a bad habit, for lack of a better term, but in 2025 I’m sure I’m not the only one that was doom-scrolling at unprecedented levels. Scrolling was off the charts, and my brain was constantly drowning in negativity.
So, for 2026, I genuinely, honestly, so very badly want to reduce my screen time. Or, at the very least, my small screen time. Obviously going to the theater or watching new shows and movies doesn’t count as like, “bad” screen time.
Every day for years my phone has told me that my screen time is anywhere between five and eight hours a day, and that starts to feel like it’s adding up. I want to use my phone for things I enjoy, like calling loved ones and texting friends. Actual phone things!
Sometimes I see media in which the characters have corded phones on the wall and I start to romanticize them. My phone is not a tool in which I use to benefit myself, it is a black hole I am sucked into on a daily basis. I hate it and yet I do not know how to live less attached to it. But I cannot keep doing this whole doom-scrolling and being force-fed ads and AI shit. I don’t want any part in the way technology is “progressing.” Fuck ChatGPT and generative AI. Congrats on making a “tool” that has made me start to hate my own technology and want to be on the internet SO MUCH LESS.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier about not absolutely loving the idea of cutting out treats and becoming a gym-bro, I do finally feel like I’m at a place in my relationship with food in which I would like to work on nourishing my body better. I don’t want to restrict myself from having what I want, or guilt myself about eating something “bad.” I only seek to give my body more nutrients and vitamins and listen more to the things it needs to feel better.
While I’ve truly hated my body my entire life, I think I finally feel like if I start to love it, it might start to love me back. And I don’t mean “start to love it” as in “be happy with how I look currently,” but in the sense that if I eat nutritionally, stretch and move my body in some small ways, and stop force-feeding it fast food, sugar, and alcohol so much, it might start to respond better, be stronger, and maybe look closer to how I would prefer it to.
Additionally, I’d really like to cook and bake more in 2026. I love cooking and baking, yet so rarely do it. Mostly because it is a lot of effort, but what worthwhile thing isn’t? I’m hoping that my connection to my own food and the intentional action of cooking and baking will help me eat in a more thoughtful and nourishing way. Not that I’ll be throwing protein powder into desserts, or anything.
While I won’t list absolutely everything I’d like to improve upon or work on, I will end this list with how I would like to grow in a creative and professional capacity. For so long, creating things has felt like a chore. Even though I’m usually happy with the result of sitting down and writing, the aforementioned sitting down and actually writing part has always been hard. Aren’t I supposed to like this whole creative process and content creation thing? It’s like my whole gig, after all.
I want to enjoy the process, not just feel relieved I got it done and end up liking the result well enough. I want to feel less like everything I do has to be purely for production purposes. If it ends up as a product (like a blog post) then great! But I don’t want to feel like that’s all I do in a creative sense.
This year I’ll be doing some fiction writing. I won’t say too much on it, but I have some lofty goals in that regard and after years of writing on the blog, I finally feel ready to move into the world of fiction and write more creatively. I’m excited for this endeavor and I hope it goes well!
So, be a better friend, less screen time, eat better and move more, and write more and enjoy the creative process. Sounds pretty standard when it’s all summed up, huh? Well, even if they’re basic goals, I’m really optimistic in making progress on them this year.
How about you? Got some basic goals, too? Let me know in the comments, and have a great 2026!
-AMS
What I Have Available for Award Consideration, 2026 Edition
Jan. 2nd, 2026 02:42 pmscalziwhatever_feed
If you’re the sort of person who nominates stuff for awards, this year I have a number of works available for your consideration. For the sake of convenience I’m using the Hugo Award categories to lump them together but these classifications should work generally for the various awards my work is eligible for. All of these works were made publicly available between Jan 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025.
BEST NOVEL:
When the Moon Hits Your Eye. March 2025. Published by Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Editor.
The Shattering Peace. September 2025. Published by Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Editor.
BEST SERIES:
The Old Man’s War series, published by Tor Books, of which The Shattering Peace is the latest installment.
BEST NOVELETTE:
3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years. November 2025. Published by Amazon Original Stories, John Joseph Adams, Editor.
BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM:
The Other Large Thing. May 2025. Episode 4, Season 4, Love Death + Robots. Written by me, directed by Patrick Osborne. Produced by Netflix and Blur Studios.
Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners. May 2025. Episode 9, Season 4, Love Death + Robots. Written by me, directed by Patrick Osborne. Produced by Netflix and Blur Studios.
In addition to me, the following people are also eligible for award consideration based on their engagement with my work: John Harris, Best Professional Artist (for The Shattering Peace); Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Best Editor, Long Form (for When the Moon Hits Your Eye and The Shattering Peace); John Joseph Adams, Best Editor, Short Form (for “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years”). Also, the anthology that “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years” is part of, The Time Traveler’s Passport, is eligible for Best Anthology consideration. Finally, all of Volume 4 of Love Death + Robots is eligible for consideration for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form.
(Please note that my novella Constituent Service, published in print/ebook in November 2025, is not eligible for award consideration, as it was originally published in audio in 2024. However, cover artist Tristan Elwell is eligible for Best Professional Artist, because the cover art to the print/ebook edition of the novella is original to 2025.)
I think that covers all the things I did for 2025! I mean, it’s a fair amount. If you read or watched any of it, I hope it gave you joy. And if you haven’t read or watched these things, well, that just means they’re ready for you when you’re ready to enjoy them.
— JS
A New Year’s Sky
Jan. 1st, 2026 10:35 pmscalziwhatever_feed
The first sky of 2026 was gray most of the day, but there was a small crack at the horizon where sun was able to peek through as it set, and then once it slipped under the horizon, it set the bottom of the clouds on fire. Not a bad look for the first day of the year.
Happy New Year to all of you and may 2026 be a good one.
— JS
Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow
Dec. 31st, 2025 08:24 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceПривет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)
Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.
I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!
С Новым Годом, and welcome home!
EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!
Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️