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quitevague.bsky.social
Ziv W
@quitevague.bsky.social
420 followers 310 following 590 posts
"There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind."
Editor at Diabolical Plots,
Associate Editor PodCastle .
He/Him.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Ziv W
brainmage.bsky.social
Sadako crawling out of your tv, turning motion smoothing off, then crawling back in
October 26, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
annieparker.bsky.social
Bathtime zoomies with the ducklings!! This never gets old…
#Ducklings #bathtime #FarmLife #LittleFarm
October 28, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
charlotteclymer.bsky.social
Tell folks to come donate food items. Let them know you'll be there to answer questions about the shutdown. Invite reporters and content creators for interviews. Make it a thing.
October 27, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
charlotteclymer.bsky.social
Dear Democratic Members of Congress:

I am urging each of you to adopt a food pantry this week. Make it clear that Trump and the GOP are withholding $5 billion in a contingency fund that could fund SNAP benefits and feed Americans, so you're adopting a food pantry in your district.
October 27, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
elilvn.bsky.social
זה הגרסה הישראלית של בטעות לקרוא למפלצת פרנקנשטיין
October 23, 2025 at 5:48 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
othersidespec.bsky.social
We've reached the final 7 days of our Kickstarter—and we're SO happy with how many stretch goals you all have smashed! Thank you!

Now help us fund some Year 3 issues so we can keep bringing you fantastic queer poetry, fiction, and art for a long time? 👀

www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyb...
OTHERSIDE 2026: A New Magazine of Queer SFF!
A new queer-led literary magazine devoted to speculative fiction, poetry, and art by 2SLGBTQIA+ authors and artists.
www.kickstarter.com
October 22, 2025 at 3:01 PM
quitevague.bsky.social
Great thread on time estimates.
spavel.bsky.social Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 20d
I need to write a long thing on this; time estimates sit at a confluence of:
- Managing the certainty of outputs (a foolish endeavor)
- Timeboxing and feedback loops (my jam)
- Wicked problem framing/solving (yay)
- Handoffs (boo)
- Folk Agile
- The feature factory
- Clarity/shared mental models
anthonybecker.bsky.social 🐜 🍯 @anthonybecker.bsky.social · 20d
No seriously @spavel.bsky.social please tell me how you think about estimating work it’s a big part of my life
October 21, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
cypayseur.bsky.social
I was thinking about early writing recently and I'm curious—short fiction writers: what is the earliest short story you remember finishing that wasn't for a school project or anything?
October 20, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
podcastle.org
Announcement: PodCastle Is Trialling a Six Month Submissions Window!! We will open in November and close in April. See our announcement on the website for details. All our usual Submissions Guidelines still apply.

podcastle.org/2025/10/17/a...
Announcement: PodCastle Is Trialling a Six Month Submissions Window - PodCastle
Greetings, writers of fantasy fiction! We at PodCastle are due to open back up to general submissions in November. When we do, instead of our usual one month open period, we plan to open for six month...
podcastle.org
October 19, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
gwenckatz.bsky.social
I saw a tragically AI-generated version of this poster, so I have recreated a 100% human-made version for all your protest sign needs.
The Obama Hope poster, but it's a frog and it says "Hop"
October 18, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
mealofthorns.bsky.social
Hey SF readers & especially folks who like criticism: Archita Mittra is in a tough spot and could use some help.
indrapramitdas.bsky.social Indrapramit Das (Offline, travelling) @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 22d
Fellow Calcuttan writer/editor Archita Mittra is in desperate need of financial help. She recently lost her father, her home was damaged in the recent rains, & her mother's in hospital. They don't have insurance, & she's a freelancer. I can vouch for her. Please share widely & donate:
Donate to Help Archita and Her Mom Rebuild Their Lives, organized by tehseen baweja
Hey Everyone! My name is Tehseen and I publish an online magazine called T… tehseen baweja needs your support for Help Archita and Her Mom Rebuild Their Lives
www.gofundme.com
October 19, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
adapalmer.bsky.social
After years of restoration following the 2019 fire, the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral are now open again to visitors. The central part of the cathedral was reopened in December 2024, but it has taken longer for Notre-Dame’s twin towers to be accessible once again. buff.ly/3ldsDU1
#ShareGoodNewsToo
Notre-Dame Cathedral's towers reopen six years after huge fire
Notre-Dame's Medieval towers have been restored after a massive fire ravaged the cathedral in 2019.
buff.ly
October 19, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social
My super modern regulatory plan is that any entity named for a thing from Tolkien has to publicly explain why Tolkien wouldn’t immediately throw it into Mount Doom
tonytassell.bsky.social Tony Tassell @tonytassell.bsky.social · 26d
Tolkein continues to resonate. The new bank being set up by Palmer Luckey and backed by Peter Thiel is named Erebor after the “lonely mountain” in The Hobbit. This was also an interesting line in this rpt on the new bank by @tabbykinder.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/202d...
October 16, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
chelseagsummers.bsky.social
There was this muffin place around the corner from me on 7th Ave that made these chocolate banana peanut butter muffins that, I am almost certain, were a joint venture between heaven and hell. Just amazing food bricks.
October 16, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
benjaminckinney.com
New neuroscience short story forthcoming in @analogsf.bsky.social! Which also means a story of - ultimately successful - negotiations with their new publisher.

Includes full final text of my contract for all to use while they finish rewriting their boilerplate.

benjaminckinney.com/analog-negot...
Analog Negotiations & Short Story Sale: Recognition, Memory » Benjamin C. Kinney - still pruning...
Successful negotiations with Must Read Magazines & Analog SF, who will publish my science fiction short story "Recognition, Memory."
benjaminckinney.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
scriblit.bsky.social
Sometimes there'll be a joke written by someone who's been dead for tens, hundreds of years & i'll stop and think about another human reaching through time to make another human laugh, long after they're gone, and it's so beautiful it makes me well up.
wiswell.bsky.social John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 27d
Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.
October 14, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
amyhoy.bsky.social
funny and accurate thread about trickery in dancing robot demos

it’s funny how it exploits our natural sense of empathy — “that thing that looks like me must also find the same things i do difficult”

and i do mean exploits

just like chatbots do

pareidolia
djangowexler.bsky.social Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 29d
I'm laughing out loud because, *twenty years ago*, a friend in robotics told me that showing off a dancing robot is what you do when your robot sucks, and a *group* of them even more so.
October 13, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary. Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe. Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat? This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight: * Waste of public resources on military theatrics. * Fraud in the name of “public safety.” * Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect. Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here. When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness. Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control. Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard. Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
October 12, 2025 at 1:02 AM
quitevague.bsky.social
Microfiction for the prompt "Elevators":
howsweetthewords.bsky.social V. Astor Solomon @howsweetthewords.bsky.social · Oct 11
No one knows how hungry it is, how it yearns to close its doors forever, how all it wants is to fall, fall, fall until it and everyone inside it have become one. All it wants is to hold onto something instead of watching everyone leave.
Maybe one day it will get that chance. Maybe it won't be lonely
October 12, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
thedeadlands.com
the coin fundraiser is SO FUN and good

(and helpful, yep)

but you know what ACTUALLY sustains us throughout the year

🦴besides bones🦴

is our PATRONS

$2/mo and you get ePub of the deadlands.

please

consider signing up

💀

psychopomp.com/deadlands/pa...
A modified version of the Simpsons “Do It For Her” meme. The bulletin board that normally shows photos of Maggie is instead covered with various pictures of skeletons in different poses and settings. The central text still reads “DO IT FOR HER,” but “her” has been humorously replaced by the collage of skeleton images, making it a skeleton-themed parody of the original meme.
October 9, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
spavel.bsky.social
Average man, average man
Median height, weight, and arm span
Fits a shirt, medium size
Airplane legroom will suffice
Is he strong? Bro come on
He ordered dumbbells off Amazon
He won't drive into town
Transit pass gets him around
Look out! Here comes the average man
October 6, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
niallharrison.bsky.social
A brief piece on Aliya Whiteley's latest novella: locusmag.com/review/short...
SHORT TAKE: The Creator by Aliya Whiteley: Review by Niall Harrison
The Creator, Aliya Whiteley (NewCon Press 978-1-914-95398-9, £8.99, 104pp, tp) May 2025. Cover by Ian Whates. NewCon Press’s latest batch of novellas is led off by the latest from Aliya Whiteley. I…
locusmag.com
October 5, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Ziv W
verybadllama.bsky.social
writing a 2025 version of "We Didn't Start the Fire" that is just four minutes of indistinguishable frustrated yelling that ends with an evacuation alert for an actual wildfire
October 5, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
othersidespec.bsky.social
WE'RE FUNDED! BASE GOAL ANNIHILATED IN FOUR!! HOURS!!

We're full of SO MANY emotions. OTHERSIDE means a lot to us, and we're so grateful to everyone who wants queer stories, poems, and art to have more space to exist. Now more than ever, that matters 🪐🗡️

Now onto stretch goals?? 👀
OTHERSIDE KICKSTARTER FULLY FUNDED! There is a screaming kitten in the bottom left.
September 29, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Ziv W
swordsjew.bsky.social
right now im rereading "ninety degrees north," fergus fleming's excellent, zippy, wonderfully researched account of centuries of maniacs attempting to find the north pole. polar reading is 2 things: man vs nature, but mostly, everyone is NUTS
September 25, 2025 at 1:52 AM