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You mentioned you like Stephen Fry! Be wary, he is a Yid and he is only friends with you to extract wealth, which is the primary objective of a Jew. He may seem nice to you but in reality all he wants is more sympathisers and your money. You can't trust a Jew as far as you throw it. No need to thank me, education on them should be mandatory not volentery. Dirty, evil creatures. Keep up the good work with the books.

Look, this is a bit embarrassing, but I’m afraid that I’m a fully-paid-up honest-to-goodness barmitzvahed-and-circumcised Jew myself. And while I would, of course, like sympathisers and money, I most certainly do not want yours.

Also, it’s spelled ‘voluntary’.

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Hugo Award Follow Up:

I think it's fair to say that the astonishing thing is how enthusiastically the American, Canadian (and British?) people involved in the Hugos took to censorship. I'm proud of the whistleblower, and am still puzzled by the removal of Sandman Episode 6. But this appears to have been what was going on:

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Kinder Scout, out on the north side away from the crowds. Dark clouds on storm winds, hints of autumn on the heather and bilberries. Out above the Snake, a red kite dancing on those winds; sheltered amongst the roots and gravel, lizards storing the last of the summer heat.

A near perfect day of fell running.

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Apparently engagement can be driven by photos of yourself* in posts. So, here I am atop Hindscarth a couple of days ago. Though I’m just a shadow of my former self after some pretty unpleasant health issues. Though I have been gifted an awesome abdominal scar**.

Decent test of my current fitness levels, properly fit I’d expect to get from Little Town car park to the top of Hindscarth in around 60 minutes***. Took me 90 by my watch; probably actually only about 80 given a nav cock-up in the valley, letting a very nervously descending group past on the scrambly bit group and stopping for photos. Diabetes behaved itself too, which recently is a surprise. I’ll take that given the first quarter of the year.

*not sure myself; I’ve a voice for mime and visually am best suited for radio …

**which a very inked friend suggests I have a little graffiti added to leave it looking like a snake - I’m a three score years old Jew, but very tempted.

***useless info unless you’re familiar with the northern lakeland fells, so - about 5km, 500m ascent up easy scrambling, farmland and steepish runnable ground

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September 2019, running over Dalehead, High Spy - approaching Maiden Moor, watched by a curious raven.

A strange day, memories of my then recently deceased father swirling inside my head while mist and wind swirled outside it.

Good, but strange.

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In the meadow, as summer’s green begins to ease into autumn’s ochres, a common darter (Sympetrum striolatum) basks in warm evening sunlight.

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Hmm, a condition otherwise known as Type 1 diabetes.

Which I live with. A full moon is not always required.

You are a werehuman. But you are not a wolf that turn into a human on full moon. You are a regular human who, on a full moon, turns into a way stronger, very angry and hyper-aggressive version of yourself. It is even harder to explain than being a werewolf.

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In Sheffield; in the window of a shop that's very firm about their stock, "it's not vintage, it's second hand". A wonderful place, I’ve got some good stuff from them over the years, be it books or music or clothing.

I'm thinking this image will probably end up offered as a print(inkjet. it's shot on my digital kit).

Six months post surgery, I can now hold a camera still again, and concentrate long enough to edit, which is a win. And a joy, I’ve missed my photographic saunters. So, slowly, I’m getting back to work. Webshop will probably reopen late September as planned.

Oh yeah, that bit of dubiously sited reflection? That is about as close to a selfie of me as will happen.

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Notes made while sauntering: 27 July 2023 ~ warm sun and a refreshing breeze ~ acorns and haws swelling ~ blackberries purple, but not yet ripe for snaffling ~ amidst the silver birch, ringlets dancing in shivelight ~ above the knapweed speckled meadow, swifts hawk high dragonflies hawk low ~ harebells amongst eggs and bacon ~ the snap, crackle and pop of broom seeds in the heat …

A note, eggs and bacon is a local vernacular name for BirdsFoot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus.

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In my suburban wild garden, Witch’s nosegay.

A moment of quiet in the last brightness of evening, before the stormclouds filled the sky.

According to the field guides, it’s Yarrow (Achillea millefolium); witch’s nosegay is a local name a childhood mentor taught me. I love the number of vernacular names for this plant; old man's mustard, devil's nettle, seven-year's love, snake's grass, soldier's woundwort, death flower, eerie - amongst so many others.

Feels like there’s a short story in that sequence of names …

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A note for type 1 diabetics. This response will also send your blood sugar spiking. If you wear a CGM linked to your phone, it may well(rather unhelpfully) scream at you.

Dysautonomia and MCAS are such wild fucking disorders.

Something can vaguely annoy me but if I’m flared up my already temperamental nervous system perceives the stress response as a threat (that’s the MCAS) and just dumps adrenaline into my system, subsequently making my blood pressure spike then drop and my vision goes orange then grey as I teeter on the verge of syncoping (that’d be the dysautonomia).

And it's not just anger or grief that does it to me. It's happy excitement too. Literally being too happy makes me ill.

I just got some happy news from a friend and my body is juuuuust flared up enough from all the renovation work that getting good news made me feel dizzy.

Like some gothic heroine about to faint from a fit of nerves. I hate it here (in this body).

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Agreeing with this 100%

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

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I am most definitely in the second group. Anything, including bits of my own body; useful because it can be hidden. No-one sees you fidgeting your toes in a good pair of brogues or mountaineering boots.

To the point of needing stitches inside my lower lip because I was using it as a fidget to calm my brain on a hard rock climb with potential for a big and quite risky fall. I cocked up a relatively easy move and took the fall. Being a little hard of thinking I kept nibbling at my inner lip; until the ropes came tight, I thumped into the crag and my teeth came tight on my lip. A proper bloody mess.

are you an "i have 85 fidget toys" neurodivergent or an "i will make any available object into a fidget toy" neurodivergent

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A little doggerel I scribbled this spring, in typically changeable northern British spring weather.

I was out running in the patch of rather wonderful woodland that’s grown up about one hundred metres from my front door. It’s nestled between housing and industrial estates and links in to other patches of woodland and meadow similarly constrained.

First the serious version;

Running before the storm;

desire paths between swaying birch,

by a sheltered snowdrop hollow,

a sparrowhawks leavings.

and now dear reader, the silly version:

Running before the storm;

desire paths between swaying birch,

willow browse height 1m58,

runners brows height 1m85 …

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Early May. Climbing to High Seat from Ashness Bridge. On an icy wind, bearing with it memories of winters bite, storm clouds build over the high fells of the Skiddaw massif.

A photo from the other year on a morning out fell running. I’d taken the first launch from Keswick, to run back over the fells.

I wish I could have made this image on my large format kit, rather than my digital compact. But … it’s a bit lumpy to carry in a fellrunning pack, and in that wind a tad tricky to keep stable. Still like the image though. This is worked up on my iPad from the in camera jpg.

On the running side, one hour from Ashness landing to the top of High Seat, after a chronic illness flare* two days earlier; I was happy with that. Happier too the only rests were to check my blood glucose levels(they were okay). That storm stayed away until late evening too; which was nice. That lazy wind was nithering** though.

*chronic illness which saw me spend most of this February in hospital preparing for, and surviving, major surgery; grim but so glad we still have the NHS

** nithering is a Yorkshire dialect word for a cold that strips the heat from every part of you, that chills you to your bones

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A specific reminder for my fellow type 1 diabetics.

Hot weather can play havoc with our blood glucose. Check more frequently and adjust your insulin ratios if you need to.

in honor of it being disability pride month and summer, remember to check your medication if it can increase risk of overheating/dehydration!

i know that some psychiatric medications (like antidepressants and antipsychotics from my own experience) can increase that risk, so please take care, remember to drink water, and stay cool 👍

love you all, have a good and safe july ♡

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This is a lovely explainer.

I was 57 when I found out. The realisation that I am autistic has made so many of my life experiences make sense(well, for a given value of sense). That my daughter didn’t have to wait so long is a great relief; her life will hopefully be less fraught.

It is Disability Pride month and I think it’s time to bring this comic from April back