Pia Long

Packing the first round of book orders today and it’s quite emotional. www.demoaccords.com

Sample September with the samples by Olfiction, a fragrance studio in the UK owned by @perfumer-pia.bsky.social and @nickrgilbert.bsky.social What to do when you realize you love every single fragrance? 🤭 I already own Iconic, so what’s next? 📚 🫖 🍊⛽️

Thank you for the review! 🥰 One of the perks of being an independent perfumer is that when I start craving a smell, I can create it. 😅

Assimilating a little too well to British culture can, post-Brexit, make one feel like it’s Stockholm Syndrome.

AI is built from a stockpile of human work. When our collective labor is repackaged and sold back to us for private profit, taxing AI and returning it as a dividend is simply the commons reclaiming our share. #UBI

I’ve been painting and drawing every day this year so far. It’s a lifelong hobby. I’m not aiming to be a pro. What I discovered at some point is that it calms me down (woman discovers art therapy).

Good riddance to Putin’s puppet.

NASA isn't why the US doesn't have universal healthcare, or a social safety net. The US doesn't have those things because politicians with the power to provide them choose specifically not to (with varying levels of support from voters). Enthusiasm for human spaceflight doesn't drive that choice.

Tove Jansson (Finnish, 1914–2001), Moomin and sisters Mymble and Little My paint an #Easter egg #womensart #Moomins

On an emotional level, I can’t get past that billionaires exist and they don’t immediately think of COOL STUFF to do with effectively unlimited resources (like funding art projects, building free theme parks, libraries, indie TV shows, ending world hunger, ending our reliance on oil so…)

Since when has America actually protected children? The “but surely NOW…” thinking is flawed because since school shootings weren’t enough, why should this be. The horror goes deeper that the present regime and can’t be defeated by just trying to return to status quo.

Would this be a good time to examine why modern Western fashion ideals are a bit problematic…

I’m going to stop saying MAGA and replace it with “paedofascist vulture capitalism.”

❤️

I mean, feel free to unfollow me if I am insufficiently pure for you. Otherwise, unless one lives in a stick lean-to and drinks naught but pure rainwater, all any of us can do is choose what level of hypocrisy we live at and with. I wrote about this, in fact: whatever.scalzi.com/2025/03/12/t...

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Looks like monsters representing the collapsing illusion of American political power are infesting my brain like the cordyceps of this chimera.

This year I had a plan: to give myself permission to do bad art, every day, as a form of nervous system regulation and learning. A sketch a day. The underlying lofty aim was to learn techniques that could help me pick up botanical illustration. Well, this is what I’ve sketched recently.

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

Serious question: is Trump trying to escalate things until his victims organise and the ongoing American class and race war becomes a civil war?

This is an excellent analogy, because my recollection from grade school is that the pen on the right looks fun and exciting, and then you play with it for a few minutes and realize it's not actually useful for anything and in fact makes some tasks more cumbersome, and never think about it again.

One of the most dangerous things about America is Republicans “sanitysplaining” Trump.

A joke for the history buffs: Germany’s satirical newspaper @der-postillon.com titles: “Vienna Academy of the Arts offers Trump admission as a student — They don’t want to get blamed again“

I wrote an opinion piece on AI since it keeps being hyped for perfumery. My position: the mix of human minds and capitalism has given us AI and will, ultimately, also determine its future. Following @edzitron.com on here has been useful, among other things. open.substack.com/pub/perfumer...

The forbidden play bow

I love how this is all the context we need.

My favorite genre of cringe is watching some mediocre white guy incorrectly lecture a woman about something related to the field where she is an expert.

A few of us indie perfume brands and Sainte Cellier, an independent retailer of multiple hard to find perfumes have organised a pop-up shop in London this November. Do visit! Meet the founders, try the perfumes.

10 years ago I started investigating and writing about fragrance regulations because they seemed so inconsistent. They still seem that way to me today but I have learned some stuff along the way. Read my free blog here: substack.com/@pialong/

A small Lofoten tourism group announces they're shutting down their guides and possibly going bankrupt thanks to the loss in revenue from chatbots that steal and rephrase their content None of this shit is inevitable. Fuck the slimy tech bros. www.instagram.com/p/DPyRB-tDBf...

If the cost to us all wouldn’t be too high, sometimes I wonder what calling Reform’s bluff would look like. Who would they have left to blame if they were in charge and managed to chuck most of us foreigners out? It would just leave their unmasked racism towards locals, and that can’t be allowed.

Hello

Nigel Farage doesn’t have to become PM; his policies have been adopted by successive governments and now by Labour, too. 10 years until Indefinite Leave to Remain and “not a penny in benefits” is pure xenophobia, classism, racism and stupidity. Citizenship costs £2k and may not be an option for all.

History shows that when democracies face crises, strengthening and reinvigorating democratic participation is essential to prevent democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism. This is not that.

Trans rights are not the rights of a tiny minority, trans rights are everyone’s rights to self-determination, control of our bodies, and a society where opportunity and aesthetics are not restricted by sex assigned at birth You should support and defend trans people because trans people are people

Sky News and the BBC repeatedly mention the "migrant crisis" in doing so they are normalising and legitimising far right talking points. There is no "migrant crisis", there is only migrant hysteria, which the British media is feeding into instead of countering.

Not to be all FBPE-pilled, but at least with the EU ID cards (and Irish passport card) you can travel with them around the continent fine. What will the BritCard have? An ugly flag, and it will give all our information to some dodgy faceless company. It’s giving gauche, it’s giving midlife crisis.

Mmmm, yeah. The most dangerous thing for us immigrants in UK is that both Tories & Labour have been pandering to Farage, but that just legitimises Farage and eventually we’ll end up the political chess pieces on a board that he has shat on.

At this particular point in the American psychodrama I’m no longer convinced that releasing the Epstein files would even tank Trump’s support. He is a mere representation of the radicalisation of the far right and their hunger for full-blown fascism. The latter is what needs to be defeated.