William Preston

Quite the streaky sky this afternoon

RT if you've never had a tab of ChatGPT open, period.

My latest Substack piece. Thanks for reading. williampreston431392.substack.com/p/in-omelas-...

POS knows PsOS

One of those classic Charlie perfume ads

#Lanterns #DCU Spotted a Lantern tending bar in The Girl Who Played with Fire.

They’re driving gloves for if he has to commandeer a vehicle and pull away at high speed. Also, it makes me very happy to see how much he obviously hates this entire experience. 

Bumblebee and hoverfly on asters

Anyone else thinking that the lack of the #presspool for Trump will actually help him? In his first term, IIRC, his polling numbers rose when he WASN'T on TV. His presence poisons his own Presidency. Even possible supporters prefer less of him.

Evil Bollweevil

I thought the conspiracy theory view was that the government was doing it, so do conspiracy theorists think a guy who works for the government is going to get to the bottom of condensa—I mean, chemtrails?

My latest (free!) Substack post. williampreston431392.substack.com/p/annie-dill...

Late Walk

Make a band edible Bruce Springroll

He meant “reduce the world to dust.”

That wasn't a thing one could do when I was a child. (Born in '62.)

Pappus, its bristles blowing in the breeze, caught atop the spent blooms of a spiraea.

Perhaps this is how you categorize as well. "Kinds of Books" williampreston431392.substack.com/p/kinds-of-b...

I'm sure this will be helpful: "Kinds of Books: An Incomplete Typology," free at my Substack. williampreston431392.substack.com/p/kinds-of-b...

It's fitting that Trump wants to rename #LakeOntario to #LakeAmerica. This changes the HOMES mnemonic to HAMES. The hames are the curved bars over a draft horse's neck that bind it to the traces, the long side bars connected to the burden. He wants us bound to the dead weight of his presidency.

Ant on garlic chive flowers #nature #garden #photography

For the birthday of Ray Bradbury, born in 1920. A brief reflection on what he gave me. williampreston431392.substack.com/p/rays-day-r...

As with the video when the running robot is taken away on what amounts to a stretcher (rather than in a box, say), what’s distressing here is the immediate move to cover it as if it were a human body that we cannot look upon. The fundamental category error of treating machinery as if it were mortal.

Now let’s hear from a man who absolutely never took any of his children to a doctor’s visit. 

Reds #photography #nature

Emily Wilson's Atlantic piece referenced the same passage in The Odyssey that I focused on! By Zeus! williampreston431392.substack.com/p/what-makes...

The funniest part of this—and the most telling in how humans see what they want to see—is that there was a stretcher at hand rather than, you know, a box.

Ross Douthat ends his NYT career (he's headed to 60 Minutes, if you didn't know) with a stunning piece of meta-opinion that reveals his own honest view of his years of work.

Thanks for reading. open.substack.com/pub/williamp...

Some brilliant friends found in my @oaklibrary.bsky.social copy of My Brilliant Friend. Can we find them and return it?

New Muppet found in Henson Studios dig.

#Odyssey Being vague to avoid giving away film details, but: Why would someone writing and directing this story dump "marriage bed" for a Pulp Fictional "I kept this up my ass for twenty years"?

Now's a good time for folks to buy my book of five Old Man stories because every chapter in the fifth one takes its title from a phrase in Tennyson's "Ulysses." Isn't that a good reason? (All five stories previously appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction.) www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQLVG6W...

This is like one of those communiques from a senior devil to a junior devil in The Screwtape Letters.

#TheOdyssey is an amazing achievement, though I don’t know whether knowing the book as I do helps or hinders in appreciating the film in its own right. Nolan makes some decisions that have huge consequences for what stays and goes and introduces some unhelpful elements. Also: a lot of bad editing.

We might still be talking about Miller himself two centuries from now because scientists will still be struggling to decode his alien DNA.

"This nation has been a complicated living thing, complicated because it is living, alive as a consequence of its complications."

Written for today. Wishing us well. open.substack.com/pub/williamp...

I’m glad there’s news we can trust in this new era

Hey JD, show me on this doll where liberation theology touched you.

Let's all truly remember the dumb fuckin' escapade of the Alamo.

I am grateful to anyone who can explain this cryptic tag on a bag of Salada black tea. (I'm assuming there's a missing word or two—but this likely would have been good enough for the Oracle at Delphi.)

Dude with no background in the biological sciences shoots his shot at a bio dissertation

And finally, a survey of orgs, mags, and other entities focused on speculative fiction, to determine where need might be greatest to help the field stay alive, whether it be through funding, outreach, or anything else. The survey is open thru 6/29. #2026IgnyteAwards airtable.com/appOgisruufu...

A lovely review of my latest story, appearing in Analog, “Variables in the Drake Equation.“

It is, in terms even Trump would understand, "par for the course."

Did America just surrender to everybody?