New paper: Moral Universality and Its Discontents.
👉 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17837774
Argument in brief: virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism & contractualism all rely on a stability in moral vocabulary that simply doesn’t exist. Instead of universal laws, we have context-bound heuristics. If language won’t hold the theory, the theory must yield.
#philosophy #language #writing #essay #universal #morality #utility #announcement #society #communication #theory #hypothesis #essay #paper #learning

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Ancient Statues

Hooray for Me! 1,000 essay downloads from my Anti-Enlightenment project and others on Zenodo.
https://philosophics.blog/2025/12/06/hooray-for-me-the-1000-download-threshold/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

#philosophy #writing #essays #blog #zenodo #celebration #amwriting #follow

Palisade Green, sequel to Atraxian Blue available as ebook https://books2read.com/u/3RrNwn or print https://books2read.com/u/m0XB6y

Renny thought he'd escaped from his father. He thought he had his addiction under control. Then a bot turns up on his doorstep with a message that changes everything.

#scifi #writing

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Cover for Palisade Green by Mary Holstege. It shows glowing rings with streamers of red dust peeling away from them.

"Just as the sun begins to peek over the flat horizon of Coon Rapids, Iowa, 1,383 pigeons fill the sky." —Oliver Egger for The Paris Review

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/11/26/homeward-bound-on-pigeon-racing/?src=longreads

#longreads #pigeons #racing #writing #reading #essays

Chapter 20 of Atraxian Blue (https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx) is up at http://mathling.com/books/index.html

Time to leave: in which Lila returns to the ship to find things very much not to her liking

#scifi
#writing
#AtraxianBlue

Chapter 19 of Atraxian Blue (https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx) is up at http://mathling.com/books/index.html

The Red Rooster: In which Renny's past misdeeds catch up with him, hard

#scifi
#writing
#AtraxianBlue

Chapters 17 and 18 of Atraxian Blue (https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx) is up at http://mathling.com/books/index.html

17: In which Renny sneaks back to his room at the coffin hostel

18: In which Lila and Toussaint try to rescue Tinks

#scifi
#writing
#AtraxianBlue

Chapter 16 of Atraxian Blue (https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx) is up at http://mathling.com/books/index.html

In which Tass has a nice birthday surprise from his brothers

#scifi #writing #AtraxianBlue

Nice! @JoinFediverseWiki has a collection of onboarding resources for the fediverse, and we're all invited to contribute!

https://joinfediverse.wiki/Fediverse_onboarding_resources

Original call to action, in German: https://social.biblioco.de/objects/66fc0b30-8b67-4ae5-8c20-bdd957d10843

#fediverse #guides #writing

@hpkomic Off the top of my head, here are some of the brands I that use in my teaching:
* Bozo Burger
* Orca-Cola (courtesy of Harvard Lampoon)
* Apollo Coffee
* Davenport cigarettes

…as well as a couple of movie titles to highlight differences in genre:
* *It Came from Rhode Island*
* *Let’s Go Shopping 2: This Time It’s Shoes*

#writing #worldbuilding #TEFL

#WISCONSIN-ITES!

Those flat, square, crunchy baked goods made of flour and baking soda-- do you call them

soda crackers?
crackers?
saltines?

other?

Asking for a main character. 😁🤘✌️🖖

#amwriting
#writing
#WritingLife
#ShortStory
#horror
#RegionalDialects

This week's Top 5:

* Metal medicine, High Country News
* Hyped humanoids, Harper's Magazine
* Carnival crossroads, The Bitter Southerner
* Divine defiance, Places Journal
* Optimization obsession, Aeon

https://longreads.com/2025/11/21/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-588/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Longreads #Reading #Nonfiction #Journalism #Writing

Write to hone your #taste, because when anyone can generate infinite words, it’s your refined feeling that makes your work stand out.

https://www.superversive.co/blog/writing-is-feeling-in-motion

#writing #writingcommunity #writers

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

15: In which Renny and Toussaint break in to the lockup

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing #AtraxianBlue

"A printed diary held out the promise of total control over time, place and the self."

Elena Mary for Aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/victorian-diary-writers-kicked-off-our-age-of-self-optimisation

#Longreads #Victorian #Diary #Diaries #Writing #Society #Culture #History #Optimization #Technology #SelfImprovement

Here is a little taste from the story.

"Was it really necessary to render every single human life in all of this detail, all of the time? So many of the thoughts in the computation-heavy human minds had almost zero impact on the physics of the universe."

I've been feeling shy about tackling the SF topics in the story head on, but I've found an angle to have some fun with it.

#writing

@b4ux1t3 @kboyd @sergio_101 @amin I watched from the sidelines while NaNoWriMo imploded. I like the idea of finishing a project in a month, but November has never been a good month for me. Honestly, with the change of seasons and the holidays at month-end, I don't see how it's a good month for anyone. I would love to see the #Writing Month folks make this a year-round thing, enabling participants to pick any month they want and providing support and encouragement during that month.

Scammers gotta scam.

#WriterBeware #Writing #Writer

"This is a complicated, layered fraud, with two distinct versions and two different endpoints. But they both start the same way."

https://writerbeware.blog/2025/11/14/if-a-famous-author-calls-hang-up-anatomy-of-an-impersonation-scam/

November 16, 2025

Sunday. Church. Game day. Read and rest. Practice piano. Had a good gig last night at Stage Too. I read Dr. Bill Stroud's poems and played The Arkansawyer songs with his lyrics at Word Play Cafe after the show. Two of the writers know Bill Stroud.

https://archive.org/details/the-arkansawyers

#journal #discord #hairylarryland #jazz #writing #poetry #lyrics

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

13: In which a young boy's friend is "upgraded"
14: In which Lila and Toussaint discuss options, over noodles

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

James Pain's motivations for moving to the Bear Blog lightweight blogging platform resonate with me:

But I care more about publishing. The truth is simple: if the choice is between a perfect platform and a published post, I pick the post.

I went with Write.as for similar reasons, i.e. focusing on frictionless writing rather than setup and customization.

https://jpain.io/moving-blog

#blogging #writing

November 15, 2025

This morning I got in touch with Steve Lawson on Mastodon. Today, Something Blue production and a gig tonight at Stage Too, Main and Monroe in Jonesboro, AR. 6:00 to 7:00. Followed by Word Play Cafe. Writers reading.

https://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/

#journal #discord #hairylarryland #jazz #writing #reading

In this week’s Top 5:

Bear bones (Southlands)
Outstanding Outkast (Oxford American)
Brightline’s brutality (Miami Herald)
Lasting lunches (The Bitter Southerner)
Ruin ruminations (The Baffler)

Become a Longreads member and find out the five stories that our editors loved most this week (plus our Audience Award):

https://longreads.com/2025/11/14/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-587/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Top5 #longreads #reading #writing #essays

Je máccuse. I confess to using AI. Now what?

https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/13/confession-i-use-ai/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=blog

#ai #blog #writing #chatgpt #robots #language #essay #books #amwriting #authorlife #technology #humancondition #Philosophy

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Escher's Drawing Hands

When someone says your prose ‘sounds like AI’, what they’re really spotting is the template of professional writing you were taught. I pick this apart in my latest rant: https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/13/apparently-ive-got-more-to-say-on-this-matter/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social
#Grammar #Writing #AmWriting #WritingCommunity #AI #Censorship #CancelCulture #Reddit #critics #technology #society #behaviour #attitude #opinion

Everyone’s suddenly an AI detective, waving pitchforks at punctuation. Proper grammar? “Suspicious.” Logical flow? “Definitely synthetic.” The psychology of fear in full bloom. Read my new piece: Accusations of Writing Whilst Artificial. 🤖
🔗 https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/12/accusations-of-writing-whilst-artificial/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

#Philosophy #Writing #AI #Posthumanism #Satire #CulturalCritique #psychology #madness #mentalillness #hysteria #Psychology #culture #society #existentialism #humancondition #critique #witch #criticaltheory #criticalthinking #smh

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AI robot taking orders to write from his sentient master

"In reflecting on her now, I wanted to check in with modern-day heroes of the school lunch line."—Jennifer Justus for The Bitter Southerner

https://bittersoutherner.com/issue-no-12/all-praise-to-the-lunch-ladies/?src=longreads

#longreads #dinnerladies #lunch #food #children #reading #writing

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

12: In which the crew makes plans and Renny asserts unconvincingly that he is definitely not a cat burglar

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?

this isn’t good UI/UX @MastodonEngineering

more importantly, it fundamentally breaks one of the basics of #rhetorics and #writing : the ability to quote someone freely.

people either have public, embedabble posts or they don’t.

stop breaking the web. stop breaking #oembed.

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it shows a post i thought would have an embedded post by @futurebird@sauropods.win about how EFF should take on how phones are being used to spy on people to sell targetted advertising.

In fiction are there any huge stereotypes, tropes about divorced characters that are overdone, annoying?

Writing this as someone who “simply can’t imagine getting divorced*” I decided to just make my character as astonished & confused as I would be. (write what you know?)

I do feel like I’m bumbling around a bit here. This guy is a math professor, gets divorced after his daughter goes to college— didn’t expect it, even if he understands it.

*I also get this is naive

#divorce #writing

"Liam tells me about one woman who, after whitening her teeth, demanded an all-white diet for two months." —Jack Burke for The Times

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/confessions-private-chef-9xh275c28

#longreads #food #privatechef #chef #wealth #rich #writing #reading

I know I've already linked to it some months ago, but it just came up in a conversation and I am pretty happy with this piece of writing, so linking again:

The Machines Ran On Anguish
https://yarn.rys.io/the-machines-ran-on-anguish/

I don't usually write fiction; this is my first fiction thing that I ever really put out publicly into the world. Be gentle.

#Writing

Wanted: #Writing Advice

Have any of you *completed* a novel where there are multiple story lines that thread in and out of each other?

I started writing it in the order I imagined it: so switching when I'd expect the reader to switch, but this has become confusing.

I'm separating the story threads by character and I'm planning on working on them like individual stories for a bit.

Then I think I will weave them back together.

Does this sound like a good idea? Anything I might watch out for?

Atraxian Blue preview/serialization chapters (http://mathling.com/books/index.html):

11: In which Renny is allowed to stay, provisionally

For the impatient: https://books2read.com/u/b6ElAx

#scifi #writing