Negative Land

Your secrets are safe with me - I’ve already forgotten them

[mamotretos]

sci-fi-art-666

Perry Rhodan - Italian No. 58 - The fortress of the past

Rudolf Sieber-Lonati (1924-1990), Austria

[scavengedluxury]

Under Waterloo. London, September 2015.

[detroitlib]

"No Gas! Reading is not Rationed. Let's Go Read! Kalamazoo Public Library"

[birdlord5000]

next year james patterson is slapping his name on a book called "the secret lives of booksellers and librarians," which is real bold considering that every bookseller and librarian that i've met in my time as a bookseller and librarian absolutely loathes him. including me.

[birdlord5000]

"rowan if you hate james patterson how come you know about a book of his that's coming out seven months from now?"

I Must Keep The Scope Of My Sniper Rifle Trained On The Beast At All Times

[foxofninetales]

Okay, I feel the need to explain just why James Patterson is so hated by librarians.

See, it's not just that he writes mediocre, churned-out thrillers; there are many, many authors of mediocre, churned-out thrillers out there, he ain't special.

It's also not that he "writes" them with "coauthors" and slaps his name on them - again, this is not unique.

It's not even - though this is starting to get there- that he chases every publishing trend and creates His Version of everything from Diary of a Wimpy Kid to Nicholas Sparks, which nobody likes as well as they like his thrillers but still buy because they have His Name on them like a summoning charm.

No, what makes James Patterson uniquely loathed is the combination of the frequency of publication and his popularity. Because, to be honest, I'm not sure that anyone even likes his books anymore, but it doesn't matter, because if they have the James Patterson name on them then readers will be queuing up like zombies desperate for a fix of decaying cerebral matter. Which would be tolerable if he had the decency to only write one book a year like most other bestselling authors, but "James Patterson" (quotes VERY intentional) puts out roughly two books per month. So as a librarian, not only do you have to buy every new book James Patterson puts out, you have to buy multiple copies in order to fulfill demand. Somewhere around 5% of my fiction budget is spent ENTIRELY ON JAMES PATTERSON. Every new James Patterson that comes out means a dozen or more queer romances, inventive sci-fi novellas, unique cultural viewpoints, etc, etc that you can't buy because YOU HAVE TO BUY JAMES PATTERSON INSTEAD. (See also, you just weeded and shifted the Ps in fiction to make room and now it's full again oh god why.)

And the clincher - the absolute clincher - is the knowledge that the publishers will be "finding" "unfinished manuscripts" by "James Patterson" for a minimum of fifty years after his death, so even if some right-minded bibliophile with a claymore takes one for the team, we will never, ever be free.

And that is why we hate James Patterson.

[iheartallthethings]

I was wondering about this when i saw the first version of this post

[coco-guillotine]

He’s also - and this will not surprise you - a real dick. I know this because I once worked at a book publisher and had a phone conversation with him during which demanded information I was not permitted to give, pulled the old “do you know who I am” routine, implied I’d face negative consequences for refusing him.

[haikumaker]

Mr Peanut stalking someone in midtown Manhattan, 1972

[coco-guillotine]

Tzinacantecuhtli (Bat Lord)

Zapotec (Be'ena'a)

800–900

A Tzinacantecuhtli is a hybrid being that combines an upright man with a bat’s claws and head, including large ears and a leaf-shaped nose. Here, the figure wears a loincloth, ruff, and necklace of three bells with clappers shaped like bones. Associated with darkness, caves, and the underworld, bats were believed capable of traversing different realms of the cosmos. Both destructive and generative, a Tzinacantecuhtli was linked to sacrifice, fertility, and renewal. Monumental sculptures such as this reminded communities of their obligations for the perpetuation of the world.

[reagan-slayer69]

“but what if you abort the baby who’ll cure cancer?!” sir the baby who will cure cancer is an organic chemistry major who works at a Home Depot because you use AI to go through your resumes

[mel-155-a]

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

[brinnanza]

one person does not cure cancer. teams of scientists who rely on funding from the government cure cancer. one person's singular novel ingenuity is not what is stopping us from curing cancer; fucking CAPITALISM IS.

[liminalbeauty]

Literally.

Kseniia Petrova - Wikipedia

[coco-guillotine]

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (2024): recommended

[coco-guillotine]

Three On A Match (1932): recommended

[coco-guillotine]

Weapons (2025): recommended

[nemfrog]

Puss-In-Boots. Big Book of Fairy Tales. 1896. Illustrated by Gustave Doré and others.

"The cat crying 'Stop Thief'." Note the marquis in the water, awaiting rescue.

Internet Archive

[coco-guillotine]

I’ll never not reblog this Puss-In-Boots

[coco-guillotine]

May 2026

Queens NY

[dominacetrix]

Saw someone on Reddit asking what the requirements are for going to the library. Not to get a card and check stuff out. Just to hang out there. I don't mean to make fun of the poster for not knowing. I blame capitalism and the reduction of third spaces for making the idea of being able to just exist in a free public space seem like a strange concept to people. Anyway. This inspired a meme.

[senso1954]

this tiktok screenshot ruined my life i need to see the serbian pigeon movie so so badly but it doesn't exist it's so foul to make this bad of a point with something so cool and then take it away from me.

[deseretgear]

Tiktok marvel fans really will be out here like "movie fan SHOCKED because i'd rather watch superhero movie #54 in blue and not a sensual 1987 french horror film about a man discovering his wife may not exist set in what is gradually revealed to be a space station" as if you're supposed to agree that superhero movie #54 is the clear winner in this comparison

[kirbymongerr]

Love the idea of a story about a complex issue that's told from the perspective of something that cannot comprehend or care about the issue. The way the story would be sliced up and moments that a human would consider pointless would be focused on because the pigeon happened to be there would be hype as fuck

[beardedmrbean]

[silken-scarves]

Ok FINE I made the movie poster of it

Mališa, otherwise known as Little One, is a pet pigeon owned by a conservative butler of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy. She is loved, and she is pampered— until her owner is murdered in cold blood, and she is left to fend for herself in Sarajevo.

In the wilds of the city, she feeds from the poor, working nationalist radicals, and the vieux riches alike.

To Mališa, there are no ethical concerns. No politics. No burgeoning nationalism.

There are only hands that feed her, and hands that do not.

[headspace-hotel]

This is compelling. Consider me fucking compelled.

[anarchautistic]

Final shot is the bird hearing, but not seeing, the sound of a .32 ACP pistol, and flying away in shock

[lilmaneater]

"From the studio that brought you Goncharov...."

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[coco-guillotine]

Ok ok but there does for real exist a GREEK movie seen through the eyes of a CHICKEN.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29283995/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

[whatkindofnameisella]

ursula k le guin affirmations for your day:

it is our differences which make us dearer to one another

it is never too late to start loving

the enemy is not the foreigner, but the ones who tell you to hate the foreigner

everyone should have food, shelter, and work

everything is a yin and yang metaphor if you try hard enough

sci-fi is important

[mutant-distraction]

The Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) needs no introduction. With bone-crushing jaws, haunting vocalizations, and a feisty disposition, this critter is Earth’s largest living marsupial carnivore. Weighing up to 30 lbs (13.6 kg), the Tasmanian devil is primarily a scavenger, chomping down on just about anything it can find—even if it's rotten. Did you know? Baby devils, which are about the size of a raisin at birth, are called imps.

Photo: CraigRJD, iStock

Credit: The American Museum of Natural History

[tilthat]

TIL that there is journalism equivalent to the Bechdel Test. An article about a female scientist fails the “Finkbeiner Test” if it mentions one of seven topics regarding her womanhood

via reddit.com

[prowlick-deactivated20210420]

The fact that she’s a woman

Her husband’s job

Her child-care arrangements

How she nurtures her underlings

How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field

How she’s such a role model for other women

How she’s the “first woman to…”

[hedwig-dordt]

Okay, one quote, and then you absolutely have to read the whole thing. 

Still, the virtue of some rules in Aschwanden’s test is difficult to see at first. Take the rule of “no firsts.” In the comments section below her post for Last Word on Nothing, Finkbeiner explained that no sooner had she taken the vow to ignore gender, than she caught herself writing that the astronomer she was profiling was the first to win a certain award. After a reader urged her to stick to her pledge, she removed it.

“The fact that she’s the first woman to do that says a lot more about the prize-giving committee than it does about her,” Finkbeiner explained in our interview. “So if I were going to put that into a story, it would be a story about prejudice in that prize committee.”

It blew my mind, because she’s right. The fact that there’s some many firsts left is the result of bias in the committees NOT IN THE WORK WOMEN DO