Sirius is actually a grey colt! He's already whitening out!
For context, Sirius is a twice grade 3 winner and is participating in the triple crown races. He's come second to lovcen in the satsuki Sho and the Japanese derby track is in his favour this year! He's Irish from his sire's side, whose foals haven't been successful at all... And his mother is sired by Stay Gold! Please run healthy and safe into the race my beloved Shiri!
Dear god they suck so much and they often take longer for tasks that would be done much more quickly by hand and yet the management is convinced it's an innovative new pipeline or whatever. BURST THAT BUBBLE.
One of the most hilarious things to happen last week was my boss struggling to generate an image of an informational sign we designed inside an acrylic frame. I did it in three minutes with Photoshop.
This is Mahmoud Khalaf from Gaza, currently studying in Ireland. I am campaigning to evacuate my family from Gaza and reunite with them in Ireland where we can rebuild our lives.
Our campaign has been vetted by El Shab Hussein and Nabulsi #151 on the Vetted Gaza Fundraisers List, as explained in my recent post titled “From Gaza to Ireland: Survived but Nightmares Make me Wish to Die"
Could we ask you please to reblog our post, boost our family campaign and share it within your networks.
You are the last hope for my family for a safe, normal life!
Link https://www.tumblr.com/supportgaza/801566956906020864/from-gaza-to-ireland-survived-but-nightmares-make?source=share
weird question: do you have a recommended reading list or formative books/works that you return to as a writer? i admire your proses and how you set up scenes so much!
hi anon! not a weird ask at all (i love talking about writing, i miss teaching it!) and therefore a long answer incoming. thank you for your compliment, that means a lot to me.
i will give you some of the works of writing i either return to often or feel have influenced me (separated into short fiction & novels/novellas). this won't be an exhaustive list, and some of these i haven't revisited within the last year. i have not included writing craft books or poetry collections this time, but i recommend reading those as well (though craft books are tricky).
before the list i think there are some helpful things to consider:
oftentimes i read a work, and it touches me deeply. rarely do i know immediately what it is i want to learn from it. i try to do a read through for "enjoyment" and one for "craft." learning to pick out what you like about a piece of writing is a skill and of itself. during grad school, the book recommended to me to help me do so was reading like a writer by francine prose. however, reading that book will do nothing if we don't put it into practice, of course. i have even done this in the past with fanfiction authors i like! if you have specific parts of my writing that have compelled you (this sounds very self-absorbed but since this is the basis of your ask...) i am more than happy to answer questions about how i approach those personally, as well.
typically when i read a book and it stands out to me, it's for one of these reasons:
- "good prose" usually attributed to a great sense of rhythm, immersive detail work, "this just fucking sounds good" and some myriad of other things
- "point of view" or doing anything with it that is interesting and unusual, such as the collective "we", etc. pov that reinforces something about the story
- "structure" such as fiction in verse, short scenes versus long, how a work approaches chapters/sections, epistolary works
- "voice" the definition of which can be argued over and has been for decades. the way i think of voice is--how do all these things, such as diction and point of view and structure, sound together? does the author have specific trends within their writing? how close or far removed is the voice of the narrator (not necessarily the same as the author) to the point of view character? does the writing shift along with pov change?
- i don't like the terms "show versus tell," however, i think there's something to say about "restraint" and authors who know what to include in greater detail, and what can be "summarized" and find a balance between these that helps the story not feel stale or slow.
- "character work" the author is capable of creating characters that feel real and nuanced and make me care.
- and the "something about this compels me, it's just that good" cop out
with all of that said, here is a (incomplete) list of works which i feel have taught me something about writing in the last few years. some of these are available online for free, but not all of them. listed in no particular order. some are translated works.
short/flash fiction
dog days by judy budnitz
silver spaceships by mary o'connell
exotics by dantiel w moniz, but also milk blood heat
the hunter's wife by anthony doerr
the axe handle remembers the tree by emily hancock
playing metal gear solid v by jamil jan kochai
house of cicadas by gabriela lee
good, brother by peter markus
my mother rearranges strangers’ lives in the dark by samanta schweblin
the red fox fur coat by teolinda gersão
blood by zdravka evtimova
story of your life by ted chiang
song for the unraveling of the world by brian evenson
novels/novellas
autobiography of red by anne carson
aura by carlos fuentes
folding beijing by hao jingfang
anil's ghost by michael ondaatje
mongrels by stephen graham jones
someone who isn't me by geoff rickly
my year of meats by ruth ozeki
beartown by fredrik backman
a man called ove by fredrik backman
star by yukio mishima
out stealing horses by per petterson
the clan of the cave bear by jean m. auel
the buddha in the attic by julie otsuka
the hungry tide by amitav ghosh
the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw
the saint of bright doors by vajra chandrasekera
i gave you eyes and you looked toward darkness by irene solà
it lasts forever and then it's over by anne de marcken
our wives under the sea by julia armfield
collections which include some of the short stories mentioned, but that are also good in their entirety:
the best american short stories 2023 edited by min jin lee (also check out the one from 2022! i tend to buy these every year)
new sudden fiction edited by robert shapard & james thomas
like i said, not at all comprehensive, but i have read every work on here at least once. if people have books or stories they like, please send them my way. i could go on but i am exercising some "restraint" here.
i have about 150 unread books at home (trophies from working at a bookstore) i am also slowly making my way through; many of those i expect to end up on this list, even if only for a few years. they have compelled me in the first few pages or chapters, so here is a list of "soon to be reads" which might intrigue you, too. some new, some old:
- ghost roots by pemi aguda
- terrestrial history by joe mungo reed
- the road by cormac mccarthy
- lake like a mirror by ho sok fong
- in the absence of men by philippe besson
- dogs at the perimeter by madeleine thien
- convenience store woman by sayaka murata
- ghachar ghochar by vivek shanbhag
- whereabouts by jhumpa lahiri
- the emissary by yoko tawada
- oh god, the sun goes by david connor
i read a lot of short stories, specifically in online literary magazines. you might notice i am very fond of short stories. books are expensive and we can't always buy all the ones we want, but there is excellent writing available for free, and if you are able to donate to keep those magazines running, even better. some places i turn to frequently when looking for inspiration is: the adroit journal, uncanny magazine, electric literature, and clarkesworld.
Everything changed the day Amira was born.
The world outside was collapsing — bombs, dust, screams, and fear. Yet inside a small room, by the dim light of a single candle, a new life began.
While others were running for shelter, I was holding my newborn daughter, trembling, crying, trying to believe that something so pure could still exist in a place like Gaza.
I named her Amira, because I wanted her to feel like a child of life —not a child of war.
A year has passed since that night, but nothing has really changed
Our house is still rubble, our streets still carry the smell of smoke, and the sky still echoes with sounds that make Amira flinch in her sleep.
She has just turned one.
She’s learning to walk, holding my finger with her tiny hand, laughing at the smallest things — as if she doesn’t see the destruction around her.
She doesn’t know the word “loss.”
She never met her father, but when she smiles, I see him there.
Sometimes I watch her sleeping, and I wonder what kind of world she will grow up in — whether she will ever know what peace feels like, what home smells like.
And yet, when she opens her eyes in the morning and says “mama,” everything becomes bearable again.
I want to rebuild our home.
Not just for the walls — but for her future.
For Amira to have a small room, a safe place to dream, a life that belongs to her, not to war.
I’m not asking for much. Only for a chance to give her a beginning filled with warmth instead of fear
My name is Saja. I am a mother, a wife, and just one of many women in Gaza trying to hold on — to hope, to my family, and to a life that no
A Mother’s Message
To everyone reading this — thank you for listening to our story.
Your kindness means more than words.
Every share, every message, every donation — it all helps me rebuild not just a house, but a future for Amira.
From the heart of Gaza, from a mother learning to hope again —
we will live. And I will make sure my daughter grows up in a world that knows love more than war.
Working on rebuilding my website and there's a bunch of art I've never shared that I'm rediscovering- I still like these character designs! I can't decide if they're robots...? girls...? I think of them kind of like "sisters" in the same "operating system"?? figuring this stuff out is fun!
so. i was not happy with the 3D models of horses on offer in the CSP store or literally anywhere else i could find them, i needed one to use for my work, and i went ahead and made my own that is now available for the low low price of FREE in the CSP assets store.
textures included are greyscale basic shapes, multicolor basic shapes, and white with no shapes (but eyes, mouth, nostrils, and hooves emphasized for ease).
shape is ROUGHLY based off the silhouette of an Andalusian. size-wise, it by default stands at around 16 hands, but of course it can be resized to suit your needs. for that, I recommend sizing a human pose doll to the correct height (in centimeters), lining them up on the same plane, and resizing the horse to match the human doll's height. remember that a horse's height is measured at the shoulders!
it also comes with the following preset poses:
if you use CSP and wanna snag it, type 2204263 into the search bar in the CSP assets store. happy horsing!
Hello, my name is Nadin. I’m from Gaza. I’m a graphic design graduate, a wife—and now, a mother.
I finished my design studies just before the war began. I had dreams of starting a small studio, of creating art that told stories. I used to think about colors and fonts and the future.
Then, the war came. And the future became something we tried to hold onto, moment by moment.
On October 22, 2023, I learned I was pregnant when a missile destroyed my husband’s family home, killing 25 members—his mother, siblings, nieces and nephews—entire branches of our family in seconds.
We were displaced twice. Everything was gone—home, safety, routine, rest.
A few weeks later, I gave birth to our daughter. There was no crib, no celebration—not even stillness. But she arrived, quietly and beautifully. In her eyes I saw something I hadn’t felt in weeks: life that still wanted to grow.
Now, our days are shaped by decisions that could dismantle the future we are trying to build together.
Today, Israel’s government is discussing plans for a full military occupation of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City and southern regions. The stated aim: to eliminate Hamas and later hand governing control to allied Arab forces—not Israel—but with no clear path to peace or normalcy.
The humanitarian fallout is devastating. More than 61,000 Palestinians have died in this war; hunger and malnutrition are rising sharply. Hospitals in north Gaza have shut down, and 193 people have now died of starvation, nearly half of them children.
Aid remains blocked, water is scarce, and many risk dying of hunger or disease long before future promises arrive.
We Don’t Know What Comes Next
There’s no clear path forward—only uncertainty for our daughter’s life and our ability to survive another day.
My name is Nadin, and I’m a mother from Gaza.
How You Can Help
I’m asking for support—not for comfort, but for survival:
Help us meet basic needs so we can breathe, heal, and preserve a world for our daughter.
Support us as I try to stand again on my own feet—even a glimmer of stability matters.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you can give—thank you. If you can’t—just sharing this post is a lifeline I will never forget.
He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.
In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.
When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.
My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.
He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.
I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.
The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?
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