Hark, the empty highways calling

I love a lot of things but many of those things are words. dirgewithoutmusic on Ao3, novels on ejadelomax.com, games on ejadelomax.itch.io, ejadelomax on patreon, second star to the left podcast, sortinghatchats

[ink-splotch]

Hi I just wanted to say I read some of your stuff on AO3 and is so amazing I loved it so much and I just wanted to if you have any original stuff that is published that is available to read!

I do! My novels are all free to download as ebooks (or you can buy print copies) from my site ejadelomax.com. I recommend starting with Beanstalk!

I also have interactive fiction games at https://ejadelomax.itch.io/

And if you like a little audio drama, I produced and co-wrote Second Star to the Left, which is a completed ten episode sci fi adventure @secondstartotheleftpodcast . You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Castos etc.

Lots to explore if you’ve run out of my Ao3 backlog!

ejadelomax - itch.io

[nudityandnerdery]

Sub-Radio, the band that did Stacy's Dad, coming out with another banger for Pride.

[ink-splotch]

In my heart and in my head, Murderbot is played by Vico Ortiz and no one can take that away from me

[gyzym]

BOOK BIRTHDAY! BOOK! BIRTHDAY! I'm so excited to get SECOND HELPINGS out into the world. It's a warm, cozy and funny second-chance romance filled with found family, a chaotic deli dog named Pastrami, and all the comfort food you could ever want. I loved writing it, and I hope you'll love reading it 💜🥪

👨‍💻 Sam Adelson has spent more than ten years pouring his heart into Silverman's Deli, the beloved Cleveland institution his family has run for seventy-five years. So when a bad review tanks his business, Sam develops some strong feelings about the critic responsible. Fantasies involving expired clam juice may be involved.

❤️‍🩹 Then Jake Thompson walks through the door—Sam's first love, the one who got away. Reconnecting after over a decade feels like coming home, and having Jake around makes even the chaos of saving the deli feel manageable. But Sam’s fought to move on from the disaster that tore them apart, and now pretending it never happened is becoming more impossible every day.

🧑‍🍳 As Sam falls harder than he ever meant to, Jake's past begins to catch up with both of them. Some recipes are worth perfecting, even when the first attempt was a disaster—Sam just hopes this one doesn't blow up in his face...

📌 Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and TJ Klune. Second Helpings is a male x male contemporary romance, featuring:

• Second-chance romance

• Surprise neighbors (again)

• Slow burn, mild spice

• Cozy vibes

• Grumpy Steady x Chaotic Anxious

• Forced proximity

• Food as a love language

• Found family

• He's fine (he's not fine)

Grab a copy in ebook, print or audio! You can also find this title through bookshop.org, Hoopla, requesting from your local library, and elsewhere ✨ 💕

[twowhoodles]

My review: I wish I could bottle up this chatty, friendly, clever, sad, hopeful book and carry it around with me forever.

I love the third person POV from one character, we don’t get bogged down in what I’m sure is the swamp of trauma in Jake’s mind and that helps keep what could be a really heavy book feeling fairly light. Although I will admit my kid saw me reading and asked why I looked so sad. I absolutely cried twice.

Sam’s got plenty of his own shit to sort out, and I love the cast of characters around him who are there to help, or needle him, or challenge him as needed. Every single one was unique and fully formed and instantly likable or dislikable as needed.

Plus the food? Oh my god, PLEASE release a cookbook or at least link us to your inspo. More deli-based romances, please!

[gyzym]

Thank you so much for reading and for sharing such a lovely review!! 🥰💜🥪

[miss-oranje]

the thing is, im always interested in The Paperwork. whenever The Characters moan and groan about The Paperwork and whenever it's left unspecified what The Paperwork entails i go aw... The Paperwork... u dont deserve this attitude, The Paperwork... im sure you're very interesting and important... this is because i like my job at The Paperwork factory and because i like homework and it's also because The Characters often hold positions of power attained through superhuman abilities and enforced with violence and i know that The Paperwork is there, aspirationally, to document their actions and protect people. from institutional neglect and from The Characters. when The Characters ignore The Paperwork to fuck each other on The Desk i think less of them for it. i do.

[hoursofreading]

“I feel it in my work as a teacher, where I recognize that we are so close — so, so close — to a world where teaching looks like AI-generating lesson plans and delivering those lesson plans using AI-generated slides, and then assessing the skills of those lessons using AI-generated tests, and then grading those tests using a form of AI. The content of AI producing student work that is then fed back to AI for AI to assess. And for what? And at what cost? It pains me. It pains me deeply. And then I sit down and I read about clams. And it’s not just that I am reading about clams. It’s that I am reading the perspective of someone who thought that it was worth paying attention to clams. There. Remind me again why we read? I think that’s part of it. You pick up a book and someone has you by the arm. There, they are saying, look over there. They are pointing now. They are holding something in their hand. Little clam in the palm, refusing to open. Look at that thing that loves being alive, how it resists the same sun we turn our cheek towards. Crazy world, beautiful place. Down in the deep somewhere, a clam smaller than my hand is withstanding the pressure of a few dozen full-size trains just hanging out on top of its body.”

— Mary Oliver’s “Clam” - by Devin Kelly

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Hey, US folks--a large portion of the last of our old growth forests is about to be at increased risk of clearcutting. Long story short, the current administration is proposing that existing protections for old-growth forests and at-risk wildlife should be lifted on BLM lands in the Pacific Northwest so that these forests can be more quickly clearcut. Public comments are open through March 23 at the above link (click on the blue Participate Now button to leave your comment.) You don't have to say anything elaborate or technical. Simply saying that you disagree with the proposed changes and support continued protection of old growth forests is enough.

Among the forests that would be razed to the ground, leaving nothing but raw scars on the land and piles of burnt slash, would be the Valley of the Giants Outstanding Natural Area.

There is literally no reason to open these places to logging. We already have immense areas of younger-succession timber land available for harvest. Moreover, any claim that this would revitalize our sawmills is a lie--American sawmills are not equipped to handle such huge trees, which would have to be shipped overseas.

In fact, that brings up a sticking point that not enough people know about. In the 1980s, logging companies began increasing the amount of overseas milling and processing, which led to the shutdown of many domestic mills. This, of course, resulted in the loss of American jobs in the timber industry.

Remember how the 1990s saw huge conflicts over protecting old growth forests and the northern spotted owl? The owl, as it turns out, was the scapegoat blamed for the loss of jobs. It made for the perfect distraction while timber execs continued to save money by outsourcing more and more work overseas. While we argued over jobs vs. owls, the execs were getting away with making things worse for everyone.

The current situation seems to be more a case of sheer greed masquerading as "America First" and supposed reliance on domestic resources. One of the things that makes our country so incredible is that we have so much public land, including those places that are set aside simply for the enjoyment of the people, whether for hiking, hunting, camping, etc. More importantly, we recognize through decades of solid science that old-growth forests and other intact ecosystems are not only ecological treasures, but sources of significant tourism revenue as well.

It would be exceptionally short-sighted to allow these protections to be removed. It takes only a few moments to leave a brief comment at the link above; I'm asking you to do so, and then reblog this so others can do the same.

[marzipanthief]

Commented. It is very easy to add a comment through this process. You also do not have to provide personal info if you don't want to.

[ink-splotch]

Hit the link above and then there is an option for “Participate” — leave a comment, save a tree

[inefekt69]

Lake Ashi, Japan

[girlwithwhitebeltinmoshpit]

[hellyeahscarleteen]

“I really wish that the circumstances were different and I was writing you this letter to say,“ Great news friend! The supreme court gave us a break today!” or to say, “Guess what, here’s how to run your endocrine system on manual without having to ask anybody’s permission!” or to say, “The state has given up on trying to destroy us!” From the bottom⁠ of my heart, I’m so sorry that this sucks so bad. I wouldn’t blame you if you feel scared, because I’m scared, too.

But listen: there’s a story of the future that has you in it. That story has some scary parts and some parts that hurt, but it also has some beautiful parts. There’s a future you who is surrounded by meaning and connection and beauty, and who has people around them that will catch them when they stumble and hug them when they get up. There’s a future you who doesn’t depend on the state for anything because they are seen and held and loved by community, who can reach out their own hand to the next generations of queer and trans people and pass along some of this stuff to them, just like I’m passing⁠ it to you now. There’s a future you who is living a life that’s cooler than you can even imagine in the present, and who doesn’t feel the way you feel in the wake of this decision. And I am determined to meet that person and high five them.”

Andy Izenson, A Letter To The Trans Teen Thinking About Giving Up

[deathcomequickly]

Andrea Spencer Glassworks

Whoa.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[homoquartz]

please do me a favor and either wear something comfy cozy or eat something yummy or both today thanks

[mcnostril]

I've always disliked the "I Am No Man" moment in Peter Jackson's Return of the King because it fails to capture the fact that when the Witch King threatens Eowyn with horrific unimaginable torment, she responds by making him soil his ghostly britches.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I've made this exact post like 3 different times atp but. It's endlessly funny when people (especially tech company people) treat Asimov's three laws as a legit proposed framework for Artificial Intelligence safety when like. Nearly every single Asimov story they're featured in involves something going wrong as a result of a robot trying to follow three three laws in a situation that makes execution of the laws ambiguous or contradictory. They're not a guideline for legit AI programming they're a plot device designed to cause problems due to interacting in weird ways with complicated hypothetical situations!

[rathayibacter]

we've implemented the safety standards from the award-winning These Are Insufficient Safety Standards series of novels!

[luulapants]

Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.

[nestofstraightlines]

There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“

And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”

[throckmortons-thrussy]

[organicmatter]

Actually what was everyone's favorite recess activity it reveals so much about your character

[organicmatter]

The tags and replies to this are actually so cute let's all have recess together