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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student

@eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog

1.5K followers 990 following 2.8K posts

Pen name. Not remotely my academic/professional account. Writes sometimes; a magpie for fine stories and essays; particular about coffee and tea; a year-round summer camp counselor for two cats.

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · Sep 13

If you're ever bothered when characters in fantasy and hist-fic think and act like modern cosplayers in plate armor, hey, me too.

My latest, long-overdue blog post is a medium-sized compilation of resources for those of us who'd like to do a better job writing about premodernity.

Writing Premodern Mindsets: A Rant and Resources

Contents Introduction: The Problem and Some Parameters Resources: a somewhat condensed list My original touchstones Premodern ontologies and the concreteness of the spiritual Misguided modern views of...

sadbutbuildingworlds.blog

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nosé @lightblanket.bsky.social · 6d

We’re getting rid of leaf blowers by eating 50 leaves a day each. Get out there

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Aaron Rodericks @aaron.bsky.team · 1d

thehive.ai evaluates all images posted to the site. We don't actually provide any input.

AI to Understand, Search, and Generate Content | Hive

Hive's APIs enable developers to integrate pre-trained AI models that address technically challenging content understanding needs into their applications.

thehive.ai

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Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 1d

Ohohoho free shipping (free?!!) from @bookshop.org on Oct 7 and 8! Two very fine days to pick up, perhaps, books written by a huge bug?

bookshop.org/shop/premeem...

Premee Mohamed Bookshop

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, Ignyte, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hug...

bookshop.org

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Sweet Science, Savage Art @sweetscisavart.bsky.social · 1d

Security Culture: A guide to keeping yourself and others safe in the face of government repression and entrapment.

archive.org/details/what...

What is Security Culture : Crime Thinc : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A guide to keeping yourself and others safe in the face of government repression and entrapment.

archive.org

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 2d

World’s oldest mummification found: smoke-dried remains from SE Asia & S. China date back 12,000 years—predating Egypt & Chinchorro, with ties to Indigenous New Guinea & Australia..

In @archaeologymag.bsky.social: archaeology.org/news/2025/09...
In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Examples of Early and Middle Holocene human burials from southern China. This figure shows six human burials from Huiyaotian (A: M14, B: M19, C: M20) in Nanning and Liyupo (D: M23, E: M24, F: M28) in Long’an, both shell-midden sites located in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. All individuals are in flexed positions, with several exhibiting hyper-flexed postures (A and E: male, B–D and F: female).

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 2d

I feel that special issues of established magazines are really where these niches publications that are all crabs or all mermaids or all cordyceps or whatever would shine.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 2d

Crab Tales Magazine, anyone?

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Bisexual Kaiju @bisexualkaiju.myatproto.social · 2d

Are you tired of watching the same popular horror films over and over again for the Halloween season?

What if I gave you a list of cult horror films to watch this year instead?

A thread.

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 2d

Easily one of the biggest disconnects I've seen between a movie's marketing and a movie's theming.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 2d

Not better

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 2d

Canada has maintained ties with Cuba in spite of the US having a giant chip on their shoulder, so probably worth looking up north.

Bigger cities like Toronto and Montreal are good bets for finding Cuban cultural orgs; I also found this one in Winnipeg.

friendsofcubanart.ca

Cuban Community in Manitoba

friendsofcubanart.ca

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Scott Murderhouse @voxparlour.bsky.social · 4d

Taylor Swift announces next album title: The Queen in Yellow. She told Variety: "A few years back I came across this amazing play and I was so inspired. It's been living in my head for years. I even dream of it, of the city in the play."

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Speculative Insight journal @speculativeinsight.bsky.social · 3d

@ericderoulet.bsky.social discusses the nature of totalitarianism as depicted in @premeemohamed.com's One Message Remains collection in this new (free!) essay... kinda feels timely...

www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says ... the imperial system is propped up by ideological frames that rationalise and valorise the wants of the core while dehumanizing those living on the periphery. Such rationales are recorded by and embodied in Tzajos in the novella One Message Remains... "Lives Under Empire: Imperial Subjugation and resistance as depicted in One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed" -- Eric de Roulet

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3d

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 3d

This video of Chicagoans intervening to save a man from being abducted off the streets by ICE is making the rounds on Instagram.

Community action works.

Source: www.instagram.com/reel/DPZL2AL...

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 3d

I believe that we are many,
And I believe that they are few.

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 3d

This video of Chicagoans intervening to save a man from being abducted off the streets by ICE is making the rounds on Instagram.

Community action works.

Source: www.instagram.com/reel/DPZL2AL...

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Minilla Jovovich 🍉 @minillajovovich.bsky.social · Aug 22

having an "okay" society by just being kinda annoying to the omelas kid

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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 4d

Free Greta Thunberg and the rest of the illegally detained flotilla activists.

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 3d

Hey now, don't you two get our hopes up like that!

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 3d

Reading world news often makes me despondent these days—and then, almost as often, it makes me feel silly in this stop-hitting-yourself sort of way. But sometimes it helps to read a story that affirms I'm not crazy for feeling the way I do.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 3d

I'm revisiting @isabel.kim's Omelas story, and the neo-coloniality of it all might be hitting me even harder than it did the first time.

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

clarkesworldmagazine.com

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Scott 🦇Cave🦇 @hellabarnes.bsky.social · 22d

Nice non-hellenic culture you have there. Unfortunately, I already depicted myself as an urbane polis-dweller and you as a guy that goes “barbarbar.”

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Sonia Sulaiman is an Ignyte Award Finalist @soniasulaiman.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve decided to develop my game in the Unity engine using the Adventure Creator extension. But I need help. While Unity is free, there’s an 80$ USD fee for the extension. I really want to add exploration to this little game about Palestinian folklore. Help me out? ko-fi.com/soniasulaiman

Buy SoniaSulaiman a Coffee

Sonia is writing speculative fiction inspired by Palestinian folklore. Leave her a tip to support her work!

ko-fi.com

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 4d

Re-upping this for the Brits, the East Coasters, and all who share time zones with them. Also for those who've just finished their coffee in California, the Pacific Northwest, and probably Italy.

Speculative Insight journal @speculativeinsight.bsky.social · 5d

@ericderoulet.bsky.social discusses @premeemohamed.com's One Message Remains collection in this new (free!) essay: www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text. One Message Remains is a meaningful addition to the body of literary and scholarly works on imperialism and dictatorship, not least because the collection lends clarity to some of the questions that trouble us most... "Lives under Empire: Imperial subjugation and resistance as depicted in One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed" -- Eric de Roulet

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MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 4d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student @eric.sadbutbuildingworlds.blog · 4d

Timely.

"As the United States gets pushed, day by day, closer and closer to autocracy, that’s a situation that ought to be setting everyone in the country on edge. Yet it’s part of the nature of autocracy to narcotize people into numbness, delusion, fear, and a kind of self-perpetuating apathy."

ShenLoop @shenloop.bsky.social · 6d

variety.com/2025/film/co...

‘One Battle After Another,’ With Its Thriller Vision of Authoritarianism, Is the Rare Movie That Could Rule the Cultural Conversation

Paul Thomas Anderson's wild swing of a thriller connects with the moment we’re in like nothing you’ve seen.

variety.com