Alex Singer, Arbiter of Bagels
SFF author and editor. 1/2 of LITTLE FOOLERY: @littlefoolery.bsky.social Author of MIRRORVERSE: BELLE (VIZ MEDIA) -- out now! Rep: @lzats.bsky.social
- C'mon 90s nostalgia. Give me a Pirates of Dark Water continuation.
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- It's even sadly MORE relevant given the climate change eco-crisis plot points!!!
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- THE SCORPUMA BABIES OH MY GOSH I LOVE IT Also Mountain Goats A+++ music choice
- Forgot to mention this on the day, since Mother's Day ended up extremely busy for us, but toddlers pre school sent her home with two handprint cards for us, because they remembered she had two moms. Yes, I am full of emotions (positive) about this.
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- The Best Cookie Boy. Love this...
- I love how anyone who's read the books can absolutely guess what's happening the second after the last line of this teaser and that's wonderful.
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- yeah Murderbot IS meant to be agender and I like that best, but Alexander Skarsgard is still a fantastic bit of casting
- My Tony's pick is absolutely Maybe Happy Ending for turning me into a sobbing mess along with every other couple in the audience, but I feel Operation Mincemeat deserves to win something for somehow managing to do a perfect smash cut on stage with the same actors and a very quick costume change.
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- the incarnations of them both that Opened My Eyes to how great shipping them could be
- Happy #WebComicsDay! I'm developing Stardust Vagrant: PI Lial Boscanov takes any job in the black market to pay for the maintenance of her prosthetic body. With her arm twisted by Mars' biggest gang lord, she starts investigating "the refugee shuttle attack", an incident that changed her forever.
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- I'm happy to hear it! The style reminds me of 90s anime in the best possible way,
- god I'm intrigued by everything you post of this one.
- Why do so many of these useless techno-fascists look like they're wearing bad halloween masks of other people.
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- what a guy!!!
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- Yeah for me it was post-partem anxiety, which no one told me was a thing. Which I normally have and am medicated for general anxiety, but I was NOT ready for the level of irrational fear and hypersensitivity that snuck up on me over the first few weeks of newborn.
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- [tottering off to pick up toddler from pre k after having careful high protein low carb lunch] "s...same hat..."
- The trouble with writing in first person for me is I tend to mutter along with my protagonist as I'm trying to hear their voice out -- this is fine with the YA stuff which is cheerful and bippy, but with my current horror manuscript it is, maybe, a bit unnerving.
- You mean they don't make a pope by feeding a cardinal royal jelly so they grow up to birth all other cardinals?
- Happy birthday to one of my oldest friends, @artofchira.bsky.social. Who humors me in my now yearly tradition of painting her dog.
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- good. he deserves all the joy in the world
- A lot about societies treatment of artists went downhill as soon as people forgot it's a craft one works at becoming skilled at, not some magical power you have bestowed upon you by fairies upon your birth.
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- I believe what Dylan is actually saying here is that the wealthy -- who tend to be the first to push this AI mush on people and claim it's somehow an 'equalizer' -- are privileged, and therefore see art as a privilege, and not a skill to be nurtured and trained. Michaelangelo was working class.
- I know very little about the Foundation Apple TV series other than it stars Lee Pace's abs, apparently.
- An actual fairy.
- Betty doesn’t know how to read yet (she’s still too young) but she’s very interested to know what books you’ve been reading
- Betty should know the Tiffany Aching books are very fun!
- Wealthier patrons could afford Lapis Lazuli, super expensive and sourced from Southeast Asia. Those are the paintings where you see that rich blue that has survived centuries. So yes. Even the genius of the old masters is dictated by cost of materials and commission limitations.
- Tldr; if you don't question the cost of a custom car detailing job, a computer build, a tailored suit, or a nice coffee table, you absolutely shouldn't question the cost of bespoke art crafted for exactly one customer to their exact specifications.
- Artists used to be seen as craftsman providing a service in the days before photography. Interesting fact: a lot of European artists in the Renaissance and Middle Ages relieved the cost for their materials from their commissioner too. Its why some blue paints are azurite (the budget blue pigment)
- A lot of those devotional paintings were commissioned by abbeys or monasteries that could only provide a small stipend for their paints, so azurite --much easier to source-- was the common blue in a lot of those Virgin Mary paintings. It fades over the centuries to a dark blue black.
- I am not an artist, but I love to paint. Any skill I might have in it comes from hours and hours of art classes from a teacher who taught us classical style tools and techniques to improve. Am I pro level? No. But I've worked like hell to be satisfied with it more often than not.
- A lot of helping that improvement was treating art as a physical skill. Learning the muscles both mental and physical of how to interpret what you see. It is absolutely a craft and one I don't envy any pro artist the hours upon hours it takes to make it look easy.
- Wife asked why I hadn't had dinner, I had to admit its because the toddler asked to make cookies and then spent the last hour or so feeding me raw cookie dough while giggling so cutely I couldn't say no. It was adorable but blaaaaargh
- Michelangelo would literally fall asleep 20 feet off the ground with his paint brushes in his mouth in an era when paint had literal poisons in it and he once beaned a pope in the head and somehow that paranoid mofo still made it to his 80s. Best argument for proof of God I can think of because HOW.
- Then there was Vermeer who was an innkeeper with a ton of kids but also a ton of neurosis. There's a reason he only finished less than 100 known works because he decidedly was not painting 24 hours of the day.
- The great masters were geniuses, but genius that was forged and honed from grueling apprenticeships and having the opportunity to do art 24 hours of the day via said grueling apprenticeships and or a rich patron.
- Ps the pope he beaned in the head for trying to spy on him working on the Sistine Chapel was not just any pope, it was Pope Badass aka Julius II who was known for leading literal armies so uh there's a reason I add that to the list of "how did you make it to your 80s, friend"
- "Alex why do you know so much about Popes aren't you Jewish" friend i used to work in a museum you cannot immerse yourself in Renaissance art history without learning entirely too much about papal drama
- This morning I caught myself chatting about school programs with another mom after dropping my toddler off at school, as I charted the course of my morning errands in my head. I'm one minivan purchase away from transforming into my dreadful final form: Alexandrias, Dire Mother of Soccer.
- W e l p. I am now 40. The world is on fire, but personally feeling pretty accomplished (if determined to fight a bit more). Turning 40 with a home, a wife, a wonderful toddler, and a whole lot of really cool projects definitely feels like a something. Joy is an act of defiance in this day and age.
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- And many more!! Wishing you the best <333
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- Thank you!!! here's to many more
- 40 feels very much the same as 39, except I've scheduled a mammogram.
- So. Birthday whale watching was amazing. Didn't see many humpbacks since it was ahead of the moms coming back with their calves, but we saw a giant basking shark and a pod of feeding right whales who came very close to the boat on their own accord, so it was a pretty cool trip.
- One of the right whales breached, which I did not know that they did. Anyway they are beautiful creatures that deserve to be saved. There's only 350 of them left in the world.
- They push across the surface a bit like a roomba. By comparison the humpbacks are total show girls about it.
- Just in time for my birthday! My short story, "We, the Fleet," about a techno organic hive queen who discovers a stranded human pilot is in this month's issue of Clarkesworld. Please give it a read.
- The May Issue of Clarkesworld features original stories by Angela Liu, Rati Mehrotra, Alex T. Singer, Wole Talabi, Ann LeBlanc, Caryanna Reuven, and Marie Vibbert. clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_224 Please subscribe at: clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/
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- Thank you! It's an honor to be alongside so many great stories.
- That little splashy lump there is a critically endangered north Atlantic right whale and you have no idea how cool it was to see one this close.
- Whenever people complain about characters like Peppa Pig or Pocoyo being total brats all I can say now is, "That's just a biblically accurate four year old!"
- Honestly, I actually prefer shows that are honest about the fact that even the sweetest, most well behaved child can transform into a holy terror under the most arbitrary of circumstances. Give me honesty in the sudden insane amount of children's media I now consume.
- Stephen Fry puts Pocoyo on blast the same way I put my toddler on blast when she suddenly decides SHE shouldn't have to wear shoes in the library.
