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Perhaps the Loneliest Volleyball Court in North Carolina It's the one at my hotel, and it doesn't look like it's been used the entire summer long....

View From a Hotel Window, 7/16/26: Greensboro, NC It's very warm here today, but at least there is shade. I spent the day traveling here in order to be part of the ConGregate science fiction convention this weekend. I will have panels and do other stuff! If you're in the neighborhood, come on down. -- JS

Krissy Has a New Toy Out here in the boonies, many of our neighbors have golf carts that they use for very short trips not on the official roads, like going to visit friends, or hauling their trash cans from their houses at the end of a long driveway to the curb, and then back again....

I Regret To Say That GMail is Now a Spam Farm, or, Why You Should Really Get That Dedicated Email Address Now If you read this site regularly, then you'll know in the past year there's been a marked increase in "AI" spam and scams designed to try to con writers…...

Various and Sundry, 7/12/26 What now? South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham Dead: And it must be said, not especially missed by most people on Bluesky and Threads, although I have to admit not going to X to see how the bots there are reacting to his passing....

New Cover: “Miracle Car” https://youtu.be/BId_oiZExts These days, Sam Bisbee is an Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated producer of film and television, but at the turn of the century, he was trying his hand at being a musician, releasing a few alt-rock albums that I thought were pretty good, even if rock and roll stardom eventually eluded him....

Various & Sundry, 7/10/26 Oh God, here we go again: Trump's New Air Force One is a Sitting Duck: More specifically, it "lacks the defensive measures of the previous model," which might be an issue when one has foolishly started an unnecessary war with an enemy that feasibly has the capability to at least take a fair shot at you....

RIP, Bonnie Tyler https://youtu.be/lcOxhH8N3Bo At the time one didn't think of it, because of course one never does at the time, but looking back from the vantage point of 40+ years, "this "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was one of the most 80s songs with one of the most 80s videos that ever 80ed the 80s....

Various & Sundry, 7/6/26 Well, this has been a day, hasn't it? I'm going to be brief about all of it:...

Various & Sundry, 7/5/26 Happy Day After Independence Day! It's on a Sunday, which means you have time to recuperate!...

The John Scalzi Collection Returns to Humble Bundle, Supporting World Central Kitchen Starting today and going for the next three weeks or so, 22 of my books are up on Humble Bundle…...

Adventures in Refrigeration, or, How We Have Become Possibly the Midwestest People Ever Earlier this year we had a rather unfortunate incident involving our 25-year-old stand-up freezer, in which the condenser failed while the thing was full of frozen things, which quickly became rather disgustingly unfrozen....

Update: Yup, It’s Hot It's currently 93 degrees here (Fahrenheit), but thanks to the humidity the heat index means it feels like 106 (41 Celsius), or so the weather report in my phone tells me, the one that also tells me we have an extreme heat warning through eight PM....

Some Passing Thoughts About 250 Years In no particular order: 1. No, I'm not feeling particularly engaged with the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, but that's mostly because a malignant narcissist decided to make a national celebration mostly about himself, and that malignant narcissist is also an actual fascist, so that kind of sucked all the fun out of it this year....

Farewell, June I'm still traveling, so no huge update today (although I am fine! Everything is fine!), but I want to post this shot of the Ferris Wheel at Chicago's Navy Pier the other night. It feels very June to me. Onward to July. -- JS

View From a Hotel Window 6/27/26: Chicago There is a parking lot in this picture, but it's over in the corner, and I think it's attached to the marina....

Probably the Last Back Deck Construction Update It's done and the new deck furniture arrived today. The furniture, like the deck itself, is made of a composite material that is designed handle all the heat/cold/sun stresses of outdoor life, and comes with a lifetime warranty, which means its likely to outlive me at this point....