The Independent Variable (Page 25)

🎉 5 literary magazines for sci-fi and fantasy readers

Anyone can start a literary journal, but it takes dedication and care for one to prosper and grow into something with potential. Foofaraw Press is an independent zine of surreal storytelling and worldly observations. Though there is an argument to be made that all of the magazines on this list are “independent,” Foofaraw Press stands out for their accessibility to emerging authors.

My litmag, Foofaraw, was featured alongside Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and two others in this list, which is truly an honor.

💣 Will Congress rein in Pete Hegseth and his boat-bombing campaign?

politics

The Economist

Many of the new lawyers installed in senior posts over recent months “don’t care what the right answer is”, bemoans the former senior JAG. “They spend all their time trying to figure out what the administration wants and then reverse engineer how to get to it.”

I called it out a while ago, but at a minimum, Trump is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and now I think it’s pretty clear he and Hegseth are guilty of international war crimes as well. Since Trump is such a great “businessman man,” he should be familiar with vicarious liability and his predecessor’s motto: “The buck stops here.”

📝 ProNotes

apps

Mac App

So this is a genius app/extension to Apple Notes that works on top of Apple Notes to give you better formatting tools, markdown, slash commands, backlinks, and templates. It has me rethinking where I keep my notes—currently in iA Writer—especially with the idea of the Forever Notes framework for Apple Notes.

🆕 So many ".new" options

tech

I have long been a frequent user of "docs.new" to quickly create new Google Docs. TIL that there are far more '.new' style "action domains" that work in this way. This list of all of the .new shortcuts is super useful – even if .new first rolled out to non-Google entities way back in 2020.

Some of these feel a bit spammy ("New casino blog") and a good number don't work as of this writing but there are some useful gems like "zip.new" to be found.

🤞 I hope you find something new and useful here!

📚 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025

books

Lithub

Tons of awesome looking and sounding books here. Support small presses this holiday season! The dream is for a Foofaraw book to one day be featured on a list like this.

🍷 The Michelin Guide is coming for wine. Here’s what it means

wine

SF Chronicle

Although Michelin has positioned its inspectors’ anonymity as a key component of its process in evaluating restaurants and hotels, the wine inspectors’ visits will not be anonymous.

I find the Michelin Guide to be absolutely fascinating—and their move into wine isn’t surprising. It’ll be interesting to see how their approach actually works in implementation and how it affects the Napa Valley, when they inevitably make their way out here.

🎉 5 literary magazines for sci-fi and fantasy readers

💣 Will Congress rein in Pete Hegseth and his boat-bombing campaign?

📝 ProNotes

🆕 So many ".new" options

📚 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025

🍷 The Michelin Guide is coming for wine. Here’s what it means

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