Sandy Smith

Writer, editor, teacher, reader, runner, chef. ✍🏼 Redeemed.✝️
Ink and Sugar -

[Nightmare Magazine @NightmareMag]

Guess who's got 2 thumbs & is opening to submissions on Aug 24? It's THIS MAG. Actually, the magazine doesn't have any thumbs, but I—JJA—do, and I'm eager to get them all over dem horror stories after 6 years out of the editorial chair. I guess it will mostly be my other fingers.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@MikeWingerii They can ban people from *visibly* praying, but . . .

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

All of these videos of women fantasizing about murdering their children and when you see the actual children they are the sweetest, most innocent, purest creatures you've ever seen, just full of love and tenderness and trust, unable to even separate themselves as individuals separate from their mother. "Mother is the name of God on the lips of children." A miracle that has somehow been born out of your body, like an angel crossing foreign territory to deliver a message. A promise to be renewed over and over again.

And yet you see these beautiful children and you tell yourself you live in hell, because you find it more satisfying to be a victim than to practice gratitude. You spit on all your gifts.

[Christian Emergency Alliance @ChristianEmerg1]

Nigeria: At least 23 Christians were killed last night when Muslims attacked them in Mangu, Plateau State.

Unprovoked attacks against Christian families are now common.

The attackers don't hide their motives – masks off, they know there will be no consequences.

Evil.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@AmericanGwyn 😂 Good one.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

When India accidentally wiped out its vultures, half a million people died in five years.

The bird doing zoomies in this video runs the most extreme digestive system in the animal kingdom. Vulture stomach acid sits near pH 1, strong enough to destroy anthrax, rabies, and botulism in the carcasses they eat. A flock strips a cow to bone in about 45 minutes.

India had 50 million of them. Free sanitation at national scale, in a country where religious custom means most cattle die natural deaths and every dead cow becomes a carcass someone has to deal with.

Then the patent on diclofenac expired in 1994. Farmers started using the cheap painkiller on livestock. Trace amounts left in a carcass cause kidney failure in vultures. Within a decade, 50 million birds fell to a few thousand. The fastest collapse of any bird species since the passenger pigeon.

The carcasses didn't disappear. Feral dogs took the vultures' place and brought rabies with them. Rotting remains leached into waterways. In districts where vultures once thrived, human death rates rose more than 4 percent. Economists at Chicago and Warwick put the toll at 100,000 extra deaths a year and $69 billion in annual damages.

So yes, the goofy bird sprinting down the walkway is adorable. It's also a disease firewall that evolution spent millions of years building and one generic painkiller nearly erased in ten.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

"Hello mom, please tell everyone the video on State TV was a lie. Tell them my confession was forced, and I didn’t kill anyone."

Those were the last words Amirhossein spoke to his mother before the Islamic Republic

Amirhossein had a physical disability in his hand. He was tortured. He was forced to confess on camera to a crime he denied committing until the very end.

His mother carries his last words now. We carry them too.

[Snoopy @snoopyb047]

祈りを、熊本へ。🤍🇯🇵

[Joey Swoll @TheJoeySwoll]

And she blocked me. 🤔

[Antidepressant Content @depressionlesss]

If "not f*cking around" was a dog

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@JoanneMason11 Alternatively, you can eat the whole cake yourself, thereby winning!

[Douglas Wright @DubhghlasWright]

Come read my reply to @Sandy_writes Drabble challenge over on Substack. https://t.co/ctiIJRS7CU

#Drabble #Writing #flashfiction

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@CaitlinPacific I found it level-zero helpful in terms of getting published, but it did give me the credentials to teach at the university level.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@drewdyck *feels

[Amanda Fortini @amandafortini]

Just saw this on Substack. The metaphor is spot on.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@SantaDecides Homie rallied admirably, but the second humiliation was fatal.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

HOW CAN I GET THIS SERVICE?

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

Justification gets you out of Egypt, but sanctification gets Egypt out of you.

[Sandy Smith @Sandy_writes]

@SketchesbyBoze I teach literature at the university level, and I've noticed that more and more English students fail to recognize fairly common literary allusions. They have not read the works (or read them carefully) from which these allusions are drawn, so they have no way to recognize them.

[Libby Emmons @libbyemmons]

"I refuse to use AI in my music creation because it's a deal with the devil," Billy Corgan says.

"You're literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you. So that's why I'm not going to mess with it."