Linking, I'm Only Linking

In partnership with

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. I have had A Bit Of A Week, so today we’re going to pretend that this is one of those hot link-aggregation newsletters that people pay real money for on Substack.

Linking! We’re only linking!

Absolutely - Mr Muzak, the Piano Man

You all know I have an interest in dark matter, because I did THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT. So when I saw that dark matter hunters may have finally spotted a hint of the particles, I was all in. It was just one signal, which doesn’t meet the bar for a discovery. But it’s the first time any detection experiment has thrown a signal of that size.
The sketchbooks of Varya Yakovleva. Some of the other pages at that link remind me a bit of Aline Kominsky.

Can’t remember if I linked this before, but here’s a bunch of web-based zine resources.
I just dropped a couple hundred quid on new stationery and tossed a couple of devices out of the office. Being in the UK, Cult Pens is my usual stop. I mentioned the other week that I’m dropping out and going mostly analogue, and, I tell you, this week I’m feeling it. Also, this woman has a point.

Your weekly prep for a creative life in a weird world from Warren Ellis, an author from England who writes books and stories, graphic novels and television. Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here for free.

Holy shit. Look at this:

And this is just kind of eerie:

Please enjoy the incredibly fucked up pencil drawings of Nathan Reidt:

Loneliness;
After the fireworks,
A falling star.

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

Graphic novella GHOST DRIVE STATION by myself and Lordess Foudre is out on November 18.

The order code/UPC is: 70985304934000111. If you want a copy, drop a note to your local comics shop or bookstore, or stop in there, and give them that code. Nobody orders for the shelf any more, so if you want to be sure of getting a copy, tell your store.

Graphic novella PROJECT EXPLOITS RIVER has now moved to lettering phase, with an old colleague of mine taking care of that.

THE PLANETARY COMPENDIUM is now out, from DC Comics, and there’s at least one other major reprint project in the works from them that I’m writing a large essay for right now.

OCEAN is being reissued from Image Comics on November 24.

The News, with Lordess Foudre

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

I nicked the above GIF from Strategy Breakdowns just to see how it works! Sorry, Strategy Breakdowns! One-time thing, I promise! This is an interesting short newsletter about how companies and people make stuff work for them, from Apple to influencers.
Dust of Stars: Soundscapes from Hollow is the new record by Angela Winter, of the AAASMR music podcast I’ve mentioned here countless times. I adore her work. Stream whole thing at link.
7EXAS by NOISBIN: “A 30-minute meditation on murder, remorse, our demons, and the death penalty.” Dark ambient, slow and mean. Composed on a Yamaha TX7, which is some old school kit. Stream whole thing at link.
New Kali Malone record. One track available to stream at that link. She does these immense organ-music records that are a whole-body drone experience.

I really think the pressing question is: Do you have the energy and the right circumstances to propel yourself from the beginning to the end? Can you sustain your own interest in the project? You don’t necessarily need a strong plot. It doesn’t have to be a complex story. You can move through a book by other means, but it really comes down to energy. Do you have the energy and the will to do it? Is the situation set up in the right way so there’s enough energy to move from the beginning to the end?

If not, it’s going to be a struggle.

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/author-and-professor-patrick-cottrell-on-finding-the-energy-and-will-to-move-through-impossible-situations/

A message from our supporters this week:

Daily news for curious minds.

Be the smartest person in the room. 1440 navigates 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive, unbiased news roundup — politics, business, culture, and more — in a quick, 5-minute read. Completely free, completely factual.

I came across this odd thing from 2025 this week:

I published a short list of rules earlier this year on Twitter in an attempt to set specific constraints to my media consumption. The rules are straightforward:

12 movies maximum per year
10 minutes of Instagram per day
1 hour of Twitter and TikTok per day but it MUST be followed by 15 minutes of writing down in the notes app or a notebook your favorite insights or things that piqued your curiosity
No TV shows
Unlimited books

I wonder if you can see the immediate curiosity of posting a list of constraints to media consumption on a social network. The idea that watching more than twelve films a year is cognitive overkill but an hour of Twitter and TikTok a day is just fine. The making-notes thing is good and healthy, and the whole thing is worth a close read, but…

Further down, I found this:

As for TV, I think there’s something strange happening with the medium. My joke is, "We need to stop until we figure out what’s going on over there in the world of TV." TV has shifted from communal, highly directed experiences, like Lost or Mad Men, to something entirely different.

I don’t own a TV or any streaming services, so I encounter TV only through friends who’ll say, "You have to watch Squid Game" or "You’ll love Love Island."

The problem is TV’s seriality. It’s never just one episode; it’s an entire season or multiple seasons. You end up watching 8 seasons of Gilmore Girls. There’s a proclivity for binging in the medium. It’s like orange juice: eating one orange is fine, but drinking a glass of Tropicana means consuming 10 oranges, which is way too much.

The author, Ruby Justice Thelot, is evidently an adjunct professor in New York, and clearly not stupid. He’s clearly thought a lot about this, he’s thought a lot about the action of images, and I don’t want to clip and decontextualise anything. But, on reading it, I just thought: this is the other side of the world, the side I never hear about, where people honestly think films and tv are more dangerous than brainrot apps, that films are MK ULTRA projects made by a single person who wants to fry your cortex, and we need to “figure out” television like it’s some ancient germ that’s emerged from a crack in the earth. Absolutely fascinating to me.

But I think we can all agree on unlimited books.

DELIBERATE DISCONNECTION: A Year In The Wild with Rain DeGrey

Artist, writer and educator Rain DeGrey moved to the wilderness after a lifetime in California and this is the record of her discovery of the land and the seasons. This is her newsletter.

Todd Blackwood’s Graveyard Gallery

Todd Blackwood is the creator of NOSFERATU: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. See more of his art on his IG.

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

We’re into the last third of 2026. Which of these films do you plan to go and see?

Which film are you going to go and see?

DIGGER

DUNE PART THREE

AVENGERS DOOMSDAY

WERWULF

CLAYFACE

WICKER

Here at home, I want to see DIGGER, we both want to see WERWULF, and herself, for reasons I cannot possibly fathom, really wants to see WICKER. Can’t imagine why.

Maigret was not the only one who’d been seeking for a long time to learn about murder victims’ characters. Criminologists were attaching a growing importance to the dead person, even going so far, in many cases, as to place a large share of the blame on them.

MAIGRET IN VICHY (UK) (US) - the Maigrets that aren’t set in Paris aren’t my favourites, and this one is slow and not quite the best-written, but the emotional crime in it is a lovely little conceit, and there’s no such thing as a bad Maigret book.

I saw THE MAHABHARATA as a tv series here in Britain in the late Eighties, and it was insane. Completely surreal. Directed by Peter Brook, winner of two Tonys and pretty much every other award short of an Oscar. Co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière (two Oscars and the Padma Shri), novelist and Luis Bunuel’s screenwriter. Haven’t seen it since. Popped up on the BFI shop and I had to drop the money - I remembered the stage design and prop designs being absolutely mad, and it was a masterclass in making small minimal sets and a multi-racial cast of maybe thirty people look like an entire world.

And, honestly, I love that people are still working to preserve the most innovative tv from the Eighties and Nineties. People talk about American cable and American streaming as “the golden age of television” but British tv from EDGE OF DARKNESS through to A TV DANTE and GBH makes most of it eat shit.

This appears to be UK only - you can get it on Amazon, but I bought it direct from the BFI.

Environment to each must be, all there is that isn't me.
Universe in turn must be, all there is that isn't me, and me.

Buckminster Fuller

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv and is sponsored by:

No follow-up questions required

Every sales leader knows the feeling. You walk into a pipeline review with a number you believe in, and twenty minutes later, you're defending every line item to a CEO who just wants to know what's actually going to close.

HubSpot Sales Hub ends that conversation. Every deal, every rep's activity, and every buyer signal are all in one place and updated automatically. So your forecast is built on what's actually happening. And when you present that number, you can stand behind it.

Get a demo

AND FINALLY

SOEUR L’ENFER

VVOMB TAPES #4 - Leaked Videos

I’m out. I have cat poop to scrape off a floor. See you next week!

I’m represented by Angela Cheng Caplan at the Cheng Caplan Company, David Hale Smith at Inkwell Management and Joel VanderKloot at VanderKloot Law. Please add

orbitaloperations@www.orbitaloperations.com

to your email system’s address book or contacts and move this email to your primary inbox so that I’m not digitally homeless. Thank you.

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here

228 Park Ave S, #29976, New York, New York 10003, United States