The problem with the "our emissions are so small they don't count" argument is that about a third of all emissions come from countries whose emissions are also "too small to count". If we all try and freeload we will all cook.

Time to showcase our brilliant internal art from Aurealis #184, our latest issue. Here’s Jimmy Spence’s moody and evocative illustration for 'The Sound Your Soul Makes When It's Happy' by Markus Wessel.

Time to showcase our brilliant internal art from Aurealis #184, our latest issue. Here’s Joel Bisaillon’s superb illustration for 'Goes the Way of the Seabird' by Mia Kelly.

The more I hear about Kirk's killer the more I'm thinking he did it for love? Which is the most fucked up reason yet.

The way drone strikes are creeping ever closer to home would worry me if I was American. How long before Donny does someone on home soil? If the CIA says you're a terrorist what's to stop him? Excuses will be given: they were cartel, not citizens, etc, but if he goes there the line won't hold.

I used to think nostalgia was utter bollocks. I agreed with Billy Connolly (what people actually miss is not some particular time or place, it's their youth). But recently I've been wondering if some small part of it isn't down to enshittification. Corey Doctorow described it as a process...

Trump has the chance to do the most hilarious thing once he gets Putin on US soil. He won’t of course, but damn it would be sweet to see Putin arrested and carted off in handcuffs for war crimes.

I'm still gobsmacked this happened twice. How could he have rated so badly during his first term but get reelected? Apparently people have the memory of sclerotic goldfish. I'd be tempted to say American voters deserves what they get, except that he looks hell bent on taking the rest of us with him.

Proprietary #AI as the new mall scam x100: When malls were big they'd lure in stores with low rent, then raise it every six months until they went bankrupt. Businesses who think AI = no wages are kidding themselves. Once you switch, OpenAI et al will just raise the rent until they own everyone.

It is cold and wet but at least you can get warm and comfortable with the latest issue of Aurelia’s. aurealis.com.au (Note - Reading conditions may vary according to location)

Design is a silly field. So many questions have the same answer. Client: we need to increase our female audience. Designer: more pictures of girls then. Client: we need to increase our male audience. Designer: more pictures of girls then.

AI on device translators are going to be painful. No more talking smack about gajin behind their backs. Sorry. No more "they were shocked I understood what they said" youtube videos. Sad. Babel fish "more and bloodier wars" here we come.

If everything about #AI was the same, but it'd come out of a gov't lab instead, would your attitude change either way? Is the visceral reaction (at least part of it, eg job loss would still be an issue) to AI more about tech bros owning it than the tech itself? Or is the tech inherently bad?

The comments on this seem delusional to me. The only way Aus could have truly independent nat sec is to spend $100s of billions developing WMD and delivery systems. If not we better kiss the CCP ring and get it over with. Or stick with the USA. Those are our choices. Sucky, but what can you do?

Kind of funny, but the dog is giving Musk too much credit. Musk wants everyone to say he’s the reason Tesla exists, he invented it all, owns it all, makes all the decisions, etc. When Musk is actually more like Tesla’s Ronald MacDonald. If Ron was South African. And obsessed with white genocide.

One reason #veo3 probably isn't a threat to hollywood (rather than another tool to use) is celebrity culture. People want to read about humans on celeb sites. You can't shake hands with an AI at Comicon (not yet, anyway), etc. Interpersonal, real life stuff will become more valuable, if anything.

AI will be the ultimate hapless nerd. It will be super smart at tech but run completely aground in real world situations. Even ASI will need decades of working with humans to get close to a world model that will let it ‘steal’ all the jobs. Edge cases, man, edge cases.

The thing that will kill the rush to super-intelligence stealing all the jobs (as discussed below) is a lack of world models. The depth of world model you need to say be able to build a new house is insane. To repair an old one? 10x it. ASI could be around a long time before humans are 'obsolete'.

Why has no one ever novelised the life of Mei Quong Tart? Fascinating story. Great source for an historical novel of 19th century Sydney. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mei_Quo...

Insane that there is still footdragging on getting these meds on the PBS. Yes they are expensive, but way less expensive than the alternatives. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

So does Trump not care about the possible consequences for all the <gestures widely>, you know, stuff he’s up to or does he know something about the US midterms he’s not telling?

Is "clear" prose dead? There's a desire for prose to get out of the way is some circles (eg US sci fi). But that's possibly the easiest style for AI to imitate. I don't think going purple is the answer either. AI will do purple. Idiosyncratic prose for the win? Stuff so weird it has to be human?

There's a big debate about real wages in the USA atm. Have gone up or not over the last few decades? I think it's clear that the evidence is yes, they have, but I don't think it feels that way. Why? Because the basket of goods you need to feel "credible" in Adam Smith's terms, has grown. Some...

Seeing my dog bark at nothing makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons a belief in ghosts/a spirit world developed. Animals reacting to things that are beyond our perception. It’s pretty odd, even scary, if you think about it from a prescientific standpoint.

Reality needs to up its game. There are two people (mother/daughter) named Dr Death working at my local hospital. The jurno currently on my radio is named Hater. I mean come on. Any writer that resorted to such cheap tricks would be laughed out of the room.

Ironically, it would have been much cheaper for Elon to hand over the measly billions he saved sacking people who'll mostly be rehired (here's hoping anyway) than to let whatever the hell this is happen. I still can't believe the other stockholders/board didn't drag his ass back to work by force.

Articles like this do make me wonder if the solution to low birth rates isn't Rosie the Robot after all. If more equal housework loads between mums and dads really is the reason birth rates are better in Western Europe than South Korea then housework robots should help?

People are saying they were mistaken to vote for trump, but did so believing trump 2 would be a repeat of trump 1…but for that to work you have to explain who you thought was going to restrain his worst impulses. It was clear the adults had long since been chased out. No one was going to stop him.

Let's talk great filters! My favourite is bromides. They are ~45x worse for the ozone layer than chlorines (eg CFCs). So if we'd leaned into bromide chemistries much more than we did (which I've heard said was down to luck) we might have burned the ozone layer off and died without ever knowing why.

I am a 2x Aurealis finalist! Great shortlist, well done @kaaronwarren.bsky.social @midnightmuser1.bsky.social @emmikhor.bsky.social @jsbreukelaar.bsky.social @tanaudel.bsky.social @birmo.bsky.social @nikkythewriter.com @tansyrr.bsky.social and everyone! aurealisawards.org

Enjoying 'Last of Us' but something poked me in the eye in both series...um where the heck are the farms? The dairy herds, the cattle? Where are the lumberjacks and miners? The cities/towns just seem to sit in the middle of the wilderness/wasteland with zero visible means of support. And it's not...

A HUGE congratulations to 2024 Aurealis Awards finalists T.R. Napper (@trnapper.bsky.social) and A.G. Slatter (@angelaslatter.bsky.social)! 🤍🎉 aurealisawards.org/2025/04/15/2...

Delighted to share that three of my stories—"We Who Remain", "Maiden's Dawn" and "Doors"—are finalists in the Aurealis Awards! Massive congratulations to all my fellow finalists 🥳 aurealisawards.org/2025/04/15/2... #booksky #auswrites #books

The idea that people should be allowed to destroy society because ‘economic freedom’ is so stupid it should be laughed out of the room as an absurdity. And yet everywhere I look people are pulling the wires out of the walls for $ while governments either fail to stop it or worse subsidise it.

My short fiction collection Pick Your Potion is an Aurealis Awards finalist! 🤩🎉 Huge congrats to all of the finalists. 💕 Looking forward to the awards ceremony in May!

So, umm, Thoroughly Disenchanted is shortlisted for best fantasy novel in the Aurealis Awards. 😮🫢😊 shorturl.at/X4o09

Stunned and delighted to say I'm an Aurealis Awards finalist for Best Horror Short Story for "Object of Vision" from Fission #4. Congrats to all, and thanks to everyone who made it possible, especially @genni.bsky.social.

Interesting, while I agree #AI will never have "our attention, framing, curiosity, and care" it will probably be able to fake them well enough that nobody can tell the difference. ie pass the Turing Test but for 'creativity'. See also Philosophical Zombies. www.freethink.com/opinion/stud...

I was thinking worst case for the USA if this level of crapulence continues…and barring ww3 to me the worst would be the US falling into permanent authoritarianism and no one else caring. ie everyone divests and pulls out. The US not so much isolated as shunned. All that promise snuffed in one term.

I think the idea that a Trump second term would = widespread looting of the treasury was understood, at least by people paying attention. Still something to see it play out, though.

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." – Hannah Arendt This is actually scary. Hitting too close to current events.

We're reaching the glorious stage of generative #AI where images of real people and pieces of genuine writing are now suspect. I expect a trend toward any markers of 'not AI' to accelerate (eg writers will stop using dashes). Then AI will then absorb those markers and start to replicate them. Fun!

Are the Republicans really going to ride the Trump train to oblivion? I can't really believe it. If things get bad enough they'll dissapear him themselves. Self preservation always wins. But how long will it take? Another 3 months? 6 months? A year? The longer they wait the worse the damage.

I'm not much of an #AI doomer, but I do think reward hacking (which can lead to unexpected often weird results) is a possible failure mode. Think the grey goo disaster, but instead of being the result of a bad set of instructions, it's the outcome of an unintentionally perverse system of rewards.

The axis had no chance in WW2. I'd say that's a pretty solid claim made by historians. They didn't have the manufacturing or scientific base to compete. It was only a matter of time. But...it is actually pretty easy to imagine scenarios where the axis did much better. Now, maybe they still lost...

People say "Trump's a mob boss" or "Trump's Mussolini" but I think he's even more atavistic than that. He's an anglo-saxon chieftain (or would like to be). He wants government by "gift-stool". To rule by receiving tribute from foreigners and gifting treasure to his loyal retainers. See tariffs.

Great explanation that (among other things) helped me understand what the heck the AI foundries mean when they talk about compressing models. Give him a follow and a like, we need people like this on bsky.

To celebrate the release of my latest Youtube explainer on why LLMs can in fact learn world models youtu.be/UKcWu1l_UNw I am starting a blue sky account! Will be posting regular updates here.