This is good news we can use: bloody-disgusting.com/movie/394534...

Today we throw out all pending Bald Man Action Plans to write a buddy comedy for Kane Dodder and David Howard Thornton.

Today we might need to hunt down some artists to commission for entries in the bestiary for Chancers. Not too many pieces are involved, happily, but they are quirky enough that human art is definitely called for.

Reviewing two chapters of Chancers today for revision, and I am pleased to report they are good. Today we have grading on tap, with a 50/50 chance of tackling the chapter on alchemy.

Did 80% of the stuff I meant to do today, but alas, I did not have the time to update the wife’s Street Fighter character.

The Ballad of Black Tom on tap tonight in the graduate seminar. Tuckered out, but experiencing a bit of jazzening at the prospect.

Almost called an audible and took today off as a mental health day because I was on a writing roll I did not want to come to an end. But here I am at work, full of regret. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN82...

Probably going to unsub from Shudder this weekend, as the content sans Joe Bob and Darcy does not tantalize me enough to stay. Might see about subscribing to another channel heavy with B movies and related nonsense, though.

The chief difficulty I encounter with work on a substantial, sustained project like Chancers is that I don't really have the more-or-less free time to work on all the other creative impulses that Kool Aid man their way into my brainspace.

Today’s writing challenge is revising a chapter on loosey-goosey reputation rules, which I’d drafted right after work on the combat chapter wrapped. I might have erred more than a little on the side of something like technical precision.

The bondage rules are not nearly as sexy as they could be, nor did they save me much time on the extra-lurid death rules, but the combat chapter is a wrap. Significant design opportunities lost today in Chancers-land.

It’s hard to express how delighted I am to see all three Dem candidates vying for Peters’s spot, even the centrist, have got trans rights in the bedrock of their pitches.

Judging from the wailing on the AI slop Discord, I can only assume that the settings for Grok were tweaked today in order to tamp down the generation of smut, which I believe is the only thing anyone actually uses it for.

One of the special perils of insomnia is that it's possible for me to do something unbelievably stupid before 5:30am, which generally means I'll need to fight for the rest of the day to keep my chin up.

Much love to MJF today, for reacting long enough to the chants (though they were probably offered out of love for Brody King) to turn the moment into a meme with fantastic traction.

I find when AI bros pretend they don’t understand or believe in intellectual property, it helps to call to their attention to how obscenely they watermark the junk they generate and how avidly they protect their most effective prompts.

I am pleased to report that the supermassive winter coat I bought for a job interview in Nebraska back in 2005, before I joined the faculty here at CMU, still fits.

Some days you write three paragraphs to cover road races in your #Ttrpg, and some days you commit three pages to rules for bondage.

I thought the Discord LLM boards were all but depleted of their value--but then some guy broached the subject of sharing his "art" with the woman who served as the model for his prompt-vomited dreck.

While the use and abuse of LLMs come with a host of red flags, there are few things more tragicomic than watching a gaggle of AI-addicted perverts trying to trick programs into generating personalized smut with reasoning and language skills too underdeveloped to deceive a toddler.

Spent twelve hours out of doors at a Floridian theme park and managed to avoid getting a sunburn. Still deliciously pasty after 20,000 steps.

I am already in peak holiday form, by which I mean I found three gift cards gifted to me on past holidays and birthdays while looking for a gift card I'd stashed for the missus.

I formerly attended to an AI-focused Discord channel to pick up tips and tricks for identifying academic dishonesty. These days I still skim it to watch image-generator addicts lose their ever-loving minds because permissions on their preferred engine of thievery have changed.

I am pleased to report that “The Rocky Road to Dublin” can be easily adapted into a Midwestern snow shovelin’ work song. The companion river dance, however, is not recommended.

Won't need a wrapped at year's end to know this was my most listened-to song by a longshot: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq6A...

Sometimes in the run-up to exam week I get to assign an A+ to a deserving student paper as a treat.

Tomorrow or Thursday I'll have everything graded but final exams, so my brain is currently 50% devoted to devising the sweetest possible origin for a sword in Chancers and the other half is refining the establishing and midpoint murders in that other thing I'm writing.

The peril of being a wizened academic in a neighborhood composed of many retirees is the guilt I feel for not offering shoveling assistance after a goodly snowfall.

Grateful today that I woke up at the same weight I weighed on Wednesday, and that I won’t have to cross the We Ain’t Buying It boycott lines to pick up two or three needful things.

I am pleased to report I stayed in my empty classroom just long enough today to redistribute the murders in Project W.

Playing mind tricks to convince myself to trudge to campus for the class no students will attend. Get to read Blades in the Dark Deep Cuts, which has me half persuaded.

I would be a subpar huckster if I did not avail myself of mine birthday to spread the gospel of Chancers: www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti... I'm rereading A Psalm for the Wild-Built and doing my best to cook in those vibes. I'd love to get more subscribers on the ol' mailing list this weekend!

Took my cordyceps supplement a little closer to bedtime than usual last night and was visited by scandalous dreams. Many thanks, fungal friends!

If you're a citizen of The Big Pleezy, the Missus is vending her delightful holiday wares at Morey Courts today. Or if you are a far flung creature of taste and good breeding, you can find her wares over at www.etsy.com/shop/luxdesi...

I am very sad to report that the Missus insists that I retire my go-to gaming shirt, a graphic tee that is no longer recognizable as such.

I have virtually no artistic training or experience, but when I need art, I never turn to the LLM grinders. I make art the way Them What Lives Beneath the River intended. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRPX...

Going to a Samhain soiree with a connoisseur who can spot real leather or latex fashion in a sea of pleather and PVC is a seriously underrated rite of pervy passage.

Getting ready to teach The Ballad of Black Tom to my fantasy and science fiction class, with "The Horror at Red Hook" already in the rear-view mirror. A helluva book for the hinge into November.

The Shawty is looking for our skeleton platter for a weekend Halloween party, which is a Whole Thing, for we dwell in a Halloween-rich environment.

The ingenuity with which my noggin devises things for me to be worried about is pretty impressive.

In our small town they drew about 2,000, or about 10% of the local population. The aerial photos and street-level photos look to my bleary eyes like tens of thousands at the very least.

My Botanist in Way Over His Head dodged death and gibbering insanity thanks to a series of dice rolls that dovetailed perfectly with unfolding events in @DeltaGreen last evening. And I've arrived at an exquisitely simple answer to a question that had stymied my revision of combat in Chancers.

Watching a movie billed as a "horror comedy," yet there's nothing even mildly funny in it. The prime suspect (wearing the killer's costume and carrying the killer's weapon) just died, and there's 45 minutes to go. So whatever happens next is sure to be either ridiculous/poorly plotted.

Caught up on all the grading I postponed as we sprinted to our wedding and fall break honeymoon. Now I need to turn the corner and work on thorny aspects of the combat mechanics in Chancers, finish off a promotion application, and resist the siren song of Secret Project X, not due till December.

Sometimes love means saving your bride the last piece of wedding cake, even though you're pretty sure she won't want it, given the caffeine and sugar content. And sometimes love means investigating squirrel skin conditions for more than an hour, so she won't worry too much about Lumpy.

My brain is stuck in a spin cycle as I try to envision the staging for the last scene in the spicy project. It's satisfying at a bunch of levels, but I want to make it gruesomely spectacular.

Rolled around the corner coming back from the wife's office and found myself behind a feller with the license plate HAVEL. Jolly cooperation, alas, did not ensue.

Outkicking my coverage, as the youth are wont to say. A+ officiant, A+++ bride, B- groom.

CMU Press is up to its old tricks--launching a few groovy new games into the stratosphere. Give them a look, won't you? www.backerkit.com/c/projects/c...

September 30th/October 1st