From a friend in #gaza on the food situation today: "For the variety of foods, there are not a lot of items. For example, no meats, no chicken, no eggs. If we find them, the price is insane. For example if we want to bring two chickens for my family, I think we need more than 130$." If you are […]

Oh sure let's all take the advice of Sam Altman, a guy whose company is losing billions of dollars trying to sell shovels in a gold rush.

#writerscoffeeclub 24 Oct How many plot arcs do your finished works tend to have? On average only slightly more than 1 — I mostly write short stories. Not sure what a plot arc is. For novels I tend to place scenes to be nodes in a storyline for each major character, interleaved. e.g. intro […]

At least if the US starts shit with Canada and Canada burn down the Whitehouse again not much of value will be lost.

Smart device = stupid owner, every time. I don't think it's rule 1 of engineering, but it's pretty near the top: Do Not Add More Ways For It To Go Wrong, There Are Always Enough Already.

A modest proposal: bomb us-east-1

#writerscoffeeclub 23 Oct Have you ever written a story-within-a-story? Yeah I love it. I think there's something about my fantasy-writing mindset that invites it as a way to explore or reveal the ideas under the main plot. In The Silk Mind is the Story of The Sorcerer (twice from different […]

@kenwhite.bsky.social even his official story would mean that we'd be sending someone naive to racist symbols to work with Republicans.

#writerscoffeeclub 22 Oct What inspiration have you taken from historical figures or events? Not much, I don't know enough history to use it well as source material. The Trovador is kind of based around a parallel of the Occitan-speaking trobadors of the 13th century, but drastically factually […]

I follow so many Finns on here, more or less by accident, that I might as well learn Finnish, and I see no drawbacks to this plan. Look, the mastodon app on my phone doesn't show translate links, what am I supposed to do?

I'm still kind of annoyed whenever I hear a Tory said anything. Like, just fuck off, you're irrelevant now, who's still paying you to have shit opinions at us? But I will say this in response to the dipshit who wants to deport insufficiently British people to maintain "cultural coherence" […]

Trump is both a grotesque insult to everything good about the US and the noble ideals of its founders, and also a natural consequence of everything else about the US and the practical actions of its founders. And you can't tackle one of those problems without addressing the other.

Apple just aren't very good at UI any more.

I was considering deleting one of my toots today for crossing a fuckin line, but someone's boosted it now, so it was apparently OK or at least now it's not solely my responsibility that it's out there.

Today I answered a work survey question about how AI could help us in development with "npm is a car crash and only real intelligence can cut you out of the wreckage" and I stand by that.

Tumnus Arrested Trying To Drill Glory Hole In Back Of Children's Wardrobe

Have you ever seen that thing where you mouse over a youtube video and the preview lights up brighter than the white background of the screen? I have no mental model of what's happening there. It doesn't do it on the monitor. Are Macbook screens made of tiny coloured lights that can be […]

After Halloween when the supermarket has slashed all the prices of "seasonal squash" did you know you can just eat them.

One huge lurid red flag about GenAI is you can ask it for something in English and it'll give you an answer, without saying "that's a bit ambiguous, what do you mean by XYZ?" or "what are you actually trying to achieve by that?" and you can broadly divide the world into people who: * think […]

#writerscoffeeclub 21 Oct What is your take on the adverb debate? The existence of wrong opinions on something does not constitute a debate. Also, debate is of limited usefulness in both craft and art anyway.

Katla raising at least one eyebrow

#wordweavers 20 Oct Do you have a favourite scene in your current WIP that gives you a thrill when you re-read it? I like one line that has what's apparently a throw-away phrase, unless you connect it with events at the start of the story, when it should have absolutely *disproportionate* […]

#writerscoffeeclub 20 Oct What role does death (or undeath!) play in your work? If you mean specially, more or differently than usual for genre, I'd say it doesn't. I've written a few stories with ghosts, none yet with zombies or vampires. A few murders, no murder mysteries. Peril of death for […]

#wordweavers 19 Oct How has the MC offended/angered an SC, even if inadvertently? In Marco's stories in The Trovador, Marco is, as in his life, the embodiment of Main Character energy. I think in most of them he outraged or infuriated someone. In Marya's story line, she's too wide-eyed and […]

"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet." C S Lewis, on ChatGPT (and possibly babies)

Go ‘Murica #american #history

A command-line interface is an accommodation for my neurotype, and it should be illegal not to provide one.

#writerscoffeeclub 19 Oct How do you keep track of dates and events in a WIP? I'm a structural plotter, so I know what things will happen and in what order. At some point during writing the scenes or after, I'll need to know how much travel time elapsed or whatever, so I work it out and fix any […]

#wordweavers 18 Oct Does your MC know where they came from? (Family history, ancestry, etc.)? Marya knows her father, of course. She doesn't piece together the whole story about her mother and where she came from until she travels through the town where she was born.

#writerscoffeeclub 18 Oct Do you tend to incorporate supernatural elements in your work? There's no "tend to", it depends what the story's about and the setting. In SF and whatever the fuck kind of fantasy The Silk Mind and The Source of Fire are, in general not. Impossible things are still […]

#writerscoffeeclub 16 Oct How much does your working vocabulary change between works? A lot. Every story has its own setting and voice, and word choice is part of that. I might be emulating Jane Austen or HG Wells, or I might be just being weird. I try to pay special attention in my fantasy […]

I made a thing called Wellness Ping because someone I care about went silent and it took too long for anyone to notice. You get regular check-ins via email. If you don't respond, your emergency contacts get notified. Built it for anyone who might go missing and needs someone to notice […]

#writerscoffeeclub 14 Oct Talk about a book that surprised you: how was it not what you expected? Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. I didn't go into it with specific expectations, but the sheer flood of strange ideas, worldbuilding like nothing else I had a reference for, and the sharp […]

The worst thing for me about Microsoft losing their game of chicken with Windows 10 users is not the extra year of PCs without security updates out there, it's that I'll have to keep hearing about it in youtube ads (which, by the way, obviously didn't work, so the guy who ran that campaign […]

AI chatbots are just like the fake bees some orchids grow in their flowers to trick real bees into pollinating them for free.

Christopher Columbus was a monster even by the standards of his time. Saying so doesn't attack anyone's cultural legacy, any more than pointing out the modern state of Israel is doing a genocide (also monstrous by the standards of our time) is an attack on Jewish people in general. It's OK to […]

A picture costs 1000 words whether it's worth that many or not.

#writerscoffeeclub 13 Oct Are you motivated to write by internal drive or external goals? I don't do well with external goals, they can turn anything fun into a chore, something I'm not doing for its own sake. OTOH I don't have a lot of internal drive either. But when the mood takes me, I […]

#writerscoffeeclub 12 Oct Do you prefer to use real-world settings or to invent new ones? A lot of my ideas are about settings that don't exist or are future/fantastical versions of real ones. I have used real world places. The Event is set in East Klibride shopping centre, The Folly in […]

#writerscoffeeclub 11 Oct Have you ever written an unlikable protagonist? See my answer for yesterday 😉 I have a known habit of writing slow beginnings with mild-mannered, not very active main characters. Some people dislike that; that's OK. By contrast, in disOrder, Nolene's protagonist arc […]

#wordweavers 10 Oct Tell us about an event in your antagonist’s life that has a big impact on what they’re doing now. I haven't written this bit yet, but... in The Trovador, Marya meets someone who is initially friendly, but ultimately dangerous and hostile. He wants her help to find what her […]

#writerscoffeeclub 10 Oct Have you written a likable antagonist? I'm not sure I've even written a likeable protagonist. I mean, people like different things. But an antagonist isn't a villain. I sometimes have cotagonists: characters of about equal prominence in the story who get in each […]

#wordweavers 9 Oct Tell us about an event in the history of your world that has a big impact on the period you’re writing about. A small worldbuilding timeline why not. * Great Wave, different views at start of The Silk Mind and The Source of Fire * +80 yr, Badger Survey reactivated, main […]

#botober2025 7 Behold onion

#botober2025 6 Sozerfrapple

You can make it illegal to support Palestine Action, but you can't compel anyone to support Palestine inaction.