unfortunately for people hyped for AI in education we only learn how to think like a programmer by programming, we learn how to think like an artist by making art, we learn how to think like a writer by doing writing. at best AI gives (bad) answers to questions you know to ask and can already answer

Downtown Baltimore has Balticon and a death metal festival going on at the same time, so the outfits on the sidewalk are all amazing.

At Balticon today and saw a writer whose name I recognized. I went over and introduced myself and said we'd been in an anthology together. He said, "Oh." So, that was exciting, I guess.

Pleased to share that Aaron Kreader and I have just sold an option for an animated version of our graphic novel Zanján. Hopefully will have more to report soon!

I'm in a coffee shop in Geneva and I'm supposed to go to a meeting but they keep playing good music so I think I'll give it five more minutes.

It’s staggering How swiftly states in the South can still move to stymie Black voters And how ready they were to do so

There was a guy solving a substitution cipher in a notebook on the DC Metro today and I am certain I just caught a glimpse of a race against time that will end with the unraveling of an ancient Masonic conspiracy.

A fantastic creamery in Maryland. If no one's there, you just take ice cream and milk from the refrigerator and cooler and leave your money in the cash box. I was going to post the name, but the internet tends to ruin good things, so I’ll just post a picture instead.

Last week, I participated in the launch of the Kenya Parliamentary Immunization Caucus in Nairobi. Senator Crystal Asige gave a personal explanation of the importance of public health.

We took our kids to see The Empire Strikes Back for May the 4th weekend.

Every subscription service I have is raising their prices at once.

More and more UN staff are leaving NYC and arriving in Kenya as centers of leadership shift. I'm currently at the United Nations' growing global hub in Nairobi.

Based on observation, AI seems to be great when you have three sentences' worth of information and want to stretch it out over three paragraphs.

I've just figured out how I should rewrite my query letter! Too bad I've already sent it to a dozen agents.

A big part of being a writer is reformatting manuscripts to meet the specs of different publications.

Pleased to have served on the editorial committee of the Casebook on Advocacy in Public Health, vol. 2, published today by the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) at the Institute of Global Health, University of Geneva. www.wfpha.org/casebook-on-...

Yesterday, a spontaneous, international network of 11 and 12-year-old girls conspired on both sides of the Atlantic, by word of mouth, to perplex the boys in their classes by all showing up to school in braids and seeing if they'd notice. I feel like there's movement-building potential here.

I get why comp titles are useful for agents and publishers. But reading other people's query letters suggests that a lot of comparisons are...random at best. For myself, I'll change my story if it reminds me too much of something else, only to have to say what it's similar to when I'm done. 1/2

"Evil is bad." "Why are you getting political?"

I'd love to see more human-made art and less AI art in my feed.

Just finished There Is No Antimemetics Division by Qntm, which I picked up entirely based on the title. It's fun and brilliant. Although they're very different books, it reminded me of Gideon the Ninth or Piranesi in that I kept pausing to think about how cool it was.

Called my Reps to ask Congress to oppose war crimes, which doesn't seem like something that should even be coming up.

Godspeed to anyone traveling to the moon today. #Artemis

I just read the Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. The emotional authenticity and judicious use of scientific detail made a dark and intimate story about clones feel real.

Project Hail Mary is my favorite kind of adaptation. It's faithful to the book while highlighting the emotional beats. The book and movie tell the same story optimized for their own mediums, so if you like one, it's worth checking out the other.

Just finished S. A. Cosby's All The Sinners Bleed. One of the things I liked about it was that despite being fiction, it felt personal, like a story Cosby wanted to get off his chest.

People keep apologizing for sharing their art while the world is burning. But we have enough food for everyone; we know how to help more kids live longer; we've made huge improvements in generating energy. Whether or not we act on them depends on the stories we tell ourselves... (1/2)

This whole concept in LOTR is one of my favourite parts of the whole book. “Evil fucks up because evil people fundamentally cannot imagine that others are not motivated by the same things as them” is another theme that feels relevant right now

These temperatures should not be happening in the same day.

I came to AwesomeCon for the books and art and speakers like George Takei and Adam Savage, but it turns out what I really needed was to be surrounded by creative people supporting other creative people.

I'm pleased to share that I'll have a new fantasy story coming out in the Soo Generis anthology Realm Weavers.

Contrary to this @nytimes.com op-ed, the Responsibility to Protect was not a "loophole" leading to the Iran war, any more than legitimate law enforcement was a loophole for DC to be occupied by the National Guard or border security was a loophole allowing Americans to be harassed in Minnesota. (1/2)

Commentary: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?

When I studied national security at Georgetown, there were service members in most of my classes, and professors insisted that future policymakers should hear from the people risking their lives in defense of those policies. (1/2)

I'd like to see Iron Maiden stop playing rock for a while, and maybe try out pop or new wave, so that they can finally appeal to whoever it is who votes to induct people into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, 22 years after they became eligible.

There's a scene in King Rat where a half-starved prisoner of war is watching someone fry an egg. I'm not sure how many years ago I read it, but it was so viscerally evocative that I think of it every time I cook an egg.

I'm excited to share that I'll have another story coming out in @mythaxis.bsky.social. It's about the more extreme ways people may cope with climate change.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower reminds me of Dune: a messianic leader navigating ecology-related conflict, in a story you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve read the sequel(s). I read it a long time ago, and I thought I knew what people meant when they talked about Butler’s prescience....

Consciousness, some say, is the universe recognizing itself.

They closed the CIA World Factbook and deleted it entirely.

The owner of Amazon killed the Washington Post books section.

There’s not enough time in the day to complain about everything we’ve lost or seen diminished in the past twelve months, but the Kennedy Center deserves a special mention. In addition to the National Symphony Orchestra and ballet and musicals and artists-in-residence and art exhibits...

One of the problems with being a sci fi writer is that whenever I come up with something for my villains to do, Elon does it first. www.scientificamerican.com/article/spac...

"I am now convinced that I was wrong to listen to the ostensible wisdom of the day—and that teachers of literature are wrong to give up assigning the books we loved ourselves." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Listening to the new song "The Last Note" on Megadeth's final album, and thinking that Dave Mustaine getting booted from Metallica was the best thing that could've happened, for him and everyone else.

I know my town should be able to handle snow without shutting down, but my family's been home together for days and it's great.

I love how Jared Leto—sorry, Ares—talks up Depeche Mode throughout Tron: Ares.

I find Uhtred of Bebbanburg in Netlfix's The Last Kingdom series (I haven't read the books) compelling both because he's torn between two worlds, and because of (not in spite of) the fact that he's a strong character who's always trying to do the right thing.

My daughter mistook our neighbor shoveling snow for me (to be fair, he was bundled in a hat and coat), so she stood on our porch and shouted a question across the street about whether she could open sprinkles to put on her ice cream. He was confused.

Not to get all political, but back in my day, masked government agents didn't terrorize civilians.