Cryptopher is in post-Fantasycon Seclusion
@chriscrowing.bsky.social
LCU, writer, guitarist, husband, dad, neurodivergent anarchist bard, petty dabbler in the dark arts, I Can't Be Having With This. Likes corvids. Glasgow, Scotland.
Shoutout to @grimdarkmagazine.bsky.social from @annasmithspark.bsky.social before @alasdairstuart.com drops the line of the weekend "Do the work you love, honestly and consistently. The networking will take care of itself, the work won't." #fantasycon
Yesterday @gsfwc.bsky.social launched our 40th anniversary 'Haverin' at @britfantasysoc.bsky.social #Fantasycon It's the first actual book I've been published in and I'm wild proud about it. There's also 42 other stories from 42 other awesome authors covering the range of speculative fiction.
On way into Fantasycon. Very excited and nervous. Looking forward to seeing folks maybe learning a thing or two.
Did you know you only need a small brain to make silly little drawings?
nobody finishes a book and concludes “that was great; now I shall never read another one.” other writers are your teammates and coworkers, not your competition.
Jukka Särkijärvi@nitessine.bsky.social · last wk.The idea of authors being in competition with each other is bizarre to me. Books aren't cars. We don't get just one.
I can't stop thinking how wrong the tech bros have understood creativity and creators. Or even just having hobbies. #erliart
seeing conservative men debate how to dress online is very funny. can't dress up or wear interesting casualwear bc you've made any visible interest in dress to be a sign of homosexuality. but you feel the need to dress better bc you've linked dress to respectability. a prison of your own making.
*Excited noises* I'm wildly happy and somewhat awed to be included in this anthology with so many talented writers and awesome human beings. You should come to our launch at Fantasycon...
Glasgow SF Writers' Circle@gsfwc.bsky.social · 3w ago#Haverin TOC reveal alert! Find out what's in our 40th anniversary anthology, including tales from Christopher Caldwell, Eliza Chan, Hal Duncan, E.M. Faulds, Elaine Gallagher, Gary Gibson, Cameron Johnston, Neil Williamson, and more. Check out the Haverin TOC at the link below: #GSFWC40
My 7 stages of novel writing: 5K: Oh man, this idea is awesome. 15K: Hmmm, I need to do some in depth worldbuilding. 30K: Map, pencilled out nations/races 50K: Religions, history 90K: Civil wars, lineages, pre-history, cosmology, magic systems... 100K: What was the story again?
to.do
"International assassin" always implies the existence of national assassins, or possibly local assassins. Every midsized town has a minor assassin working out of a storefront at the mall between the Cinnabon and the UBreakIFix guy
Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/
Masters of the Universe ia pure awesome.
I am awful at regularly updating here. Especially given I'm intending on doing and promoting vids again once the schools are back. Anways, off to Fife for summer visit to my aunts with the kids. Obviously after an insane heatwave it starts to rain as we head to the seaside...
"Verify your age" I used a pencil to fix my music player. There were 4 TV channels. My first computer had a tape deck.
Danie Were@danacea.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Verify your age" When I first turned the television on, it was black and white until it warmed up. I used to play a little game with myself, trying to guess when it would change.
"O Ye, All Ye That Walk in Willowwood” 🎨 Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1903, detail)
‘…we need to achieve a minimum of 40% street tree canopy cover, and preferably more, before we start to really feel the benefits of nature’s most advanced air-conditioning technology.’ Me, for Big Issue, on tackling urban #heatwaves…👇 www.bigissue.com/opinion/heat...
"The mere existence of trillionaires is a major political and economic problem, probably the defining issue of our time," writes @gabrielzucman.bsky.social. "When the power of wealth is wielded by sociopaths, the consequences are a matter of life and death."
The era of trillionaires will be dire for democracy. Here is how we can fight back | Gabriel Zucman
There is a fundamental tension between extreme wealth and the very possibility of democracy. That’s because extreme wealth is always an extreme power
theguardian.com
No. Its cause people have less disposable income and the world is evidently getting worse in numerous ways. The only part smartphones have to play in that is making access to the 24 hour doomscroll news cycle a bit easier.
NPR@npr.org · 4mo agoAre smartphones causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since the iPhone was introduced nearly two decades ago.
We have no money. You know this. Why do you keep asking why we’re not doing things we used to do? It’s because we have no money. We. Have. No. Money. We have no money. There is no money left. It’s all gone. None of us have it. No money. Nope. Money gone. We don’t have it. No.
NPR@npr.org · 4mo agoAre smartphones causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since the iPhone was introduced nearly two decades ago.
Scotland? On fire. Your defence? Terrified. Super, super. John McGinn.
I’ll either start a new game or restart a comfort game, but I will not be finishing anything.
Omg, so much this. Two of my favourite things but SO many bad folks into/using it in negative ways.
Gory Thing@korybing.bsky.social · 5mo agoLiking 40k is the same as being into Norse mythology in a lot of ways. You gotta vet every other fan you meet to make sure they’re not into this shit for fashy reasons
I hate the Nazi attempt to co-opt Norse mythos as their own with all the blazing power of Surtr. It's a blatant pillaging of aesthetics without navigating context, not unlike what generative AI is doing today. Read one Icelandic saga and you'll quickly understand why the vikings would hate Nazis.
Gory Thing@korybing.bsky.social · 5mo agoLiking 40k is the same as being into Norse mythology in a lot of ways. You gotta vet every other fan you meet to make sure they’re not into this shit for fashy reasons
The people that use gen-AI and scream about “gatekeeping” don’t really want to make art. They want to be praised and to make money and want to skip the actual “art” process. They don’t JUST want a product, they want everyone to tell them how gifted and special they are, too, for no work!
I live just down the road from this weather station, and can confirm from my own scientific observations that it was at least a gazillion degrees. And to be more sombre about this: any politics that doesn't start from the existential nature of the climate crisis is just not a serious contribution.
MetJam@metjam.co.uk · 5mo agoOxford, the longest running continuous weather station in UK history, with temperature observations stretching back to 1815, has preliminarily broken its maximum temperature record for May yesterday by OVER 3ºC with a temperature of 33.7ºC. Unprecedented in its 211-year history.
