There is an imminent pet death in my extended household, so today if you have pet pictures, I would very much like to see them. Selfishly, please give me some joy to offset the sorrow.
Dei Walker
@dei2dei.bsky.social
Queer | Codex | SFWA | fibercrafter, language nerd
I have been getting so little writing done this break, it's killing me. Where am I supposed to fit it in on what is proving to be a very active vacation? Argh! I think I've written all of 5k in the past month, missed some events & deadlines. We fly again tomorrow, too. I miss my writing time!
This evening, I'm heading out to a fibercrafter night at a brewery an hour away. There is, apparently, a ferry involved on the route. If I can maybe make some knitting acquaintances, it'll be worth it, right? ... right?
Book mail at my mother's! @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social, @ceciliatan.com via @neonhemlock.bsky.social + another NH, @yiggybean.com delivery for my baihe!, @sandratayler.bsky.social, and one of the @duckprintspress.com anthos I'm in! SO HAPPY to finally have my hands on all these!
We'll be in again today, and if you are in the DC area, you should definitely stop by. LavenderCon has been great fun and you know you want to take home books (and stickers and zines and and and...)
unforth | Claire Houck | Duck Prints Press@duckprintspress.com · 2w agoHappy Lavender Con weekend! If you're in the Washington DC metro area, come on out for lots of awesome queer book conning!
Happy Lavender Con weekend! If you're in the Washington DC metro area, come on out for lots of awesome queer book conning!
If you want to read a book and your library doesn’t have it, it is truly a massive favor to an author to request that the library acquire it. It really and truly is
Waiting for the plane to DC! Tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun: seeing a long-distance writing and gaming friend, a museum, and also: birthday! And then Saturday is LavenderCon and @duckprintspress.com time! I am more than a little excited, mostly about the friend stuff, tbh.
(Me, learning that someone I thought was interesting and maybe even cool is anti-trans) Huh, well, that's that then (Drops the whole person into the bin)
I do feel like publishers sometimes sneak under the radar a bit on this front. Like we all hear about Hollywood math and Music Industry Math, but every time I tell someone outside of the industry about basket accounting they act like I just killed a puppy in front of them.
Marie 🇨🇦⚜️@blammarie.bsky.social · 2w agoThe people in the music industry consistently say “wait, what the fuck” when they find out how some parts of the publishing industry works, and I feel like this isn’t acknowledged enough Like yeah, all corporations suck, but publishing has a particular flavour of sucking
Saturday & Sunday are LavenderCon in Washington DC and I will - for once! - be there! I'll be floating around the con & helping periodically at the @duckprintspress.com booth when allowed! I'm looking forward to seeing people; if you're there and want to say hi, let me know!
(1/3) The Anishinabek Nation stands in solidarity with Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, which has experienced devastation from the recent wildfires. We are accepting donations on their behalf to help them navigate this crisis. If you can, please donate via e-transfer to: an7gc@anishinabek.ca
live your life in such a way that when you go more people return to the things you did that mattered to them than the things you did that harmed them. a low bar rarely more dramatically expressed
If you're at ReaderCon this weekend, so is @duckprintspress.com ! Swing by the booth, say hi, buy a book or zine or some stickers. We'll also be a LavenderCon in DC at the end of the month, and - for once! - I'll be there too, *not* just my stories!
This is why I add non-fiction into my TBR. The Towers of Bologna turned into the setting for a short story, a book on sumptuary laws and fashion into my sub to Neon Hemlock, and I'm reading a book on murder in Rome and getting ideas for something new. Shove them together, compost, and magic happens!
SJ Groenewegen@sjgroenewegen.co.uk · 4w agoExactly! Where do creators get our ideas from? Well, let me tell you what I discovered when researching a completely separate project...
Yesterday was very very wet, but we went to Osaka Castle and tried to enjoy the gardens, regardless. People talk about the castle a lot but no one talks about how positively massive all the walls are. They were frankly some of the most impressive parts!
Thought of another fun exercise everyone can try: turn Bouba and Kiki (of the Bouba/Kiki Effect) into characters that fit your own tastes and interests
This is horrifying on several levels: a, that common writing techniques stolen by genAI are now all but *owned* by genAI; b, that scant evidence is enough for a checker to call it 100%; and c, that we're again granting a program better judgement that a human* *with training, anyway
Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 2mo agoLol. Hey AI checkers, you're not taking my freaking —'s away. Before AI existed I had set up keyboard combinations to make them, because that's how I write. So this is why they say it's 100% AI. Because 6 emdashes, 1 triad, and 1 ai phrase ("relentless"). Fucking hell.
...i feel like the wrong people are being laid off at videogame studios ALL I WANT IN LIFE ARE OVERCOMPLICATED DATING SIMS WHERE I OCCASIONALLY COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW BAD I AM AT FIGHTING it doesn't even have to be dragons
GamesRadar+@gamesradarplus.bsky.social · last mo.Destiny 2 devs repeatedly pitched a dating sim, Bungie veterans say, "but leadership was very Hard No that nobody wanted romance or silliness" www.gamesradar.com/games/destin...
⚔️🏳️🌈MY LIEGE: QUEER KNIGHTS IN LOVE by @novamali.bsky.social is live on kickstarter!🏳️🌈⚔️ ✨ www.kickstarter.com/projects/nov... ✨
What lies are crowding you this week? Perhaps some of them are just "Waiting to Become True" as in today's story by Samantha Murray:
Waiting to Become True - Small Wonders
In the morning the lie is curled up at the end of your bed. It stretches, pale and translucent in the sun that streams through the slats in the blinds.
smallwondersmag.com
Fandoms need diversity to be healthy. They need the rarepair monoshipper, the obsessive perfectionist dropping a 100k epic every 10 years, the crack writer turning out inspired derangement, the multishipper, the gen writer, the AU compulsive, the lore obsessed, the smut lover...
Seems reasonable to me the-decoder.com/landmark-ger...
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers
A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previous limited liability protections for search engine operators ...
the-decoder.com
What about parents? I cannot tell you the number of times I've been mid-flow and writing and then suddenly child. Or a phone call. Or someone knocks on my door. Or I need to answer a question for someone. Or I stand up to get a snack. Or I pause for a few minutes and noodle around, then write again.
Dax, sapphic fantasy author@daxaeterna.ink · 2mo agoI know people are very excited about the Emboss tool in Ellipsus that can show readers how often the writer paused and if those pauses seem like "natural" human pauses or .... something artificial, something that hints at perhaps AI being involved.