Kay Orchison
@kayorchison.bsky.social
Former visual artist. Occasionally still a musician. Mostly writing SF/horror these days, with excursions into amnesiac memoirs. Disabled, keen indoorsman, BLOCKS WITH GAY ABANDON. You were warned. He/him www.amnesiana.com
I keep saying this I wonder how long it would take to get banned from the platform for trying Be nice if there was a big enough wave of people trying for it to make the news so they had to justify why everyone else’s deaths can be wagered on but not their own
Stephen Blackmoore@stephenblackmoore.com · 18m agoDoes Kalshi allow betting on the life expectancy of Kalshi executives?
It occurs to me that reverse engineering a list of the responses would make a pretty good pub trivia challenge
An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog@hugobookclub.bsky.social · 5h agoReplace one word in a movie title with the word “Gazebo.”
Sephera Giron would like the focus to return to writing horror but that's not going to happen, either
Frances Larina@franceslarina.bsky.social · 4h ago"Sophie Cunningham said Wednesday that she wants the focus to return to basketball after her comments on transgender athletes" Must be nice, to be able to expect that what she wants will just happen.
And Terry Pratchett started just about every third sentence with ‘And’. So you can do that too. You can also start sentences with ‘But’. A pox on editors who insist on changing all those to ‘Yet’.
Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 3h agoJane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
I was stumped at the bookstore today, and I need help. A young man came in looking for indigenous American science fiction. Not horror, of which there is a lot, and which we don't have. Not fantasy, of which there is some, and which we do have. Science fiction. Not so much.
The narrow, high-banked path that carves a channel through the boneyard of St. Urian’s at Wormford is notoriously ghost-soaked. We would expect nothing less for a old wraith way, yet it has a pleasing diversity of phantoms: giant spiders made of smoke; flaming wheels; floating pillars of blue light.
I'm new to this whole novel thing so this is probably something many of you have workarounds for but when your brain habitually wraps scenes neatly at the 5-600 word mark you wind up with something more epileptic than epistolary It's like trying to build the Eiffel Tower out of 1x1 Lego blocks Gah
the fine gradations and overlaps between scab, arsonist, gullible, and advertisement
Holly Lyn Walrath@hollylynwalrath.bsky.social · 24h agoThere is a lengthy pro-AI screed in the latest HWA newsletter and it is . . . a mood.
Locals used to call the cliffs at Dedwick 'the place of a thousand skulls'. Given that the clifftop cemetery was collapsing onto the beach below, it wasn't an unreasonable name. Even now, storms sometimes pull bones onto shore, feeding it new ghosts. – #MattAdams, 1981
A friend of mine once read the Geneva Convention just so that she was well versed in war crimes and could then commit as many possible during a DnD campaign.
Mabel Normand chained to a railroad track in 'Race for a Life' (1913). She looks straight into the camera, becoming the first film actor to break the fourth wall.
Teaching doctors about smoking is a moral imperative. And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking the tobacco industry's money or doing nothing!
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 12h ago“Teaching educators about AI is a ‘moral imperative’, said Randi Weingarten, the AFT president.” “And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big tech’s money or doing nothing, she said.”
Pubic Service Announcement The Vagina Museum is trans inclusive. Always has been, always will be. Today the new EHRC Code of Practice comes into effect. Let us be clear, the guidance changes nothing about how we operate.
we are at the point where huge swathes of the media sees their only job as getting attention from the public and giving nothing back and you're supposed to juuust tell enough truth that you can't be called an outright liar, just get the click anyhow, it is used car sales masquerading as journalism
Gareth L. Powell / G.L. Powell@garethlpowell.bsky.social · 13h agoIt’s like how there was that one professor who thought the recent interstellar asteroids were likely to be alien spaceships, and even though the rest of the scientific community disagreed with him, it was reported as “scientist says…”
I wrote about my years filming with ex-wino turned chessmaster John Healy, exploring his bitter exile from the British literary world despite writing a runaway bestseller: www.rte.ie/culture/2026...
In the arena - John Healy's long road back from literary oblivion
Ahead of a special IFI screening of his acclaimed documentary Barbaric Genius, filmmaker Paul Duane reflects on the life and literary legacy of the film's subject, Grass Arena author John Healy.
rte.ie
Paul Duane 🥔@paulduane.bsky.social · 2w agoBack in 1988 John Healy published his memoir The Grass Arena about his life as a wino turned chessmaster. This August the sequel, The Glass Cage, is published. To coincide with this @irishfilminstitute.bsky.social screen my 2011 documentary about Healy. Please share if you can ifi.ie/film/from-th...
Today, shamefully, government guidance comes into force that trans people should be segregated or forced to use facilities that don't match their lived gender. It's important for businesses and organisations to understand that this is guidance, not a requirement. So don't obey.
Touchingly, I've just had an order for one of these from the vet nurse who helped save Roscoe's life after what looked like being a fatal dog attack in December 2015.
Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 2d agoIf anyone else in the UK would like one of these books (happy to sign & personalise) for cover price £9.99 I just got some lovely Roscoe bookmarks from my mum, which you can have free. Drop me an email at hello@tom-cox.com with your address and I'll send payment info.
Stunning infographic work
Simon Kuestenmacher@simongerman600.bsky.social · 16h agoBrilliant work by Benjamin Bartholet. He turns real ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz into an imaginary coastline: outbound vessels shape one shore, inbound vessels the other, and the channel narrows as traffic falls. The data draws the map. Source: github.com/telohtrab/st...
“All writers are making maps of the cicatrix of their lives, disturbing the ghost soil, unearthing artefacts of unreliable memory. Being an English child of the 1970s, there is possibly a little more need than usual for exorcism. For there’s no getting away from the fact it was a bloody weird time.”
The UK countryside is full of interdimensional portals. You just have to know where to look. I've decided to make a thread here of some of the best ones I've found on walks. 1. JRR Tolkien's Psychedelic Lime Kiln.
That's a hell of a crash-out. Whoever wrote this just took an org down in flames with them.
Tiffany Morris@tiffmorris.bsky.social · 20h agoSo apparently that HWA pro-AI newsletter also uses Indigenous water rights issues as a prop, trivializing the activism by Indigenous peoples to protect our water including specific anti-data centre actions. I guess they figured why not alienate Indigenous horror writers while they’re at it?
Nice work London! Alt: Left bus stop photo: Epstein wearing glasses. Text: Glasses for people who don't so consent. Ai glasses. Meta Right bus stop sign text: If you have a trillion dollars in a world where children are starving, you're not a visionary, you're just a cunt Photo: Musk in a suit
Cally Beaton@callybeaton.bsky.social · 2d agoGotta love what London is doing with its bus stops.
On August 5, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is predicted to crash onto the Moon. What has crashed on the Moon before? The very first human object to touch the Moon - Luna 2 in 1959. A probe, 3 bombs, and a rocket body! 🧪 🔭
1959: Luna 2 (USSR)
YouTube video by International Astronautical Federation
m.youtube.com
If at any point you feel like gen-AI can do one of your tasks just as good in fraction of a time, it should be treated as an indicator that you are bad enough at that task to have no competence in it, and you are the last person who should be off-sourcing it to AI. Talk to an expert, damn it.
there are two types of fans of things- those who treat it like a hobby and understand it's ok to laugh at things you enjoy and those who use it to replace church or whatever in their lives and are very vigilant against Blasphemy
Not only was she loudly right about everything and reviled for it, in 2017 O'Connor donated 30 years worth of clothes and makeup to trans girls in Ireland.
Irish Literary Times@irishlittimes.bsky.social · 2w agoRemembering Sinéad O'Connor, who died three years ago, on July 26, 2023. Photo by Andreas Larsson. #sineadoconnor
