Mike Murphy-Burton
@mikemurphyburton.bsky.social
Your friendly neighborhood tech-creative ADHD magpie.
They say never meet your heroes, but if I could have made one exception it would have been Ray Bradbury. I can’t think of another writer whose work means more to me. He was still alive when I started writing in earnest. But alas.
Today is August 4th, 2026. #raybradbury #sarahteasdale #softrains
@leeburton.bsky.social Has this bitten you yet?
Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 2d agoThe most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.
Trupanion guarantees they will never kick your pet off of their plan, and in exchange they will only increase the monthly price by 100% over 5 years. What a deal!
A thread on "Theories about why TTRPGs are so cheap", with notes, including Oversupply (x2), Satiation, Non-Distinction, Production Purchases, Exemplar Pricing, and Confidence Pricing. Notes at end. 1/?
Oh good, Sam Altman is involved in a BCI startup. Because fElon wasn't sucking up enough oxygen as it was.
Our yard has had a fair number of rats in and around it in recent years, and yesterday I discovered that my dog had dug under our shed and dragged out a decomposing rat. My first encounter with a literal maggot-ridden corpse, and I would be very glad if it was my last such encounter.
I’m struggling to think of a single use case for this that isn’t mis/disinformation
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 6d agoNew from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
For writers worried that they won't be able to "prove" their work isn't Spicy Autocomplete--worry not. You thought about every choice and will be able to talk about those choices easily and clearly. Folks who used the slop machine didn't make choices and won't have anything to say about why
When you feel like your life isn't going to plan, just remember that Folco Boffin didn't even make it as far as the fake house Frodo was pretending to move to.
#newfoundland specific thing: Very glad to see Purity Cream Crackers on the shelves again. Looking forward to the day they're stocking Hard Bread again.
Ocean's Edge is now booking dev & copy & line edits for August & the autumn. Recently updated my client library with more books I've worked on in 2026. ✦ Invoices are in CAD. Prices on webpage. ✦ Browse, and/or get in touch with any questions you may have. #amediting #editors #writingcommunity
2026 Clients
Ocean's Edge Editing
oceansedgeediting.com
Lee Burton - Author | Editor@leeburton.bsky.social · 2mo agoOcean's Edge Editing has openings for both dev edits and copy & line edits for July and August. Get in touch and kick some tires and see if we'd be a good fit to work together. Editing #indies since 2012. Friendly inquiries always encouraged. www.oceansedgeediting.com #editors #books #amwriting
Folks who know security much better than me have told me passkeys are light years beyond other common MFA tools, but I have to say, if I wasn't already a software guy, I would be constantly lost with respect to their current incarnation.
#mintrecommends: Games of the Month - July! The following are games that looked cool while I trawled the new releases of Itch. I think they're worth checking out!
You can tell that AI is a long-term strategy for search by how carefully they've implemented permalinks to AI generated results.
Received a Kickstarter reward (Fifth Season RPG) today and realized my vision is now at the point where I almost can't even read the text because it's small print and not always high-contrast. I had this issue with the Arkham Horror Card Game instruction manual a while back too. Not great.
Hobbits between 20 and 33 are tweens, and Sam Gamgee's dad is Ham Gamgee, and you all neglected to inform me of EITHER OF THOSE FACTS
I'm looking for work! • 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗹𝘆 looking for long-term contract; • Experience with Environment, Characters, Animation and UI; • Experience as Lead/Art Director; • Great at working with a team; Created all the art of Orange Season and Farming Camp. Portfolio below!
Oh hey, remember when I said you might be legally liable for feeding proprietary information to your LLM, when the levee breaks on the data lake? Claude remembers. Claude remembers *everything.*
Maggie Harrison Dupré@mharrisondupre.bsky.social · last wk.NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
LinkedIn having quite a day responding to the whole "GPT broke out and hacked Hugging Face" thing, with a lot of folks attempting to frame the conversation in terms of "Open vs Closed" models instead of "Hey, maybe we should stop (for now) vs Hey, maybe we should stop (forever)".
Sure, the Great Library of Alexandria burned down, but what if we did that intentionally, and by "we" I mean "Every sociopathic fuckstick on the planet" and by "did that" I mean "robbed us all of our history to eke out another percentage point on a doomed share price"? xcancel.com/HedgieMarket...
Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets)
🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million ...
xcancel.com
I really like this article by @thewalrus.ca on electoral reform. They do a good job of both summarizing and analyzing the historical possibilities if 2015 had lead to actual reform. thewalrus.ca/liberals-ele...
How Canada Keeps the Conservatives Shut Out of Power | The Walrus
First-past-the-post has failed our democracy. Here’s a way to make it truly representative
thewalrus.ca
Starting a reread of Lord of the Rings, and now I wonder if there are roleplaying games that feel like the front matter - a whole bunch of mannered history that only obliquely talks about what would otherwise usually be "the point".
I'm interested in knowing more about the couching of the issue here - "Uncontrolled" is a load-bearing word in this statement - but in general it's just nice to see a federal politician take the tack that Hey Maybe We Shouldn't Wreck the Economy Just to Make a Few Americans Richer.
Avi Lewis@avilewis.ca · 2w agoUncontrolled AI is a threat to our jobs, our environment, and our communities. Canadians across the political divide know this, and that’s why they’re fighting back. The public must assert its role in the technologies shaping our lives, and draw hard lines where AI causes nothing but harm.
This is also true of every other application of the current generation of privately-held LLMs and adjacent systems. Giving the reins of knowledge itself over to people who've historically been fine being absolute monsters is just a Real Bad Idea.
Jason Sanford@jasonsanford.bsky.social · 2w agoI warned last year that if people relied on generative AI to write, this could happen. Those who control a tool can take that tool away from you. But if you learn to write with your own mind, no one can steal that from you. 1/
It's crazy to me how Casey isn't a youtube megastar. I like some other gane streamers but Casey is one of the GOATs.
Casey Explosion@caseyexplosion.bsky.social · 2w agoI don't know how to get more people to watch my YouTube videos, other than to keep plugging away at making more and hoping for the best, but everyone should definitely follow my channel because I can't tell you how excited I am about the next one I'm working on. You'll want to see it.