Megan is right. History is sorting facts. Every historical period has a list of innate truths that exist independent of human deduction. Each fact is an absolute, unchanging, abstract essence. I have so much free time now that my computer can sort the facts for me.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

"I don't understand why you, a fantasy writer, don't appreciate the value of making bargains with the fae."

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 2d ago

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude

Just so everyone knows, this is a tried-and-true mainstream media tactic. For progressives/leftist candidates, every election is a “crucial test” and any loss would serve as proof to the media that the latest left-side moment is at its end. Any win, though, just means it’s time to find a new test.

Politico@politico.com · 2d ago

Michigan will provide another crucial test of whether progressives can not only keep up their winning streak in safe-blue seats but also break through in battlegrounds crucial for control of Congress. The stakes for the Democratic Party are huge.

Fuck Platner. Fuck rapists and misogynists writ large. But also fuck tarring combat vets with your nihilistic stick. Who ended slavery and rebellion? Who ended fascism and Hitler? The lack of civic virtue and awareness, the lack of public service - that's the rot here, not 6% of the population.

I've always been against fetishizing veterans over public service writ large, but this is such a broad, ignorant statement. Nearly 16M vets, millions of combat vets but sure they're why Trumpism happened vs 94% of the population turning a blind eye to the forever wars bc they didn't have to care..

Rick Perlstein@rickperlstein.bsky.social · 5d ago

A watershed piece. America will have have a very hard time becoming less imperialist as long as combat service is sentimentalized and fetishized, when it actually tends to turn men into broken, hateful people, and helps make things like like Trumpism happen. www.newyorker.com/news/the-pol...

Very sad. It should have been a long illness.

The National@scotnational.bsky.social · 2d ago

BREAKING: Sunday Times and Sun columnist Rod Liddle has died aged 66 after a short illness

#Spokane Report for #SFFH-- As of four hours ago, CJ Cherryh & Jane Fancher were doing fine. From Pat Briggs 4:18AM her time-- "I called them this evening and they were good. Evacuations were about 10 blocks away but the wind favored them. Power was back on." 1/

I am concerned about C.J. Cherryh, who lives in Spokane WA. I am no longer on Facebook and do not have her personal contact information. Can anyone confirm that she and her partner are safe from the Old Trails Fire?

Stop Calling Me Frank@stopcallingmefrank.bsky.social · 5d ago

You have a month to write a 33 1/3 book about the album of your choice. Which record are you going to write about? (No previously covered albums allowed; new shit must come to light: see below.) (For all books in the series: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_1/3) (H/t @monostich.bsky.social

Today's not-so-vagueskeet: "Decel": someone who slows down to *take a good hard look around* at the ramifications of a situation before their enthusiasm impels them to ram themselves (and lots of other trusting people) skull-first into a rock.

Awesome thread.

Flint Dibble@flintdibble.bsky.social · 5d ago

Everyone's comparing Nolan's Odyssey to Homer, but I think there's much more richness The ancient Greeks adapted the Odyssey into ART While these images might appear static to us, I want to walk through how an ancient Greek saw art: AS DYNAMIC STORYTELLING like our films 1/13

As much as radicals get criticized for being "unrealistic," demanding entire demographics facing literal genocide always maintain mild rhetoric and actions is an absolutely delusional level of conformity to expect. I don't think that gets said enough.

"Left-handed People: Are They Just Pretending?"

Scott Bryan@scottygb.bsky.social · last wk.

Channel 4 has announced documentary “The Great ADHD Myth?” It “seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct.”

Father’s father: just back from US Army service in Panama, looking for industrial work in Detroit Mother’s father: hardware clerk in Grand Rapids, studying for the Michigan CPA exam

Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 7d ago

Enough “what would you do on the commune questions” If you got sent back 100 years and were given your grandparent’s job, what are you doing?

They claim on their homepage that they're bringing the DSF archive back "with author consent, gathered story by story." This is 100% NOT TRUE. I never gave consent for them to reprint my story. They've just stolen the whole archive and not paid any authors a dime for their work.

Beth Cato@bethcato.bsky.social · 6d ago

Hey! If you were published at Daily Science Fiction, be aware that a site called Science Fiction Weekly has stolen the entire story database & posted it on their site. All of my DSF stories are there without my permission. sciencefictionweekly.com

Also @bluejo.eurosky.social’s Thessaly trilogy https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250320087/thessaly/

Citizen of Somewhere Else@citizense.bsky.social · 7d ago

All this makes me want to see @adapalmer.bsky.social Terra Ignota made into a three-season prestige TV series

Being mortal creatures with limited time and energy, it is totally natural that human outrage is selective. If you tried to do work on every injustice and horror on this earth, you would collapse into an exhausted ball of trauma it is absolutely fine for you to select a cause that is yours

99% of the time, when someone accuses you of selective outrage, it’s a way of politically demobilizing you and shutting you up “Why are you angry about data centers instead of fast fashion” isn’t about making you care about fast fashion. It’s about shutting you up about data centers And visa versa

yes, and unfailingly predictive of absolute cowardice. If someone waffles on trans rights, they're wrong and gross, but also, you know they're just spineless losers who don't care about anything. nope, bye, next.

ashley 🌹@clearlyashley.bsky.social · 7d ago

trans rights frankly is a top 5, potentially top 3 issue for me despite not being trans and not having any trans family being bigoted against trans folks not only hurts my trans friends and every trans person but is so predictive of further bigotry

There probably was someone called Emily Wilson who wrote a critical review of Nolan’s Odyssey, but most of what we now think of as “Wilson’s review’ is probably the result of codifying a long tradition of anonymous Bluesky posting.

I do think that a lot of people doing political commentary want to be doing cultural or artistic commentary. in art it's totally fine to be provocative and want things to be challenging or exciting. but politics is about whether clean water comes out of the tap and who the men with guns answer to.

Daniel Rober@profdanrober.bsky.social · 7d ago

To a certain extent the Emily Wilson essay was a harmless version of this.

'guess what? thing you thought was good is PROBLEMATIC' ad infitintum until the actual fascists it was far too cringe to care about put us in the camps

100%

violet allen@blipstress.bsky.social · last wk.

One thing AI craze is revealing is that a lot of people have a child's understanding of "intelligence"

YOU CAN'T CONVERT THE BIGOTS. I'm truly sorry, folks. The Enlightenment ideals of rational persuasion just aren't supported by psychological science. A person can (sometimes, rarely) be convinced. People at scale cannot. We have enemies and we have allies. Use your energy accordingly.

Erin Biba@erinbiba.bsky.social · last wk.

All the time and energy that is being expended by white people convinced that bigots and monsters can be talked out of it *should instead be used to protect people from them*. Put your effort where it can actually help. You can’t convert the bigots. Build a new system that doesn’t include them.

one of my most strongly held beliefs is that a hell of a lot of people haven't been told to their face that they sound like a slower-than-average third-grader often enough

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · last wk.

“What we need to explain to the world: Number one, we are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. Number two, we are going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity” - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — This is definitely the opposite of Anthropic’s AI kills all jobs pitch.

I want companies to understand that when I see an AI flier, my brain instantly deletes it. I don't think, "Ooh, I should go to this event!" I rush past it like it's a pile of dog poop. Same for ads with AI models. I assume that if your marketing is cheap garbage, so is your product.

Robert Sean Leonard _is_ Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last wk.

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

Do you know why airlines are so safe? Because we regulate the ever-loving shit out of them. You don't have to like government regulations. They can be annoying. I promise they have saved your life. They happen when people get hurt or die. Every single one is written in blood.

Wrong Vernor Vinge story. We’re in the Slow Zone.

meanwhile to me a blockbuster is, among many other things, an object through which we relate to each other; a prism through which we can communicate with each other; a terrain we can inhabit together for a while. It has enormous capacity to contain contradiction!