Dr. Sean Munger
@seanmunger.com
Historian, YouTuber, teacher, author, citizen of the world. New book "Faraway Star" (science fiction) is out now in the usual places.
The whole delusion of “orbital data centers,” and the apparent willingness of adult human beings to waste billions of dollars on a nonexistent technology that cannot exist in the real world and will never be built, is just a retread of Ronald Reagan’s SDI/“Star Wars” fantasy.
More amazing art for my book Faraway Star! Artist is @artbynayomi.bsky.social and it’s terrific. A pivotal scene in the story! www.gardenofmemory.net/another-conc...
Another concept illustration for “Faraway Star” has come out!
Another illustration by my talented concept artist depicts one of the pivotal scenes in the book.
gardenofmemory.net
Could a couch-to-5k for books get you back into reading? With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit
Could a couch-to-5k for books get you back into reading?
With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit
theguardian.com
This is great news and I hope she wins. There’s a much cleaner way to kill Scientology stone dead, though: simply revoke its tax exempt status. Could be done at any time with the stroke of a pen.
Yashar Ali 🐘@yasharali.bsky.social · 5d agoBREAKING: Scientology Leader David Miscavige Dealt Major Blow in Leah Remini Lawsuit The ruling clears the way for Remini to seek discovery from Miscavige and his close aides, something Scientology attorneys have fought hard to prevent in the past. Full Story: bit.ly/4g6r9P2
During its about-face on selling old books to AI thieves and then destroying them (as a result of @404media.co coverage), ISBNdb also quietly tried to memory-hole this article, which is about how authors can take steps to make their work poisonous to AI databases. web.archive.org/web/20260729...
How Authors Are Fighting Back Against AI Training, And What It Means for Your Data Strategy - ISBNDB Blog
The courtrooms didn't stop AI companies from buying paper books in bulk, scanning them for training data, and destroying them. So authors moved the battle
web.archive.org
Really happy to support the work 404 does.
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoIMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
I finally get to use this photo in a video! That's me (on the right), @stephengrahamjones.com and the late SF writer William F. Nolan at the Bram Stoker Convention in 2014. Fun night! Few have seen this pic in 12 years. I was there to promote my book "Zombies of Byzantium."
Friends who like words, this is pretty cool. Put in a year, like your birth year for example, and Merriam-Webster will list all the words that were first recorded in print in that year. www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/ Time Traveler. What words are as old as you?
Choose your reason to hate me! There are so many. ✅ Jew ✅ Opposed to Gaza genocide ✅ Ph.D historian ✅ LGBTQ (specifically B) ✅ Believes in global warming ✅ Debunks conspiracy theories ✅ Wrote an antifascist book ✅ Hates AI ✅ Teaches your kids real history ✅ Won’t stay quiet ✅ Really annoying.
Ruin a book by adding a word: Pride and Extreme Prejudice
Joanna Masters 🏳️⚧️@joannamasters.bsky.social · 7d agoRuin a book by adding a word: Howya Dune?
In 2016 I was at a hotel bar and by chance a small group of people next to me, all strangers, happened by chance to start talking about the exact topic that my Ph.D. dissertation was on. They got all the facts about the event wrong and didn’t understand it. I stayed silent and stared into my drink.
Steve Hugh Westenra 🕷️🧛♂️🏳️⚧️📚✒️@stevewestenra.bsky.social · last wk.I have this happen to me a lot and I'm curious if others also experience it. But sometimes I get intensely anxious when I see topics coming up in online conversation (offline as well occasionally) that I know a lot about and that I could socially participate in. There's always this feeling of
Human creativity is more important now than it ever was, and those of us who don’t use AI will, I think, find our work increasingly valued. I’ve leaned into “no AI” as part of the reason why people should seek out what I make, and they’re responding. So how to fight AI? Keep being creative.
Kayleigh Diaz @kayleighdiaz.com · last wk.29 | In an industry that is increasingly becoming saturated with AI-generated content, how do you feel about the importance of art & human creativity? (If this reads like an essay prompt, yes. Sorry. Teacher. 😅) Also, how do you fight against it? #SummerOfStories #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt
Hi!! You can check out my work, I have worked with lots of authors, I'm sharing the cover here too. You can check out my portfolio and Instagram too and then let me know:) Here's my Instagram: Nayomi_Arts Here's my portolio: nayomiportfolio.carrd.co bsky.app/profile/sean...
Dr. Sean Munger@seanmunger.com · 2mo agoTo be clear to the world: the cover art for my book Faraway Star was not created with AI. I've been asked about it but it's 100% human made and I was involved in the process. The artist is the very talented @artbynayomi.bsky.social. The ebook is out now, paperback coming this week! #booksky 🪐📚
It's amazing the emails I get because people assume, or perhaps just hope, that I'm related to a super rich person (Charlie Munger).
*deep sigh* Even if this were true (it is not), only the western half of the state collapsed while continuing in the east for another millennium. Such reasons for why Rome fell completely fall apart because they fail to explain why they east continued mostly undisturbed in the 5th century & beyond.
Annalee Newitz@annaleen.bsky.social · last wk.FYI there is no "real" reason why Rome "fell." Its power waned for the usual, mundane reasons: widening gap between rich and poor, inability to maintain infrastructure, incompetent leadership, pointless wars, endless persecution of marginalized groups who performed vital labor, etc.
I finally saw it, so I can get in on the #Odyssey discourse! I saw "The Odyssey" and "Backrooms" on the same day, and I put them in the same article. If cinema in 2026 can give us these films, there might be some hope for the future of movies. www.gardenofmemory.net/the-odyssey-...
“The Odyssey” and “Backrooms”: Reclaiming cinema in 2026.
Two fascinating current films have left me with some optimism about where cinema of the 2020s may be headed.
gardenofmemory.net
Faraway Star by @seanmunger.com is just one of the great indie books available to reviewers on bookmatch.co.uk. Want to check out out our full library? Sign up for free today. #BookSky
The book with a body count, 167 (Oklahoma City) and change. Doesn’t surprise me at all that Muskrat loves it because he’s a Nazi. Posting this for those who don’t know about this book. We’re going to have to defeat these bastards again, since they didn’t seem to learn the lesson back in 1945.
Avel Guénin--Carlut@fluffycyborgii.bsky.social · last wk.Would assume everyone knows it by now, but just in case "First the traitors, then the invaders" is an explicit reference to The Turner Diaries, where a white supremacist revolution overruns "The System" and kills all their enemy during the evocatively named "Day of the Rope".
Finished the filming on my latest video. Urgh, I hate filming. Worst part of the process.
Well, Odyssey was pretty good. Not great, not Ben-Hur for a new generation, but pretty good. I’m glad it wasn’t just “which monster are we fighting now?” and actually tried to say something worthwhile. Nolan still shoots his action sequences in Confuse-O-Vision, though.
Seated for Odyssey. Yes, decided to go after all. My audience can watch cat videos for an extra day.
Update: I’ve decided to go to Odyssey. What’s the point of being your own boss if you can’t drop work arbitrarily and go off and do something fun? I got enough done today.
Dr. Sean Munger@seanmunger.com · 2w agoLooks like I’m not going to get to see Odyssey tomorrow. We have tickets but I’m way behind on my video production schedule. My husband is going. So while he’s yukking it up with Matt Damon and the ancient Greeks, I’ll be sitting in a stifling office babbling to a camera about the Vietnam War. 😳
Looks like I’m not going to get to see Odyssey tomorrow. We have tickets but I’m way behind on my video production schedule. My husband is going. So while he’s yukking it up with Matt Damon and the ancient Greeks, I’ll be sitting in a stifling office babbling to a camera about the Vietnam War. 😳
Apartment complex maintenance and trash crew: I appreciate you, but please keep your bongs and clangs to a minimum today. I’m filming a video.
1. Don’t “write what you know.” You’re too young to know anything so rely on your imagination. 2. The publishing industry is a joke. Ignore it. 3. Have a reason for every scene in your story. 4. Most of your shit is going to suck, but some of it will be really good.
Kayleigh Diaz @kayleighdiaz.com · 2w ago24 | If you could go back in time to when you first began writing, how would you counsel your younger self? What advice or tips would you offer that you think would have made a difference? #SummerOfStories #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #WritingPrompt
Democratic Socialists are vastly preferable to “establishment” Democrats, but they’re still awfully conservative for my taste.
Four of my last 7 books were based on things I wrote more than 10 years before. My last book, published this year, grew out of a short story I wrote in 1993. I’d like to hear an AI cultist explain how their grok machine could do that.
Pookleblinky@pookleblinky.bsky.social · 2w agoAn actual writer or artist or programmer etc can dust off something they made a decade ago and go "let's see what a decade of learning does to this" Someone who outsourced their learning to the gacha machine made of plagiarism and CSAM, *have nothing to revisit* and *no skills learned since*
