Bluesky is fucking dangerous. I am DEEP in a novel and on a deadline and you fuckers just sparked not one but two TOTALLY NEW AND IRRELEVANT book ideas and now my think parts are chasing after them like whippets after phase squirrels.
Replies
I can definitely read the internet on your behalf at a reasonable rate, if that's a useful service.
aug 29, 2025, 3:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Stealing “think parts”, boss. Sorry, not sorry.
aug 29, 2025, 2:54 pm • 1 0 • view
I have similar issues.
aug 29, 2025, 3:31 pm • 0 0 • view
But the shiny new ideas are always SO PRETTY, Nick. Ask me how I know!
aug 29, 2025, 3:34 pm • 3 0 • view
I misread as "think pants" and I know I'm not the only one
aug 29, 2025, 4:35 pm • 1 0 • view
Coleridge reference! Nice.
aug 29, 2025, 4:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Don't act like you don't like it, sir
aug 29, 2025, 2:39 pm • 21 0 • view
Honestly wasn't sure if this was in response to the new ideas thing or my post about an alien invasion being potentially something I could get behind. And obviously I do but also JOHN I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO AND MY BRAIN IS... very... me-ish.
aug 29, 2025, 2:41 pm • 15 0 • view
Feel it
aug 29, 2025, 2:42 pm • 6 0 • view
Ooo shiny
aug 29, 2025, 2:43 pm • 0 0 • view
Thats BlueSky 😁
aug 29, 2025, 5:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Bluesky dangling keys in front of all the writers.
aug 29, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
I believe @cstross.bsky.social calls these “attack novels”? And in both your case and his, I trust your respective judgments on what is worth pursuing right now and what needs to be set aside in the interest of deadlines.
aug 29, 2025, 2:47 pm • 2 0 • view
Hh. If I was at a loose end I'd do one of them in a heartbeat. As it is I'm banking both, with a slight preference for one, and it can fight my superhero/Frankfurt School crossover that no one will EVER publish because: superhero/Frankfurt School crossover.
aug 29, 2025, 2:48 pm • 8 0 • view
My advice: take a day or three off to write copious notes. That takes the edge off the attack novels and lets me focus on the day job again for a while.
aug 29, 2025, 3:26 pm • 17 0 • view
📌 when beset by "attack novels" (or other project ideas).
aug 29, 2025, 3:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I've noted at speed and I'm pressing on - deadline waits for no one :)
aug 29, 2025, 3:32 pm • 6 0 • view
I *wasn't* at a loose end but luckily my current rabid attack novel is coupled to the space opera I shelved at 80% so it could write itself closely enough my agent can hopefully sell them as a twofer. It's just one project that unexpectedly bloated from 130K words to 250K words in two volumes.
aug 29, 2025, 3:25 pm • 3 0 • view
I dunno, a “superhero/Frankfurt School crossover” pitch would get _my_ attention
aug 29, 2025, 4:10 pm • 7 0 • view
It's certainly a good starting dialectic for critical analysis of Nietzsche :-)
aug 29, 2025, 4:57 pm • 2 0 • view
After Gnomon (if not before) I learned to ignore the blurbs on your books and just enjoy the ride.
aug 29, 2025, 2:51 pm • 1 0 • view
I live to give blurb writers migraines...
aug 29, 2025, 2:55 pm • 2 0 • view
I would read superhero/Frankfurt School crossover! Self-publish it, you can have my tenner. Might be the only tenner but still...
aug 29, 2025, 3:36 pm • 2 0 • view
in case you missed it: bsky.app/profile/rowh...
aug 29, 2025, 2:41 pm • 5 0 • view
I sense that you are intentionally NOT helping, Rowan :)
aug 29, 2025, 2:43 pm • 9 0 • view
FFS I want to point out that the word is "thinky". Not "think parts" although that is fine but "thinky parts" and autocorrect is even more aggressive than it used to be and I hate that.
aug 29, 2025, 2:40 pm • 27 0 • view
Please tell me to stop reading your damn posts and get back to work.
aug 29, 2025, 2:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean, I should stop writing them...
aug 29, 2025, 2:56 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm at the hideous stage of the day when I'm here or checking my word count instead of just getting the blasted chapter finished, ffs
aug 29, 2025, 2:58 pm • 1 0 • view
While you're here though: help us remember where AI stood in 2007? If *The Gone-Away World* appeared now, the miscombined info taking literal shape would read as a metaphor for "AI slop" - but what led you to that then? And they remind me of the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child" - any link?
aug 29, 2025, 2:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Ohhhh... I don't know. Too long ago. Ask me when I have a bit more time and I'll try to piece it together. War on terror, reification in my degree... one of the ideas which became TGAW was that they were pursued by the shark from Jaws across the broken world... that didn't gel until Gnomon...
aug 29, 2025, 3:05 pm • 9 0 • view
Thx. Weirdass experience, though, to read it in 2025 and keep thinking, "2007."
aug 29, 2025, 3:08 pm • 0 0 • view
It's a very interesting connection you're making, and one that hadn't occurred to me. My nightmare in 2007 was of making stupid ideas real, of forcing the sharpness of theory onto the frailness of human life and cutting off the overhang like Procrustes' bed... 1/n
aug 29, 2025, 3:25 pm • 12 1 • view
I saw it in terms of "professionalisation" - the instinct in late capitalism to strip away everything that is not part of a particular government role, job, or corporate product, and do ONLY that pure iteration, when it's often the peripheral, unwritten functions which keep everything working. 2/n
aug 29, 2025, 3:27 pm • 20 1 • view
To go with that, you have a new dream crushed down onto everything which doesn't mesh with the truth. Anti-science, ideological economics, blah. Metaphorically, obviously. So I guess, without wanting to blow my own trumpet... It feels relevant because those things happened and here we are? 3/n
aug 29, 2025, 3:30 pm • 17 0 • view
And AI Slop and so on are - ironically enough - a reification of those fears. But the other bits are worse, at least for now. Huh. I feel like I should go read my own book. Thank you. 4/4
aug 29, 2025, 3:31 pm • 13 0 • view
Lean and Taylorism have been a disaster. Nowhere has productivity actually improved, at best you end up with a short term death march until the reactor unexpectedly blows.
aug 29, 2025, 3:36 pm • 1 1 • view
Thanks for this. Maybe what's in common is that evil tends to involve insisting on a belief about how the world is or ought to be, at the expense of a world that isn't as imagined? A pastor friend suggested evil may intrinsically consist of "carelessness" and I wonder if he meant this.
aug 29, 2025, 3:39 pm • 1 0 • view
I think there’s certainly a truth in the idea! But not all accounts of evil and error have to unify. There can be many, alas.
aug 29, 2025, 4:32 pm • 1 0 • view
And since you've used it twice in this thread, I just wanted to say thanks for teaching me the word "reification" when you used it in TGAW. 👍🏻
aug 29, 2025, 3:58 pm • 2 0 • view
You should, it’s really good.
aug 29, 2025, 5:09 pm • 1 0 • view
listen, if you need someone to take up the slack
aug 29, 2025, 2:41 pm • 0 0 • view
This handy guide helps keep the neck strain from looking up to a minimum...
aug 29, 2025, 2:47 pm • 0 1 • view
The problem with this is that you are using a volume based scale, but normal humans read this as an area scale*, and misjudge the lie factor by about x^-3, which is a big number for Trump: approaching 100x by now. *I had the citation in 1994
aug 29, 2025, 3:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Fair enough. I'm a 2000+ WPM speed reader who stinks at math. *For physical reality, Press 3 😃
aug 29, 2025, 4:26 pm • 1 0 • view