Congrats to @maryrobinettekowal.com, @mattdinniman.bsky.social, @joeabercrombie.com, @chucktingle.bsky.social, @michaelwhelan.bsky.social and all the other winners of this year's Dragon Awards! file770.com/2025-dragon-...
I enjoy pie. Social Media FAQ: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/04/16/the-official-john-scalzi-social-media-faq/
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Congrats to @maryrobinettekowal.com, @mattdinniman.bsky.social, @joeabercrombie.com, @chucktingle.bsky.social, @michaelwhelan.bsky.social and all the other winners of this year's Dragon Awards! file770.com/2025-dragon-...
Happy Labrador Day, I hope your day was filled with Canadians and dogs (listens to earpiece) Sorry, LABOR Day, I hope you passed a small human out of your body in a relatively non-punishing way (listens to earpiece again)
JUSTICE FOR THE EM DASH (from @ellecordova.bsky.social) youtube.com/shorts/XKsPa...
Did Bluesky kick Nate Silver's dog or something
That's happened before with artists
LOOK IT'S JUST NOT *FOR* YOU OKAY
Yes, she does that
Spending a non-trivial amount of time the last couple of days assuring the previous cats that just because there's a new kitten in the house, I don't love them any less
No, he was an alien, there's a difference
I've said this before and it bears repeating: One way we'll know if and when a real machine intelligence happens is that it will create art that is an artifact of its own intelligence, not ours, and it likely to be absolutely incomprehensible to us human on first approach. How cool with that be.
He wasn't taking up my time, but he was annoying others in my threads, which I don't take kindly to
Blocked this fellow for aggressively sea-lioning
One of the victories of the "AI" industry is that the use of the word "intelligence" for their product has led to people conflating a massive appropriation of intellectual property for an database sorted and outputted with algorithms, with what actually happens in human brain, one artwork at a time.
YES I YELLED AT THE SCREEN WHEN THIS HAPPENED
2/2 Now, if you have read the others first, you'll more immediately be up to speed with the characters and the context. But otherwise, my philosophy as a novelist is, don't give readers an excuse to put down your book. No matter where a book is in a series of mine, I'll get you up to speed, fast.
1/2 I write all my series books with the assumption that the person picking up the book does not have access to the previous books in the series, which means the first couple of chapters have relevant in-cluing added into the storytelling. So you CAN read this one without having read the others.
Because I know actual human artists whose work was appropriated without consent to train these "AI" models (as of course mine was, repeatedly, for LLMs), and using an "AI" to generate pictures is like kicking them in the teeth and then laughing at them whilst they bleed
Also, if you post AI-generated art in this thread I will just mute it for everyone, which is also my general policy when people post clearly AI-generated work in my comments
My own blanket policy is not to share things that are, in my evaluation, clearly AI generated. This leaves a lot of things still available to share!
I'M A BIG HITTER Y'ALL
Yeah, we kept the black kitten. It wasn't the plan! We had a home for him and everything! But plans fall through sometimes, and also, cuteness will not be denied. He's ours now.
I've been confused about this for a while myself, although charge stations at truck stops are becoming more of a thing, which makes sense because the amenities are already there
I remember watching your video for one of the Lucid Airs and remember thinking, wow, that's the range I want, I just don't want to spend $250k to get it
If it was a train, I would splurge for a roomette
Meh. We almost bought a 300-mile range EV truck a couple of years ago, and that would have been perfectly fine, because our specific use case for it would not have required long trips. If I get a new car, the range issue is a consideration. Not moving goalposts, just a different game.
In college, I was obliged to take a Greyhound bus from Chicago to LA, which was a three-day journey each way. I have not felt the need to repeat that experience.
(Mind you, I'm not in a huge rush to get a new car; my 2011 Mini Countryman only has 105k miles on it and will be fine for me for a few years more, knock wood. By which time I may get my 600-mile-range EV wish!)
Folks, you can be as angry as you like about the idea that a 600-mile EV range is what would totally sell me, but I said what I said. In the meantime, the next car I get will likely be a PHEV, the higher electric-only range the better (and if it's an EREV, swell). For where I live, that's ideal.
I do it a couple of times a year at least, often more, and I do it because it's quicker door-to-door and cheaper than flying, and then I don't have to deal with ORD.
There's an absolutely enormous Cadillac SUV that gets 500+ miles on a giant 200+KWH battery pack. The car is 9,000 pounds. That's... excessive.
Our new CR-V Hybrid (not PHEV) is rated to get 602 miles from a single tank of gas ("under optimal driving conditions") so actually I'm holding it the same standard as the gas-powered car that currently in my own garage.
As it happens, the hybrid CR-V we got last year gets 602 miles on a full tank ("when driving in optimal conditions").
Opposite of ICE cars, which is to say better mileage in the city than on the highway
Literally I can turn right to the main road in my house and drive in a straight line to this place AND I WILL
Yes but they sell them only 20 miles from me! I HAVE A GOAL
My "I'm 100% in" total range number for electric cars would be 600 miles, which (in real world terms) would be a round trip between my house and Chicago. This is entirely pie-in-the sky, I know, given current power densities and battery weight. But I believe it's eventually possible.
I WANT A FRY PIE ANDY
I did not do Model UN, although Webb definitely sent teams back in my day.
Ha! For fun, I checked the US Census definition, and includes these states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. I would have considered the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas as plains states though.
It does add nine hours to the trip though
Missing at least two and a half Midwest states there, though (Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, not to mention Missouri, which soooometimes is thought to be in the Midwest)
Gauls in my case, but yes!
I don't hate that. Anyway, I went to high school there!
No, if we made rail a priority here in the US we could have it. Particularly light rail! Hell, in LOS ANGELES they decided they wanted light rail and they made it happen; you can get on a train in Claremont, on the edge of LA county, and get into downtown LA in an hour.
Krissy and I thought to take the Amtrak from Chicago to Seattle earlier this month for Worldcon, but that would have meant devoting and extra four days total for travel, and we would still need to get from our house to Chicago and back again (five hours each way if we drove). We flew instead.
Yup. Population density in Europe is much higher. England (not the UK, just England) is roughly the size of Ohio, and it has five times the population. Germany (83 million) is roughly the same size as Montana (1.1 million).
There have been multiple proposals for passenger rail for the diagonal between Cincy, Columbus and Cleveland, but this is a state with a GOP supermajority in its government and the hate against public transportation is strong
I mean, at this moment in time there is a whole list
(Reminder, since I see some of you doing it, not to be rude to the person whose original post I am replying to. I didn't repost to dunk on the dude, and I never need you to be an asshole on my behalf. Thank you.)
I can't even snark about that, it's not wrong
I like using it when I'm there! Likewise I enjoyed trains when I'm in Europe. I would love to have it as a viable option for transportation. It's just... not, and it's going to be for me, unless I move east.
3. If you live on the East Coast between DC and Boston, "use a train" is more realistic, if still not always practical. If everyone in the Acela corridor switched to trains, the train service would probably literally explode. It's no longer designed to be anything other than a minority use choice.
2. There is irony here in that my little town used to be an important railway hub! But the last train came through here in the 80s. All the train tracks are bike trails now, or just simply disused. No public buses out here either. No public transport in general. Lots of the US is like this.
1. I think it's difficult for people not in the US to appreciate how absolutely non-useful/condescending "use a train" is as advice. Where I live, the nearest passenger train station is 90 miles away, in Cincinnati. However, there is a bus from Dayton to that train station, a mere 43 miles from me.
I was going to get one for Krissy when she retired, but then she stayed at work for a couple more years and they gave her a car to use. When she finally retired she didn't want the F-150 and opted for a hybrid Honda CR-V instead. Which was more practical for her and considerably cheaper for me.
Those are extended range electric vehicles (EREV) and they are starting to show up here in the US. I'm interested in them as well.
Holy crap! My story "Marginalia" just won the Eugie Foster award at Dragoncon
Congratulations! Well-deserved!
(so of course it's not available in the US, but hopefully something like it will be on the horizon)
As someone whose driving habits are "drive short distances most days and one long trip once every six weeks" and who lives in a charging desert, this is the kind of car that's perfect for me 2026 Volvo XC70 PHEV gets real with 125 mile electric range share.google/nD29ykmKIYR4...
Remember, kids: A real big goal of "AI" is to entirely sever capital from labor, and no, there will be no universal basic income, you can all just starve and die, thanks www.axios.com/2025/08/26/a...
Imagine how much money could have been saved just by going with an actual human to begin with www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
Those are actually really good
Caffeine is a hell of a drug
I owned that version!
They have a sugared version as well.
Eh. Fully-sugared sodas taste like syrup to me now. I don't like the mouth feel at all.
SODA REPORT: This is basically chocolate-flavored creme soda. Which is fine! I'll probably not be picking up another 12-pack of it, however. This is one of those "limited edition for a reason" sodas.
I'm sure the contents will be good and also LOOK AT THAT DESIGN Y'ALL
You may or may not like what I have to say (or don't say) and you are entitled to your opinions about how I use my particular social media megaphone. But all of it comes from me directly. No one's slipping me a twenty and telling me how to post. If you like what I post, great. If not, blame me.
I don't think anyone was worried about this regarding me but just for the record: no one is paying me for what I post on social media, including for product placement or political opinions. I have enough money and I prefer not to have people telling me what I can and can't say.
Still my favorite explanation of the difference between INT and WIS: int is knowing that Frankenstein is the name of the doctor. Wis is knowing that Frankenstein was, in fact, the monster
This feels like a metaphor for 2025 www.cnn.com/2025/08/30/u...
Indeed
I am not comfortable with this film being 25 years old
I spent my Saturday evening covering a Van Morrison song (or perhaps more accurately, covering a Bryan Ferry cover of a Van Morrison song). Experience me in my baritone range! youtu.be/7-YOHvbmAAg
Tonight's sunset clouds.
Google's Pro-Res Zoom "AI" has a decent model for the moon.
I don't think the science fiction itself needs to be optimistic. I think there needs to be some optimism that there will be a future (aside from the pure "yes, time indeed moves forward" sort).
I don't really taste too much a difference if I'm being honest
I don't drink alcohol! That said, there are indeed beers and ciders in the drinks fridge because Krissy does imbibe.
IN FACT I did a Hallmark Channel movie pitch a few years back, it would have been delightful
ANNOUNCEMENT: THE DRINKS FRIDGE IS NOW KNOWN AS THE BEVERFRIDGE, PLEASE UPDATE YOUR RECORDS
IMPORTANT LABOR DAY UPDATE: Drinks fridge has been restocked
If I decide to write in a very different genre I'll probably take a pen name to avoid brand confusion, but I'm not going to hide it's me writing it. I'd promote it the same way I promote any other work.
I'm not going to get excited until they play Swan Lake on the radio
(Also, don't worry about the cis-white-dude authors in either genre; they're doing fine and you'll see them as top sellers in both genres in this current era. HOWEVER, the ones that sell the best right now tend to assume their audience is more than what they see in the mirror and write accordingly.)
I think science fiction is currently reimagining itself both in terms of its writers and its audience, and we're already seeing it be far *less* cis-white-dude coded in terms of both. But it's a long-term progression and fantasy, its sister genre, is further along and reaping the benefits.
I see a discussion re: whether science fiction as a lit genre is dying. My thought about that is no BUT there are two important factors to consider: One, it was/is heavily cis-white-dude coded and that group buys fewer books now; Two, SF thrives with optimism about the future, and, well.
It’s going to be so satisfying when Taylor swift bankrupts Mark Zuckerberg
Oh shit this is not wrong
Over on Whatever today, I write on the Pixel 10 Pro's "Pro-Res Zoom" and how that "AI"-generated zoom feature is not creating photos, but illustrations, some of which have not much to do with actual reality, and what that means for taking photos with the phone: whatever.scalzi.com/2025/08/29/p...
Be the ALF content poster you want to see in the world
Whatever was run off of Movable Type for several years until the software couldn't scale anymore and then I moved it to Wordpress where it remains to this day. I wasn't aware Typepad was still out there in the world.
I checked on my own works and they are all registered, as contractually specified, so that's good. I also saw I had a copyright registered for "Spin," by Robert Charles Wilson, which confused me until I checked further and saw it was for the intro I did for the Tor Essentials edition, not the novel.
YOU BETTER
Feel it
Bluesky is mostly great Also Bluesky is an actual business with actual people trying to be a business doing business things so that they can eat and keep the virtual and real doors open Sometimes the former and latter get into a slapfight
