It’s the weekend and weekend plans are upon me, including both reading and writing some sci-fi stories, so I wanted to leave you with something thematic to ponder. I too love words. And ranking… as much as I may not agree with others’ rankings. Is it as much as other people dislike my ranking? Probably not (though some people clearly like it). But in any case, ‘ansible’ is A tier.
Writers are sometimes asked if they fall into one of two camps. First is the plotter: someone who outlines their work assiduously and only then begins their draft. Second is the pantser: someone who discovers the plot as they write. There is a third proposed faction called plantsers, which I may arguably belong to, but I do not identify as such. On the one hand, being a plantser sounds like a condition for which I…
The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, a time long before today’s norms where you can wait a few months for any film in theaters to make it to streaming. So it was not uncommon to go back and see a film in the theater again. Alas, unbeknownst to us young Star Wars fans, Empire had an additional enticement for cinema-goers in the UK, Australia, and Scandinavia. George Lucas liked the idea of playing…
As I mentioned back in February, I’ve been musing about a longer piece about AI, the catch-all if imprecise term lobbed at the current crop of large language models (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Co-Pilot, Grok, Gemini, etc.). I get more examples of videos and articles motivating me to write that longer piece on AI every week. The current hucksterism selling AI strikes me as the same overconfident idiocy that led some to believe microwaves would replace…
I’m in the midst of some other writing, so to feed the Internet algorithm, I give you Screen Junkies’ now-annual tradition of explaining all the best picture nominees in their irreverent manner. You can check out all the nominees on the academy’s web page and if you’re wondering which films to cram in before Sunday’s ceremony, Joe Reid over at Vulture gives you his ranking of all 50 films nominated. It’s been years since I’ve…
A definite plus of last year was reading the number of books I did: far more than I had the previous few years. Not only did it help with my writing, but it also helped provide some solace amid all the happy fun stuff happening in the world. But before I advocate wanton reading, you should be made aware of the research done by Gregory Berns and others, research that indicate STORIES CHANGE YOUR BRAIN.…
I’ve been musing about a longer post about AI, because my thoughts about the current large language models (LLMs) and the like have evolved over the past year as we’ve looked into more and more use cases at the dayjob. However, if you detected skepticism in my previous posts about AI and my many links to articles and videos, that doubt has not dissipated. Besides the consistently cited environmental impacts, something that at best must…
I’m guessing I’m not the only one who has various goals related to writing for the new year, so this article by author Elizabeth McCracken, an article recommended in turn by Mary Doria Russell, author of one of my all-time favorite books, as the one she would write were she not so firmly in retirement. I’ve read and heard enough writing advice to appreciate when they (a) have cogent reasons for their system or approach…
It’s the new year and if you haven’t already locked in your resolutions and resolution-related plans, have I got a post for you: a 26-minute breakdown of 20 tactics to make for a better 2026 from Daniel Pink. I first read Pink’s work with Free Agent Nation and then later Drive, which sent me down the scientifically-structured rabbit hole of “flow” back in the day. So when the almighty YouTube algorithm served up Pink’s videos…
Since the return of thousands of works entering the public domain again in 2019, I’ve been posting about it — and given site traffic and feedback, y’all want me to, so here goes this year’s edition (previous entries should all be tagged). Note that I’m specifically talking about the United States, where, as of today, creative works published in 1930 and sound recordings from 1925 are free to use without licenses or fees. If you’re…