Val Delane

This feels like something Ursula K. Le Guin considered and probably addressed in her writing somewhere, though I don't have a specific reference to offer.

bsky.app/profile/kiss...

At this point I think it's mostly an affectation because italics are usually easy to specify and render, and when italics aren't available, leading and trailing underscores sufficiently suggest it.

I've seen this a lot from 60+ year old people in the industry (authors/publishers upper-casing book titles, movie people upper-casing movie titles). I gather that was normal when typewriters were prevalent.

I heard stories of people who've fed crows, and been given gifts in return. It sounded charming, so I began doing that.

Then, one night, there was a rapping on my bedroom window. I stumbled up and opened.

A crow flew in and spoke: "They're coming for you. You must flee."

I only just made it out.

When I say that knowing things intimately changes you please believe I mean it as a warning more than anything else

Purring assistance is pure vibe coding

Loss of Signal - Reactor Toby Benson has a chance to make history. The first mind to circle the moon without a body in tow. It's a golden opportunity, perhaps the only chance for a 19-year-old whose body failed him to become ...

This Friday we're doing a short fiction throwback to @sbdivya.bsky.social's "Loss of Signal"!

Toby has a chance to make history. The first mind to circle the moon without a body in tow. It’s a golden opportunity, perhaps the only chance for a 19-year-old whose body failed him to become immortal...

Check out _Machinehood_ and _Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse And Other Possible Situations_ by same author. Visionary and a real pleasure to read.

Stochastic Flocks and the Critical Problem of 'Useful' AI Acknowledging that AI systems are advancing does not buy into hype, it sharpens the precision of critical thinking about their impacts, says Eryk Salvaggio.

To acknowledge the ways AI systems are changing does not buy into hype, it sharpens the precision of critical thinking about their impacts. To make sense of what AI does to people, you also need to understand what it does for them, writes Eryk Salvaggio.

Ew, It's Beautiful

Can relate. I have a large pile of references and my own writing related to the concept "everything and everyone is provisional, in progress, in transition at all times." So far I have been unable to load the entire thing into my squishy endocortex to synthesize it into a coherent piece.

Heh, and just 2 weeks ago I bought the Anders/Newitz humble bundle including _All the Birds in the Sky_!

• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

• The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum

• Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers

• Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse And Other Possible Situations by S.B. Divya

The 3 bullies from The Simpsons pointing at Bart and asking "Nice tools Simpson. Did your cow make them for you?" in the top frame. In the bottom frame Bart is holding the saw cow tool in his right hand, the rake cow tool in his left, the blob cow tool with the handle is on the yard, and behind him the cow from the Cow Tools comic is watching on from inside behind the bay windows and bart is responding "Of course she did. Who else would?"

Bortposting cow tools? What a time to be alive

Excellent. You definitely have an entire book in you about this.

Digital drawing of a pink heart-shaped box that says “OOPS…ALL BUGS. assorted chocolates” on the cover with colorful bug-shaped chocolates inside.

got you some chocolates. don’t worry about the title

A collection of six ominous bird valentines set against a background of pink hearts. In the first one, a Canada Goose looks angry and hisses and the text says "Baby, I'll make you fall head over heels if you approach within 10m of my nest." In the second, an American white pelican opens its mouth to eat the reader and the text says "There are plenty of fish in the sea, but I want this one." In the third valentine, a Black Vulture looks suspiciously at the reader and the text says "I will love you until you die. And after that, I'll love you even more." A Southern Cassowary stands proudly against the heart-covered background. The text says "My wattles are red. My head is blue. My deadly reputation has been somewhat overblown, but I'd kill for you." In the fifth valentine, a Northern Giant-Petrel stands open-billed next to a large brown furry object, and the text says "Let's seal the deal by sharing a 3000 kg elephant seal carcass." In panel 6, a happy-looking Bearded Vulture holds a bone in its beak, and the text says "I love every part of you, especially your bones."

Ominous bird valentines.

Shush, nobody knows I'm a vampire

Agree with many of the above. Not yet mentioned (as far as I can see): Scavengers Reign, Lessons in Chemistry, The Get Down, Sense8, Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5.

Bootie Mashup Blog Our periodically-updated place for new mashups, news, party info, & more.

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and starting looking behind and under everything, in the shadows and… Mom spotted him. "Why, you little..." My tiny infant brother, who had never even rolled over that we knew—much less crawled—was all the way against the wall under the couch, facing and grinning silently at us.

One day my brother vanished from his blanket in the center of the living room floor while I was "on watch" (I was reading on the chair). Parents and grandparents panicked. We searched house, back yard, garage, down the street… eventually we returned to house

Why the ^%&#^@ won't Google or Apple Maps simply show the names of the businesses when I zoom into that block?

It's a rhetorical question, I know the reasons.

Google Maps had that functionality ~15y ago.

Open Street maps shows some, but it depends entirely on volunteers to submit updates.

🚀🐾🧑‍🚀🪐🌟

"Oh, I get it now. Dreaming is practice for dying." - shifting between lives where the last one echoes and fades as you wake, sometimes with lingering feeling and sometimes gone as your eyes open. I said those quoted words in a dream and made myself hold them through until waking.

This figure illustrates molecules and minerals discovered in samples of near-Earth asteroid Bennu, which were delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in September 2023. The upper left panel depicts precursor molecules like ammonia and formaldehyde, while the upper right depicts salts and clays. These early ingredients mixed with water inside the parent body to undergo chemical reactions and synthesize organic molecules, shown at bottom. The lower right panel depicts nucleobases, the genetic components of DNA and RNA, while the lower left depicts amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The Bennu samples contain all five of the nucleobases that are found in DNA and RNA, and 14 of the 20 amino acids that life uses to build proteins. Credit: NASA

Rock and dust samples brought back from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu contain organic matter, including amino acids and all five DNA and RNA nucleobases, according to two papers published in Nature Astronomy and Nature in January.
go.nature.com/40SlwfF
go.nature.com/3CC6ZLO
🔭 🧪

* Which is saying a lot, having been in Chengde, China during Lunar New Year.

Recovering from midnight wartime zone. At intersection ~25m from my house some chuckleheads set off 10 minutes of some of the loudest fireworks I’ve ever heard.* Rattled the windows and thumped the chest. Blinding flashes through skylights and windows. Scared the ever loving fuck out of poor Mom.