Charlie Stross

No, because without causality violation you can't have FTL, and without FTL you don't have space opera.

No, LLMs caught negging from their training data, which is an unfiltered trawl of the internet, which is dominated by the discourse of the shittiest humans.

Pick a random reddit news thread, count the proportion of upvoted posts that are sarcasm or lies, then extrapolate that to your LLM answers.

A conversation starter a part of a long-con "butchering" scam? PUA-style "negging" as a prelude to a sales pitch? Or just some loser who gets a kick out of saying mean things to women, but needs AI to write his texts for him?

Naah. More like, "shortly after midnight, the weather control satellites malfunctioned. Nature rejoiced ... "

Dammit, now I'm going to have to figure out how to cram my own version into the current WIP.

Let us remember that the 2CV was designed to get a farmer, his family, and a pig to and from the country market over dirt roads and up mountains if necessary. With a 375cc 9HP engine. (Admittedly the later 33HP engine was more satisfying.)

Warmed over Christianity is *never* the answer (and that's what singularitarianism boils down to, when you examine its structure and origins as a belief system).

I really hope not! (People keep misreading Accelerando as a hopeful future. I don't see "human near-extinction within 100 years, survivors living as rats in the walls" as a positive outcome of AI!)

Screencap from an editor window. Text reads: As the Lady Lydia fell towards the night side of the planet, all Jum could do was gape in dismay. "Are you sure this is the right place?" Asked Tabitha. "Pretty sure," he said, hesitating slightly. "I mean, I think we left Jaeger at Sabine Dark? And this is Sabine Dark. Unless there's more than one Sabine Dark?" Tabitha checked her mindscape: there wasn't, she saw, another Sabine Dark. Sabine Dark was a distressingly unique name for a planet. Not like Dirt, Earth, or Mudball, which were all as common as muck. "There appear to have been some changes," she observed.

Sigh. The muse is hard at work. Here's the opening of the new chew toy (space opera sequel to the one I just delivered: only writing the opening for now):

Not so fast: this doesn't mean the government will actually listen to the house committee!

(But it adds the voice of eminent experts in the field to the opinion poll that showed overwhelming public opposition. So all the attempts to astroturf the LLM grifters' land grab so far have hit pushback.)

History of *England*? There are three other nations in this trenchcoat full of squabbling raccoons, I'll have you know!

Nope, not really. It has bought about the hilarious spectacle of the seats reserved for the hereditary peers being open to elections (voted on among the peerage) every 5 years. So the house of lords contains only democratically elected members of the hereditary aristocracy.

Wrong: it's mostly appointed, 20% of the seats are reserved for hereditary aristocrats and bishops (thanks to Tony Blair who sabotaged the attempt to turn it into an elected upper house), they're mostly domain-specific experts from the professions and former politicians, cross-party.

Back before Mandelson got arrested I'd have said "fat chance". Now? There might be some light at the end of the tunnel.

UK MP's don't generally pay for their election campaigns—in fact, spending money on electoral advertising is in most cases illegal per the electoral commission rules.

Thread. (TLDR: the House of Lords DCC report on AI came down hard on the correct side of the debate, rather than siding with industry lobbyists.)

Tate was trying to get to Dubai on a bus.

When they got to the Saudi border everyone was told to get off for passport and baggage checks and Tate decided to stay on - presumably because the bus was air conditioned and he didn't want to stand in a queue.

He then got detained by Saudi guards.

He also seemed to forget that Mad Max Fury Road is about women trying to escape from toxic masculinity.

@cstross.bsky.social Honestly bravo, that was an ending.
Bittersweet but still in a way as sweet as could be expected for our cast.

Couldn't put it down for the day when I was capable of reading. I'm going to no doubt have a ton of questions in my notes for when you do your blog retrospective.

Never read the books (and you need to bear in mind there were different small forces for each town in those days) but I met the cops and I was Not Impressed (TBF I was more scared by *them* than by the armed robbers).

Started reading The Regicide Report by @cstross.bsky.social and it's exactly what I missed since the last novel.

I'm excited to see the climax and denouement of my favorite sf series I started reading back on a rainy day waiting for the bus in 2014.

Nope, I meant their *new in 2026* single, "I love the 80s".

Was there ever a band (probably playing ragtime) called Aztec Daguerrotype?

I saw Aztec Camera before they changed their name to Aztec Videocamera and then Aztec Phonecamera and then Aztec Streaming.

Hmph!

Apparently, the original Aztec whistles only made sounds like the wind, rather than the delightful high-pitched shriek we all know and love.

Well, Rule of Cool! The Mesoamerican whistles in my game are *definitely* going to be harrowing shrieks.

So there!

We had an automatic box but it was shit.

What I'd recommend is a slotted scoop/sieve, a tray with a lid and cat flap on the front, and really good cat litter. I use this stuff because it's biodegradable and flushable and lasts forever: https://www.worldsbestcatlitter.com

Listen, you have kids, presumably you've experienced full diapers? Cats are different but not *that* different. Unfortunately.

I speak from experience, you understand.

Also the dark side: older cats with arthritis and/or colon cancer expose you to feline spatial reasoning skills—"when I go to poop in this place it hurts, this place is bad now because it bit me, guess I have to go poop somewhere else".

Not 2 or 3 litter trays, FOUR trays: and they will wage the Battle of Stalingrad daily for ownership of the least desirable one. The front line will move back and forth, and every so often you'll have to pick up the pieces after a sudden blitzkrieg sortie causes an outbreak of feline displeasure.

Naah, my life has been totally boring compared to, say, Roald Dahl.