Xauri'EL Zwaan

Saskatchewan Screams 19+THURSDAY OCTOBER 30THDOOR: 6PMSHOW:7PMPRE-SALE TICKETS: $20DOOR TICKETS: $30The Saskatchewan Screams horror anthology rises from the abyss October 30th. Hosted by Queer'd Al, and featuring local pe

Ticket sales are now open for the Saskatchewan Screams book launch and reading! Art Bar on 20th St, Thu Oct 30th, Doors at 6, show at 7! Tickets are $20 in advance, $30 at the door! Come chat, get a signed copy, and listen to some chilling tales of prairie horror! www.jumpcomedy.com/e/saskatchew...

I've been active on here for less than a year and I'm already regretting it. Back to Mastodon I slink

Like it or not, USD is still the default currency of international trade and finance. I'd like to think that will probably be changing in the near future, but for now we just have to put up with it. Also, our economy, however well-run it might be, is a fraction of the sheer size of the US market.

Not long ago -- in my lifetime -- all trans people faced unspeakable violence, including state-sponsored violence, for simply existing

And self-appointed gatekeepers made it as tough as possible for a person to transition.

Anyone who wants to bring back the gatekeeping also wants the violence back

"Postmodernism has destroyed respect for the concept of objective truth," say academics of famous postmodernists like Immanuel Kant and Pyrrho of Elis

Help, I'm starting another novelette/novella

I honestly hope I can sell just one *longer* story this year. I've got a good number of credits (for me), but the longest one is under 2k. Even if it isn't published this year, just getting a contract signed for one of my longer pieces would make me super happy

AI guys are like "we don't KNOW that LLMs aren't capable of consciousness because the processes are SO complex now that we don't understand them anymore" but if I put one in a box without a prompt, there isn't an amount of time that can pass that will make it go "I'm bored, what else is going on"

"The mainstream media has a liberal bias" is one of the greatest propaganda coups ever executed

I love Ozzy and this fits perfect with the latest meeting of generals will Pete and Don.

This is the thing that irritates me about people who argue against renewable energy. They say things like "solar and wind are unreliable" or "solar farms take up a lot of arable land" or "lithium mining also damages the environment" and then they just... stop. The chain of reasoning ends there […]

Betting there's going to be another influx soon as the butterfly site bends knee to the tyrants

Look, I know it's infuriating, but expecting a corporation to take a moral stand on something is an absolutely ludicrous and unserious desire. Every one of them will cave within femtoseconds of comprehending that profits are on the line. We all need to understand and prepare for this

I can't help but assume at this point that the much-applauded introduction of Spaceships in Edge of Eternities, and possibly the entire existence of Edge of Eternities as a set, was a cynical exercise in preparing the ground for next year's Star Trek set to be accepted by the community. Look, it […]

In all seriousness, publishers are going to have to figure out how to market books in the post-social-media landscape. That should be an implicit part of their job. What authors/artists can do on their own is increasingly limited and siloed.

yeah this is child abuse sorry

My personal timeline is full of autistic people trying to explain that there isn't more autism than before, it's just that we're better at detecting it, and there's nothing more autistic than hoping explaining something at length will help matters when nobody is really listening.

The fun thing about power is that while you can use it to silence people smarter than you no amount of it can cure you of being a fucking dipshit

(Please note: there is a line between "disturbing and uncomfortable" and "nazi shit". The line, like all distinctions created by the human mind, is blurry and challenging to locate, but it is there)

I am of the apparently unusual opinion that art I don't like, even art that I find disturbing and uncomfortable, should nonetheless be allowed to exist

Some schools will be starved of resources. Other schools will be offered bribes. The end goal is the same. To make the universities an extension of the Trump administration. Shame on any of these institutions willing to take the bribes.

Yes, I think the biggest way tech has influenced education is as an enabler of autodidacticism far more than any impact on formal classroom teaching

When I started at the place I work now eight years ago, I was told "V.R. (and A.R.) are the future of learning", "In five years all students will come to college with their own V.R. headset", and "V.R. will transform [chemistry]!"

I was told to get in on the ground floor.

Went to the Olive Garden for the first time today, and the food was pretty meh, but man I could have eaten a couple whole packets of those bread sticks just by myself

Help, I forgot to take my meds today. Someone please take away my access to social media, lol

I'm starting to genuinely hate my own writing tics. Like, I was aware that I start a lot of stories with zero-context dialogue lines, but I've been doing a lot of minor revising lately to avoid having to produce fresh drafts, and my lord Satan, it's like every second one. I still feel like it's […]

Idk about y’all, but my grandpa shot Nazis. I feel like we’ve collectively forgotten how many of our grandpas shot Nazis. A little pepper spray and a boop on the snoot feels pretty peaceful. A mild scolding for an aspiring Nazi: get them back on track.

I've been awaiting with bated breath the day I get Isabel Fall'd for something I've written

This is the sort of behavior that kills creative projects. Not big productions like KoG, but the little ones made by one or a handful of queer or feminine or Black or Brown people who are scared of being unpersoned for not doing it "right."

It is true that watching a bad movie with other people in realtime can be a very fun experience, whereas the only thing you can really do socially with a bad novel is tell other people how bad it was after you've read it. Which brings up the intriguing possibility of "bad novel book club"