James Milton - he/him

YouTube video by Anton Petrov Major Breakthrough in Figuring Out How Life Started on Earth

Tentative but still really interesting... www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyac...

I've been rereading George Saunders's "A Swim In A Pond in the Rain". Still my absolute favourite #WritingBook by light years. It's a gentle, transformative journey through the short story writer's craft and, frankly, a little bit of a joy to read.

My new weapon against paralyzing writer's block: poetry. I'm just playing with short, structured forms like haiku, limericks, & clerihews. Writing anything is a balm, the structure is scaffolding to lean on, & I get the little 'win' of actually finishing something, which is uplifting. It's going OK.

The most recent #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds is drawing some hate. It's not perfect. But my god the whole space whale SFX thing was gorgeous. There are artists in their SFX department, and no mistake.

Belatedly bought The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans & just read it. Exactly what I was looking for and written clearly & well. Still, a difficult read, given the subject matter & the state of the world. Learned a great deal. Definitely worth reading.

I'm too old not to judge a movie by its trailers... so going out on a limb and guessing that (despite very excellently rendered tripods), War of the Worlds is not going to break its long streak of wretchedly awful adaptations. They eat your data! Sure. Why not.

Ha. It's such an intricately woven mystery narrative that literally every possible favourite moment is an unforgivable spoiler.

If you have access to Prime and don't mind the sound of a police procedural horror science fiction series that's insanely well-made and alternately scares you and kicks your emotions in the nethers, have a look at The Devil's Hour. It's exceptional.

Will do. At the moment, I'm leaning towards The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. I can't personally recommend it yet, as I haven't bought it yet, but it's looking attractive. (And it's a trilogy, so if the first grips, there's more covering the whole war in the same way.)

Just read the blurb on Amazon. I'm aiming for something that digs into how Germany transitioned from one war to the next, but wish listed The Garden of Beasts as it sounds awesome. Thanks!

Any recommendations for a history of Germany in relation to World War II? (How Germany moved from its situation post-Great War to being a global threat, discussing the course of the war from a historical rather than military perspective, again centred on the German experience, but in English?

A Statistical Analysis of Exoplanet Habitability Turns Up One Great Candidate - And Significant Observational Bias The search for life beyond our planet continues, and one of the most underappreciated tools in an astrobiologists' toolkit is statistics. While it might not be as glamorous as directly imaging a plane...

Terrific article: complicating the idea of the habitable zone to work out good candidates for exoplanet habitability, and Earth as not common but not a Unicorn, either. www.universetoday.com/articles/a-s...

So the difference between AI training on human culture & Pullman writing His Dark Materials in response to Lewis is Pullman isn't a key tool in enclosing & commoditizing culture & slyly monetizing access to & participation in the universal cultural heritage of the human species. IMO.

When AI trains on human-made cultural items, the AI isn't acting as an individual. It's enacting corporate enclosure of human culture. It's parcelling human culture & enclosing it for the profitable use of the corporation. It's not the farmer; it's the wall agribusiness throws around the field.

Humans *participate* in human culture. When inspired by existing art or literature, a human is engaged in communicating along the networked cultural tissue that connects us all across time & space. They are making and reproducing human culture. Their use of culture is the point.

You often hear the question, "What is the difference between a human writing producing work inspired by what they've read and generative AI producing work based on their training data?" Often delivered as a gotcha. But it's pretty straightforward and pretty big.

One of my favourite space opera writers novelizing one of my favourite episodes seems ... seems too good to be true. Might be a trap.

Vera Rubin is my favourite human thing since New Horizons. Considering what humans actually can do, it's kind of unfathomable what we waste most of our doing on.

This heat wave is absolutely bone crushing. I'm so glad I installed central air two years ago.

But if you're without AC, or you're dealing with a heat wave for the first time because it's reaching areas that don't historically get this hot, here are a few tips from my years of poverty in a desert:

I can't imagine my schooling without librarians. Teachers assigned work & school librarians showed you how to build your study skills. They were also my first guides to recreational reading: who to read next if you loved this or that, how to navigate all the world's books. What a damn fool move.

Why do the characters in JAWS not simply defeat the shark in the marketplace of ideas?

Just finished reading David Mitchell's Unruly, a history of English monarchs. Enjoyed it thoroughly. It was irreverently funny and informative in turns, and sometimes simultaneously, and I wouldn't weep in my beer if he wrote more history. #amreading

For some reason, this strikes me as insanely funny ...

Even if they could prove they were the toilet police, you'd have to wonder how much authority they had ...

Protest, Power, and the Violence Debate "We are told we are experiencing peace, so long as everyone is cooperating."

@prisonculture.bsky.social and I have been encouraging people to read chapter six of our book, Let This Radicalize You, which deals with the question of "violence" in social movements. We have decided to share the chapter publicly, to offer some context and grounding for the current conversation.

YouTube video by Event Horizon What We Know About Dolphin Minds with Dr. Diana Reiss

Really fascinating discussion of communication with dolphins from a somewhat SETI perspective: youtu.be/qXE4y9bGerA?...

I think Billie Piper is terrific. But I don't care who she's playing, or why, or what shocking revelation/twist/cameo it's setting up. Current era Who mishandles pay-offs so badly, there's just no percentage in engaging with any of it. I don't know. Wait and see, I guess.

It seems to me that big TV series events & twists require significant runs of actual normal episodes to stand out. When everything is a big event/twist, there's no room for any of it to matter. This #DoctorWho finale was like going over Niagara Falls in a toy-box.

#DoctorWho finale was fun, I suppose. The latest crop of mysteries ... well, resolved doesn't seem the right word. SPOILER...

Then we get the regeneration, & look! A new mystery! Who is Billie Piper really playing, what's going on? Ooooh. Kind of exhausted with cheap Dr Who mysteries.