Blaize K.

two men are sitting on a porch talking to each other . one of the men is wearing a blue shirt . ALT: two men are sitting on a porch talking to each other . one of the men is wearing a blue shirt .

Nice :'D

yes

If you generate a book-length blob of text every day, and it takes me six months to write a SHORT STORY I still win the race because I care about art and not just volume of words.

I believe it, too.

Here's the thing, if publishers and distributors are indifferent (or actively cheering for) the race to the bottom, then alternative signals of quality will surely become salient.

Collectives like @sauutiverse.bsky.social, or individual editors, could become effective signals.

ooh dang! This is my favorite video lecture basically ever.
I'm doing a bunch of writing with my daughter this year and this lecture + Fry's "The Ode Less Traveled" are our guiding lights.

Although I am not a "brony", I am a massive fan of the show (perhaps I am functionally equivalent to one?). I watched the whole thing with my daughter. An episode every morning before I walked/drove her to school.
When it's good it can be _very_ good.

Ah, this is amazing
And the cover is gorgeous. Huge congrats

Aurealis 187 cover, robot floating in space.

Aurealis #187, our February 2026 issue, is here and we are pleased to present the quality fiction of The Last Faithful Servant of the Empire by Blaize M. Kaye, The Prince of Dogs by Harry Goddard and With Teeth by S.R. Kriger superbly illustrated by Leah Clementson.

Then why are all the starving artists I know vehemently opposed to LLM extruders, while every marketing manager and would-be Bitcoin bro under the sun is using them to generate shit self-caricatures and write LinkedIn posts nobody reads?

I realise I've said for a while that eating the rich could lead to prion diseases, I must caution everyone that the risk is greatly increased by the rich already having eaten people.

I must insist on ensuring they remain several steps removed from our food chain. Please dispose responsibly.

and @ammansabet.bsky.social nailed the illustration, seriously. Please do a little search on Burkina Faso and sukhala. I really appreciate the detail (I've had illustrations before where Durban looks like central Paris). Also, the cheeky SF references in the patterns are just awesome.

He’s going to destroy both companies hell yes

*takes off philosopher/technologist hat*

My interest is purely philosophical/scientific here. I absolutely acknowledge the ethical clusterfuck involved in these technologies.

@doctorspurt.bsky.social - if you were ever interested in digging into how dev tooling acts as cognitive scaffolds for language models, I'd be very keen. My intuition is telling me that what we're seeing here is the genAI version of scaffolded cognition.

Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

This is an impressive feat of engineering - but the 4EA cognitive scientist part of my brain is screaming that the scaffolding is doing a massive part of the work - www.anthropic.com/engineering/...

it's not something I've fully worked out yet. But I think that NEEDING an airtight argument before doing something about it is ghoulish (the "moral shame" or revulsion we feel should be enough justification, I guess).

I do want to do more though.

I mean, it does for me - since whatever little I'm realistically going to be able to achieve for myself and "by myself" is dwarfed by what we lose through this systematic and systemic undermining of potential. Not that people need to be useful/great to have a dignified life, but that's not my point

Michael Morgan suggests that the fact we live in a world where genocide exists should be cause for moral shame. I think that the point below should encourage a broadening of Morgan's source of shame.

This isn't history. It is our present.

Does that change how you want to live?

(as there is in most areas of human endeavor - I just happen to know the lit/phil ones best)

This is one of the great tragedies of humanity, and the fact that it's still the case should shame us all.
But there's one small light - those that manage to break through IN SPITE of all of all this. These are truly remarkable people. There are some really inspiring examples in SA philosophy.

Thanks so much @annaclark.bsky.social - and I was lucky enough to have you see that early draft! It is much better for it.

YouTube video by rjun67 The Third Man......The.Cuckoo Clock

also, obviously - www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydk...

This whole film is such a banger

YouTube video by okidokivideos "Fact and Fiction" scene from The Third Man (1949)

YES. This is such a great film.
I loved this scene so much - www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQkK...

Ah, that's awesome. First, good luck! Second, the fact that they're paying as part of the process bodes well for them as an employer.

And I have to thank
@wtalabi.com, @annaclark.bsky.social, and @nerinedorman.bsky.social --some of the smartest people I know, who all made this story so much better than I would've managed on my own.

Phano Phano delivers wondrous, thought-provoking content about the future to the questioning masses—beautiful stories, essays, interviews, reviews and art to make sense of our world in constant change. We w...

I'm really proud/happy/excited to say that my story "Endling" is now live at Phano.
www.phano.com/articles/end...

It's a story about the Fermi Paradox, Philosophy, being from the global south, and making a VERY questionable moral decision (over and over again).

Phano Phano delivers wondrous, thought-provoking content about the future to the questioning masses—beautiful stories, essays, interviews, reviews and art to make sense of our world in constant change. We w...

🔥 Phano 14 up at www.phano.com 🔥

Come chase darkness across worlds, peer into the radio spectrum for life, and win more than you know what to do with in three new free-to-read stories...

- “Endling” by Blaize M. Kaye
- “The Water's Country” by Miah O'Malley
- “Winning” by E. M Dasche

Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2025 - Reactor Here are some of the speculative fiction gems that may have flown under the radar in 2025...

2025 was another great year for African short fiction! Author @wtalabi.com recommends 10 highlights across science fiction, fantasy, and horror, from "magic-for-wealth schemes" to an unsettling religious organization (in space). And if there's some ties in there...? We're not complaining.

How many people know "The Liberation of Earth" by Tenn? The form of the story was _heavily_ inspired by this story.

Really happy to have my story "The Last Faithful Servant of the Empire" out in Aurealis #187 today (thanks @genni.bsky.social and the rest of the crew <3) - grab it here aurealis.com.au/store/aureal...