Fernando Salazar

That pushy guest, Real Life Explore a personal journey through illness and recovery, intertwined with musings on sci-fi advancements in medicine and the chaos of hospitals.

Health tech, hospitals, and Forlorn Toys, my last month in a nutshell. fjsalazar.com/archives/2387

NYT headline from last August: "Harris and Trump Embrace Tariffs, Though Their Approaches Differ"

gee i wonder why voters might've been confused about the existential stakes of the last election

The Contrarian | Jen Rubin and Norm Eisen | Substack Unflinching journalism in defense of democracy. Click to read The Contrarian, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

The exodus from the Washington Post continues, as Jennifer Rubin, has left. But she can now be found at contrarian.substack.com: reporting on issues of the day, with an emphasis on not sanewashing the unconscionable things coming out of the new administration.

What Happens Next? Short post this week. Last time I wrote about the development editing and revision approach for Stone By Stone (SBS). I’ve completed 14 items on my list – yay, me. The majority of these were to add…

Progress in revising STONE BY STONE. I now have a map. fjsalazar.com/archives/2029

we're cooked

YouTube video by countryjazz Quelle Belle Vie Beausoleil(with Mary Chapin Carpenter)

QUELLE BELLE VIE, MA FEMME EST PARTIE! That’s my battle-cry when Kim is traveling. These times I watch a lot of Trek. I’m inclined to a WORST of Trek marathon. Nominate in comments your picks for worst-ever episodes from TOS, TNG, DS9 or Voyager.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWz0...

Get me Edit! What, J. Jonah Jameson, editor extraordinaire and bête noir of both SpiderMan and Peter Parker? That can only mean I’m going to talk about the  developmental edit of Stone By Stone. But first a bit…

The next steps for my in-progress novel STONE BY STONE. fjsalazar.com/archives/2013

The Great Grocery Squeeze How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Great Grocery Squeeze How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert

In the 30's Congress passed a law making it illegal for suppliers to offer preferential prices to select retailers. In 1954 large chains had only 25% market share.

In the 80s enforcement stopped. From 1982 to 2017, the market share of independents shrank from 53 to 22 percent. Link in comments.

Authors of the study surmise the preference for AI poetry is that it is simpler and more straightforward in its images and messages -- you know, just the way a Quarter-Pounder has a more straightforward taste than a Paella.

AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably

Here's a shocker, Humans prefer poetry written by AI to poetry written by Humans. Humans also assume the poetry they grade as best was written by Humans. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Examples of books mixing adult and coming-of-age storylines:
* Dune
* Several by Brandon Sanderson
* Provenance by Ann Leckie
* The Revenger series by Alastair Reynolds
* The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMasters Bujold

Some details: The mix is 75% adult, 25% child/adolescent. Quite a lot of the non-adult content is there to provide context for things the protagonist does as an adult.

My WIP book STONE BY STONE mixes childhood and adolescent chapters, with adult chapters that present an action/intrigue story. I’ve gotten feedback that this is a turn-off for agents/publishers, because adults aren’t interested in such “mixed” narratives.

What do you think about this?