Eddie Clark

Today's Sun Sword posting. Again reminiscent of nothing so much as Tolkien at his best. Portentious isn't necessarily a negative if you have control of your tone.

(The Uncrowned King, Ch 4...)

"“Who are you, Kiriel?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Choice waiting for consequence to occur.”"

Dicey argument, that.

Media Do International Acquires Seven Seas Entertainment Media Do highlights its LLM AI-based translation system in announcing US$80 million acquisition

Well shit. Seven Seas, one of the bigger English-language manga & light novel distributors, bought by a company proudly touting its AI slop translation software. Not good.

www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-03...

I think bluesky would be roughly 300% better if people here were capable of reading “this is an assessment of the empirical reality of a situation” without assuming it comes with an implicit “and therefore I endorse the reality of that situation”

I'm not starting up an award ...but I am testing a hypothesis and spotlighting some great queer SFF

Still not starting an award, but I *do* have my inaugural Queersar Not An Award honour list ready to go and be posted this time next week!

Underappreciated middle books! Top quality YA! Spreadsheets! Idiosyncratic space opera! Science Fantasy! Terrible Gays! Standalone stunners!

Banger of a list.

Literally, at work this morning:

Clinician: Patient should stop medication A, but must keep taking medication B.

AI VR transcription of this: Patient should stop taking medication B.

Seriously NEVER LET A DOCTOR USE AI FOR YOUR APPOINTMENTS. NEVER. UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Feel free to try to guess the 2020 books based on the above vagueposting lol.

To make things extra fun some of the descriptions apply to multiple books. *and* there's an 11th Hall of Already Famous bonus book; the only one that was nominated for & won both queer & mainstream SFF awards that year

I'm not starting up an award ...but I am testing a hypothesis and spotlighting some great queer SFF

Still not starting an award, but I *do* have my inaugural Queersar Not An Award honour list ready to go and be posted this time next week!

Underappreciated middle books! Top quality YA! Spreadsheets! Idiosyncratic space opera! Science Fantasy! Terrible Gays! Standalone stunners!

Banger of a list.

(This is not "incredulous at you" it's "incredulous at publishers")

That seems utterly bizarre. The prospect of having to reread a 600 page tome before starting the next one released 2 years later is MUCH more likely to cause me to stop with the series. They seriously think people will start at book 3 and just use the recap for the previous 2??

Do take the time to nominate for this! Have a look at the citation, think about what you read last year that was great and fits those criteria (note the requirement for a 2025 *US* edition; some newer non-US books might not be eligible, some older ones with new US editions might be). It's easy!

I get the resource limitations involved in covering foreign policy & overseas wars. But outsourcing all of that to a single extremely right wing source - does Stuff not have licencing deals with any other major news source? - is a really bad look.

4 iran analysis stories on the Stuff home page, only the one about a Kiwi family in the Gulf is not a telegraph reprint.

3 of these 4 stories are reprints from the Telegraph. Outsourcing foreign policy analysis to a paper as nakedly ideological as that - and not informing readers until the END of the analysis - is A Choice that I think reflects poorly on stuff.

Social media created this nonsense idea that not exposing yourself to hatred is isolationist. Choosing to not spend your free time with bigots isn’t living in a bubble. I don’t need to know what’s going on at X. I won’t be smarter or more knowledgeable or empathic by being there. Neither will you.

Shop wasn't open so I cannot indulge my bad instincts. I bought a little rainbow trout plaque elsewhere to salve my pottery kitsch urge.

Two ugly cross eyed cat statuettes.

These are incredibly ugly and also I kinda want them.

An Unpopular, Doomed, Bloody War People will die and nothing will be accomplished

From last night - how dumb is this war? Let @professormusgrave.bsky.social count the ways. (separate question from 'how illegal is this war', the answer to which is 'about as illegal as it is dumb')

This is one of the key reasons that I have a no generative AI policy in each of my classes. I do not want students, many of whom are already stressed and vulnerable, slipping into this predicament. It is also why I design my classes for students to talk to & work with each other to reduce isolation.

A light-brown and white owl, eyes shut, sits on a wooden shelf between a chicken-shaped cookie bowl and an urn.

I can't provie a full timeline cleanse, but here, courtesy of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Associated Press, is an eastern screech owl asleep in an antique store. (The owl was gently, and without incident, removed by NYSDEC and released into nearby woods.)

Huger congratulations to everyone shortlisted for the BSFA awards!

illegal use of force by every measure, domestic & international

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

"Governments are big. We are small. We only survive in the cracks. Cold comfort."

- Maureen F McHugh, China Mountain Zhang.

Could put this feeling in a jar.

West coast folks, how shit was every other candidate that the electorate voted for *this* guy??

I mean I lived in Toronto during *Rob Ford* & in some ways this guy seems worse.

At the risk of tooting my own horn, my CMZ piece out next week is talking in this space too. The thing that makes it special is SFnal worldbuilding held up as a backdrop for lack of character agency.

Obv everyone knows Stardew Valley, but Grim Dawn is still in the year 2026 imo one of the best ARPGs on the market, clunky 10 year old engine and all.

Endless fun skill combos (the "pick 2 classes and combine" thing is genius; borrowed from the devs' earlier Titan Quest), build defining loot etc.

10 year anniversary announcements on steam side by side for Stardew Valley & Grim Dawn.

If you put out something good with lasting appeal, people will keep buying and keep playing.

These two side by side in my Steam news updates: 10 year anniversaries for Stardew Valley & Grim Dawn are only 1 day apart! Both still selling, both have content expansions planned for 2026.

Hm not that for me - as in this place IS home for me; the whenua is inescapable. But yes odd what it is about a place that creates an emotional attachment where other places it simply doesn't.

It's funny what places get in your blood, right? Not Vancouver for me, but Toronto was home for me in a way nowhere else except Wellington has been. Something about those hosers!