Jon Olfert 🌾🍁

"Individuals can produce good enough outcomes with remarkable speed, only to labor extensively for the additional improvement that marks true quality. This frustrating gap between initial ease and final effort is the essence of the GenAI Paradox: better technology, worse motivation."

Argent, a cross encliparted, a wingding rampant

I regret to inform you there are people still trying to undertake new projects for 2025

Sadly, the legal deadline for new projects was five days ago. Those are now 2026 problems

This is the big number going around but a double-barrelled question that includes something that can be taken multiple ways is MEANT to get a big number. Nobody with the resources to get n~3000 could make both mistakes in one Q by accident. Holocaust denial is too serious to be mishandled like this.

Shiny Jets, New Subs, and Old Problems Canada’s defence excitement doesn’t fix the fundamentals.

I talk about fighter aircraft, subs, and reality

open.substack.com/pub/blackclo...

Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Woman Like Stone Like Water by Malda Marlys The stranger turned at the noise she was making and stared at her rather rudely. (Did plains people not train their children properly?) He didn’t quite seem able to stand, but he scooted away from her...

(sure would be a cool time to read a weird ghost story about a world where many disparate creatures were recognizably human and how that'd shake out huh? if there was such a thing)

A: Half the people I follow are American writers of some kind.
B: Profile images are tiny.
C: My concept of American geography is shaky.
D: Everyone born in the 80s starts with J.
A+B+C+D = I have no idea who anyone is beyond 'big on 2nd person' and 'likes writing weird swamps' and 'E...LLIP...SES.'

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Get more from Beneath Ceaseless Skies on Patreon creating an online fantasy magazine & podcast

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Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 187 (December 2025) LIGHTSPEED is a digital science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF-and fantasy: fro...

My latest Fivefold Church story, "Crickets in Lost Light," is out in Lightspeed 187. Free to read on the 11th but who'd wait that long for answers to the great questions? (How hard is it possible to fail as a Wife Guy? Is tithing theft? Can you fight with a saw?)
weightlessbooks.com/lightspeed-m...

It takes me 3x as long to grade assignments now, because I have to explain gently and effectively why ChatGPT style writing is boring -- they swim in this stuff now even when they don't use the tools. Maybe no one has even told them their own voice matters, so that is down to us. 3/

Plus Lady in the Lake got derecognized as a professional credential so the field got choked by multi-level marketing. Magic swords are impossible at a reasonable price point but there are garages full of 'magic' swords and magic 'swords' from St. George to Red Deer.

Early-career professionals are increasingly unsettled — I see it daily — about their prospects for bear skull mentorship. About to enter my forties, I admit I'm insecure about my own magic sword planning and the frequency of my malevolent fog vanishings. My moss layer, however, is ahead of schedule.

@charliebing.bsky.social You'll enjoy this.

Lot of possible factors re: What's Happening With The Students for sure.
This isn't an insight unique to me — a student affairs comms pro pointed it out — but my money's on the biggest actual driver being the launches of Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, & FB Reels. Timeline, total reach — it fits.

A cloudy sky reflected in a lake, framed by dry prairie grass and inverted reflections of evergreens

Missing my homeland of Alberta something fierce tonight. Picture's a little lake north of Rocky Mountain House, 2025.

Alberta <3

Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain’s ship. But b…

In this week’s @strangehorizons.bsky.social, one of my favourite pieces I’ve edited this year — on orientalism from Star Trek to Game of Thrones.

Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence,” by Tanvir Ahmed —

strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Without exaggeration, one of the finest pieces of paleofiction I've found anywhere. Weird Stone Age horror as high art.

I missed this when it came out - magnificent.

a man with long hair is saying contemplate this on the tree of woe . Alt: James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom saying 'contemplate this on the tree of woe' to Conan the Barbarian, offscreen.

"You have utterly breached your genre contract with me in my capacity as a reader! Your sword-and-sorcery stories don't have any gloopy monsters!"

And yours don't have any stakes, bub, settle down a bit.

The Pope using a microphone like a musician

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me

YouTube video by GuitarDocs While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood... Tributo a George Harrison

If you haven't heard the solo in question: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWc4...

A purple area chart labeled "Prince joins Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, et al. for 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', March 15th, 2004, 202 Days After His Doubtless Accidental Omission from Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." The chart shows a large spike when Prince starts his solo and another spike when he concludes it.

Trying to get some more practice with bread-and-butter ggplot and didn't feel like trawling more government datasets today so-

Paleofiction crew, it's a good morning, wake from the grasp of encroaching ice and come check this story out.
@carlc75.bsky.social @handiworkgames.bsky.social @sashabrown.bsky.social @ranylt.bsky.social @rkduncan.bsky.social @mimulus.bsky.social

Snap up some ostraka for me but I've been saying it: the main way people are reading checks-every-box sword and sorcery these days, by an order of magnitude, is probably Scarlett St. Clair. It's like how one of the absolute juggernauts of science fiction is Nora Roberts.

You can build yourself. You have the technology.

This International Men's Day I'd like to point out to my fellow guys that on average we don't do so hot at conscientiousness, which can have broad impacts on how we live and feel and what we achieve—but conscientiousness is learnable and trainable through setting goals, helping others, pitching in.

I had not, thank you