#ScribesAndMakers 12 Oct
Do you ever talk to people in song lyrics?

No. Quotes from comedy or unintentionally comical films, sometimes.

The AI did this, the AI did that, who knows what the AI will do next? Look, I could have told you 2 years ago, this isn't because "AI" is this special self-aware entity that can break out of its cage and get up to mischief.

It's because the business idiots wished on a technological monkey's paw for the ability to write programs by telling the computer what you want in English and this is what you fucking get.

@LJ #ScribesAndMakers #TTMD

Hi, have you experimented with your own glaze recipes for pottery, or is there any glaze you've tried that gives a result you especially like?

You can't win at capitalism. You just have to survive it while you do the human things that have true worth.

#ScribesAndMakers 25 Sep
Our next featured creator uses a separate Fedi account dedicated to their book. Do you use different accounts for different creative purposes?

Not much. I have a pixelfed I hardly use. I have a different email just for writer stuff that I don't use yet. I thought about going on wandering.shop for posting about writing, since I have friends there. But in the end, I'm just me in all contexts, so there's no reason to add complexity.

#ScribesAndMakers 22 Sep
Promotion day. Self or someone else. Or both.

Self: check out my books here https://torn-and-crumpled.page/books.html

Other: Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle have an anthology "Haverin" coming out on 9th October, to line up with FantasyCon, in Glasgow this year.

There's also going to be a signing event on 21st October at the Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street.

#ScribesAndMakers 11 Sep
Have you ever been part of a collaborative group for your creative work?

I think the Shadows at the Door anthology counts, and the upcoming Glasgow Science Fiction Writer's Circle 40th year anthology "Haverin" (due out in October, you should buy one, it looks great)

I have a few collab ideas, but I don't have the time right now that I'd need to put in to get them done, or available writer and artist partners who also have that time. Maybe one day.

Remember when printers just worked? You'd send them bytes over a parallel port, and there was a manual that came with the printer to say what would happen if you sent what sequence of bytes?

If so, you may soon be eligible for free bus travel in Scotland.

Try to live your life so that otherwise kind people who look after each other and are nice to cats don't still make dark jokes about your death … and keep doing so every year afterwards.

#scribesandmakers 8 Sep - Gauge

She checked again, but there was no point. The fuel gauge said 60%. Of course it did. Every readout was digital, not one light was on because a physical circuit was closed, not one dial was a needle held in place by a real pressure or voltage. The whole control room was run on a 21st century computer, and those bastard things LIE.

#ScribesAndMakers 1 Sep
With many new people here, let's do another round of introductions. Tell us something about yourself and your creativity.

I'm a mostly SF writer in the Glasgow area. Day job is software engineer. I have a lot of small odd ideas that make it into short stories, a few medium-sized ones turn into novels. Some of my stories have been good enough, or at least the right kind of odd, to get published.

What to expect: no gore, no SA, too much science.

Link to ebooks in bio

#WordWeavers 31 Aug
What's one thing you hope readers remember long after they finish your story?

The line they needed at the time, or the idea that they wanted to think about a bit more.

#ScribesAndMakers 29 Aug
Do you know what you wanted to be at 11?

I did want to be a science fiction writer about that time, but because it seemed like fun. I had no stories to tell and no idea how to do it for another 30 years.

As for what I'd do for a paid job, I think I assumed I'd be an organic chemist like my dad; the jobs I ended up doing after I found out I liked computer programming *didn't exist* when I was 11.

I've said before, civilisations (and smaller hierarchies) die when they need to change to survive but are captured by interests that benefit from the declining status quo too much to allow change.

Addendum: Also, when they just… can't be bothered any more. When the easy answer, the over-simplification, the lazy generalisation, becomes the only preferred path. No adventure, no rigour, no nuance. Smacks of effort, man.

I don't like seeing both of these so much.

Tourist crap shop in Paris trying really hard to use the Eiffel Tower as a letter I when it is obviously an A. I will not be buying any SOUVENARS de PARAS.

A question I haven't heard yet re the current AI hype cycle, as to whether it's a grift or a serious technological step forward is this:

What's IBM doing?

In other words, how many hundreds of billions has big blue dropped on new datacentres and enterprise software tools based on LLMs?

All I can say for sure is I don't see them on isaiprofitable.com :)

AI that absolves you from thinking critically sure did land at a convenient time when thinking critically about the world is a constant torment and moral injury.

#WritersCoffeeClub 22 Aug
Have you ever used a sensitivity reader?

I don't think I've attempted anything that'd need one, and needing one would feel like a sign that I'm trying to tell a story I don't know. Others might dare, not me.

The very occasional "you probably didn't intend this, but did you know...?" from my writing group has been plenty to help me inform myself. I've never had a full-on "Yikes. Not cool" from them, and they're good people who wouldn't hold back if it had to be said.

Do you have "injustice sensitivity" or is that just being a decent person?

I have a lot of mixed off-centre-genre speculative fiction short stories, produced haphazardly as I get ideas for them. Almost anything could be a plausible answer, so I have made no attempt to be fair.