Cryptopher is in post-Fantasycon Seclusion

Hope folks at #Pictcon2 today have a fun time. I have family duties involving alpacas to do and also con fatigue tbh. Hope to go to Pictcon3: the Revenge next year though.

Shoutout to @grimdarkmagazine.bsky.social from @annasmithspark.bsky.social before @alasdairstuart.com drops the line of the weekend "Do the work you love, honestly and consistently. The networking will take care of itself, the work won't." #fantasycon

On way into Fantasycon. Very excited and nervous. Looking forward to seeing folks maybe learning a thing or two.

Did you know you only need a small brain to make silly little drawings?

nobody finishes a book and concludes “that was great; now I shall never read another one.” other writers are your teammates and coworkers, not your competition.

I am so excited for this. Please come along!

I can't stop thinking how wrong the tech bros have understood creativity and creators. Or even just having hobbies. #erliart

seeing conservative men debate how to dress online is very funny. can't dress up or wear interesting casualwear bc you've made any visible interest in dress to be a sign of homosexuality. but you feel the need to dress better bc you've linked dress to respectability. a prison of your own making.

Always a treat to be reminded of an old friend

*Excited noises* I'm wildly happy and somewhat awed to be included in this anthology with so many talented writers and awesome human beings. You should come to our launch at Fantasycon...

My 7 stages of novel writing: 5K: Oh man, this idea is awesome. 15K: Hmmm, I need to do some in depth worldbuilding. 30K: Map, pencilled out nations/races 50K: Religions, history 90K: Civil wars, lineages, pre-history, cosmology, magic systems... 100K: What was the story again?

Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/

Masters of the Universe ia pure awesome.

I am awful at regularly updating here. Especially given I'm intending on doing and promoting vids again once the schools are back. Anways, off to Fife for summer visit to my aunts with the kids. Obviously after an insane heatwave it starts to rain as we head to the seaside...

"Verify your age" I used a pencil to fix my music player. There were 4 TV channels. My first computer had a tape deck.

"O Ye, All Ye That Walk in Willowwood” 🎨 Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1903, detail)

"The mere existence of trillionaires is a major political and economic problem, probably the defining issue of our time," writes @gabrielzucman.bsky.social. "When the power of wealth is wielded by sociopaths, the consequences are a matter of life and death."

stop the count, etc, etc

No. Its cause people have less disposable income and the world is evidently getting worse in numerous ways. The only part smartphones have to play in that is making access to the 24 hour doomscroll news cycle a bit easier.

We have no money. You know this. Why do you keep asking why we’re not doing things we used to do? It’s because we have no money. We. Have. No. Money. We have no money. There is no money left. It’s all gone. None of us have it. No money. Nope. Money gone. We don’t have it. No.

Scotland? On fire. Your defence? Terrified. Super, super. John McGinn.

Omg, so much this. Two of my favourite things but SO many bad folks into/using it in negative ways.

I hate the Nazi attempt to co-opt Norse mythos as their own with all the blazing power of Surtr. It's a blatant pillaging of aesthetics without navigating context, not unlike what generative AI is doing today. Read one Icelandic saga and you'll quickly understand why the vikings would hate Nazis.

You can’t collaborate with a tool.

The people that use gen-AI and scream about “gatekeeping” don’t really want to make art. They want to be praised and to make money and want to skip the actual “art” process. They don’t JUST want a product, they want everyone to tell them how gifted and special they are, too, for no work!

I live just down the road from this weather station, and can confirm from my own scientific observations that it was at least a gazillion degrees. And to be more sombre about this: any politics that doesn't start from the existential nature of the climate crisis is just not a serious contribution.

Currwntly hyperfocus shopping for camera toys notionally to start making videos again. Torn between fun action cam like the Insta360 3s or a gimbal for my phone like the Osmo Mobile 8. Could I possibly spend hours and hundreds of quid on stuff for a project that doesnt get finished? Again!

Not quite lilacs, but almost the right shade for the glorious 25th. How do they rise up?

In a panel on faeries and folklore in fiction, Meg quips.... 'This is no longer a panel, this is a djinn tasting.'

Star Trek panel past and now in a panel about folklore related to faeries and myths and such. Fairly good spread of my interests represented TBH.

If you were 46% wrong at work, you would be fired.

This is SUCH a satisfying shot.

still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them

Every year, I aspire to become more and more like my icon, Granny Weatherwax. “Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.” Happy Sir Terry Pratchett Day! Grateful for the books and the magic, always.

Definitely not making much of a case as to why they’re not voting remotely from their constituencies instead of getting second houses in London paid for by the taxpayer, let alone for their enormous salaries

Happy birthday, Dad. Wish you were here. You’d know what to do. Or at least you’d know what to write. ❤️

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Ghibli.

Oh yay, autism awareness month. Folks are aware, but theyre also misinformed, prejudiced and instututionally opposed to actually making accomodations. Everything comes back to 'lack of resources' (or 'business need') or some bullshit prefaced by 'can't you just...'

Yes. Character development, narrative that can meander, monster of the week. A bit of bloat in the service of world building, gardening an ensemble and having some fun is good actually.

What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.