May be of interest.
Originally shared by Mary Robinette Kowal
Short Stories Explained — workshop
I’m teaching a short story workshop that’s specifically for people who are having trouble control length and structure. WHEN: Sunday, October 2, 2016 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 PM (CDT) – Add to Calendar When people are struggling to write short fiction, the…
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/short-stories-explained/
I found this fascinating. Things I noticed:
– For a much longer time than I’d expected, city formation is slow, and confined to the Middle East.
– About a thousand years in: Gilgamesh.
– Gradually, cities spread east and west, then fill in the gaps.
– Some cities I think of as really old are not nearly as old as some less well-known cities.
– Some cities I think of as very modern are actually old.
– Lots of cities in Africa, many of them medieval or before.
– Unsurprisingly, things start to get busy around the early Middle Ages.
– There’s a slowdown around, I think, the time of the Black Death, but no caption for it.
– Things get really busy around 1800.
– Surprisingly many cities were founded in the 20th century.
Originally shared by Amanda Patterson
Sharing this to read later.
Glancing over the titles and abstracts, it strikes me that one of the most important things we can do is attempt to transform our political and economic systems from ones that primarily benefit those who already have access to power and wealth into ones that protect and provide for everyone and share the benefits more widely – not only for the liberal reasons of justice and fairness, but for the conservative reasons of security, liberty and opportunity.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
From universal basic income to the gig economy, there’s no denying technology is going to cause sweeping changes.
This is well worth a read.
Originally shared by Brand Gamblin
It’s like brain surgery.
Originally shared by Walter Roberson
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/essential-tremor-health-surgery-clinical-trial-brain-disease-1.3732875
The point of this article is to write people as people.
I suspect there’s a little more to it than that, but there isn’t less to it than that.
Originally shared by Lisa “LJ” Cohen
Before I dive into #Parallax I wanted to share this very insightful article about the necessary role of empathy in writing, and its failure.
This really encapsulates the challenge and issues around writing people who have different life experiences than the author. I particularly resonated with this:
“If you cannot write other without the assistance of a dedicated team of marginalized people to check your every sentence, then you should likely interrogate the writing that is about self. Writing requires you to enter into the lives of other people, to imagine circumstances as varied, as mundane, as painful, as beautiful, and as alive as your own. It means graciously and generously allowing for the existence of other minds as bright as quiet as loud as sullen as vivacious as your own might be, or more so. It means seeing the humanity of your characters. If you’re having a difficult time accessing the lives of people who are unlike you, then your work is not yet done.”
http://lithub.com/there-is-no-secret-to-writing-about-people-who-do-not-look-like-you/
And now, the third of three reviews of other novels with which my Hope and the Patient Man shares this excellent boxed set. (It’s 12 novels, plus bonus short fiction, for 99c, and all of them have heroes with integrity and honour standing up against a dark world.)
You may not be as familiar with Sabrina Chase as you are with Lindsay Buroker and C.J. Brightley, the other two authors I’ve featured. Like mine and Lindsay’s, her book The Last Mage Guardian is a bit steampunkish – enough so that Amazon suggested it to me because I’d enjoyed Lindsay Buroker’s work, and I’m glad of the recommendation. I awarded a very high four stars for this well-written tale of a young woman who finds herself in charge of the magical defense of Europe, some years after a devastating war started by the French.
It’s set in an alternate world. The date appears to be mid-to-late 19th century, from scattered clues. There are trains, but it’s magic rather than technology that gets the emphasis. The North American continent appears to be called Atlantea, and the countries of Europe have different names, their cities have different spellings, and there are other geopolitical differences like the continuation of a separate country of Bretagne distinct from France (or Gaul).
Although there’s a romance subplot between the two viewpoint characters, the emphasis is on the adventure and the magic, with a great boss battle at the end. Flooding cellar, explosions, collapsing masonry, levitation, it’s all good stuff. I liked both the main characters, enjoyed the world, and was happy to accept the more cinematic parts of the story in their own terms.
The editing (and writing) is fully as good as you’ll find from any big publisher, and better than you’ll often get from HarperCollins.
There’s a sequel, which I’ve also read and enjoyed, and I’ve explored some of the author’s other books (mostly SF, inspired by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my own favourite authors) and found them up to the same high standard.
So, preorder this boxed set of 12 novels, including The Last Mage Guardian, for 99c, and you’ll have some great reading come October.
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Noblebright-Fantasy-Boxed-ebook/dp/B01K3534QI
Name generator, trained on a baby names book.
Originally shared by Andrej Karpathy
#RandomExperimentSundays : I was curious if char-rnn (https://github.com/karpathy/char-rnn) can generate new, fun and plausible baby names. So I got a dataset of 8,000 baby names from an NLP repo (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/nlp/corpora/names/), trained a 2-layer LSTM and generated some.
To my amusement many fun unique names come out and 90% of them are not found in the training data. Here are 100 example samples that do not occur in training data:
Rudi
Levette
Berice
Lussa
Hany
Mareanne
Chrestina
Carissy
Marylen
Hammine
Janye
Marlise
Jacacrie
Hendred
Romand
Charienna
Nenotto
Ette
Dorane
Wallen
Marly
Darine
Salina
Elvyn
Ersia
Maralena
Minoria
Ellia
Charmin
Antley
Nerille
Chelon
Walmor
Evena
Jeryly
Stachon
Charisa
Allisa
Anatha
Cathanie
Geetra
Alexie
Jerin
Cassen
Herbett
Cossie
Velen
Daurenge
Robester
Shermond
Terisa
Licia
Roselen
Ferine
Jayn
Lusine
Charyanne
Sales
Sanny
Resa
Wallon
Martine
Merus
Jelen
Candica
Wallin
Tel
Rachene
Tarine
Ozila
Ketia
Shanne
Arnande
Karella
Roselina
Alessia
Chasty
Deland
Berther
Geamar
Jackein
Mellisand
Sagdy
Nenc
Lessie
Rasemy
Guen
Gavi
Milea
Anneda
Margoris
Janin
Rodelin
Zeanna
Elyne
Janah
Ferzina
Susta
Pey
Castina
Here is a much bigger sample: http://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/namesGenUnique.txt
Some of my favorites include “Baby” (haha), “Killie”, “Char”, “R”, “More”, “Mars”, “Hi”, “Saddie”, “With” and “Ahbort”. Well that was fun.
Originally shared by ExtremeTech
A historic discovery — Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our own Sun, has a planet circling it.