Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, which is my personal favourite of his books, is on sale at Amazon. Excellent use of time travel in the plot, a kind of proto-steampunk feel (very well executed), and all around a unique and memorable book.
https://smile.amazon.com/Anubis-Gates-Ace-Science-Fiction-ebook/dp/B006UMI0OK/
I wonder if I can use this in the Gryphon Clerks. The gnomes are always making stuff out of mushrooms.
Originally shared by Danie van der Merwe
Leather Made from Mushrooms!
– 1 inch grows within 1 week
– 2×3 feet within 1 month
– Full cow hide size within 2 months
– Extracted from mushroom caps
– Tanning process is natural and doesn’t contain any toxic chemicals like the ones used in processing leather
– Muskin is natural and non-toxic so it’s safe for contact with your face and skin
– Softer than leather, is water repellant and breathable
– 100% biodegradable
– Stops the proliferation of bacteria
– Strong absorbent capacity
– Any exotic animal skin can be emulated like elephant or snake and comes with a soft shammy backing
Watch the short video at http://bit.ly/2Bz1HN3
This is similar to my “genres considered as restaurants” blog post from a while back, but takes a different angle.
Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger
A few years ago, I came across an interesting theory of how to divide up stories implied in a talk by Lois McMaster Bujold: that stories are most usefully divided not by their structural elements, or their set dressing, but by the type of emotional experience they try to create. Romances, in this model, are fantasies of love; mysteries may be fantasies of justice or of understanding, and the latter category is shared with spy thrillers and Lovecraftian horror. Literary fiction about painful divorces may have more in common with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than with Agatha Christie.
(Member post)
I have an idea for a lucid dreaming story that could use this as handwavium. But it also sounds like it could be really useful for people whose brains aren’t working quite as they should.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How Bursts of Ultrasound Can Be Used to Flip Switches in the Brain http://suhub.co/2ilqCin
Design is becoming more and more talked about in business and technology, as people realize its value.
Design, after all, involves thinking about the customer and creating something they find attractive and useful, which is pretty much the definition of good business.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
An interview (text & video) with Nathan Shedroff, one of the pioneers of experience design as a strategy. http://suhub.co/2BmrVkN
OK, these are cool. And a touch Uncanny Valley at times.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
9 Robot Animals Built From Nature’s Best-Kept Secrets http://suhub.co/2iYgKrM
From Publishers Weekly:
“Kadaxis, started by Chris Sim (formerly CTO of Bookish), uses data science to examine a book’s full text, customer reviews, and other related materials to formulate effective keywords to boost books’ discoverability in Amazon search. Its bookdiscovery.co website is a public-facing demonstration of the power of keywords in search. In July 2016, Kadaxis partnered with Firebrand to study the effectiveness of Sim’s approach, and the results for backlist titles in particular were impressive.”
Great news for amputees – turning a prosthetic from a tool into a restored body part.
Infrastructure. It’s a thing that, historically, people have celebrated with great enthusiasm.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/atlantic-cable-carnival-broadway-parade-1858
This is nuts.
Originally shared by Scott Roche
Relevant to my interests. https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/spider-spins-web-can-hold-weight-human-after-drinking-graphene