Aug 25

The point of this article is to write people as people.

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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/

http://lithub.com/there-is-no-secret-to-writing-about-people-who-do-not-look-like-you
Aug 24

And now, the third of three reviews of other novels with which my Hope and the Patient Man shares this excellent…

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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

Aug 24

Name generator, trained on a baby names book.

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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.

Aug 24

This would work really well in a fantasy setting.

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This would work really well in a fantasy setting.

Originally shared by Dirk Puehl

24 August: #onthisday the gate to the underworld on the Forum Romanum was opened annually with a festival-like character.

“mundus patet”, the “the mundus is open”, the priests of Ceres announced on the forum, offerings to the gods of the underworld and the agricultural deities were made and the dead were given the freedom of the city for a day. One of the more obscure Roman traditions, full of archetypical symbols, but read more on:

http://wunderkammertales.blogspot.de/2015/01/mundus-patet-gate-to-underworld-on.html

Depicted below is Alice Pike Barney’s somewhat ghostly imagination of Ceres (1901), while the blog includes a short video with yours truly narrating the tale.

#ancienthistory, #ancientrome, #history, #mythology, #romanhistory

Aug 24

I am a big non-fan of the Hero’s Journey, in large part because it’s overused and produces a lot of very similar…

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I am a big non-fan of the Hero’s Journey, in large part because it’s overused and produces a lot of very similar stories with embedded assumptions that I think it’s past time to question.

This, however, is a form of refresh, and, if not followed as a rigid formula, could potentially give you a useful mythic story structure.

Originally shared by Andy Brokaw

The Hero’s Journey can, of course, star a female lead. That’s not what the Heroine’s Journey is about. The second is about a more “feminine” plot arc than one sees in the first. If I were to develop the journeys anew, I think that I would use the words Physical and Spiritual rather than invoking gender. (Or perhaps Tangible and Intangible?)

Both Journeys can, and should, involve both action and emotion. But is the focus on battling the Empire or coming to personal terms with the Force?

H/t to Troy Campbell​ for pointing me to this article.

http://mythcreants.com/blog/using-the-heroines-journey
Aug 23

Here’s the second of three reviews of books in this boxed set (currently 99c on preorder for 12 novels and a…

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Here’s the second of three reviews of books in this boxed set (currently 99c on preorder for 12 novels and a selection of bonus short fiction).

This time it’s of C. J. Brightley’s _The King’s Sword_. It’s the first in the series that led me to coin the (tongue-in-cheek) term “cheerybright” as the opposite of “grimdark”, which has now become “noblebright” and led to the existence of this boxed set.

It’s enjoyable, and even fresh, these days, to read a book in which the cynical, selfish opportunist is the antagonist, and the protagonist is a straightforwardly decent man. This is such a book.

I very much enjoyed the first-person viewpoint character, an ex-soldier discharged after an injury who happens across a prince in distress. (That’s a convenient coincidence, but it’s the only one the plot relies on.) Kemen Sendoa is a big man from a dark-skinned ethnic minority, raised as a soldier as is the tradition with foundlings and orphans in his country. Women are scared of him. Men are wary of him. He’d really like to settle down and have a family, but that’s not going to happen, he’s pretty sure. He’s lost friends, he’s battered by injury (and becomes more battered as the story progresses), but he retains a powerful loyalty to his country and its people.

His mentoring of the young prince is firm, but not harsh. When he’s hailed as a hero for fighting off raiders, he’s genuinely modest about it. He’s not without his secret shame, though, and he does have a character arc as he confronts it.

The prince is less fully rounded, but definitely has a lot of development in the course of the book, under Sendoa’s guidance. Rather than giving us a training montage, the author spends considerable time on the process of his training, which I welcome as more realistic than the usual “Chosen One is whiny and won’t put in the work, succeeds anyway when put under pressure” trope.

An enjoyable start to what became a delightful series.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Noblebright-Fantasy-Boxed-ebook/dp/B01K3534QI

Aug 23

“Katherine Johnson, the NASA Mathematician Who Advanced Human Rights with a Slide Rule and Pencil” via Vanity Fair:…

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Originally shared by NASA

“Katherine Johnson, the NASA Mathematician Who Advanced Human Rights with a Slide Rule and Pencil” via Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/08/katherine-johnson-the-nasa-mathematician-who-advanced-human-rights

Aug 23

Modern Day Cults can Wield Considerable Influence

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Modern Day Cults can Wield Considerable Influence

This is an excellent presentation and blog post reviewing a book that resulted from the psychological study and research of cults and cult-like behaviour. There were a number of times when I felt chills down my spine while listening, as I realised that the behaviour and actions being discussed were descriptive of influential mainstream groups, organisations, and movements in the real world today. Some of which wield considerable cultural and political power.

Also, we’re all a little bit cultish in our behaviour and even if that typically doesn’t manifest to the extent of actual “cult membership” it is more prudent, more necessary, and more important than ever to question one’s beliefs regularly and deeply. Deliberate exposure to ideas and content outside of your typical media consumption and social exposure can make this necessary process easier.

I’ve started to wonder if the dynamics of the Internet and the media consumption behaviours it encourages in all of us actually serve to exploit the idiosyncrasies of human psychology to make the formation of cults and cult-like behaviour much easier, and much more effective than we really appreciate. The filter bubbles. The echo chambers. The self-righteous morally outraged victimhood culture. The politics of the other. The suppression and censorship of dissent. All feedback powerfully one on the other to make modern day cults that much more powerful, invisible, and pervasive.

Groupthink, wrongthink, and doublethink are all endemic to cults.

Selected Excerpts

Here’s a selection of key excerpts if you don’t have time for the entire presentation, which lasts for a bit of 30 minutes, or for the blog post, which is lengthy. But I’d encourage one or the other if you can manage it.

The structure of cults is basically authoritarian; obedience and hierarchical power tend to take precedence over truth and conscience when they conflict, which they often do. Unfortunately, certain psychological benefits can make authoritarian groups very attractive – they provide the opportunity to feel protected and cared for … Intelligent, well-educated people join cults because they simultaneously desire a sense of working for a higher purpose and because they are afraid of being on their own.

What I wish to stress is not that every group is a cult, but that cult thinking is the effect of psychological forces endemic to the human mind, and that these forces operate in the everyday life of each of us; they distort perception, bias thinking, and inculcate belief … and while not all cults require a formal leader as such, the authority figures … empower the group by giving them a source of confidence and righteousness that enables them to delegitimise dissenting points of view through their air of authority.

Projection offers protection from the anxiety of being bad and the punishment of being abandoned. In addition, by making other people bad in our own mind, we can legitimise behaviour toward them that would otherwise be morally unacceptable, even to the point of sanctioning cruel and vicious actions … Projection is is infused with self-righteousness to increase moral security. If the group member represents all that is good and the outsider represents all that is bad, it is natural to feel morally superior. It allows the group member to separate the world into a false dichotomy in which they have chosen the sacred path and the path the outsider has chosen is profane … Perhaps the most important thing to understand about devaluing the outsider is that it is a necessary preliminary to harming others, to doing violence.

Only a lively appreciation of dissent’s vital function at all levels of society can preserve it as a corrective to wishful thinking, self-inflation and unperceived rigidity.

A cult is a group fantasy created and maintained around specific beliefs for the emotional protection of its members. If information or opinions exist that contradicts the dogma or goals of the group, the only protective measure the group can take is suppression. Thus the core philosophy of the group becomes rooted in the distortion, if not outright fabrication, of reality. This censorship does not have to be as overtly authoritarian as one might imagine.

Care to suggest any groups this reminds you of?

Sources

Main video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqOIjzi-jE

Blog transcript: https://therationalists.org/2016/08/17/cult-behaviour-an-analysis/

Second video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxO_UWr43Rw – this covers case studies of actual cults and is also worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqOIjzi-jE