This is powerful.
Via Lisa Cohen.
Originally shared by Cheryl Martin
Jul
17
Jul
16
Sharing this in part to come back to it later.
Sharing this in part to come back to it later.
Originally shared by MJ Bush
Advanced Techniques
Dialogue is one of those areas that can transform a story into a delight. How does yours measure up?
Jul
16
You can’t own it, but you can kind of squat.
You can’t own it, but you can kind of squat.
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
Outer Space treaty forbids anybody owning a planet, but there might be a loophole.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/07/eternal-light-up-for-grabs/
Jul
15
Literally epic.
Literally epic. As in epic poetry – a form that’s been out of style for a couple of centuries, now used to tell an SF story. Is old the new new?
Originally shared by David Brin
Something is missing. Sure SciFi has taken over popular culture, leaving grownup/literary SF (that explores deep ideas) seeming a bit of a revered grampa. But what’s truly missing is connection to our past. No, not silly-feudal fantasy, that bears no relation to our ancestors’ real challenges and grueling lives. Rather, the oral rhythms and voluptuous wordplay of true, epic poetry!
Now that tradition – beloved of our forebears – has a pulsing, with-it revival in science fiction! Frederick Turner’s wonderful Mars colonization canto led the way. Now he expresses some of our deepest fears… and can-do spirit of hope… in “Apocalypse” wherein he puts into throbbing iambic beat a blending that other SF poets aimed for with the Rhysling Awards and that some of the best hip hop guys* have stabbed-at. Only Fred creates an epic so fluidly readable you’ll call it a compelling novel… that just happens to sing.
Baen Books will start a ten-week electronic serialization of the poem on its very popular subscriber website. Ilium will simultaneously issue the book in inexpensive but handsome hardback and paperback editions.
http://frederickturnerpoet.com/?p=441
* (Hip-hop scifi? Gift of Gab and Blackalicious, especially their excellent pop-rap song “Powers,” which is joyful and stunningly original. Follow Gift of Gab over to The Mighty Underdogs doing “Droppin’ Science Fiction!” Sci-fi rap! Seriously!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isL-M4_Mftk
Jul
15
Via Deborah Teramis Christian.
Via Deborah Teramis Christian. It’s remarkable how many of these women have a story that ends without her final fate being recorded.
Originally shared by Ancient Origins
In most civilizations of the past, it was the men who were engaged in the bloody business of war… but not always. Throughout history there have been many powerful women who have led nations or guided armies into war, renowned not only as fearsome fighters, but also as cunning strategists and inspirational leaders. There were others who made a name for themselves in a domain traditionally held by men and whose story, carried forward over the centuries, continues to be told today.
#ancient #history
Jul
14
For a while now I’ve been setting up trackable links using the Pretty Link WordPress plugin to see whether people…
For a while now I’ve been setting up trackable links using the Pretty Link WordPress plugin to see whether people will click through from one of my books to the Amazon buy page for another book. I put these links in the back of each book, pointing to the others in the series, and use a naming convention so that I can tell what the source book and target book are.
Today, I was setting one up and had a look at the report (the plugin tracks the number of clicks on each link). The numbers are small – all my sales-related numbers are small – but people are clicking the links. The biggest number is from people clicking through from my first Auckland Allies book to the second, which makes sense, since I recently did a free promo on the first one.
If you’re interested in tracking such things, the plugin is free and easy to use, or you could use another service such as bit.ly.
Jul
13
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Or could you?
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
It is possible to purchase Pokemon “lures”.
Businesses find that for about $1.19 an hour they can drastically increase their walk-in traffic by dropping a lure every half-hour.
Jul
13
Language shapes culture as well as the other way around.
Language shapes culture as well as the other way around. (And that, apparently, is a sentence that would be phrased quite differently in Chinese.)
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
“A deeper kind of worry about our fondness for nouns occurs to me: does it happen, perhaps, that speakers of English are drawn to believe that certain things exist because nouns that serve as their labels exist? Might it be only the labels that exist?”—Perry Link, author of “An Anatomy of Chinese” (Harvard University Press)
Jul
12
I’m entirely serious when I say that the situation this article describes – the replacement of checked facts with…
I’m entirely serious when I say that the situation this article describes – the replacement of checked facts with manufactured clickbait, and the fragmentation of society into fact-free bubbles – is one of my biggest concerns for the survival of our civilization.
It’s long, but that’s because there’s a lot to say, and all of it is good stuff. Please read it and reflect.
Via Charlie Kravetz.
Originally shared by DeeAnn Little
(for later reading)
via https://twitter.com/datatheism
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
Jul
12
You can control this from your device (phone/tablet/computer) and choose which plants to plant.
You can control this from your device (phone/tablet/computer) and choose which plants to plant.
Originally shared by Gadgetify
FarmBot Genesis: Automated Farming Machine