Tag Archives: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Aug 27

Sharing this to read later.

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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.

http://suhub.co/2bPn42g

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