Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Every time I think the vastly misnamed #Republicans can't get any lower, they have to go and prove me wrong. They are now #censoring the #Constitution.
BTW, the pages aren't only missing from the direct links, e.g. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/ , they're also missing from the index of Article I, https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/ . There's no possible way this is a glitch.
The phrase "foreign and domestic" popped up in my head for some reason.
Not posted for agreement, if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, etc. This came up in a #fantasy and #sciencefiction writing group on Facebook. I disagree with it, but it's a worthy topic for discussion.
There's nothing magical about #numbers IMO: like any other part of #worldbuilding, they should be dropped into the story when they're useful and left out when they're not. Give the readers enough to understand the world, without multiple paragraphs of exposition or "as you know, Bob" dialog.
I live in #Colorado and spend as much time as possible in the #mountains. When people are talking about mountains—as the characters in my current work do a lot—they throw numbers around. #Elevation, map #distance, and time all matter a great deal when you're planning a hike. Since they're #explorers in a mostly unmapped world, they need all the information they can get. Qualitative details like #flora, #fauna, and #climate matter at least as much, so they talk about those too.
Number soup is boring, but as a seasoning rather than a main ingredient, numbers can really help add flavor. Readers who know mountains will recognize the way my characters talk, and those who don't will hopefully pick up on the authenticity. Anyone who wants to challenge my numbers at a con is welcome to do so, but I try to make sure they need to bring their A-game.
I understand that when it's time to pay up, he can be a real bastard.
Rick Astley and Trent Reznor must never be allowed to meet. If they do, they'll mutually annihilate in a shower of gamma rays that could wipe out all life on Earth.
The currently trendy obsession with being a "#king" is poison.
Buddy, the vast majority of #men throughout human #history—past, present, and future—are not kings. If you think you are, or can be, you don't understand how people function. We're not #knights either. We're #peasants. We're born, we live, we work, we die. Nobody but our friends and families will ever know we existed. When they die too, we will be completely and utterly forgotten.*
The ones who are kings? Or #dukes, or #barons, or knights? Shitheads, by and large. Even the "good ones" turn out to be pretty bad when you look closely. #Rulers need the #people, but people don't need rulers. This is a lesson the world learned through millennia of blood and pain. Those who want to discard that hard-won knowledge are scum.
If that's what you want to be ... okay, thanks for letting us know what you are. We won't forget it.
From "Crash Landing" (1979) a pleasant little science fiction movie about how the crew of a damaged space freighter work together to repair their ship and get home in time for the third officer's daughter's eleventh birthday.
I'm a #patriot, not a #nationalist, and often get into the weeds trying to explain the difference. This simplified version covers the most important parts, especially the first panel. "Patriotism is pride in who you are, nationalism is pride in who you aren't" deserves to be an internet law.
If this didn't happen, it should have.
Implications for current political issues are left as an exercise to the reader.
The #WISP exists partially as a deliberate counter to this—i.e. to portray #fictional #dinosaurs more like the first panel than the second. Not that I expect it ever to become a #movie. But *if it does*, I will use the vast power for which #writers are known in #Hollywood to ensure my dinosaurs don't have mange and broken wrists.
Like many memes about #GenerationX, this is superficially appealing but falls apart the more you look at it. #Xers do a lot of self-congratulating on how #independent we are, but what that's translated into is more support for #Trump than any other generation, including the reviled #Boomers. We're cats.
This is how #waterwars start. It's going to be really bad.
For anyone who doesn't know, the #Gunnison, #SanMiguel, #SanJuan, #Yampa, and #White #rivers are all tributaries of the #Colorado. So the entire #Southwest is in *deep* trouble. The #RioGrande and #Arkansas are equally important: much of #NewMexico and southern #Texas depend on the former; and #Kansas, #Oklahoma, and of course Arkansas itself on the latter.
As rough as it will be in Colorado, downstream it will be worse. We have the #headwaters for all the major rivers across about a quarter of the country ... and our water-sharing agreements were written during an unusually wet period. The fighting will begin in the courts, but I'm not at all sure it will stay there.
#MountSaintHelens, 1980. The big boom really grabs your attention, of course. I think the first part of the video, where nothing much seems to be happening until you realize the *entire mountainside* is sliding down, is even more awesome.
Anyone who knows me knows how I love #mountains, and how purple I get talking about them. It's one of the few parts of my life where I indulge in mysticism. I love them for their permanence, their impartiality. They make no demands. They expect nothing. They *are*.
They don't hate us, they don't love us—they're not even indifferent, because indifference is a choice. I like to think they'd feel a kind of indulgent affection for the small scurrying life on their flanks, if they could. I know they don't.
But they're not immortal. They're born, they grow, they age, they die. We live on their shattered bones.
Unimaginable violence drives their life cycles, and by extension ours. Heat, pressure, collision, miles of rock folding and shattering. Bubbles of the mantle rising through the cracks, and sometimes escaping to give us the *tiniest* glimpse of the power below our feet.
#Volcanoes live fast and die young, compared to the more common kinds of orogenesis, the slow folding and slipping that builds entire ranges. They often nestle among their older, calmer cousins, unremarked until—
—well, until.
All mountains are alive, and sometimes they remind us. They will kill us if we give them the chance, with no malice at all. We have choices they don't. The danger will never stop us from giving them that chance, over and over. At least not those of us who can't stay away.
We can't change their lives, nor should we try. On the balance, I sure am glad they're here to change ours.
Never let it be said I'm above a little self-promotion. 🙂 This may be the last short story in the Seaway Station universe for a while: I'm going to concentrate for a while on the Silmarillisaurus, the writer's bible for the universe, and then get to work on the novels.
#dinosaurs #timetravel #sciencefiction #SeawayStation
Main BSQ site: https://www.boundaryshockquarterly.com/product/30-fading-empires/
Amazon, including paperback option: https://www.amazon.com/Fading-Empires-Boundary-Shock-Quarterly-ebook/dp/B0F397V5QY
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
