Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

I particularly love the idea of #supernatural #beings brought into existence by #modern #technology.

Last time I got #carded, the clerk looked at my #ID and said in shock, "You're older than my *dad*!"

"Clean living," I replied, and walked out with my goods.

Sum up 2024 in one bad #movie line. I'll start:

"Somehow, #Palpatine returned."

STŸRÄCÖSÄÜRÜS

Calling anyone except yourself "#triggered" is an insta-block. Just so we're clear.

Seen in the wild: "Well, whatever he used, kudos to him. Being able to clear #malfunctions in the heat of the moment is an important skill when working to lower #healthcare costs."

Seen in the wild: "He’s out of network for any sympathy from me".

So you're saying it's the perfect vehicle for #flatEarthers?

"But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Just leaving that there in case, you know, it has any relevance in the coming months.

The article suggests there may be not just thousands, but *tens* of thousands, of unrecognized #protein-coding #genes in the human #genome. As a fan of the #ENCODE approach to a broad definition of "#gene," and a skeptic of "#junk #DNA," I'll take a great deal of satisfaction if this pans out.

https://www.science.org/content/article/dark-proteome-survey-reveals-thousands-new-human-genes

I have stopped trying to parse #Poe's #Law and my life is better for it.

We are invested in our #evolution in a way we aren't in just about anything else's: the idea that there was a moment in our development when the lightbulb came on appeals to our egos. But really we're subject to the same constraints as every other critter.

https://neurosciencenews.com/evolution-brain-size-28153/

From an exchange in one of the Facebook #paleontology groups:

"STOP. Is there really any compelling evidence that non-avian #dinosaurs (or any of them) had a #bird-like #respiratory system?"

[The answer is yes. Lots of comments explaining the evidence and linking to relevant journal articles.]

"STOP.
Can't touch this.
#Pneumaticity time."

Like Sokka, if I have nothing else to contribute, I can always add sarcasm and meat.

I'm a believer!

Retro!

A sad little personal note about the #election, and my #writing. Trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I want to get it off my chest.

For close to a decade now I've been complaining about the #WINMP (work in not much progress) and as those who follow my illustrious career know, recently I managed to turn it into the #WISP (work in some progress). What's more, it's published, at least in embryonic form. I feel really good about that.

There were a lot of reasons it took me so long. One is that after thinking about it for several years, I finally wrote the first draft in 2016, finishing it a couple of months before that year's election.

Well, that draft got two kind initial reviews and one ... much less kind, from someone in whose writing judgement, and judgement in general, I put a great deal of trust. That knocked me off my feet for a while. But I wasn't going to give up. The story wanted to be told.

And then—November happened.

You see, the story as it was depended on a functioning #US #government. Not necessarily one with everyone's best interests at heart, and I planned some pretty nasty events down the road. But competent, and ideally not run by someone composed *entirely* of equal parts malice, ego, and stupidity.

I spent a good part of the next four years thinking about ways around this. Throwaway dialogue: "Nobody in #Washington really knows what we're doing here." "Not even the #President?" "*Especially* not the President." But I wasn't actually writing it.

The election of 2020 made that kind of workaround unnecessary—permanently, I thought—and I breathed a sigh of relief. Easier to do when you're not choking to death on your own liquefying lung tissue ... I'll get back to it any day now, I told myself.

Come early 2024, and a friend responded to one of my WINMPy posts with an offer. Sounds like your story would fit into my anthology series, he said. Here are the deadlines. Send me a manuscript.

I hadn't been that motivated since I first started writing the thing.

I did the thing. The thing was done. First in a fairly lengthy list of planned stories, eventually to be collected in a novel-length compilation. Over twenty years after my last publication, I was a *writer* again.

And then—November happened. Again. Motherfucker's like Freddy Krueger without any of the wit and charm.

So here I am. Again.

WISP though it may be, the story will not be denied. Long and long it slumbered. Lying undisturbed in the strata, one might say, bits of once-living tissue being replaced one by one with bits of mineral. Then entire bytes, and eights of bytes, and sixty-fours, and soon the whole thing was kilobytes of stone.

Then resurrection.

Surrounding matrix carefully chipped off, the skeleton revealed in painstaking steps. Shreds of preserved soft tissue softening under drops of saline. Bones glistening again with life. New flesh merging with old, growing outward from the bone. Muscles, organs, blood. Skin, and at last feathers—

—I mean, you didn't expect anything else, did you?

This is my monster, and it's *hungry*.

But I sure do wish I didn't have to jump through so many hoops to feed it. That's all.

https://www.amazon.com/SF-Horror-Boundary-Shock-Quarterly/dp/B0DJD9JDLP/

"The #US isn't a #democracy, it's a #republic!"

It's a goofy argument, but fine, whatever. You don't like the d-word, don't use it.

A republic, by definition, does not have a #king.

55 days to #coronation, and "#Republicans" are just fine with that.

Why doth #treason never prosper ...