ITS FLETCH FEST! Looking forward to kicking it all off later today on stream!
Good luck to all of y'all making projects!! Don't know what Fletch Fest is? Read about how to participate here: fletchmakesstuff.com/fletchfest
help us celebrate human creativity March 13-24!!
#gamejam #artprompt
Been sitting on this news for a while! There's going to be a Children of Time TTRPG courtesy of the amazing folk at Rowan Rook and Decard (Heart, Spire, DIE, Eat the Reich and many more).
Last stretch for this solo journalling TTRPG made by a bunch of fantastic folks!
two panel comic page. the first panel is set in a town where the silhouettes of Ruko and Sky shake hands. the second panel is set on grassy hills. the remnants of large swords and spears are scattered around, and Ruko and Sky walk by cheerily.
two panel comic page. the first panel is set in a forest area. the silhouettes of Ruko and sky are in front of a large stone golem. Sky is kneeling down in front of it with what appears to be a wrench, working at something glowing blue within the golem's chest. the second panel is set in an area with clouds, fog, and large mushrooms and coral like shapes. the silhouettes of Ruko and Sky sit beneath the cap of a giant mushroom
two panel comic page. the first panel is set in a dim, ruined structure. the silhouettes of Ruko and Sky stand in front of a partially crumbled mural showing a draconic person shackled, with their mouth open towards a red star-shape. Ruko holds her staff up, casting a blue light. the second panel shows a starry sky, some ruins, and a lake reflecting the mountains and stars. the silhouettes of Ruko and Sky's tents are around a smoking fire. "'Night, kid", from the left tent. "Not a kid. ...Goodnight Ruko", from the right. "Goodnight, Sky" from the left tent again.
happy Stars day! the first pages of #StarsLightOurPath up now! starslightourpath.neocities.org/page/1-begin/
these pages serve as a little vibey intro to the world. we'll get to know the characters better soon. I hope you enjoy them!
#webcomic #comic #artistonbsky
What you have to realise about all the people really kicking the shit out of GenAI and the idea that it is sentient or even capable of the most rudimentary forms of problem solving, is that most of them are people who have badly wanted to see an emergent machine sentience since they were kids.
Rob pooped on a rat, more at 11
I'm finally watching For All Mankind, and something I'm really appreciating is how season 2 just jumps a decade forward and we get to see all the characters we met in S1 at completely different stages of their careers.
It's *change* that's fundamentally compelling.
As you advance from junior to senior developer, you typically write less code over time, which is good because every line of code is a liability. The best solutions are those that require no new software (and therefore bugs) to be built.
Using generative “AI” is the antithesis to this. Laughable.
It’s normal in this profession to spend an entire day ruminating, debating with colleagues, reading other people’s work, only to then write 10 lines of actual production code that solve the problem.
And that process usually reveals missing information, conflicts, even impossibilities. It’s crucial.
https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3mgaqaaisfs2e Why @why.bsky.team Oh interesting, people who don't know how to build software are getting mad at my post about building software. Cute. Let me be clear, over the next year, the job of software engineer will shift dramatically to no longer have typing syntax into an editor as its primary time sink.
In my entire 15 year career in software development, “typing syntax into an editor” has never been the primary time sink.
Most of the time was spent on understanding what the software was actually supposed to do and to resolve conflicting requirements.
As a male writer, this is my man oeuvre
graphic of a starry sky, some silhouettes of two travellers at the bottom. In the middle are the words "Stars Light Our Path", with a graphic blue glowy constellation between the words
#webcomic project i'm cooking up:
#StarsLightOurPath is a warm fantasy journey following scavengers Sky and Ruko as they travel through strange forests, windswept ruins (perhaps some haunted boneyards as well), reclaiming old tech and magic to clear their debts and get a chance to start new lives.
(Happy to discuss my experiences further either here on on discord if you like.)
- The caveat to the above is that professional game journalism is currently in a very challenging place, with reduced budgets, wide-scale layoffs and large sites turning to GenAI slop or being taken over by crypto/gambling affiliates.
Not intended to discourage, but to help calibrate expectations.
A few thoughts on the current state of games crit:
- I'd absolutely recommend UW; they're wonderful folks to work with.
- If you're not already reading Critical Distance, they're a great resource to keep up with the current games crit discourse: www.critical-distance.com
I made a decent attempt to get into games journalism last decade. In my case, I'd done quite a bit of games crit on my own blog, then pitched an essay to Unwinnable and they gave me a chance.
After working with UW for a while, I also successfully pitched a couple of pieces to Eurogamer.
A side-view of a very fuzzy bee with golden fur on her back, and paler yellow and white along the rest of her body. She's hanging upside-down from a clover flower with dark-grey legs, and her face is buried in a small white petal.
A large yellow-and-black bumblebee hanging off the side of a white clover flower, with visible pollen baskets on its hind legs
A small black bee with little grey hairs feeding on a white clover flower
A few local bees from the UK, enjoying last summer's clover patch 🐝
Welp. Seems like it's a good day to highlight trans books. I'll do this off and on all day, no idea how long the thread will eventually be. And if you need any trans book recommendations, post in here and I'll point you toward people who might know if I don't since I mostly do romantasy.
And what a game! Genuinely a formative experience for me.
A buzzard seen from below, flying right to left across a pale blue sky. The sun is shining on their face and left wing; their wings terminate in finger-like brown feathers.
A buzzard in the bottom-right of a gradient blue-to-white sky. They are wheeling away from the camera, and the light catches the white and brown feathers under their wing.
A buzzard seen from below, flying left to right across a pale blue sky. They've rolled to the left, and the sunlight catches their pale underbelly and yellow talons.
A distant shot of two buzzards flying in formation in a blue sky, hunting together.
Took advantage of this week's occasional sunshine to enjoy the garden, and watched the buzzards circling high overhead.
#Birds #Photography
i know people are intentionally lumping things like spell check in with AI to make opposition feel ridiculous but honestly don't push me. i'd strangle clippy with my bare hands if it meant getting rid of AI
It's the return of rage blogging and it's not even about the pandemic this time!
... instead it's about the OTHER thing that everyone's doing that makes me feel like I'm in Pluribus or something. Cool cool cool.
lia-sae.net/articles/202...
"It'll only get better!" Cool, call me back then.
"It won't destroy jobs!" It's already destroying jobs.
"It's like working with research assistants!" I already do that, it's called teamwork, humans are cool actually.
"You just need to review the code carefully" THAT WAS ALWAYS THE HARD PART
As much as I love the comparison here this is why I'm saying that programming is a wedge. So we urgently need to become hardliners for code too: we are murdering pathways to seniority and sawing off the branch we're sitting on as a profession.
My job is already exorcism so NO EXTRA GHOSTS, TA
I don't know who needs to hear this but: Motivation is a muscle and burnout is what it looks like to tear it. You can heal, but it'll change you. Not everything you did before may be an option again. That's okay. What you were doing before is how you hurt yourself. Rest and rehabilitation take time.
You've got this, Eden!
Sci-fi about robot / AI rights is about people being treated inhumanly. It’s not about whether to kill -9 the process you should not have allowed to access the internet to begin with. Start by treating people like people and then we can have a conversation
The new cover of The Call. It features a girl with a spear, standing in front of an otherworldly portal. She is threatened by a giant pair of creepy, taloned, hands.
Today is the day! Or a day, anyway.
The Call in its spanking new cover is available right... this... second... in bookshops across Ireland and the UK. Woohoo!
My publisher sent me flowers too 😀
I just filled out this consultation, and now I'm doubly pissed-off.
Please, if you're in the UK and you have a spare twenty minutes today or tomorrow, go tell the Home Office that forcing good folks into 10 to 20 years of uncertainty and exorbitant expenses doesn't "help them integrate" 🤬
Genuinely, if you live in the UK you should so the consultation just to find out some of the unbelievable details of what's being proposed. Even with their spin and obfuscation it's shocking
