Kameron Hurley on writing interpersonal conflict.
It's been a very good week for Sarah Goslee (whom you may know as Phiala). Also, later this month she's debuting as a panelist at Confluence, which is a nice little con in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately I haven't attended for the past 2 years, but this year looks like a nice line up.
The first one is free. On the mantra of "you get one impossible thing for free" in telling a story. This also goes to engaging in verisimilitude. If you can get the reader to believe in the concreteness of the world they're reading, you can slip in the fantastical and they'll not notice it too much. Although it can also wind up like the Sheldon and Amy game of counterfactuals. In the end, it's all about making the impossible thing feel not that impossible. IF you do it well enough, you might start your own urban legend.
Sixteen fictional characters as Myers-Briggs personality types. Given my past history with MB, this is pretty much as valid an exercise as I've ever seen. (Grokked from Random Michelle K)
Furby 2, Electric Boogaloo. They're baaaaack. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
And speaking of being back, Burt Rutan and Virgin Galactic are back with a new launcher. Same idea, get in the air with WhiteKnightTwo, drop the rocket and light it off. But now we're talking high orbit insertion, and probably giving Space-X a run for their money for the small launch market. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
More on those composite mummies in Scotland. (Grokked from Tor.com)
Ah, back in the innocent past when everybody was virtuous and all this lasciviousness wasn't a problem. And, the purity of the old days. That's a physician listing out the sexual oddities of the 18th century. Have I ever mentioned the references to sexual toys in Shakespeare's sonnets? (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"After achieving the difficult task of placing the (500 million year old genome) in the correct chromosomal order and position in place of the modern gene within E. coli… some of the altered lineages actually became healthier than their modern counterpart." What could possibly go wrong? (Pointed to by Dan)
A short run down on the political violence creeping in from the right. Individual instances does not a pattern make. But after a few years things start to pile up in a coherent order. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Worst. Congress. EVAR. Ezra Klein with Teh Math. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
Alligator Quotient: So full up, we're spilling over into the weekend. Hope everybody made reservations.
3 comments:
Aw, thanks!
You should come to Confluence this year, I'm certain of it.
Also, karma balances itself: last night my refrigerator decided that keeping things cold was far too much work and it wasn't going to bother any more. *sigh*
Thanks, Phiala. I'd like to see how it's changed and meet up with everybody again. I never really liked the hotel they moved to five or so years ago. The programming was on different floors, and they weren't easy to navigate between (and the stairs were all the way on the opposite side of the hotel). There's two rooms on the lower level than don't have adequate air flow unless you keep the doors open, but they're right next to the elevator. A problem that could be alleviated with the use of 1) a fan in the rooms (or turning the HVAC fan on all the time) or 2) make a rule about silence next to the elevators. Invariably the audience is annoyed by the noise and closes the door. And by the end of the 45 minutes or so, the rooms are hot and stuffy. But it's mostly all the people I used to hang out with and see there stopped coming.
The programming was always entertaining and there were a few panels there that aren't often found at other cons.
But this year there's too much work and too little time.
Agreed on the hotel. It's only virtue seems to be location. But this is effectively my local con, so I'm going to keep going, I think. Maybe some year you'll make it back.
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