When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

pope tweets good

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Hey Newsom sucks.

NEW: More Perfect Union is opening up our newsroom, connecting with students everywhere, and equipping them with the tools needed to unrig our broken economic system.

Join! actionnetwork.org/forms/mpuniv...

*Laughs in Magic: the Gathering*

"I'm attempting to draw strength from faith and yet I am not the first to contend with the silence of the Almighty when the legions of darkness appear so articulate."

Some incredible dialogue here.

Ross Bryant, Time For Chaos S2E2, Glass Cannon Network

Oh no. Not the mayor!

a complex biosphere in vivid color in an illustrative style inside a circle and outside all white with shadow, with suggestion of complex ferns and other vegetation; art by rogan brown

Thrilled that my first new short story in several years, "Constellations," about astronauts crashlanding on a distant planet, has been published by the @technologyreview.com. Acquiring editor Rachel Cortland. Art by Rogan Brown. Free link to avoid the paywall: ter.li/r3tbrsgr

The fans, it seems, are finally available.

I'm sure many people have seen the Publisher's Weekly article about my editor, Sean McDonald, leaving Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and his imprint, MCD Books, being shuttered. I have a lot of feelings about this, including gratitude for ten years of stability with one editor. Before Sean, I had a trilogy where each novel was taken by a different publishing company. It sold well enough that I was still in the game, but I never had anything approaching a settled situation. I never had any assurance from book to book that I could relax or get comfortable or feel settled. Sean's offer for Annihilation and the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy was extraordinary. It fused a deep love of the literary with a savvy understanding of the world beyond the words in the novel. He had the vision to put the three Southern Reach novels out in the same year, creating a PR sensation to go along with a startlement of mostly rave reviews--a positive feedback loop that landed Authority and Acceptance on the bestseller lists in trade paperback. {Ultimately, the series has gone on to sell well over a million copies in the US alone, and been translated into over 37 languages.) He further had the vision to slap an X on an omnibus hardcover just before the holidays, as a perfect gift book. It was as immaculate a synergy of the storytelling and the marketing and PR expression of that storytelling as I have ever seen or had ever experienced as the author in question. He also slipped the manuscript of Annihilation to a producer at a lunch, which led to the Annihilation movie and eventually led to Annihilation making the NYT bestseller list for the first time.

When he got his own imprint at FSG, MCD Books, my novel Borne was the first published as an MCD book. It didn't make the bestseller list in hardcover, but got rare trifecta of rave reviews in the NY Times, LA Times, and Washington Post in the same weekend. The trade paperback edition is in a fourteenth printing. After the Annihilation movie came out, I strove to write the least commercial idea I had, first, to kind of wash away the Hollywood experience. That novel was Dead Astronauts, accompanied by The Strange Bird. I sent Dead Astronauts to Sean with an email note that I knew the novel was unexpected and very strange and I appreciated him reading it, but I did not expect him to publish it. I absolved him any obligation. But within a couple of months, He replied that he liked it very much and he did want to publish it, and he saw a clear path to publishing it. The trade paperback is still in print and Dead Astronauts earned out the advance, despite being formally experimental. When Hummingbird Salamander tanked at the beginning of the pandemic (only to rise again in trade paperback), Sean didn't bat an eye about it, just moved on and endeavored to reprint my entire backlist at FSG. As of this writing, City of Saints & Madmen is in an eighth printing, and the others, Shriek, Finch, and Veniss Underground, are all in print and selling steadily.

FSG itself--from the art department to the PR and marketing teams, the other editorial staff, and the foreign language rights division--has always felt like a place where everyone passionately loved books and while no company is perfect, I certainly have felt it was and is an oasis in an increasingly inconsistent publishing world. I'm very sad that Sean is leaving FSG. I know he will land on his feet, as they say, and do more great things elsewhere. I really owe him a lot and FSG a lot. I'm very fortunate, very blessed, and I also know from 45 years of a book life that everything has its place and has it season. It's good to celebrate what you had and how wonderful it was to have it, rather than to dwell on the fact that it has ended. Eleven books in eleven years, with a twelfth on the way is a thing to treasure. Sean changed the trajectory of my career, and we fought many a long, arduous campaign during book launches often quixotic and against the grain of the popular in the moment. I have a lot of joy and love in my heart for all of those times and all of those opportunities. It's been a great run. I've learned a lot and had such adventures. My career isn't over and my association with FSG isn't over, either--among other things, I have a novel under contract with them--but it does feel like the end of an era, for me. Honor the past but don't live there, the saying goes. But, you'll forgive me, I hope, if I live there for just a bit longer. Thanks for reading.

Many of you have heard that my editor Sean McDonald will no longer be working at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I wrote a little bit about my feelings at the end of an era.

I took a ride share to start my hike this afternoon, talked birds with the driver and he gave me a 250th anniversary US silver half dollar. I was astonished and asked why. He said any time a customer is a "purveyor of wonder" who he enjoyed talking to he gives them out. What the hell, Portland?! ❤️

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE TAGGING ME IN ON THE VATICAN / PENTAGON BEEF HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT

I tried to type "should I nudge her" but my phone changed it to "should I judge her" and, Autocorrect, I AM judging you for this. 😅

I'm a fantasy writer. I had to turn off all autocorrect in my Scrivener program because I was retyping more words than not. Even words that EXIST in the world like "rutilated" and "greatroom" and... yeah. I'm done redoing everything because it thinks it knows better.

Folks, we're very close to overtaking Neopets. I've told my Discord that if we get $1 more than that project did, I'll officially change the Latchkey move that gives you a dog to optionally give you a Tamagotchi. Let's make it happen!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/gau...

I don't often speak with urgency.
I know those who sit with me because I affirm the right and need to rest may be those who need it most.
But if there was ever a day to burn your anxiety as fuel instead of trying to snuff it out, it's today.

Do what you can.
Start with one thing.
🧵 Practical steps:

Come on then, and remove him.

The Moon: oh wow you guys decided to come back

Artemis II crew: earth’s haunted

Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Iran S04 E06 Dailymotion video by L3arnTV

If you’re an American should watch the Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown ep on Iran. A deeply humanizing look at a country full of people just like you and me. I watched it after Anthony died and it moved in ways that are hard to relay. I also immediately ran out to try kabob koobideh and tahdig.

The one thing LLMs are undeniably great at is exposing the contradiction between an institution's ostensible goals and their actual POSIWID purpose. Education is about performing competency. Work is about hitting metrics. Art is about getting in front of consumers. War is about bombing targets.

I'm 42. I'm looking for cargo shorts. Gimme those Canvas jawns with thread sewn so tight they're stiff as a board Slide into those things like I'm sliding into an Army Surplus Store full of Korean War surplus. Permanent marker names In the seams--gimme those huge-ass pockets so I can fill 'em With my stuff. A purse's size for a faraday wallet, Rite-in-the- Rain pad and self-defense machined titanium pen. Battery charger For my waterproof iPhone headphones to shut 'em all up. Doesn't work And all that cash I don't have because we all know: America's First gold is green. The hardest hue to keep. Need pockets for my credit cards Cuz I'm creditmaxxing and nothing gold can stay. Gimme those armored Cargoes from the 90s bagging sagging. I'm talking knees up untouch with Vibram-lined pockets and carbon fiber belt loops gimme that Paracord YKK fly-zipper pulls so I can adjust in gloves without Discomfort gimme those drawstring leg-holes in case it rains or I'm Wading in pools of snakes--they can't touch this. Two sizes too big but Cinched with a kevlar belt gimme that ammo. Lead-free so the crops Don't get us sick when I pump rounds downrange. Gimme that Feeling, anything at all, that feeling of immortality I felt as a child Standing beside my dad in the mall where we could be anything And he already knew.

I poemed. The Buckle (Poem)

My wife just named my belly “Big Pippin.”

A Poem:

Good Friday

Everyone is hiding and
It's illegal to ask if you're okay

theyre in a real pickle, gosh. cant get a hold on either end of this thing

Lots of tech dudes think the "idea" is the important part of creating, not the creative journey you take through work to give that idea actual meaning. Ideas are the easiest, cheapest and least fulfilling part of it. Giving ideas life through work, and sharing that work with others, is the stuff.

Seriously it’s like there is a giant chunk of tech people who don’t understand that when you’ve learned how to write, you feel proud, you look forward to doing more of it, you cheerfully neglect your other work just so you can write more

Resident Alien and Lilo and Stitch have basically the same plot

See you this afternoon, Jacksonville, Alabama!