The rampant and unchecked gambling happening everywhere over everything is one of the clearest signs of how deeply unwell we are.

I also do kind of want to learn the fiddle but when I told my siblings who play instruments that (as a person who plays no instruments), they explained it's a bit like wanting to learn to drive in a formula 1 car.

I think tin whistle might be more up my alley (keeping rhythm isn't my strong suit.)

New goal: learn a simple instrument in order to join in tunes.

Went to my first Irish jam session to sing and am deeply flustered but also it was fun.

Two! Incredible! I'm planning to grab mine from my local at indie bookstore day this Sat. :)

Publishers Weekly: Chen (A Quantum Love Story) shows off his worldbuilding chops in this ingenious 24th-century space opera. Humanity is now in contact with multiple intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms, including the Lumersians, whose bodies are comprised of “planes of pink light” and who have shared their knowledge of photonic energy to help humans harness that volatile power source. Starship Horizon captain Demora Kim was among the first to encounter the Lumersians, and developed a close relationship with one photonic being, whom she nicknamed Chuck and considers a hero. The novel opens with Kim’s exit interview, a part of her forced retirement from the Galactic Cluster Fleet as a result of a decision to disobey orders. The plot then flashes back to explain what happened before the “incident at Base Theta Seven,” including Kim’s struggles to make a photonic engine functional at the request of her superiors, who hope to use it as a weapon in an ongoing war. Chen takes impressive care presenting nonhuman characters, showcasing their often baffled perspectives on humanity. These skillful character portraits make it easy to get sucked into their far-future plight. Readers are sure to be hooked.

Chen (A Quantum Love Story) writes a classic space opera with an original cast of characters who have been to hell and back together—or more specifically, have spent 10 years in a gravity well created by photonic beings called Lumersians, who exist just outside the third dimension and don’t understand the consequences of their experiment. That is, until one of them falls in love with Demi, the captain of the Horizon. Now returned to cluster space, the crew must grapple with a galactic civil war, what it means to join one side or another, and the ethics of pushing today’s problems onto tomorrow’s generation. The story leaves readers questioning who is right, who is wrong, and what we owe one another across species and dimensions, as the crew races back to the gravity well that already consumed so much of their lives to save the Lumersians—and themselves.VERDICT A superb sci-fi story about 21st-century issues set in a futuristic space environment, featuring flawed but lovable characters doing their best with whatever challenges the galaxy presents. Ideal for fans of Claudia Gray and Timothy Zahn.

Did you know that THE PHOTONIC EFFECT launches on Tuesday with TWO starred reviews?

"Chen shows off his worldbuilding chops in this ingenious 24th-century space opera." Publishers Weekly

"A superb sci-fi story about 21st-century issues set in a futuristic space environment" Library Journal

Game Designer Ross Isaacs (Last Unicorn’s STAR TREK rpg, and much more) is in desperate straits.

PLEASE join me in helping a great guy out!

Even simply spreading the word can help!

This is edible erasure, doc.

The Photonic Effect “What space opera is meant to be. A brilliantly complex novel about love, loss, and war.” —K.B. Wagers A starship captain and her crew face conspi...

THE PHOTONIC EFFECT releases tomorrow! To tempt you into preordering, let's deep dive into the initial pitch of "Voyager x DS9 x Mass Effect" and how its influences all shake out on the characters and world. THREAD

(And the all-important preorder links!)

www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ph...

With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars.

We've enlisted the help of @timheidecker.bsky.social, who will be InfoWars' Creative Director.

Please stand by for more.

Yes, I promise.

I gotta say the only thing about the trailer that made me interested was the presence of Lee Pace, though.

I usually say no to familiar comforts if it means decades later follow ups but since this one is also my brand I will probably not.

The image is a humorous meme featuring the Pope with his traditional white attire, altered to exaggerate the size of his papal vestment to resemble a large, flat collar or a ruff. The caption jests, "When threatened, the Pope can spray holy venom up to 25 ft.," poking fun at the resemblance of his attire to the defensive posture of a frill-necked lizard. This meme plays on the juxtaposition of the Pope's peaceful role with the imagined defensive mechanism of a reptile.

This was the right amount of funny for 6am

Yes, AI is the one of the greatest threats to humanity ever, but I would still choose to knock the teeth out of the person who made it so I no longer warm up my car by turning a dial right toward the bigger red lines.

I mean yes I hate AI deeply on an existential level but its having to sit there pressing my finger to the surface of our stove with no feedback as to whether anything is happening until it does that causes me more personal, daily irritation.

My partner just sold me on a new stove based purely on the fact it has actual knobs/buttons. And the fact a 2023 Leaf still had some was a big selling point for it too.

My personal greatest beef with stupid, unnecessary change for change's sake but is worse technology I hope/expect us to roll back on is the lack of knobs & buttons.

I fucking hate all this smooth touch interface bullshit where it does not belong.

Very very true.

I mean, he did also clerk for Kagan and help prosecute the Jan 6 insurrectionists? Not saying he has my vote or anything but there is an interesting background there.

an underrated game dev skill IMO is being able to realize “this person and I have been discussing (thing) for months, and yet i think we have slightly different versions of (thing) in our heads. let’s get together and talk about that in excruciating detail”

BAFTA pulling a trailer for an autobiographical game about surviving sexual assault only hours before it was said to be a part of a showcase is an exceptionally bad look.

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

🚨The last time Senator Wyden raised the alarm this urgently, it was in March 2013 when Wyden asked DNI Clapper in a public hearing about the NSA surveilling the phone records and emails of every American. Three months after that hearing, the first Edward Snowden mass surveillance story dropped.🚨

A mix of sea detritus including red, glass, and clear sea glass; shells; agates; and an intact purple crab claw.

A turkey tail mushroom set against a conifer forest.

Going hunting for mushrooms and sea glass on Whidbey Island (not in the same place.)

WATERSPOUT?? Taken 3:01 PM from UW Atmospheric Science building roof, looking towards Magnolia neighborhood. Look just over the hill. #wawx

clavicular? sneako? are we living in a dick tracy comic??

Dosa Divas is a touching exploration of the healing power of food Come for the delicious dishes, stay for the surprisingly moving family drama.

Absolutely ADORED @outerloopgames.bsky.social's Dosa Divas.
It smartly expands upon the quirky charms and lovely South Asian representation of Thirsty Suitors while delivering a genuinely moving story about family, community and reconciliation.
One of my favourites of the year so far!

A Netgalley ARC of @mizdoomcookie.bsky.social Morgan Lockhart's new cozy witchy romance :) A Curse for Christmas Past.