Em called it Operation Hearts and Minds. She hadn’t given any more detail than that, just grinning a sly and dimpled grin, enthusiasm practically oozing between her teeth.
Sigmund was in trouble, and he needed their help. No surprises there, which was why they were currently standing outside of Hel’s tent.
The word didn’t really do it justice. Marquee would probably have been better, or maybe yurt. Wayne had never been clear on what a yurt was, exactly, but Hel’s current office would’ve been Wayne’s first guess: a sort of round, felt-covered building, mostly black, and decorated by a variety of skulls and glossy feathers that looked to have been shed by the Lady herself.
It also had two enormous Helbeasts curled around the outside, guarding.
Day 54 of #100DaysOfCode - Worked my way through #python fundamentals and a data analysis project using Python Crash Course by Eric Matthes. I highly recommend this #book for anyone starting their python programming journey!
A new series, folks. I watch a lot of movies and TV shows and I read a lot of books. So I'd like to do some reviews here. Not so much in the direction of good and bad and "x out of ten" voting, but rather under the aspect of what parts are interesting or unique in the sci-fi and fantasy world. ...
Was Þrúðr right? About Nic? Because, fuck. Nic. Nic is great. She is LB, literally, but Travis is the face of the company and . . . and maybe it shouldn’t be like that? I mean, this is the twenty-first fuckin’ century right? Nic can do the bread and circuses stuff just as well as I can. She deserves to do it and—
And, fuck. This really isn’t the time to be thinking about succession plans. Not those ones, anyway.
In 7 days my first poetry book will be published as an ebook and a paperback.
It's a #collection of 81 poems with a leading thought/theme
Life as a remembrance of Longing and Despair/ Hope and Faith/Love, Lose, and Pain/ in a place where Demons are putting Angels to rest.
As any art, these poems will resonate with a reader or they won't.
The lines here shared are what they are, and it's for the readers to see how they feel.
If you ever loved, lost, and gained love again, not only for another but for yourself, then my poetry is something you can relate to.
It's already out for pre-order on some online bookstore's - Apple, Kobo, Tolino, Vivlio, Smashwords, Borrowbox.
Nanna had escorted Sigmund through the corridors of her hall, smiling patiently whenever his attention got caught on the carvings in the woodwork or the tapestries on the walls. Wolves and ravens featured prominently in the art, as well as stylized figured of men with spears, and winged beasts Sigmund realized were most likely jötunn. A whole history and culture of a whole . . . Well. Alien wasn’t quite the right word, but Sigmund couldn’t think of a better one, either. Because the æsir were definitely humanish, and Vikingish, but it was the ish that was fascinating. Sigmund was a geek. He loved video games and shitty fantasy novels with half-dressed women on the covers. He lived for the ish, and now, suddenly, here he was. Soaking in it.
From #politics to #AI, one of the defining aspects of the time we live in is #bullshit.
Which is why I highly recommend this #book (essay, really) of #philosophy by Harry G Frankfurt. It really will help lead you to an understanding of where we find ourselves.
In Frankfurt's model, bullshit is not about lying, it is another axis of #morality entirely. Whereas a lie is constructed with knowledge of the truth, and is directly in opposition to it, bullshit has no concern with the truth. Bullshit can be true, or it can be false. The creator of bullshit does so without regard to these things.
When an LLM tells you that the human population of Mars is ten billion, it is not lying to you, it is bullshitting. Even if it correctly tells you that the population of Mars is zero, it is still bullshitting. Either way, its "concern" is with the text it is generating, and not with the truth or falsity of that text.
Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite, but you should go read the whole thing. https://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf It's not very long, it'll take you 20 minutes. I like the hard copy, I re-read it frequently and the physical book helps me feel like I am Thinking Serious Thoughts.
"For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. "
"Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth. On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need requires."
This was originally written, by the way, in 1984, but it sure reads like it could have been written in 2016. Or late 2022.
The final day’s march was interminable, silent and strained and grim. They made Lain walk ahead, stumbling too fast over roots, with Magni riding the stallion on his heels. Þrúðr came behind on her mare, Móði’s arms held loose about her waist.
As they rode, they did not see the wolf, nor the girl, nor hear the cries of bird or flight of beasts.
Valdís, Lain had called the beast, and Þrúðr had seen the anguish in his eyes. Saw now the broken slump of his shoulders, even as he was forced to run on all fours to keep up with their pace.
Magni called cruel words as they ran, taunting Lain as he drove his horse to catch the edge of feathers beneath its hooves.
Þrúðr was starting to believe she did not know her brothers.
Whether played on the exotic felt tabletop in a palatial casino, or on the rough-hewn bar in a tavern's smoky din, the game of #Gwent is never a dull one.
Check out this artbook featuring the gorgeous card art from the game.
Unusually for one of the gods, Thor was sparing in the number of children that he sired. He had three, all—despite some rumors to the contrary—mothered by his wife, Sif.
Magni, the middle child, was all too eager to follow in his father’s footsteps. Besting jötnar as a toddler, with all the arrogance of a firstborn heir. Meanwhile Móði, Thor’s youngest, grew soft and uncertain. No match for his brother in physical prowess, he instead turned to magic to make his mark on the world. Magic, it must be said, is a woman’s art, but Móði’s grandfather, Odin, was its master and so, too, was Móði able to learn with only a minimum of disapproving gossip.
Thor’s eldest child, his daughter, Þrúðr, inherited her mother’s hair. Sif’s hair was not the hair she had been born with. Instead, it was a magic wig of sorts, rooted in her scalp and growing strands of purest gold. Literally gold. Unlike her mother, Þrúðr needed no wig, and rumor was her hair was even finer for it.
They’d watched every single Die Hard and half of RoboCop by the time Hel’s arm-scort made it to the gates of Ásgarðr.
Actually, if he thought about it, Sigmund really couldn’t be sure how long they’d been traveling. Time seemed to work differently here, outside of Miðgarðr, fading in and out until even the trudging of the náir and the bellows from the Helbeasts became routine.
Maybe Sigmund was just too desensitized to the extraordinary, raised by a lifetime of comic books and video games. And Hel’s army—Sigmund decided to give up trying to pretend it was anything else—Hel’s army really was something straight out of a game, monsters and undead and tattered banners, flapping in the breeze. The golden road glimmered beneath their feet, and when they passed, the land around them fell to blight and rot.
Taking players back to the survival horror atmosphere of the first film, #AlienIsolation features Amanda Ripley as the hero trying to survive on a wrecked space station.
This book is the ultimate gallery of the game, a must-have for any fan.
01: Mary Robinette Kowel - The Spare Man
02: Becky Chambers - The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
03: Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
04: Jule Owen - The Kind
05: Jule Owen - Elidir
06: Stephen Baxter - Flood
07: Stephen Baxter - Ark
08: Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword
09: Ann Leckie - Ancillary Mercy
I will soon have finished Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Memory and have to go back to more books I have already read.
Molly McCarthy. 2013. The accidental diarist: a history of the daily planner in America.
A dense read, but one that sparked a lot of thoughts, and made some surprising connections across history, especially in the late 17th C. Just think about the fact that a 1690s colonial almanac publisher included a 10 page editorial on the "new" Copernican cosmology.
It also brought to mind the day planners distributed by the student council when I was an undergrad.
Part of the SF Masterworks Collection. Despite being nearly 60 years old the narrative around the manipulation of the truth feels incredibly prescient. Wondering whether David Whitaker had read it before he came up with #DoctorWho story The Enemy of the World. #Books#Bookstodon#SciFi#PhilipKDick
The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Jem Roberts
Finished coincidentally on what would have been the great writers 71st birthday. I’ve read Jem’s other comedy biographies of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, Blackadder, Fry & Laurie and The Beatles and as a comedy geek enjoyed them all.
The influence on Orwell’s 1984 is obvious and there are lots of great ideas and passages within the story. That said while I appreciated it I can’t say I ever felt gripped by it or as engaged with the characters as in 84 or other similar works.
Penguin Plays: Four English Comedies
Volpone by Jonson
The Way of the World by Congreve
She Stoops to Conquer by Goldsmith
The School for Scandal by Sheridan
A nice little collection as part of the Penguin series. Definitely found the two later plays came across better on the page, but there was something to enjoy in them all.