kazarnowicz

kazarnowicz, 1 year ago to random

Beta readers wanted! "The Anomaly" is a sci-fi novel that outgrows traditional genres.

It is a self-contained contemporary urban sci-fi mystery, and the first part of a hard sci-fi space opera.

It is closer to Sense8 than to Star Trek, closer to Contact than to Star Wars.

Works that have influenced it are Star Maker, Foundation, The Birthday of the World, Sense8, Mass Effect, and Killjoys.

Features F/F romance, epic bromance, an AI PoV, and aliens.

1/3

#bookstodon #scifi #BetaReaders

kazarnowicz, 5 months ago to scifi

The Truman Show, but it’s the internet (with a pinch of The Game)

A guy spends his life on an alternate internet, where all user created content is just an AI playing all the different parts. The news is the same, it’s just all the commentary that’s different. All of it.

He is slowly radicalized to murder a progressive politician.

It is the first attempt by the AGI hiding in the internet to program humans, to find out when they snap. How far you can program them.

#scifi #WritingCommunity

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago to philosophy Swedish

A lovely conversation with @Thoreau made me aware of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and from that the analogy of the divided line.

It looks like this:

A—B—C—D——E

"(AC) is generally taken as representing the visible world and (CE) as representing the intelligible world”

If you think of it as a process (the evolution of mind) sapience would emerge between C and D. D is also a point that inevitably leads to E (the ability to think about why we exist)

1/5

#consciousness #mind #philosophy

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to NealStephenson

I reread "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson over the summer. It has a core idea about memetics that is very interesting, and it was much more fun than I remembered. I was only 19 when I read it the first time, and a lot of the satire was lost to my inexperience of the world in general and the US in particular.

It's a great read that still holds up today. I'd love to do a book club discussion around it.

#bookstodon #SnowCrash #NealStephenson #scifi

kazarnowicz, 1 year ago to random

You know the people that think ‘cis’ is a slur? I wonder how they would react when they find out that the term ‘heterosexual’ originally referred to a perversion …

kazarnowicz, 1 month ago to random Swedish

I have no idea what's going on, but today I woke up with eyes and nose gushing as if to challenge Cardi B to write a sequel to WAP. My eyes are puffy, I'm sneezing like crazy and nose is stuffed.

I suspect allergies, but to WHAT? We still have snow, and nothing has started to sprout yet.

Also: allergy medicine barely helps.

kazarnowicz, 1 year ago to random

Dear #WritingCommunity, help me welcome @ascribblingscribe, a fellow writer looking for her tribe, to our cozy corner of the Fediverse.

We met over at TikTok (which I had grave misconceptions about, the writing community there is fantastic!) and I promised to introduce her to Mastodon.

I also promised to provide a list of writers and authors I've had thoughtful exchanges about writing with, so in no particular order:

@Thoreau
@JAJablonski
@ljwrites
@pergus
@wendyparciak

(cont'd)

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

As a gay man, I am offended by “Red White and Royal Blue”. It’s no better than a straight man writing a love story between lesbians, when he’s really acting out his teenage fantasies about what he thinks lesbians are like.

I am also saddened by Uma Thurman participating in this utter shite. It’s the worst kind of exoticism of gay men. If the author was twelve year old it would be understandable, but that an adult wrote this is forking insulting to decency.

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to random

I was just at the goldsmith to pick up our wedding rings. We wanted two thin bands each, one for each ceremony we’re going to have, that together form a whole.

Mike had both of his grandfathers’ wedding rings, so part of the gold and the diamond in my set comes with a history.

I’m so glad we chose to splurge on the rings.

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to scifi

“Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson has me thinking about the evolution of consciousness, and the ways biology facilitates it. It makes me even more certain that consciousness is not emergent, but fundamental to the universe.

I realize that the main thesis I have in my books is that "the flesh is not a prison, it is training wheels”. Biology can obviously be overridden by a sufficiently developed mind (the Marshmallow test is a concrete example).

1/x

#consciousness #scifi

kazarnowicz, 11 months ago to random

If you're living in Sweden, you can sign a petition against #ChatControl that Ylva "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” Johansson is trying to push through despite experts saying that it’s unbalanced: https://agera.skiftet.org/campaigns/stoppa-chat-control

kazarnowicz, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to random

A question for frequent readers: without looking it up, do you know what 'hegira' means?

#bookstodon #WritingCommunity

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to Dogs

In hindsight, adopting two dogs is one of the best things I’ve done as a (sci-fi) author. Before Dante and Ori, I was subconsciously planet-of-red-hat-ing animals in general, and dogs in particular.

Getting to know two individuals with a history we only can glean in their behavior, learning how to communicate with them, slowly earning their trust, and glimpsing the world through their minds is like befriending two aliens.

I see the world differently now.

#WritingCommunity #dogs

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to scifi Swedish

I have a hard time understanding how writers manage to write several universes at the same time.

I have no room for any other project, because literally everything in the news and zeitgeist can be related to my universe and the world building.

Writing the books, I am having the same experience that I hope a reader will have: a loosening of the rigid wall we put up between fiction and reality.

Or maybe “fiction and potential future” is more apt.

1/5

#WritingCommunity #scifi

kazarnowicz, 8 months ago to Starfield

Here's a rant about #starfield:

Having played through the game, it's clear to me that a lot of video game reviewers are incompetent. The main storyline is poorly executed, and the "new game+" opportunities it offers are all but lost.

If you're looking for a space mining simulator, it's a decent game, but if you're looking for an RPG with a story that evokes any emotion other than awkwardness and disappointment, it cannot get more than 3/5 (or the equivalent) if you're generous.

#gaming #xbox

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to sweden

If you read news, you’ve probably heard about Tesla’s conflict with Swedish union IF Metall.

It got me thinking about other examples of “the Swedish model” and how to explain it to, say, an American.

The spirit of the law is common sense to me: it is about markets being self-governing by the involved parties. The state is the keeper of the rules the players agree on. You can see it in government agencies like the National Board for Consumer Disputes

1/x

#sweden #tesla #unions #law

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to Health Swedish

Three things I've learned about fruit as an adult:

1. The apple core is a lie. If you eat the apple like there wasn't any core, it'll taste just the same and you'll barely notice it (and even if you bite through the seeds, you have nothing to worry about unless you eat a metric shit-ton of apples every day).

Also: eating the whole apple (and the stem, although it's a bit hard to chew) is good for your microbiome.

1/2

#fruit #health #apples

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to random Swedish

The top 1% in the USA now have more money than the entire middle class.

This will end really well!

(for the billionaires, that is - the average American is forked three ways to Sunday)

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

Sometimes, I’m struck with wonder at things I normally take for granted. Like seeing.

Photons hit flesh which transforms them to electric signals. These signals travel to the brain, which then constructs a mental image of the rich, immersive reality we see. Isn’t that insane?

The light doesn’t reach your brain - so it has literally never experienced light other than through the proxy of electric signals from the eyes, in a language only the two understand, evolved over millennia.

kazarnowicz, 5 months ago to languagelearning

Two words that are common in descriptions of natural scenery are “picturesque” and “scenic”.

Both are weird if you consider etymology, but the first is the weirdest: “What a picturesque view!” in other words is “this view is like a picture of natural beauty!”

There are really interesting implications in this on a metaphysical level.

#WritingCommunity #language

kazarnowicz, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Ellen DeGeneres: “I got kicked out of show business”.

No, sweetie, you were cancelled because you are a horrible person to anyone you deem below you, while stroking the egos of anyone you consider above you.

You bullied people on your show, both guests and coworkers.

You were cancelled because people saw the real you and realized that you're petty, unkind, and a sociopath who posed as a good person.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89zy07x40no

kazarnowicz, 9 months ago to mentalhealth

So this happened:

I got burned out at work in May. I did not think it could happen to me again, that I had learned my lesson when I as an ambitious 24-year-old got burned out. On the flip side, I've learned a lot about how my mind works in the process.

One thing I'm sure of is that this artificial separation of "work" and "not-work” that existed for GenX becomes toxic for knowledge workers in the digital age.

In 2023, just existing is "work”

#WritingCommunity #MentalHealth

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago to random Swedish

Public Service in Sweden makes strange choices. When reporting on Israel's genocide trial, they chose to interview an Israeli professor who works at an Israeli university in an occupied area.

Why choose an Israeli? Why not someone neutral? Of course the Israeli professor working in a school on land taken from Palestinians will be all “it's not genocide, it's just a little unfortunate that our government speaks like that”

Swedish Public Service is so milquetoast that their logo should be beige.

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to random

If you have a Hugo Award, it now also comes with an “Approved by the CCP” rubber stamp.

If you make a list that has been washed from people who can upset the CCP, you are milquetoast at best and a useful idiot [for the CCP] at worst.

I feel bad for last year’s winners who did not ask for this, but will forever by associated with the corruption of the awards.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/science-fiction-authors-excluded-hugo-awards-china-rcna139134

#WritingCommunity #HugoAwards

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

U.S. maternal death rates almost doubled between 2014 and 2021. Black women are disproportionately harmed by this: black individuals are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related deaths than white individuals.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/03/u-s-maternal-death-rate-increasing-at-an-alarming-rate/