@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

kazarnowicz

@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club

I spent 20+ years on the hedonic treadmill, only to realize it doesn't lead anywhere. Now I'm a metamodern hippe living in the far north with my husband https://unstraight.club/@Nightwolf and our two dogs. My passion project right now is a contemporary urban space opera called "The Psychonaut Chronicles". See pinned threads for more about me and where I live. I alt-text images and expect the same from you.

#scifi #videogames #storytelling #consciousness #metaphysics #popculture #psychedelics #cosmology

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kazarnowicz, to random
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

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

kazarnowicz, to random Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

A few times a year (when we have cold spells) mice move into our house.

I wouldn't mind them if it wasn't so unsanitary with all the mouse poop along the paths they're running.

I hate killing them, but putting them outside in this cold is a slow and probably terrifying death. We bought well-made traps that instantly break their necks. It makes me sad every time one of the traps snap, but at least it's a very quick death.

kazarnowicz, to random Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

I find it harder to take scientific journals and news outlets (and scientists) seriously about consciousness.

Today, I'm reading an article about birds having a neocortex that we've missed for years. The writer in Scientific American seems very excited, he even adds: "The new work even suggests that certain birds demonstrate some degree of consciousness.”

Scientific American has really gone down the drain, hasn't it?

Thoreau, to random
@Thoreau@mas.to avatar

While making spaghetti tonight, I could barely get through the process as the oven fan was on, and, you know, running. Oven fans are so freaking LOUD. Bzzzzzhhhhzxhhhzhh! My brain can't take it.

That got me thinking about how I truly despise the obnoxious guest bathroom fan, which tortures me further because of its very bright Gitmo overhead light that just interrogates you mercilessly. It's traumatic!

Which leads me to my long-winded Proustian question.
(1/2)

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Thoreau I feel like my tinnitus has prepared me for this. It would take Dumb & Dumber levels of annoying sounds to drive me to make a Falling Down.

kazarnowicz, to random
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

I just watched congressman Ro Khanna grill a counsel from Johnson & Johnson about their lawsuit against the US government.

J&J have leukemia medicine that they charge $160,000 per year for in the US. In the UK the price is 1/7th for the same medicine.

That lawyer for J&J is pure santorum in a meat-suit. How can you wake up and feel that this is a live well lived, screwing sick people for greed.

People aren’t born evil, but many become evil as adults.

kazarnowicz, to scifi Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

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

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

We're on the verge of strange physics; a fundamental shift of our view of the universe. The cosmological standard model is incorrect when it comes to dark energy, but we have yet to find an alternative. The universe may be inhomogenous. And the standard model of physics may need adjustment (I won't bore you with details but it's about the decay of the Higgs boson). We have no scientific understanding of the mind or consciousness to speak of.

This is where fact and fiction touch.

2/5

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

The paradigm shift I'm betting on (that consciousness drives biology) could have consequences such as: consciousness becomes a hard physics field, subfields emerge based rom hybrids of previously unrelated fields (e.g. behavioral psychology and particle physics).

Also: if it is a fundamental force, it can be manipulated, but the technology for it will likely be biological.

This is just a small part of the world building! So you see why I have no capacity for more universes.

3/5

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

Don’t get me wrong, I get ideas for stories every now and then, and some of these are really good. But when I get one of these ideas, I ask “could it play out in my universe?” and if not, I let it go.

A lot of the subplots in the books come from such ideas. And the others are surprisingly easy to let go. All but one that I had maybe four years back, inspired by @neilhimself's craft. I didn't have to write it down, the premise is so good that it stuck. Too bad it was incompatible.

4/5

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

I'm in a long marination period, Some would say writer's block (because I want to write) but this story emerges like an intricate structure at the bottom of a draining pool: you need to give the water time to drain before you can fully see the intricacies of it and start describing what you see.

One thing that surprised me a lot when I recently came to a point where I saw the full picture: that fantastic Gaimanesque idea is at the heart of it.

Creativity and the subconscious are amazing.

5/5

kazarnowicz, to random Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

Google seems to have bricked a lot of Google Wifi units overnight.

Our mesh network had not internet connection this morning. I started troubleshooting. Ended up factory resetting the units. Turns out that you cannot create a new network because of a problem with Google (same problem that made our network lose WAN connection).

It’s a good excuse to return these, and de-Google my home. I’m throwing out Google Home while I'm at it.

I was furios with Google, but now I feel weirdly liberated.

Palace, to random Swedish
@Palace@mastodon.nu avatar

Vad har du lärt dig idag?

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Palace att det finns typ tjugo kilo ko (biomassa på ~420 miljoner ton) för varje kilo vilt däggdjur på jorden (biomassa på ~20 miljoner ton) .

När jag läste det så förstod jag plötsligt varför just djuruppfödning för mat är den enskilt största bidragaren till klimatdestabilisering.

(Det är också ett argument för att människan av framtida rymdvarelser som forskar på jordens historia kommer bli klassad som en cancer-liknande parasit som helt enkelt växte tills det inte fanns mat kvar)

kazarnowicz, to random Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

One thing that struck me about this meta-modern, post-truth era is that all the crazy feelings-over-facts arguments from politicians (pretty much all conservatives regardless of country), influencers, lobbyists, and the general population is not a temporary hickup.

Things will never be as un-crazy as they are today, it will only get worse.

I'm not sure how we move on to the next era, but it helps to not expect things to "go back to normal”. What we're experiencing today is the new normal.

LALegault, to random
@LALegault@newsie.social avatar

Dr. Jane Goodall not holding back:

Jane Goodall

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@LALegault
The loss of biodiversity is so important, yet news today talk mostly of the weather. I am terrified about whole ecosystems collapsing once a critical mass of diversity is lost.

Look at the microbes in our gut, when we eat processed junk food, diversity decreases and it has consequences on our health.

I guess this analogy makes humans the bad kind of microbes to have in your biome, and I can’t really argue that we’re not.

@Palace

kazarnowicz, to random
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

I just read the truest comment about the internet:

“The internet has allowed the village idiots to unionize and it’s the fuckin worst”

It really is.

kazarnowicz, to Health Swedish
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

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,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

  1. Kiwis don't have to be peeled. Just wash them and eat like an apple. You'll barely notice the difference, while the fuss goes down 80%

  2. Oranges that are hard to peel (like blood oranges) become very easy to peel if you roll them between your palms for a few minutes, applying gentle pressure.

#oranges #kiwis #fruit

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@troed I was skeptical about the apple thing too, but then I tried it and 🤯😅

Thoreau, to random
@Thoreau@mas.to avatar

No matter how many ways we create to communicate, humans will always find a way to drive each other crazy with it. At work I have to culturally know who will answer an actual telephone and who would rather die, who keeps their calendar online up to date and who is a conscientious objector to sharing calendars, who will answer a teams call whenever, and who believes all calls must be scheduled 3 weeks in advance. Who answers quickest on text and who never looks at their personal phone.

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Thoreau that sounds exhausting. Like herding working cats.

Thoreau, to random
@Thoreau@mas.to avatar

Announcement:
Hawaiian butter mochi cake will be on the menu on my spaceship when we leave earth. Thank you. That is all.


kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Thoreau I love mochi, but never had butter mochi cake. It is now on my bucket list.

sjvn, to random
@sjvn@mastodon.social avatar

I love Elle Cordova and her clever, funny videos. This one is for all my writer and editor friends.

video/mp4

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@sjvn her poem "Before the Big Bang” is phenomenal

For anyone that hasn't seen it, you're in for a treat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXZqjCk7wWE

@gerikson

Palace, to random Swedish
@Palace@mastodon.nu avatar

Vad har du lärt dig idag?

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Palace något jag absolut inte ville veta: med den nya data vi har om isavsmältningen på Grönland har prognosen för när golfströmmen kommer upphöra.

Tidigare var 2040-talet den tidigaste punkten när det kanske skulle hända.

Då isen på Grönland smälter 20% snabbare än man trott, kan en AMOC-kollaps komma så snart som 2025. Det är dåliga nyheter för norra Europa, som då troligtvis drabbas av en istid. Vi har inga bra modeller för vad som händer med det globala klimatet om detta system kraschar.

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Palace exakt, på bägge punkter. Jag har alltid tänkt att jag kommer att vara död innan det blir riktigt drastiska konsekvenser, men mänskligheten ba ”hold my beer!”

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Palace jag har länge tänkt att med farten vi bryter rekord i, så är läget mer brådskande än allmänheten och politikerna - t o m de miljöinriktade – är medvetna om.

Det är väl bara att skaffa ett lager dryck och sätta sig och betrakta den långsamma undergången. För jag kan inte tänka mig att något som gör skillnad görs i tid.

kazarnowicz,
@kazarnowicz@unstraight.club avatar

@Palace är det inte härliga processer vi fått av new public management och kvartalsrapportsekonomi? Skit i framtiden så länge de kommande tre månaderna ser bra ut.

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