@jg-milton
Australian spec-fic writer. Sociology PhD (violence). Gen-X media tragic. Astronomy & history nerd. On Wulgurukaba Country (North QLD). Fandoms: Dr Who, Star Trek, B5, BSG (both), The Expanse, Murderbot. Rec: Linda Nagata’s Inverted Frontier series.
If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!
Exactly that. I like my character wins to be kind of a reflexive process of coming to terms with the limits and costs of winning in a complicated human world embedded in an uncaring physical universe. Winning being a remission rather than a cure or anaesthetic, I guess.
For my nicer protagonists, I best like a happy ending though showing the character not there yet, instead trapped in a melancholy transitional moment of reflection on their losses & need to grow. I also love the Frodo, "I saved the Shire but not for me..." thing.
That said, I'm also a Dr Who fan, where lately finales are great 1st episodes followed by howling catastrophe conclusions, so if Academy manages to end its first season with two modestly good episodes, I'll take that as a win.
Didn't mind part one of the #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy finale, but it didn't quite measure up to the best Trek finales. I missed a lot of characters, found the action muted (the Athena's arrival wasn't as cool as I think they thought it), but I still loved the characters/actors. Maybe high B-tier.
True that. But it's a beautiful place, too. I recollect once standing atio a hill I'd rock-climbed in Northwest QLD, and gaping at the view (reds to shame Mars), and a rock wallaby literally jumped at me and nearly kicked me off the cliff. Australia: love it, but always be situationally aware.
Mind you, I live in Australia, so wherever you live there's something.
My region has giant underground cockroaches, giant underground tarantulas (that whistle) and meliodosis in the soil ... all of which rise up to menace the living when it rains. We're nearing the end of a summer of severe storms and flooding. And I *moved* here. Kind of questioning my life choices.
I would normally claim not to be a romance reader (I'm so not). That said, circumstances drove me to read #DianaGabaldon's #Outlander and the series hooked me hard. Heck, the scene in the most recent book where Claire ... comes into her own ... is magnificent. Worth a read no matter what you like.
The doomscrolling feels particularly doomy today.
Of course they want to use Grok.
Trump Orders Government to Stop Using Anthropic After Pentagon Standoff www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/u...
Following along with the quarrel between Anthropic and the Pentagon and noting the word "warfighter". Is this new? I feel we already had a word for that. Several.
Well, IMO, #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy S1E8 was absolutely & breathtakingly good. I'd consider it one of the best Trek episodes ever. Beautifully crafted & performed. Excellent use of the Doctor and Sam, Mary Wiseman's Tilly was pitch perfect, & it had real substance. Can't praise it enough.
Not sure how the #XFiles reboot can work in an age where the cospiracies are pretty much out in the open, the government is into UAPs, and the truth is neither out there nor anywhere else. "Crazy Mulder" is mostly going to be the sanest person in the room. Wish them well, though.
A line graph with three points of information. At left, the word "Writing." In the center: "I haven't written in too many days, it's over, it's so over, I'm never finishing this and I'll never write again." To the right of that: "Writing again" with a happy face
The Graph of Eternal Hope is cross disciplinary.
Loving in #Music right now: #Ren's "Vincent's Tale" series of songs (link to the first below, but it continues through a few more videos). Genius stuff; very much music deployed consciously as art.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ1M...
A great analysis of the meaning of AI to creatives. Ignore the combative thumbnaill--the video is pretty realistic and encouraging.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNd...
Tentative but still really interesting... www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyac...
I've been rereading George Saunders's "A Swim In A Pond in the Rain". Still my absolute favourite #WritingBook by light years. It's a gentle, transformative journey through the short story writer's craft and, frankly, a little bit of a joy to read.
My new weapon against paralyzing writer's block: poetry. I'm just playing with short, structured forms like haiku, limericks, & clerihews. Writing anything is a balm, the structure is scaffolding to lean on, & I get the little 'win' of actually finishing something, which is uplifting. It's going OK.
The most recent #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds is drawing some hate. It's not perfect. But my god the whole space whale SFX thing was gorgeous. There are artists in their SFX department, and no mistake.
Belatedly bought The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans & just read it. Exactly what I was looking for and written clearly & well. Still, a difficult read, given the subject matter & the state of the world. Learned a great deal. Definitely worth reading.
I'm too old not to judge a movie by its trailers... so going out on a limb and guessing that (despite very excellently rendered tripods), War of the Worlds is not going to break its long streak of wretchedly awful adaptations. They eat your data! Sure. Why not.
Ha. It's such an intricately woven mystery narrative that literally every possible favourite moment is an unforgivable spoiler.
If you have access to Prime and don't mind the sound of a police procedural horror science fiction series that's insanely well-made and alternately scares you and kicks your emotions in the nethers, have a look at The Devil's Hour. It's exceptional.
Will do. At the moment, I'm leaning towards The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. I can't personally recommend it yet, as I haven't bought it yet, but it's looking attractive. (And it's a trilogy, so if the first grips, there's more covering the whole war in the same way.)
Just read the blurb on Amazon. I'm aiming for something that digs into how Germany transitioned from one war to the next, but wish listed The Garden of Beasts as it sounds awesome. Thanks!
Any recommendations for a history of Germany in relation to World War II? (How Germany moved from its situation post-Great War to being a global threat, discussing the course of the war from a historical rather than military perspective, again centred on the German experience, but in English?
Terrific article: complicating the idea of the habitable zone to work out good candidates for exoplanet habitability, and Earth as not common but not a Unicorn, either. www.universetoday.com/articles/a-s...