Thesis: fact
Antithesis: feeling
Synthesis: fact-based feeling
04.03.2026 19:05
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Thesis: fact
Antithesis: feeling
Synthesis: fact-based feeling
I was thinking today about how beautifully our post-truth politics has prepared us, epistemologically speaking, for LLMs and their confabulations.
Last year I studied some introductory finance at Massey. There were multiple choice quizzes to check your learning.
I found, and I'm not joking, that I would get these quizzes right if I asked "what is the most heartless and cruel way I could answer this?"
That seemed significant.
This was such blatant misogyny and anti-intellectualism that it genuinely shocked me.
I sometimes browse "r/conservative" to get a sense of how far right people interpret news. Today I read a discussion about an article about why nurses are so left leaning?
The commenters homed in on the fact that "they're mostly woman and are educated" AS THE PROBLEM.
Fucking terrifying.
We are really proud of @wtalabi.com’s Sauúti novella “Descent” making the BSFA shortlist. 🔥💫🥳
Read it!
Very cool to see that my @sauutiverse.bsky.social novella DESCENT is now a finalist for the BSFA Awards! Many thanks to @clarkesworldmagazine.com for publishing it, to everyone who read and congratulations to all my fellow finalists whom I'm pleasantly intimidated to be counted among!
#bsfa #awards
oh dang, congrats bud.
I was _just_ thinking about this in a completely different context - refactoring of code. We actually have examples are great refactoring algorithms pre-AI, and now to do something like extract a function or rename symbols, you _know_ people are reaching for Opus or whatever.
It'll be time for the #TransRightsReadathon soon and many of my books are on sale NOW at Smashwords!
For trans reads, please consider The Other Me (YA contemporary set in South Africa) or By the Blood of Rowans (YA fantasy with murder and magic): www.smashwords.com/profile/view...
#booksky
Agreed. I also just don't get the appeal, right. It feels like cheating at chess with an engine, you didn't actually do the thing, so what is there to be proud/happy about?
I'm also not convinced that genAI can actually produce writing of interest, I don't think the architecture supports that.
Commentary: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?
(great alt text btw :D )
Crouton is the MVP here.
It's really hard as a parent to try balance what your kid needs to know about living (stuff that's really hard to work out/on) and the kinds of everyday things they get absorbed in.
I want her to be happy but also to take a stand on her existence. These two are not always aligned.
My daughter got ready for school a little early and for her sins got a long talk about the aesthetics of the self, poetry, and Richard Rorty before we drove to school.
Also, hot chocolate.
Alysa liu is basically if a superhero anime character came to life
Book cover ZamaShort #11 ‘Gold-Plated Boy’ by Hussani Abdulrahim. A black background and bold gold title text reading “Gold-Plated Boy.” The letter “O” in “Boy” contains a raised gold hand symbol. Above the title is “ZamaShort” and “Pre-Order,” and below is the author’s name, Hussani Abdulrahim. The design features red, green, and gold African-inspired patterns forming a large inverted triangle, with a blue adinkra symbol centred near the bottom.
Happy Publish Day ZamaShort #11 ‘Gold-Plated Boy’ by Hussani Abdulrahim! @hussani14.bsky.social
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#AfricanSFF #Africanfuturism #scifi #booksky 🪐📚💙
I'm aware that (1) isn't how the metaphysics of karma works (he was mostly joking, and making a point about how responsibility still counts) and (2) it isn't some exhaustive reduction of the piece I posted. But it was the first thing that came to mind.
Weirdly, reminds me of a lecture on karma I once attended at Nan-Hua's satellite center in JHB years ago. The venerable was joking about how he thinks you can only blame your past-life karma for your decisions till you're like 25, then it's all you.
Great piece by @emilyrinkema.bsky.social fracturedlit.com/dead-mother-...
Grammarly has a "humanizer" function.
Think about it. You, a human, employ this tool to help you write, then you have to "humanize" the output. With a machine.
Left cover of The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg featuring a East Asian style building with a tree blooming with purple flowers behind it. Right REVIEWS Quote Fogg’s focus on endings and societies declining or being destroyed may hit harder today than when these stories were originally written, which is why her consistent emphasis on the power of beauty—if not to save then at least to somehow redeem such endings—is important. reviewer: Stephen Case 23 February 2026 Strange Horizons
The House of Illusionists and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg
reviewed by Stephen Case
Link ⬇️
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
#bookreviews #fantasy #sciencefiction #scifi
The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive
"How profoundly are we shaped by our words, and by their sound?"
That's the whole game, no?
Lovely, review.
A screenshot from The Continent. Partial text: The Continent 28 FEBRUARY 2026 | ISSUE 230 TC BOOK REVIEW BY JACQUELINE NYATHI How safe is sound? If you haven't explored the Sautiverse yet, you're missing out on a fascinating project from an African collective. THE SAUÚTIVERSE is Afrocentric fantasy centred on sound. This universe is held together by the mysterious Mothersound, its magic mediated through song, instruments, and words. Sauúti Terrors, the second short-story collection (after Mothersound) expands the Sauútiverse in dark directions. It brings welcome depth. The editors of the latest anthology - Cheryl Ntumy, Eugen Bacon, and Stephen Embleton - wanted to bring realism to this imaginary African future by showing readers that "everything is not perfect in the federation of planets". In Sauúti Terrors, sound magic is perverted through human failing, through its sheer power, or because good, life-giving sound must have its antithesis in destructive anti-sound (or silence). The collection's authors - including Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Wole Talabi, T.L. Huchu, Moustapha Mbacké Diop, J. Umeh, and more - show us what could go wrong. In Umeh's excellent The Sounding, a healer learns of ancient, evil beings when she becomes inhabited by one. A similarly chilling exploration occurs in Kofi Nyameye's The Unspoken, which unpacks clandestine government experiments at secret military bases. Ntumy's Where Daylight Bows to Darkness gives us an alternate view of 2024's Song for the Shadows in which we meet the mysterious Shad-Dari for the second time. A spacecraft in Wole Talabi's The Final Flight of the Ungu-ugnu is powered by humans singing in chorus. Xan van Rooyen's unsettling Kyi'yaji features anti-music recorded in scars - which can be played back.
Some of my thoughts on this excellent collection in this week's @thecontinent.org, which you can download here: www.thecontinent.org/_files/ugd/2...
Amy is the best. This is the book I've wanted her to write since our writing group first met in Hyde Park Exclusives to crit stories and drink hot chocolate. Wonderful novel.
A screen grab of the New Contrast page saying "submissions for new contrast are OPEN" with a link to "Submit Your Material"
The Submittable page for New Contrast Submissions saying "There are presently no open calls for submissions"
New Contrast's submissions, a tale in two parts
Excuse me if this exists but god damn if I wouldn't _love_ a collection of Alice Sola Kim's short stories. She is the boss.