Tootfinder

"People notice that while AI can now write programs, design websites, etc, it still often makes mistakes or goes in a wrong direction, and then they somehow jump to the conclusion that AI will never be able to do these tasks at human levels, or will only have a minor impact. When just a few years ago, having AI do these things was complete science fiction!"

Day 3: Octavia Butler.
Incredibly dark, graphic, and disturbing near-future science fiction, which has proved absolutely prophetic. In the 1990's she was writing about a charismatic Conservative Christian and white nationalist president elected in 2024, and the horrors his paramilitary followers would unleash, including forced labor & indoctrination camps. Did I mention those books include ebikes & pseudo-cellphones too? Characters fleeing north from a disastrous social collapse in Loss Angeles? This is "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents" and the later was tragically rushed to an end because of Butler's declining health.
Her work deals unflinchingly with racism and the darker parts of society, and to those who might say "her depiction of social collapse is overblown," I'd say that while it's not literally the world we live in, it's *effectively* the world that the poorest of us live in. If you're a homeless undocumented latinx person in LA right now, I'm not sure how meaningfully different your world is from the one she depicts.
Her work comes with a strong content warning for lots of things, including racial violence, sexual abuse and slavery, including of children, animal harm, etc., so it's not for everyone. Reading it in 2023 was certainly an incredible trip. Her politics are really cool though; with explicit pro-LGBTQ themes and tinges of what might today be considered #SolarPunk.
#20WomenAuthors

Series C, Episode 02 - Powerplay
DAYNA: Avon, what are you doing?
AVON: In a way, I am making us invisible.
[Scene - the corridor with the hatch, Tarrant, Klegg, Harmon and a guard]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/302/190 B7B6

I’ve been getting beta reader feedback on my #novel and it’s the most magical thing hearing how other people have formed their own relationships to and feelings towards my characters.
I made up these characters in my own mind, they didn’t exist a few months ago, and now they are real to not just me but other living, breathing humans.
Artistic creation feels like one of the closest ways we have of approaching a sense of something almost divine.
#writing #writersofmastodon #fictionWriting #writers

Just finished reading "Theory of Water" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. It's a departure from a lot of the other stuff I've read lately (mostly unchallenging fiction), but it's really great, and hits hard in this specific political moment. It's an Indigenous anarchist theory book, published this year, and unsurprisingly holds a lot of truths I found valuable to hear. Highly recommend it if you're feeling nihilistic.
#AmReading #Anarchist #Theory

Good Morning #Canada
#HappyBirthday to Mike Smith (1972) and Cory Bowles (1973), Canadian actors who both starred in the groundbreaking series "Trailer Park Boys." The Canadian mockumentary television sitcom began airing in 2001 as a continuation of his 1999 film bearing the same name. The show follows the misadventures of a group of trailer park residents, including two lead characters in and out of prison, living in the fictional "Sunnyvale Trailer Park" in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The series premiered on Showcase on April 22, 2001, and originally ran for seven seasons before concluding on December 7, 2008. During its run the series also spawned four films.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Comedy #Legends
https://youtu.be/8INC618ybFo?si=r6ZSLH7GgH_RY16d

A Meat-Summer Night's Dream: A Tangible Design Fiction Exploration of Eating Biohybrid Flying Robots
Ziming Wang, Yiqian Wu, Qingxiao Zheng, Shihan Zhang, Ned Barker, Morten Fjeld
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06507

A Meat-Summer Night's Dream: A Tangible Design Fiction Exploration of Eating Biohybrid Flying Robots
What if future dining involved eating robots? We explore this question through a playful and poetic experiential dinner theater: a tangible design fiction staged as a 2052 Paris restaurant where diners consume a biohybrid flying robot in place of the banned delicacy of ortolan bunting. Moving beyond textual or visual speculation, our ``dinner-in-the-drama'' combined performance, ritual, and multisensory immersion to provoke reflection on sustainability, ethics, and cultural identity. Six partic…

#Blakes7 Series C, Episode 02 - Powerplay
DAYNA: Do what? Avon, why do you keep everything to yourself? Why so secretive?
AVON: Perhaps I'm shy. [Goes to leave] Anybody comes through this door, kill them. Anybody that isn't me, that is.
https…

‘We’re fighting for you!’ Podcaster Ben Meiselas on taking on the Maga media – and winning the ratings battle | Podcasts | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/oct/11/podcaster-ben-me…

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading