I'd like to share a little news story.  It's fairly long, but I'm just going to say that I was laughing for about ten minutes straight as I read through this story:  Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

You know how having money makes people think that they're really smart in every field?  Well, someone managed to get a recording of Peter Thiel's four-part lecture series, despite making it clear that recordings were entirely prohibited.  And this guy hates universities so much that he just spent a few hours trying to impress academics with his theories about the antichrist.

What is the antichrist?  Apparently anything to do with world government, like UNICEF or something. And also getting in the way of new technology, like luddites. Who is the antichrist?  People like Marc Andressen, Greta Thunberg, and Eliezer Yudkowsky get mentioned as candidates, fairly close together. (A different article noted: "With enemies like these, who needs friends?")  The whole thing is like SF tech scene inside baseball, but antichrist flavored.

And people kept going to see these things!  I mean, I definitely would have, this is comedy gold, especially if you're in technology.

I'm not really knocking the idea of there being antichrists, there are plenty of people who meet the definition in 1 John. It's that, like, people whom you disagree with in politics are probably not the antichrist just because you disagree with them, right?

ISBN 978-1-5387-7800-5
(also available as an ebook, but you probably want a copy that can't be remotely deleted without your permission or knowledge)

Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism
by Stewart "Brittlestar" Reynolds

Exactly what it says on the tin.

A quick read, but you should take your time and think about what's written in each of the two- or three-page chapters.

Your PM mailbox is full

This is a beautiful song by Allister MacGillivray. I'm thinking specifically about the SATB choral arrangement by the composer.

Quote:Small craft in a harbour that's still and serene
Give no indication what their ways have been.
They rock at their moorings all nestled in dreams,
Away from the roll of the sea.

Their stern lines are groaning a lullaby air,
A ghost in the cuddy, a gull on the spar,
But never they whisper of journeys afar,
Away from the roll of the sea.

Oh, had they the tongues for to speak,
What tales of adventure they'd weave.
But now they are anchored to sleep,
And slumber alee.

Come fair winds to wake them tomorrow, we pray;
Come harvest aplenty to them every day,
'Til guided by harbour lights they're home to stay,
Away from the roll of the sea.

Oh, had they the tongues for to speak,
What tales of adventure they'd weave.
But now they are anchored to sleep,
And slumber alee.

Come fair winds to wake them tomorrow, we pray;
Come harvest aplenty to them every day,
'Til guided by harbour lights they're home to stay,
Away from the roll of the sea.

Away from the roll of the sea.

Every 7 years Ireland gathers together to watch paint dry.

And occasionally elect a President at the same time. And while the current incumbent is well loved - we're required to get a new one after 2 terms of 7 years. (A constitutional referendum to nail him inside the Aras would take too long to spin up)

And yet, considering how utterly inconsequential the position of President of Ireland is, it tends to turn up some the most vicious of catfighting (Probably emulating the yanks) and usually ends up with one candidate being monumentally humiliated in the public eye by some utterly trivial 'scandal'.

After a nomination campaign which has been as electrifying as a dead battery, with the only spark being the establishment sending Maria Steen back to 1954 where she belongs, the race began with a shrug, and had been proceeding with all the processional drudgery we've come to expect.

Until it floated up that, about 16 years ago, Jim Gavin had once owned an apartment.

And he rented it to a tenant who paid the rent by direct debit.

And, of course, Jimmy could no longer pay the mortgage on that flat in 2009 - because very few people *could* - so handed the keys back to the bank and rolled the remants of the loan into his home mortgage. The tenant, unfortunately, kept paying him for several months, totaling about 3300k in rent. (About a months rent in 2025 terms)

And for 16 years, and even after a solicitors letter, that debt stayed outstanding. Washed under the carpet. Too much money to be dealt with summarily in small claims. Too little money to be dealt with in real court. Probably not actually owed in legality. So it was forgotten. One tenant agrieved by their own mistake. One landlord too busy to think about it - thinking it was all so long ago.

It lingered like an old German shell under a Belgian farm, waiting for it's opportunity to ruin someone's day with a bang

That day was Saturday. After receiving a bruising earlier in the week for flying a video drone without the proper permits - something someone who once worked for the aviation regulator should've known about, the final knife in the back came on Saturday.

A report of a disaffected former tenant floated up early in Saturday - a tenant who sent proof to the political party backing Jimmy of their complaint that they were owned a substantial sum of money - just in time for poor oul Jimmy to deny on a publically televised any knowledge or having any records of the 3.3k debt ever being owed in the first place. The party knew, and they didn't warn him. The knives were out.

So now, Micheal Martin who put him forward looks like a gobshite. Everyone involved in the whole affair looks moronic. And the entire thing is turning into a political omnishambles worthy of our Westerly and Easterly neighbours.

Reports that Bertie Ahern was seen huddled in Fagans with his circle of sheisters clustered around a mobile phone like witches around a cauldron, have yet to be verified. But if the cutest, most devious hoor of them all had put a knife in the Gavin campaign's back- I wouldn't be surprised.

Jim Gavin officially withdrew from the campaign last night.

Too late for his name not to be on the ballot on polling day.

Part of me thinks it'd be fun to vote for someone who now desperately wants not to be President. If we follow Hitchicker's logic, he's the perfect man for the job. Or we can cause a constitutional crisis for shits and giggles.

Now it's just Heather Humphries, and Catherine Connolly.

They each exist, and have a body temperature of approximately 37 degrees.

...since an Otaku first gooned to Rei Ayanami.

(And the first episode of Evangelion premiered on Wednesday, October 4th, 1995)

Imagine coming home from cram scool at 18:30 in the evening and whatching this thing for the first time. This weird mix of giant robot cliche and what-the-fuck? Would you have kept watching it without knowing what it was to become? 

Anyway - not only have we had the series - we've had the manga, the movies, the weird AU's, the merchandise and that one garage figurine of Asuka sitting on a cutaway toilet (Seriously, WTF?). And it still lingers, drawing fans like a siren. Once captured, you cannot escape.

It's also been about 20 years since I started *that bloody fic* and maybe ten years since I lost any ability to create. So it goes. Time and the world move on.

This is a little something I've been working on, on and off, for a few years now. It's nowhere near done, but there's enough here to serve as a tasty teaser.

I walked by a bar and video rental place when I took a break from traveling tonight and their front display got me me thinking: Do specific drinks pair well with specific movies?

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Hello all! I’m limping back to being more active on this forum since I still like it as a digital space. I kinda faded from being here a whole lot after I fell off of working on my one Ranma / AMG fic Divine Patronage. But I’ve been doing plenty of other really cool stuff. And since I got permission from Bob to do a thread like this, I’m gonna shill completed projects, half-active projects I’ve been struggling to chug along on, and projects I keep kicking around. I don’t remember which of these projects I’ve brought up before but what the hell. Hoping people find them cool, that's all.

I'm starting to get my screenwriting groove on, actually, so I might just let fanfic fall by the wayside and focus on that. We will see, I guess.

Back in 2022 I lost interest in Divine Patronage and decided to go back to BGC. Two things I wanted to do were a) establish a fic that could be seen to take place in an AU that would constitute a second reboot of the franchise, with a timeline that could take off from the present and not feel wreathed in the retrofuturism of 2032 or 2040, and b) save Sylvie, as so many fics have, but then do something with her. The result was the only fic I’ve really, truly finished, after a little less than a year. Anatomy of a Lovedoll is about cybernetics and humanity and freedom and yuri angst and epic mecha fights. One of its key plot points will, I suspect, have to be retconned in an awkward way sometime soon but it’s no biggie.

Later that year, I got really into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners despite not really liking the release version of 2077 for a multitude of reasons, and then into a fic that got big in the embryonic phase of the fandom called Group Chat by Arrow S. Morgan. I ended up on the author’s Discord, hung out there a lot, made some friends of dubious merit, and went on to help write a pretty significant chapter in the fic’s back half. The fic starts off as horny screwball comedy and then becomes a bit more action-packed, and, yes, crosses over with the original Marathon trilogy in amazing ways. Very few longer Edgerunners fics hold up, to me, as more than pulpy adventures; Group Chat is one of them.

In early 2023, I started watching the Madhouse Black Lagoon anime. Oddly enough, I’ve never finished all of it because of how unpleasant I find some arcs, but I love the characters, the world, the unhinged action. The pseudophilosophical monologues lack panache to me, but there’s some really excellent fanfics birthed by it (and more than a few atrocities against good taste). So as Anatomy wound down I quickly spun up Bubblegum Black, which is the longest thing I've ever written by a country mile, an unhinged crossover in Roanapur, November, 2069, where the Knight Sabers are hired on by Sylia's sexy ex Balalaika to help her fend off a megacorporate takeover of the city, only for things to spiral out of control in true mecha-hyperviolence style. I love this fic, I want to do so much more with this fic, I have not updated this fic in nine months, I need to winnow this fic's ambitions down significantly. (And I'm envious of those who can sustain other fics longer and with more hits, even if I don't really enjoy their content. I have opinions! Judgements! Complaints!)

Same with something I spun up a year ago with a pal. I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust does a lot of very odd things as far as Edgerunners fanfic goes. It uses the BGC206X (The all-new, all-unhinged continuity for Anatomy and Black) timeline more than it does Cyberpunk's but still takes place in Night City; It's a pre-Sabers prequel involving Celia; It's also a 'Gloria lives and gets to do things' fanfic, since I seem to have an attraction to turning fridged heroines into badasses. I think the cowriter and I are onto something, but, again, time! The foe of all beautiful things, the high-octane fuel in the engine of entropy!

Let's see, what else... Nene Romanova god of the internet is a two-part atrocity against good taste where Nene and company deal with cyber-future 4chan and also Knight Saber real person fiction. The New Wave Empress uses interview format to imagine what it's like to talk to Sylia's public persona as a fashionista, especially when you're getting on her nerves. I like those shorts. They're pleasant chunks of nonsense. I think that's about it.

The one idea I'm having if I can't justify keeping up with writing big serialized fanfic is rewriting an old OVA episode or two, or just writing something that could fit in an episode and has tight structure. Revenge Road sticks out in particular; I just finished the original The Warriors novel, the Sol Yurick one, the one far more freaky in the best ways than Walter Hill's movie (which is itself a forerunner spiritually to streets of fire, then to Megazone 23, then etc etc etc), and I keep thinking about the world it crafts and how well it gets inside the heads of its protagonists. There's something there.

Hope this is interesting to someone!

Yeah, it's over a dozen years old now. It took Best Comedy at Nekocon X.

Skip the first 20 seconds or so to get past the vanity clip and to the AMV itself.



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