Category: Blog

I’m selling books at the Authors & Artists Fair today! If you’re in Eugene, drop by to say “hi” and check out all the new books I have this year!

---

I am having so many lovely AI-positive conversations with people at the Authors & Artists Fair today! People IRL are so much more reasonable about AI than so much of what I see online. Mostly they seem to range from curious to enthusiastic, and it’s just so nice. Continue reading “Authors & Artists Fair 2023”

I’m rewatching the original Quantum Leap with my ten-year-old, and we’re up to the episode where a town tries to outlaw rock’n’roll…

And it just has me thinking about what a weird trip it’s been this last year discovering how many people would still ban rock if it were new. Continue reading “Banning Rock’n’Roll”

It’s bad Christmas movie season!

We’re starting this year off with Mystic Christmas, because there’s a sea lion in the picture for it.

Will there actually be a sea lion in the movie??? Hard to say! Fingers crossed. Continue reading “Mystic Christmas & Never Been Chris’d”

In some ways, I think I Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward shaped my beliefs even more than Star Trek, which is impressive as Star Trek is basically my heart and soul.

But Looking Backward paints a picture of a similar utopia while actually making sense and being thought through. Continue reading “Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy”

It would just be so incredibly cool if when people don’t understand a topic or really know anything about it, they would start by seeking out information with kindness and politeness instead of with cruelty, foisting assumptions at people, and general name calling.

Discussing the effects of AI was so much more fun before most of my little societies turned it into a purity issue where if you don’t express the Right and Correct beliefs you’re fair game for cruelty and name calling. Continue reading “Engaging in the Name of Outreach (Or Not)”

Hey, Eugene people,

My kid has been seeing JEFF SPERLA at BETTS PSYCHIATRIC, but he has gone off the rails. Today, he fat shamed my kid, interrogated him about his snacking habits, berated him for still masking in public to protect against Covid, and finally punished him for basically not fitting some weird mold that this doctor had in mind by withholding ADHD meds THAT THE DOCTOR HIMSELF HAD RECOMMENDED. Continue reading “Jeff Sperla”

I don’t seek out arguments about AI, because it’s not worth my time. But if someone who’s clearly connected to a community I value comes at me, I do my best to discuss the topics reasonably. And when I do… it’s just so sad how circular and incoherent the anti arguments are.

I guess that saying this might draw more people into arguing at me. And that thought makes me tired. But also, I decided some time ago that I wasn’t going to let the meanness of the anti crowd make be quiet. Continue reading “Peer Pressure”

That feeling when you realize that something in the book you’re writing may contradict established canon in a related book you’ve already published, so you do a bunch of research on your own works… finally concluding that it’s fine, and you’d already dealt with the problem.

Poems are weird. It’s hard to tell when they’re done. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re anything at all until they’ve sat in your mind a long time and somehow not disappeared.

I just finished rewatching The Good Place for the first time since it ended. The end hit me way harder this time. It’s only a few years later, but I was under 40 then and am over 40 now.

I think… I still felt immortal just a few years ago, and now I’m wrestling with mortality. Continue reading “Not Wanting to Walk through the Door”