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Malcolm F. Cross

@foozzzball.bsky.social

380 followers 250 following 2.2K posts

Lazy. Writes. Is known to write fiction. Is almost fictional. Sometimes furry. Homepage: https://sinisbeautiful.com/ Patreon: http://patreon.com/MalcolmFCross Raw live draft for writing/creativity/motivation advice: #HacksawDraft

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · Sep 15

For the sake of promoting my own work, my latest novel, Mouse Cage, and its first pages. More details here: sinisbeautiful.com/mouse-cage/

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 2h

To-do list has been crazy lately, so, short (late!) public bloggy update.

www.patreon.com/posts/slippi... for Patreon, sinisbeautiful.com/slipping-by-... at my site.

TL;DR: Busy, busy, busy. Which is bearing some fruits... but not quite enough to share properly, yet.

Slipping by September

Short update, as things keep getting away from me!I think I am within touching distance of finishing a short story I mentioned months ago (VVV) that will hopefully be getting passed around some of …

sinisbeautiful.com

Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Marie Brennan @swantower.bsky.social · 23h

<totters out onto porch>

<settles into rocker>

<thumps cane a few times>

Let's talk about what the process of submitting short fiction used to look like, shall we? And about what it looks like now.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 1d

One if the best bits of feedback on 'I Am The Law' that I ever received was someone who told me they'd bought it for their dad as he was an arsehole and it would make him furious.

Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · Jan 28

Write the book you would like to see someone pull from a higgledy piggledy pile in a secondhand shop 63 years after your death and say, "This looks fucking weird. I think I will buy it for Joan."

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 2d

Coming back to this after a full night's sleep: Thank you, but it is very hard for an author to KNOW HOW ON EARTH TO REACT TO SUCH PRAISE. <3

It's like I am STARING INTO THE SUN.

... Thank you for giving me the opportunity to entertain you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

DamnDesertDog @damndesertdog.bsky.social · 3d

Finished Dog Country by @foozzzball.bsky.social
I don't know what to say at the moment but this might be book of the year. This one'll stay in my head for a long time.
👏👏👏

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 3d

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

A comic strip in six panels. The panels inerlock like a jigsaw with knobs and sockets. Two stick figures walk right to left through all the panels.

Panel 1: Person 1 says "I hear you're working on a new theory."
Panel 2 & 3: Person 2 says: "Yes, I'm calling it the jigsaw model. I think it could change our whole View of reality."
Panel 4: Person 1 says "When Will you publish?:
Panel 5: Person 2 says "But a couple of things are still bothering me." (this piece/panel is a bit squint)
Panel 6: This piece is rotated ninety degees and fits to the others very badly. Person 2 is saying "Soon. I feel like I'm really close"
A second look at the whole comic shows that the last two panels read in the wrong order because the jigsaw has been put together incorrectly.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Skipai Otter @skipai.bsky.social · 9d

Everyone in the UK that has had to use this service should be phoning up their MP office to demand an explanation why a law set out (OSA) did not have adequate protections of said data.

Phone calls
Emails
Actual visits to their office.

John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · 10d

NEW: breach of Discord age verification data.

Including some users passports & DLs

Age verification is a badly implemented data grab wrapped in a moral panic.

Mark my words, as age verification mandates expand, we'll end up more surveilled and less secure. 1/

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 7d

"I use it, it's just a tool like Photoshop," is the refrain from people I know that has me biting virtually clean through my tongue.

No. It's emptying you.

MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 11d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 8d

*by talking to myself out loud. ... Typos are part of my process, and every single one is precious. >.>

Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Blaise Ulysse Bernard Collins @wittywebhandle.bsky.social · 8d

Bluesky's lack of a coms team does indeed give us some of these funny moments such as:

"You're aware that you are ostensibly speaking for the company with the current role you have and the subject matter you're wading into, right?

what?"

Maja Öberg @majaoeberg.bsky.social · 8d

I do find it hilarious how they immediately backtracked after this and deleted the comment

a member of bluesky saying "Yeh" in response to the above post, with a journalist responding asking to get their exact quote over the thread in which the bluesky member responds with "what" and the journalist then rephrasing the question only for the bluesky member to delete the entire thread

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 8d

A somewhat-brief scribble as I try and work through a technique issue I've been wrestling with my talking to myself out quiet. (As opposed to out loud.)

scribbles.malcolmfcross.com/talking-out-...

Talking out Quiet - Talking to myself about action scenes.

Sometimes, while trying to figure things out, I engage in a process I refer to as 'ToQQing', or 'Talking out quiet' - as opposed to talking out loud - to work on my thoughts. Here's an example from to...

scribbles.malcolmfcross.com

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 8d

Here’s a mugshot of an incompetent, drug addled narcissist. He insisted the charges against him were trumped up.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 11d

As well as fulfilling predictions about the Online Safety Act, this should be a warning about the implementation of digital ID…

The Verge @theverge.com · 11d

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

An “unauthorized party” may have accessed the names of users, the last four digits of credit card numbers, and more.

buff.ly

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Jeni Tennison @jenitennison.com · 12d

Important read on digital ID based on experience in India.

Our investigations into Aadhar revealed that once such a system is implemented, it is almost impossible to prevent its proliferation into every interaction between the state and the resident, which turns each failed transaction into a potential criminal breach.

Politicians know that national IDs are hugely unpopular, which is why they invariably start with a scape-goat to sell the system to a sceptical public. These scapegoats offer a glimpse into the insecurities hidden in the national psyche. In India, Aadhar was sold to middle-class India as a technological balm to the widespread perception of corruption.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 12d

[Scene is ANCIENT GREECE - where SOCRATES and PLATO and others are sitting round, thinking]

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SOCRATES:
Plato..

PLATO:
Yes Socrates?

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SOCRATES:
Can you tell me, are you human?

PLATO:
Why… yes, Socrates

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SOCRATES:
And would you agree, Plato, that a human knows what a chariot is?

PLATO:
Um, yep

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SOCRATES:
So you can tell me, then

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[Socrates produces a papyrus, showing a drawing of the corner of a chariot wheel]

SOCRATES:
*Is that a chariot*?

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PLATO:
Well
that’s more just a bit of wheel

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SOCRATES:
So not a *chariot*.

PLATO:
No.

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SOCRATES:
[Producing another papyrus with the full drawing of the chariot, chopped into boxes]

So if a man were challenged to “tap the boxes containing chariots to prove you’re human” when he was just trying to check his ClubCard points... *where could he tap*?

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PLATO:
Well you can’t tap any of them really

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SOCRATES:
So are we not human?

PLATO:
‘Spose not.

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[Bleak pause]

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PLATO:
I’ll get the hemlock

SOCRATES:
Yeah

[ends]

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Malcolm F. Cross @foozzzball.bsky.social · 12d

A messy moment in a messy life. ;~; But don't we all feel like that, sometimes?

Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

DamnDesertDog @damndesertdog.bsky.social · 12d

I've never felt so much from a book since Watership Down. @foozzzball.bsky.social

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

scott⚡️mccloud @scottmccloud.bsky.social · 13d

Written 55 years ago, Schulz's heartfelt clarity cuts through the noise, even today.

h/t @tisserand.bsky.social

Scan of a typed letter from 1970, from Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, addressed to "Joel Lipton, 622 N. Foothill Road, Beverly Hills, Calif. 90210"

It reads:

"Dear Joel:

I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever been before. Certainly all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy. Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call "American Virtues" who lack this faith in our country.

I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.

Sincerely yours,

Charles M. Schulz"

At bottom is an illustration of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, a kite wrapped around the dog house.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Kyell Gold @kyellgold.com · 13d

I wrote some stuff about Dr. Jane Goodall, whom I met a few times, on the occasion of her passing.

open.substack.com/pub/kyellgol...

Dr. Jane Goodall and Empathy

Many years ago, when I was beginning to study animal behavior in graduate school, we were guided to study animals as clockwork mechanisms with some variations here and there.

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

It's me, Syd @adabear.art · 15d

furries i neeed you to stop sleeping on this game it's very good. it's like if stardew was mean to you via stakes rather than catty villagers (sorry stardew sorry sorry but uh. uhm. uh)

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Bill Nottingham @notting.bsky.social · 15d

Just read the whole damn thing that goes into the very depressing state of the numbers and the math that isn't mathing, but this is a very succinct representation of a specific type of feneric Executive (Dys)Function:

This is the true nature of labor that executives fail to comprehend at scale: that the things we do are not units of work, but extrapolations of experience, emotion, and context that cannot be condensed in written meaning. Business Idiots see our labor as the result of a smart manager saying “do this,” rather than human ingenuity interpreting both a request and the shit the manager didn’t say.

What does a CEO do? Uhhh, um, well, a Harvard study says they spend 25% of their time on “people and relationships,” 25% on “functional and business unit reviews,” 16% on “organization and culture,” and 21% on “strategy,” with a few percent here and there for things like “professional development.”

That’s who runs the vast majority of companies: people that describe their work predominantly as “looking at stuff,” “talking to people” and “thinking about what we do next.” The most highly-paid jobs in the world are impossible to describe, their labor described in a mish-mash of LinkedInspiraton, yet everybody else’s labor is an output that can be automated.

As a result, Large Language Models seem like magic. When you see everything as an outcome — an outcome you may or may not understand, and definitely don’t understand the process behind, let alone care about — you kind of already see your workers as LLMs.

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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 15d

Britain dominated the era of coal, the USA won the oil century and the Chinese are looking like the solar hegemons.

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 15d

Nigeria’s solar moment: 1.7 GW of Chinese panels imported in the past year, leapfrogging Egypt to become Africa’s #2.

Part of a 60% YoY surge across the continent per @ember-energy.org data.

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Reposted by Malcolm F. Cross

Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 17d

#OtD 28 Sep 1846 British troops opened fire on starving food rioters in Dungarvan, Ireland, killing one. The Great Famine lasted until the 1850s, killing around a million people and forced even more to emigrate, while food was exported for profit stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1005...

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TigerhawkVok @tigerhawkvok.bsky.social · 17d

I find this quote from Battlestar Galactica shockingly relevant here

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 17d

I know a lot of people won’t click through to read about “med beds” so here’s the crucial quote to explain how fucking crazy this is.

Trump just posted an AI video of himself promising every American access to this.

An increasingly popular conspiracy theory falsely centers around the existence of "med beds" a fabled medical instrument that does everything from reversing aging to regrowing missing limbs.
The theory has grown in popularity among followers of far-right movements like QAnon, some of whom claim to be urgently awaiting a med bed to treat severe health conditions.

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