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Matthew Claxton

@matthewclaxton.bsky.social

1.3K followers 540 following 8.4K posts

Semi-failed science fiction and fantasy writer, semi-successful local newspaper reporter. Deeply confused most of the time. He/him

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · Apr 24

My newspaper is on here now – if you're interested in local news in the Langley, British Columbia area, you could do worse than to follow @advancetimes.bsky.social.

Well, I write for it, so I guess that may alter your opinion. But still! Here since 1931! Still in print and online!

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Kay Orchison @kayorchison.bsky.social · 25m

This is not the reason you should buy Premee's books. You should buy them because they are all great. Not just good, GREAT.

I mostly don't post about books repeatedly, so if you see me banging on about one again and again, GO and GET THE DAMN THING cos it's REALLY THAT GOOD.

All of Premee's first.

Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 2h

"What do you mean" Well sometimes people ask me "So, do awards help with book sales?" and anyway, not universally. I definitely do NOT believe that I (or indeed any author!) am entitled to book sales. But I, uh. Can't live on mine. :)

a screencap from the ISFDB showing 'highest ranks authors and editors since 1950 by decade,' then the top 12 list showing premee mohamed at #3 for the 2020s. then a royalty statement indicating $209.10 total earned over a six month period, and, quite reasonably, an arrow pointing to a beetle with a clown face labeled 'me'

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 15m

Anyway, DO NOT listen to the next song in the cycle, especially if you've lost a cat recently.

Here's a song about penguins instead:

The Weakerthans - "Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault In Paris, 1961)"

YouTube video by Epitaph Records

music.youtube.com

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 16m

Reminded of The Weakerthans' Virtute the cat songs recently, and as is tradition, I am now almost crying.

"I swear I'm gonna bite you hard and taste your tinny blood / If you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating since the day you brought me home/

"I know you're strong."

Plea from a Cat Named Virtute

YouTube video by The Weakerthans - Topic

music.youtube.com

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 2h

"We've outsourced friendship, but you still have to scrub toilets!"

This is a such a bullshit dystopia.

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Sarah Pinsker @sarahpinsker.bsky.social · 6h

On the way home from the barn I heard a This American Life piece by a guy who had an AI clone of himself call his friends to have conversations and I would just like to state now that if anyone ever does this to me, we will no longer be friends. WTF is this world where we outsource all interaction?

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 6h

I live in British Columbia, so both hills and rain are pretty big factors.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah, this is why I roll my eyes at people who are like "We should ban private cars!"

Like, rural areas and small towns exist! People with big families! People with two large dogs! Wheelchair users! Plumbers and contractors!

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 6h

I think cycling advocates focus a huge amount on problem 1, because it's the only one that was obviously fixable, and sometimes dismissed or minimized the other two. But we can only get more people riding if we do everything we can to fix those issues, too.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 6h

The three big barriers:

1) Roads are dangerous/no bike lanes/shitty infrastructure. Fixable, requires politics

2) Ugh, hills!

3) Weather

We can fix two of the three, and good clothing/cycling culture can help with the last one.

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 6h

As a recreational cyclist, I got pretty excited when I realized that ebikes basically eliminate the "Ugh, I can't ride up hills!" barrier for casual/starting commuter cyclists. In many areas, it's one of the biggest barriers to adoption.

Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 7h

“The big advantage of bikes is that they go directly from where you start to where you finish, when you need to go. The advantage over cars is that they need perhaps 1/10th of the amount of space. Roads that jam up quickly with cars can carry effectively unlimited numbers of people by bicycle.”

Why e-bikes are more important the EVs

Bikes can actually transform cities in the way driverless cars promise

danielknowles.substack.com

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

jon rosenburger @jonrosenberg.bsky.social · 11h

They're spinning this as a marketing fail but I think the real story is just that people are stupid as fucking rocks now fortune.com/2025/10/10/p...

Lay's drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes | Fortune

New bags—matte-ified and designed to look like wood planks (like a potato crate)—will hold the chips with revamped ingredient lists.

fortune.com

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 7h

William Gibson's The Peripheral – near future economic precarity vs. some kind of weird post-scarcity future where money still… exists? But the people on either side of the divide can barely understand each other's systems.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 7h

Came here to say the Merchant Princes series is about money, but more in an economics way than a personal way.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 7h

On TV, both Veronica Mars and Friday Night Lights deal with money fairly often. Teen characters defined by whether they need a job, drive a nice/okay/shitty car, worry about money for specific things like college applications.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 8h

GODDAMMIT!

Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 8h

But honestly it never gets less funny to say "Yeah no I have two science degrees and no arts degrees, let's fuckin GOOOOOOOOO" (as I open my powerpoint slides)

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 8h

Today's great quotes also included me screeching "HEE HEE! You've been SCAMMED! I'm teaching writing but NOBODY TAUGHT ME HOW TO WRITE!"

(Luckily that was near the end, so people were less inclined to leave)

GCLS Writing Academy @gcls-wa.bsky.social · 9h

Another great gem from a GCLS Writing Academy presenter/teacher @premeemohamed.com
Premee: A story is the answer to a question.
#gclswa #gclswritingacademy

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 9h

Janky combat and skill systems, awkward character creation, game balance nowhere in sight.

Everyone had a blast, none of the rule stuff really matters once it's playable at a basic level.

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 10h

One of the fun things about playing tabletop role-playing games is 1) a lot of the games have TERRIBLE mechanics and systems and 2) this doesn't really matter at all.

Spent the last year running a game a friend and I picked purely for nostalgia value – a 1995 Palladium game.

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 13h

Relatedly, I recall a lot of "the joy of canceling plans" jokes and memes from the 2010s and now folks are talking about a loneliness epidemic, and, well...

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 14h

People will scoff at virtue signaling and then wonder why today’s billionaires don’t build museums, libraries, hospitals, and universities like Gilded Age ones did.

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Jason Adams @jamnpp.bsky.social · 11h

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world,... I feel like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in.

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Reposted by Matthew Claxton

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 12h

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, I read Planet of Exile a few years back (grabbed a crumbling used copy) and was struck at how you could see it was clearly Le Guin, but still finding her feet. Better than her peers, but still more recognizable as being in the pulpy 1960s SF mainstream than her later work, if that makes sense.

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Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 1d

Very true!

Matthew Claxton @matthewclaxton.bsky.social · 1d

One of the things I'm really noticing is that things a lot of other authors would lavish chapters on, she skims over in half a paragraph. Making strong narrative choices all the way through. Really enjoying it, not surprisingly!

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