Tom Doyle
@tomdoyle.bsky.social
510 followers 460 following 1.5K posts
science fiction and fantasy writer, author of the American Craftsmen trilogy, Border Crosser, and the Agent of Exiles audio adventure series.
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tomdoyle.bsky.social
I'm a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for similar reasons--saved me from a lot of that nonsense later in life.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
OK, this makes the whole District 9 thing a notch more understandable, but still not great.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
"All praise, she's found the awful truth, Balthazar"
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Even apart from the popular response, people w/ obscene amounts of treasure empowering grifters to take it all from them doesn't seem like a good business model. None of these guys is a Krupp--what they sell isn't essential to this regime's non-existent program (not even the surveillance/AI stuff)
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Earned some royalties for Jethro Tull though.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
It's funny that humans seem to be the ones failing their end of the Turing test.
Reposted by Tom Doyle
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Likely not a coincidence that this has arisen after witnesses to the previous unpleasantness have passed away. But I agree with your recent book that handling 2008 better might've helped.
As a side note, some good African-American speculative fiction set during the interwar period and adjacent.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Ha, I was on a TV and Film SF/F soundtrack panel at Glasgow Worldcon, and I asked the audience if they liked McCreary's work on Outlander, and they unanimously did, so yep, he did it.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
I don't know who needs to hear this, but I'm not the Tom Doyle who wrote the Cosmic Thread collection of stories.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
And it connection with that, Freud's writing about the thanatos drive as applied to a society.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
@delong.social Hey Brad, I've been reminded a lot lately of of our reading of Neumann's Behemoth in Soc.St. 10, and how he was so very wrong in some respects about how nonrational things were getting in Germany (at least in the 1st edition of his book).
tomdoyle.bsky.social
His "it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake" has been rattling around in my head a lot lately, because it seems to apply to a lot of arguments.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
This also mixes w/ what I call the Trotskyite error (I first noticed its prominence among the Spartacist Youth)--idea that things have to get worse before they get better. This discourages hard work of incremental improvement, and ignores that when things get worse, they usually continue to do so
Reposted by Tom Doyle
djl71.bsky.social
For more about "Force 10 From Navarone"s applicability to the USA today, please read my latest free newsletter, Synthesizing Sense, Vol. 38. substack.com/home/post/p-...
tomdoyle.bsky.social
I'd check your math before you try that with him--I here he's blaising hot with figures.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Nah, it's a Zenomorph if it can never beat a tortoise in a race.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
A lot of them were brought up with what I think of as the Trotskyite idea that things have to get worse before they get better, when history shows that when things get worse, they generally just keep getting worse still.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Ha, also, you'd think a cultist of technological determinism would have mastered the logic of Rhett Butler's cannon factory speech.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Some of those readers/listeners may have made it necessary in a not-so-great way
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Got my covid and flu shots. Worth getting done whatever speed bumps they throw into the process.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
Holy crap, Sitchin stuff? I read his work as a kid--even as a youngster, the orbital mechanics looked like BS, but I appreciated his twisted introduction to Sumerian mythology.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
You're well rid of that nonsense. The Rapture's for "I told you so" posers. Serious end timers go to Valhalla.
tomdoyle.bsky.social
It was both cautionary and deceiving--it helped perpetuate the myth that fascism was efficient in some respects. But the drugged up oatmeal brained leader manipulated by his advisers sure looks familiar.