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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 7h

*It's 25 years from now and you're like: "I'm flying to Belgrade, Serbia for my A)-Biotech medical upgrade, because it's legal and cheap over there"

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 9h

*What's worse: a make-believe civil war with fake invasions, or politicians pulling a walkaway where the last one out of the bureaucracy turns off the lights forever

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 10h

*If "workslop" is generated product that ticks the checkboxes of labor without advancing the mission, then what does "playslop" look like? "Leisure activity" with no real amusement, like automating the grind in a videogame, maybe

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*I guess I'm sub-skeeting him here, but this highly distinguished computer scientist was on the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society and on the US President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, and yet he still can't manage with Apple's dreadful bullshit

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*Pretty sure that these harmless Rotterdam art-hippie urbanites would qualify as "globalization terrorists" over at the U.S. War Dept

www.engagerotterdam.nl/en-us/manifest

manifesto

www.engagerotterdam.nl

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*It was a deliberated career choice really: "Why is this 70-year-old sci-fi guy rewriting the same trilogy for the fourth time"

Or else: "He was '80s Cyberpunk Underground, and nowadays he's so freakin' underground that even four different intelligence services never know where he lives" 👍🤖🚀🖋️

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*I always knew this day would come if I lived long enough: "Didn't he used to be Bruce Sterling, whatever happened to him"

*It's kind of exciting

Danny Lore @weredawgz.blacksky.app · 1d

I love Bruce Sterling i should go back and reread some stuff

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work," as Gustave Flaubert used to say

*When he wasn't catching syphilis in Beirut, and all that

Lavie Tidhar @lavietidhar.bsky.social · 1d

I often say things like "the old cyberpunks are weird".

(affectionately!)

(but really, they are)

(and "Mad" Rucker (who seeded the Boppers on Titan) is an actual character in the Central Station universe)

#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

I'm inclined to agree, but there are some micro-ethnic groups scattered here and there whose weirdness goes underappreciated. Mom, dad, the kids are weird... and Grandpa, 3 times as weird

*Especially if he's into math

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*To quote a guy on Mastodon:

We went from "we will deport the worst of the worst" to "we will deport anyone here illegally" to "we will round up anyone who looks wrong" to "people who live in cities are the enemy" essentially overnight.

Jonathan Alters @pangelico.bsky.social · 1d

They’re coming for the globalists now too? Who’s next, the politically correct?

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*it's surprisingly common for political activists to grow by the size of their enemies. It's like some kind of Robert Boyle Gas Law. The political pressure bloats the least likely balloons

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 1d

@lataco.bsky.social first began as a blog documenting local Mexican cuisine. Now, it’s an essential reporting powerhouse to the city as Trump’s mass deportation plot unfolds.

Check out the latest from our friends at Reveal: tinyurl.com/4cm2bsdr

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*Anybody who has studied the extensive saga of French history knows that France is never too big to fail. Even a Napoleonic Imperial France half as big as all Europe is not too big for an abject collapse: swords, ostrich feathers, leopard-skins and all

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*Maybe they should rename themselves "Antiglobalist Security," to fit with the "War Department" thing

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

I'm inclined to agree, but there are some micro-ethnic groups scattered here and there whose weirdness goes underappreciated. Mom, dad, the kids are weird... and Grandpa, 3 times as weird

*Especially if he's into math

Rudy Rucker @rudytheelder.bsky.social · 2d

Of my various interest groups over the years mathematicians are the most peculiar. More than acid heads, punks, computer hackers, artists, mystics, and SF writers. There's even a name for what we use. Instead of "logic" we have "mathematical logic". Which I got my PhD in. What---ME mad?

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 1d

*Here, in another SF story which isn't "Il Versificatore," Primo Levi has it figured out that a cybernetic machine that writes poetry would also offer spiritual counsel to the users, ChatGPT psychoanalysis-style.

*How did Levi do that #prophecy

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*You can "correct" slop, but it's rather like oil-painting, where you have to brush-on an additional layer of more finely-diluted slopness.

*The left one is the earlier one. And it's "better." More of the AI frisson

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*I wonder how much money these phishing guys make and how do they make it

*Maybe they're hapless slaves in a camp in Myanmar

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*You look at "weird" science fiction people and, like, how many of them do any time in prisons and madhouses

*Not all that many, really. Surprisingly few.

*They might have a *day-job* as some orderly in one of those places

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*Science fiction writers are not the weirdest people that I've ever hung out with, but there are some SF creatives who really are pretty darn weird

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*Well, there's Tanith Lee (1947-2015). Upstaging Chelsea Quinn Yarbro twice in Chelsea's own obituary

*Our Tanith, man, that was a real-deal weird fantasy writer

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

*What if "War Stars" is written with otherworldly ChatGPT multidisciplinary erudition and is much more interesting than some L.A. studio product from the young George Lucas

*Every Jawa from Tattooine has a unique generated backstory ten million pages long

Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 3d

Why would I pay for your book when I can go straight to ChatGPT and have it spit out something and for cheaper? Why would I pay for your ugly AI art when I too can access Midjourney?

And why would I pay for a licensed AI Star Wars movie when I can generate War Stars for a few bucks?

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 2d

"Creative writer"? Trump hates you and wants you replaced with slop

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 4d

*Isn't this just "Facebook Libra" six years later with some "AI" painted on?

www.cloudflare.com/en-au/press/...

Cloudflare Introduces NET Dollar to Support a New Business Model for the AI-Driven Internet | Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced plans to introduce NET Dollar, a new U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin that will enable instant, secure transactions f...

www.cloudflare.com

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 4d

*A nonhuman AI "economics" where there's no such thing as a "job." Would there be no "consumers" and no "advertising," either

qz.com/universal-ba...

Universal basic income won't save us from AI. Here's why

Universal basic income, or UBI, has been floated as a potential solution for the coming AI revolution. But experts warn it's far from a perfect fix

qz.com

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 4d

"Creating an ignorance-base: Exploring known unknowns in the scientific literature"

"Unlock your AI access" so as to "read strategically"🤖

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 4d

*Writing "science fiction" about sciences that don't exist or can't exist, that's very Borges, it's very Stanislaw Lem

*Kinda "caviar for the multitude," but that's not gonna stop me. The multitude have their own favorite issues and I have mine, okay 🤖🖋️🚀

Larry Hunter @proflhunter.bsky.social · 4d

Wishful metaphor? These days I look for the empty holes in the rocks. Which are important because they tell us where to do the next science. Like www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
or www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Creating an ignorance-base: Exploring known unknowns in the scientific literature

Scientific discovery progresses by exploring new and uncharted territory. More specifically, it advances by a process of transforming unknown unknowns…

www.sciencedirect.com

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