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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 12h

Yeah, saw that yesterday. (Facepalm.)

Reposted by Charlie Stross

Diane Ackland @author.dianeackland.com · 1d

Agreed. It's a tenuous system, and Patreon is already cracking down on adult content. Ream is a good alternative, but is not as well known outside of romance circles (and even then, it's not well known). They're sub-based but moving towards supporting single sales as well.

Ream

A membership platform built by authors for authors.

reamstories.com

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 1d

I notice a lot of RR authors use it to drive readers towards their Patreon accounts, which get extra fiction drops and early access for a subscription. The problem is, what happens if Patreon is taken over or kneecapped by a rival (eg. Amazon takes aim at them)?

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 1d

You haven't discovered Royal Road and the other serial webfic aggregators yet, have you?

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Reposted by Charlie Stross

CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 1d

Wow, I didn’t know the UK also spent 30 years teaching vibe reading. And amazing how vibe reading can contort every word on the page.

Paul Haine @paulhaine.bsky.social · 1d

Kemi Badenoch claiming Terry Pratchett as her favourite author is wild

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 1d

I haven't seen that.

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

I speculate that *all* penetrative microgravity sex is to some extent bondage sex. Also that chastity fetishists will *definitely* be interested in the potential of space suits for locking up their subs.

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

And decades earlier by John Varley. (Notably: Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance)

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

See also John Christie. (He was a notorious and extreme version who turned serial killer, but it wasn't uncommon among the generation who were teens during WW2 and got issued with gas masks, either. A couple of teachers when I was at school in the 70s ...)

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Reposted by Charlie Stross

Anders Sandberg @arenamontanus.bsky.social · 2d

The cliched "sexy robot" has breasts because of the male mammalian gaze. What attributes would a "sexy von Neumann replicator" have?

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

Yes, well: note I said *future*, and also note that there's an extensive history of space suit designs that have never been flown because (a) it's horrifically expensive (needs a crewed launch vehicle) and (b) it's safety-critical (if it fails, someone dies). So current designs are conservative.

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

Mad SF speculation:

In 1918 young men came home from the trenches with a new sexual fetish: gas masks.

Spacesuits are still exotic, but in an SF setting with space travel, they're going to be as common as respirators (and better desined than ours).

What sexual fetishes do they lend themselves to?

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

Does building your protagonist's spaceship and then flying it between planets in KSP count as writing? Asking for a "friend".

Kate Heartfield @kateheartfield.com · 2d

Making a floor plan for your character's house counts as writing.

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

I've never listened to The Archers (on BBC Radio 4). Or seen East Enders or Alien. (I'll cop to Aliens. Which put me off the entire franchise.)

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Reposted by Charlie Stross

Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 2d

Anyone remember Reform promising to go into their new councils with DOGE-style units to slash “waste” and stop taxes from rising? Yeah, it went exactly as you’d expect if you put people in charge who have no idea how anything works.

Reform poised to raise Kent council tax as Musk-inspired attack on costs falters
ANNA GROSS - KENT
Kent's local authority will probably raise council tax rates next year as Reform UK strugglesto find big savings under an Elon Musk-inspired cost-cutting drive.
Kent was one of 10 councils that Nigel Farage's rightwing populist party seized in a swath of local election victories in May. He vowed to save "a lot of money" by abolishing "wasteful" spending.
But Diane Morton, Reform's cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services were already "down to the bare bones".
"We've got more demand than ever before and it's growing." she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. "We just want more money." As with many local
authorities in England, the bulk of declined to say whether council tax Kent's budget went on adult and chil-
would be raised but other Reform coun-
dren's social care, as well as on children cillors said they wanted to avoid hitting
with special educational needs, which the full 5 percent.
together accounted for about 50 per
Reform's experience highlights some
cent of its £2.5bn annual expenditure.
of the obstacles it may face in national
All councils have a legal duty to bal-
government if it won the next general
ance their books and will set next year's
election and pursued its pledge to slash
budgets in February or March. Ahead of taxes and spending. "Everyone thought
that, most councils in England are we d come in and there were going to be
expected to increase council tax by 5 per
these huge costs we could cut away but
cent, the maximum allowed.
there just aren't," said a third senior
"I think it's going to be 5 per cent,"
Reform cabinet member in Kent.
Morton said of where Kent would land
Farage has set up a Reform Depart-
on tax rises, adding that every 1 per cent ment of Government Efficiency team -
increase equated to an extra E10mn.
modelled on Musk's "Doge" i…

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 2d

It all came bubbling up during the middle of the 90s. That sequence of stories coincided with the dot-com bubble for a reason (I wrote it as therapy, to avoid a work-induced nervous breakdown ...)

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

I was late-breaking. Sold my first short story to Interzone at 20, but hung fire on novels until the 21st century—I'm the last member of the 1980s "Interzone Generation" to break through. (Think Kim Newman, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, etc. Then me, trailing behind, 15 years late to the party ...)

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

Ahem: that was in "Tourist", the third story in the cycle, originally published in Asimov's SF in 2002.

Glaringly obvious this was a risk from WAY back. (I first saw someone with a wearable computer and a HUD strapped to his face in 1996.)

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Reposted by Charlie Stross

alana (witch mode) @bonestudent.ing · 3d

Just like how all of these techbros are rabid transphobes while claiming to love the Matrix. And also while never watching the Animatrix.

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

Musk also named his drone ships after Iain Banks' Culture ships. Not realizing that the ships of the Culture were autonomous individuals and Iain was, in Musk's terms, a commie.

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Reposted by Charlie Stross

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman @josie.zone · 3d

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

And this is why the Labour/Tory duopoly is crumbling visibly by the month.

It was the press wot did it!

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

I am reminded of pretty much the ENTIRE middle east, including Iran, where by "stomping on the left" the Ba'ath (or the Shah) left an opposition vacuum which was occupied by the worst possible religious fanatics. (Who were untouchable by the secular Ba'ath, like the Lutheran church in the DDR.)

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

Well, that *was* the one novel I wrote in a mad fit of hypergraphia in 18 days from start to finish! So "horked up" is about right. I'm just surprised it sold. (I'd been unable to write for two months before then, due to travel committments then a medical issue: when it wore off, the dam burst ...)

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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 3d

I think we can safely ignore that possibility ...

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