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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 3h

I haven't written much fiction this year because *waves at life*, but I'm very pleased with the two stories that got published.

- Child of the Mountain in Clarkesworld 👧🪶🧠(clarkesworldmagazine.com/dewinter_01_...)

- Desert Beetle Song in Tractor Beam 🪲🏜️🌠(www.tractorbeam.earth/story/desert...)

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 1d

I know, it's crazy!

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 1d

Dinosaur tail (with feathers) in amber!
Dinosaur! Tail! In amber!

#science #biology #dinosaur

A Feathered Dinosaur Tail with Primitive Plumage Trapped in Mid-Cretaceous Amber

Xing et al. describe the tail of a non-avialan theropod (coelurosaur) preserved in Burmese amber, combining bone outlines with microscopic details of plumage and integument. This specimen sheds new li...

www.cell.com

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 6d

That means so much to me. I really appreciate that. Let me know what you think when you read it!

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 6d

What a pleasure to contribute to this issue with an essay on... space bears!

👉 clarkesworldmagazine.com/de_winter_10...

Clarkesworld @clarkesworldmagazine.com · 7d

Our 19th anniversary issue of Clarkesworld features original fiction by Isabel J. Kim, Fiona Moore, H.H. Pak, Greg Egan, Liu Maijia, Carrie Vaughn, and Phoebe Barton.

Online now at:
clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue_229

Subscriptions available at:
clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

Cover art by Quentin Stipp features a robot and two humans walking into a forest and towards a tall building with red tubes that have burst through the upper levels and into the sky.

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 9d

I've had worse Monday mornings...

#writing #science

Message saying: "I discovered you through your Clarkesworld article “Symbiosis and Holobionts, or Life Is a Manifold”. It was brilliant, and I’ve been following you here ever since."

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 12d

What makes a novel timeless?

"... bestsellers are longer, and include more punctuation, social words, and pronouns. In contrast, timeless novels feature longer sentences, more plural pronouns, more numbers and enumeration, and more food-related words."

#science #writing

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Tajja Isen @tajjaisen.bsky.social · 12d

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus

Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

thewalrus.ca

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 12d

This goes for every day ending on -y.

Gareth L. Powell @garethlpowell.bsky.social · 12d

It's Friday. Buy yourself a book. You deserve it.

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 12d

Termite farmers.

"... termites build a nest that protects the fungal comb, or “garden.” These insects are therefore driven to increase the yield of their garden by exhibiting behaviors such as garden feeding, habitual planting, altering the garden environment, and harvesting."

#science #biology

Gardening strategies of termite farmers

Termites use microbe-infused soil to protect a fungal symbiont

www.science.org

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 14d

Can synthetic biology help save endangered ecosystems?
Our new paper with @vmaull.bsky.social explores how engineered genes can spread through soil microbes.
We model how synthetic gene transfer can support biodiversity. @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 19d

When a Blue Jay and a Green Jay have a baby, it's a... Grue Jay! (One for hybrid scholar @jenteo.bsky.social)

#science #biology #animals #evolution

A grue jay? Rare hybrid bird identified in Texas

Biologists at The University of Texas at Austin, who have reported discovering a bird that's the natural result of a green jay and a blue jay's mating, say it may be among the first examples of a hybr...

phys.org

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 21d

AI and human creativity, or a story about productivity, men of steel, and creative souls.

#technology #culture #science

AI And Human Creativity

Science says... - man of steel - rust

subtlesparks.substack.com

Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Thomas Ha @thomasha.bsky.social · 22d

Hey! It's midnight on the east coast, so it's release day. Thanks to @undertow.bsky.social for being such a fantastic publisher. Thanks to family, friends, and fellow writers for their support. The short fic grind has ups and downs, but it's a blast. Fricken love what we do. Thanks for reading.

A pile of Uncertain Sons, just a lot of uncertainty and a lot of sons

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 29d

Orangutans are intuitive gym bros who track their macros!

"... orangutans regulate protein and regularly switch between exogenous and endogenous nutritional substrates as preferred food resource availability declines."

#science #biology #animal 🧪 🦧

Integrated behavioral and metabolically flexible responses of wild orangutans to ecologically driven dietary variation

Orangutans have evolved behavioral and metabolic flexibility to cope with a feast-and-famine ecology.

www.science.org

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · 29d

Or a very, very big man.

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · Sep 6

Totally agree, mari!

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · Sep 5

*holds breath

#science #health

Lewy body dementia promotion by air pollutants

Evidence links air pollution to dementia, yet its role in Lewy body dementia (LBD) remains unclear. In this work, we showed in a cohort of 56.5 million individuals across the United States that fine p...

www.science.org

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · Sep 4

RIP SoMe (as we know it). Great reflections by @jamesosullivan.bsky.social in @noemamag.com

"The problem is not just the rise of fake material, but the collapse of context and the acceptance that truth no longer matters as long as our cravings for colors and noise are satisfied."

#technology

The Last Days Of Social Media | NOEMA

Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.

www.noemamag.com

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Jente Ottenburghs | Avian Hybrids @jenteo.bsky.social · Sep 4

Crazy discovery in ants 🤯🐜

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago."

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · Sep 2

In this piece for Aeon, I argue that, while nanotechnology is now a very real and mature field, a popular early vision of it was an example of what I am calling an "oneiric technology": a fantasy of the sort that Silicon Valley loves.
aeon.co/essays/no-su...

No suffering, no death, no limits: the nanobots pipe dream | Aeon Essays

Thirty years ago, nanotech was about to change everything. Let’s not get tricked again by Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

aeon.co

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

LindenShieldARTs @lindenshieldarts.bsky.social · Sep 2

Two fantastic sceneries that are waiting for their forever home in my shop! ✨
 And if you want to learn how to paint your own, head on over to my Patreon where you can find video tutorials for them~
 Which do you prefer? 💜
 Shop: lindenshieldarts.com Patreon: patreon.com/lindenshieldarts

A photo of two portrait format gouache paintings, placed on a wooden desk and surrounded by a paint brush, hag stones, semi-precious stones, leaves, and a painted magic circle in the top left corner. The left painting features a magic cavern lit up both by pale pink back lighting, and tiny luminescent teal minerals in the fore- and middleground. The right painting featured a purplish, misty nighttime canyon, bordered by conifers, under a sickle moon. A fallen, arching tree trunk creates a bridge between the sides of the canyon.

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Aug 28

Here is "AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto". I've been working on this feverishly because the issue seems to me so urgent - and I'm worried extreme positions on both sides are becoming locked in, when the best way forward is in the centre. Please read it! philpapers.org/rec/BIRACA-4

The abstract of "AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto", available at the posted link.

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Gunnar De Winter @gunnardewinter.bsky.social · Aug 28

The U-hump of happiness has disappeared. It's basically despair until retirement.

"... this change has come about because the mental health of the young has deteriorated compared to that of older people"

(study: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...)

#science #culture #health

A graph of trends in despair by agein the United States for two periods - 2009-2018 (the blue line) and 2019-2024 (the red dotted line). It is apparent that the hump-shape in despair by age in the first period has been replaced by despair declining in age due to a rise in the rate of despair among younger people.

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Reposted by Gunnar De Winter

Renan Bernardo @renanbernardo.com · Aug 25

Happy to announce that "The Hungry Mouth at the Edge of Space and the Goddess Knitting at Home" will be out this Wednesday at Reactor! 🎉

Stay tuned for:
☄️ Space Fantasy
👹 Evil space entities
👻 Ghosts of dead captains
🇧🇷 Brazilian street markets
👵🏾 Goddess-grandmothers

Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · Aug 25

All the captain wanted was to found a street market in a distant moon. But now she's dead.

This week. "The Hungry Mouth at the Edge of Space and the Goddess Knitting At Home" by @renanbernardo.com

Art by Alix Pentecost Farren
Edited by @annvandermeer.bsky.social

Two figures floating on a green background. One holds a tangle of vines in one hand, fully illustrated, while the second figure appears as a sketchy figure trapped in the vines

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