rznicolet

9 ms·

1.
Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera(antipope.org)
10 points by rznicolet 7d ago|0 comments
2.
by rznicolet 17d ago
Yeah, I expect the tidal forces and whatnot are, shall we say, not negligible in practice.
3.
From poop to plants, how wolves help blueberries grow and spread in Minnesota(mprnews.org)
2 points by rznicolet 17d ago|0 comments
4.
The Wormhole Hall of Shame(rznicolet.com)
42 points by rznicolet 17d ago|20 comments
5.
I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)(rwwgreene.substack.com)
89 points by rznicolet 26d ago|60 comments
6.
Dynamical dark energy and the week that broke cosmology(perimeterinstitute.ca)
54 points by rznicolet 28d ago|27 comments
7.
by rznicolet 2mo ago
It's even funnier that, at least around here, one of the biggest crime problems is people stealing copper wiring... from streetlights...
8.
by rznicolet 2mo ago
Small counterpoint to your analogy, as someone who studied astrophysics: I actually did have a requirement to understand general relativity! Deriving all of it independently from scratch wasn't something we did, but there _were_ deriv
9.
by rznicolet 2mo ago
In which I expound on a very petty complaint about fictional wormholes.
10.
by rznicolet 3mo ago
This reminds me very much of Buffer Time from Star Trek: Lower Decks, but applies pretty well to a lot of life. No slack = no margin for error or the unexpected...
11.
Thoughts on "The Machine Stops"(rznicolet.com)
2 points by rznicolet 6mo ago|1 comments
12.
by rznicolet 6mo ago
I reread the famed short story recently, and had some thoughts about how we could try to avoid the bad ending in real life.
13.
by rznicolet 6mo ago
And, with publishers, you can get both monopoly _and_ monopsony problems. The latter is, I believe, one reason the attempt to consolidate from Big Five to Big Four failed -- I'm forgetting which two publishers were trying to merge, bu
14.
by rznicolet 6mo ago
Yeah... for new stuff, I follow authors I already like on social media and see what they recommend from other folks (and why). I've had a miss or two, but that's generally a good start.
15.
by rznicolet 6mo ago
As somebody whose first book came out last month from a (very) small indie press... yeah. In trad publishing, once you've got an agent (not an insignificant step), you only have a handful of shots at the Big Five publishers with your
16.
by rznicolet 7mo ago
Blood of the Old Kings, by Sung-Il Kim (translated by Anton Hur). Absolutely fabulous fantasy novel -- it's an about folks in an empire literally powered by the dead, and the folks fighting against its worst excesses. Very strange, m
17.
by rznicolet 9mo ago
You joke, but, alas, there is a _real_ company kinda trying to do this. Reflect Orbital[1] wants to set up space mirrors, so you can have daytime at night for your solar panels! (Various issues, like around light pollution and the fact th
18.
I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)(rwwgreene.substack.com)
3 points by rznicolet 9mo ago|1 comments
19.
An Abbreviated Survey of AI (In Fiction)(rznicolet.com)
1 points by rznicolet 1y ago|0 comments
20.
by rznicolet 1y ago
Yes... but that ocean has a lot of trash and algal blooms to work around. If you're not careful, you end up the sea turtle with a stomach full of plastic. That issue of varying quality of web-based information (and varying ability to
21.
by rznicolet 1y ago
Watch the source - Avi Loeb has a poor reputation among solar system astronomers _and_ scientists who work on SETI and exobiology, due to poorly supported claims of alien (meaning intelligent) origin for many different things, including &#x
22.
by rznicolet 1y ago
Writing SFF novels! I need to put it up on the ol' blog-thing, but I've signed a contract with a small press for a debut novel, which is highly exciting. That one's urban fantasy from the point of view of the wizard's m
23.
by rznicolet 2y ago
The 100 richest people are (by design) going to be very unrepresentative of the whole, depending on how "rich" is defined. How does the balance between inheritance and other sources of wealth shift if we look further down the lis
24.
by rznicolet 2y ago
Galatea is an old one I enjoyed, essentially as a character piece: https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/emrhyy7pp0c8bjkjeuhs... I'm not sold on generative AI for this purpose -- maintaining a consistent ch
25.
by rznicolet 2y ago
Everything coming in speeds up when it falls to earth. Tiny stuff burns up completely in the upper atmosphere, where the pressure is low, because they have low surface area per mass -- the atmosphere can stop them entirely. Their terminal
26.
by rznicolet 2y ago
Aside from bog-standard machine learning for work purposes -- novels! (Because I apparently can't restrict myself to just one.) You can see some of my world-noodling about aliens that don't need to breathe at: https://
27.
Why Journalists Can't Always Tell You What They Know(aftermath.site)
4 points by rznicolet 2y ago|0 comments
28.
by rznicolet 2y ago
I wonder how this is going to play out. At a company I previously worked for, we ended up not rolling out personalized on-site search because while the results were better in theory, in practice it was so slow nobody wanted to use it. Then
29.
Yes, People Still Buy Books(slate.com)
15 points by rznicolet 2y ago|9 comments