#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 3. Do genre conventions provide an essential framework, or stifle original storytelling? Genre conventions are a crutch for the imagination: they're also a marketing tool. But I think you can get good results by recombining them in ways nobody else has thought of, or by transgressing genre boundaries deliberately. (I've got this series for you: it's Lovecraftian horror but also political satire and office comedy with IT tech support humour, some background romance... )

Hey @npub1hyku...3p33 , they're taking you literally now! #enshittification

LGBTQIA+ and Tech

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️ (@LilahTovMoon@tech.lgbt)

"Kohler can access data and pictures from toilet camera" It's amazing what passes for a totally normal sentence in 2025 https://varlogsimon.leafl...

Is it just me, or does the old Evil Overlord List look an awful lot like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, Peter Thiel et al are systematically looting it for all the worst of their ideas? https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/evil.overlord

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 2: What do you dislike as reader and thus avoid in your own work? TOO MANY CLICHEs! I began work on a space opera in 2015 and as prep I wrote up a taxonomy of cliches in space opera, just so I could avoid them. It's a LONG list, and it's not even exhaustive! Note that writing a space opera that accounts for all these cliches—either by avoiding them or by deploying them with deliberation—is not difficult. They're a symptom of sloppy writing. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html

This is basically three monstrous stellar time bombs in a trench coat, dancing in circles around each other …

Mastodon

Phil Plait (@badastro@mastodon.social)

This is a staggering cool JWST image of one of the most terrifying star systems I have ever seen. Apep is a monster… *three* monsters, actually, ...

This is what malicious compliance looks like (sub-editor handed repugnant article: "hmm, I wonder what photo I can pair with this to undermine it …")

Universeodon Social Media

George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 (@georgetakei@universeodon.com)

Attached: 1 image You can always depend on the Murdochs to have the worst takes.

Psst: if you're in the USA or Canada, Amazon.com are selling my novel "A Conventional Boy" for $2.99 for the next two weeks! (It's a promo to push my next novel, "The Regicide Report", which comes out at the end of January.) https://www.amazon.com/Conventional-Boy-Laundry-Files-Novel-ebook/dp/B0CXX7MKY6/

"I put all of Scotlands Sheep into one Mega-Sheep, here is how big it is." https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1pbcygq (Epic quality shitpost!)

oh dear chulhu the nineties were 35 years ago /me: crumbles to dust

TheCanadian.Social

MostlyHarmless (@MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social)

Attached: 1 image

(UK) Parliamentary Petition: Require generative AI watermarks & ban using people’s likeness without consent

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

Petition: Require generative AI watermarks & ban using people’s likeness without consent

As AI generated content becomes increasingly realistic, we think laws should be put in place to prevent misuse. All such media should carry a perma...