Luke R. J. Maynard

@lukemaynard.bsky.social

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Author, musician, lawyer, lapsed academic. Cat lover.
Disability warrior/advocate. Proud Canadian. Short-ish.
(He/him)

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1/2 OK @bluesky folks, I have to complain: (I'd "kvetch" if I had the right to, though I guess as a half-Scot I can "whinge" instead of just "whining.") I was all excited to wake up to 9 new followers, until I found all but one were spam bots for the same Onlyfans account. Thus, the following:

Artists: be brave enough to be awful! It's VERY hard when you have the maturity & taste to know what's "good," and what you produce isn't as good as the masterpieces you consume. Young children don't know they suck at things they love until they've become "kinda good." Cultivate this Toddler Mind.

I am not @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com, despite my best efforts. His Masterclass only made me very slightly moreso. But I suspect most of my 66 followers are readers of the same kind of thing his, um, 278,000 followers would enjoy. So here is a new book you should check out. There are alarums in it!

Hi @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com, could I ask you please for a signal boost for a debut trans author? This is my first novella, out today, with a trans main character and alarums and adventures. Available on Amazon, Kobo, at all good bookshops and just in time for Worldcon

In theory, I find it hard to imagine a language with a richer subset of vowels than spoken English. But of all the subtle vowel sounds my impoverished North American accent has done away with in its lazy race toward nothing but /ə/, I feel I miss /ɔ/ the most.

I was sad to hear about #RogerCorman, but I didn't really KNOW his work. I knew only his name and his reputation for beautiful trash. I've spent the night reading, learning, about just how much he did for Hollywood—how many incredible artists he lifted up. I hope i'm remembered as an "up-lifter."

Me: Has any company officer's gap between claimed & actual technological aptitude ever been wider than Elon Musk's? I can't think of anyone… Mira Murati: "Hold my, uh, brown cylinder thingy." Me: "Your beer?" Mira: "Yes, beer—oops! Hey, the brown's gone." Me: "Beer is a liquid. You spilled it."

Big hint: probably ‘borrowed’ (translation: stolen) from my work — and yours! futurism.com/video-openai...

In Cringe Video, OpenAI CTO Says She Doesn’t Know Where Sora’s Training Data Came Fromfuturism.com Wondering what data OpenAI used to train its buzzy new text-to-video AI? OpenAI CTO Mira Murati seems to be wondering, too.

I'm an ex-academic who still does Humanities research (but I also selfpub—it pays "worse than bestselling novels, but infinitely more than monographs"). I often worry my indie scholarship will be of neither weight nor value without peer review. Then I'm reminded what peer review is worth in 2024:

More on the AI rat junk

Scientists aghast at bizarre AI rat with huge genitals in peer-reviewed articlearstechnica.com It's unclear how such egregiously bad images made it through peer-review.

I think folks reading my tombstone will one day read: DIED FLAPPING HIS ARMS LIKE AN IDIOT as I won't be able to afford to finish the inscription: LONG AFTER HIS PARACHUTE WAS EATEN AWAY. Those who read the top half will think they knew me. Those who remember the bottom half will know they did.

All Elton, No John (That pretty much sums up my experience of finding a vacant restroom at his farewell concerts)

All Bad, No Religion

Maybe it's just me, but I can't shake the feeling somebody left the door to Twitter open by accident, and everything distasteful we left behind on the birdsite is starting to leak through. I guess the scarcity of #BlueSky invites only bought us a year of peace & positivity, if that.

#ChristmasSong tip for everybody: if you sing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" in swung 5/4 time, (a)it absolutely COOKS, and (b)you have an extra beat to sing "tidings of comfort AND/OR joy," which is so very 2020s. Y'know, cutbacks and all.

Folks, I don't make the laws of the Internet; I just interpret them. But we've been hitting the "George Santos singing" meme hard enough that we're going to have to advance the medium a bit if we want it to stay both "fresh" and "dank." Submitted for your consideration:

People dunking on the #cybertruck missing the point: someday, sadly, Michael J. Fox & Christopher Lloyd will be gone. In 2060 it'll be time to think about rebooting #BackToTheFuture. We'll need a new "unreliable stainless-steel boondoggle that's libel-proof as it was made by a now-defunct company."

I'm so glad I've finally discovered the #MedievalSky hashtag for all things #Medieval. The #OldEnglish tag doesn't get much traffic and I had to share this #Beowulf in-joke with you all. Sadly, I don't know who to credit. But I'm glad to connect with the people here who facepalm over this.👋

Maybe it's the accent of a natural-born New Yorker, but #MichaelCohen does a PERFECT spot-on #DonaldTrump. If Alec Baldwin ever retires from doing Trump for SNL they should hire him. (Bonus points if he gets a scene opposite Ben Stiller reprising his role as Michael Cohen.) youtu.be/k-oZVYPbCaE?...

Almost hit "Reply" on X, and got into a scrap. Instead, haikus here. #poetry #lifechoices #zen 😌

Sisyphus for the #Commodore64 age: 10 PRINT "The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout." 20 PRINT "Down came the rain, and washed the spider out." 30 PRINT "Up came the sun and dried up all the rain," 40 PRINT "So the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again." 50 GOTO 20 #C64 #QBASIC #BASIC

Since #FultonCountyJail will release #Trump's true weight today, I'm bracing for the #fatshaming. There are SO many better things to attack, him on, folks. John Candy was almost exactly Trump's height/weight, and we LOVED him. Just remember Trump's not the only fat guy you're hurting.

Social networks are like neural networks: right now, the "newborn baby" stage of #BlueSky, is when its architectural neuroplasticity at its highest. Make EVERY CONNECTION YOU CAN with good people. Strengthen what you love. You can weed out the follows that don't work out later on, but connect now.

#ThoughtOfTheDay: As a #songwriter, my job begins and ends with filling the balloon and perching it above the door. The listener who comes into the room is the one who controls when, and where, and how it hits.

I really appreciate that #AltText has been added for ALL of us. Yes, for blind and low-vision users especially. But if a picture is worth 1,000 words, the ability to nest long & elegant "skeets" under a simple image caption is like a superpower that utterly hacks the 300-character limit. Behold!

I'm suddenly and belatedly feeling very happy to be here with you all. I started writing that sentence specifically in the context of #BlueSky, and finished that sentence in a much less product-endorsey, more general & life-grateful way. Thanks for being a part of the life I'm grateful for, folks.

1/2 Dearest Martha, Returned to the front tonight to see if there could be anything done for the #Twitter refugees. The Elonites move inland a little more every day: nearly caught in a flame war; barely escaped with my human dignity. Dodging flak, sheltered briefly in an #LGBTQ trench where the…

Hey #writers, Another great #writingcommunity discussion here reminds me that we're lucky to have a community space to know one another as artists. Let's not squander it by ad-spamming one another. Yes, I write novels. They're easily searched. But I'll try not to fill your #writer feed with ads.

Reconnecting with my Twitter mutuals.

I have arrived on BlueSky! Yay me! Hi and welcome to all. Let's see how this goes… but the button calling this post a "Post" is a nice, neutral, generic choice. I'm not sure what we'll end up calling tweetlike posts here—but anything's better than Mastodon's "toots." 🦣

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