Patrick Nielsen Hayden

@pnh.bsky.social

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Editor-at-large at the Tor Publishing Group. Series editor, Tor Essentials. Opinions mine, not Tor’s. Musician and layabout. He, his. Intolerant of anti-trans nonsense.

After decades in NYC, happily in Tucson, Arizona.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

It's also wildly inaccurate. Plenty of the base of white christian nationalism is in wealthy suburbs and, yes, cities too. Stop buying this "barefoot hicks" b.s. and realize the fascists are down the street shopping at whole foods.

Honestly I feel deflated seeing the response to “depiction of white Christian nationalism ascendant” be cracks about inbreeding, or glee at concentrating these people in rural communities so they can eat their own

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

seriously I cannot get enough. cry more. cry harder. understand that as long as people draw breath the opposition to fascism is stronger than you. whatever your reasons for being a fascist, know every time that your gains will be short ones which you'll relinquish in tears every. fuckin. time

DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS btw

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS btw

Here's some fashy tears for your Sunday.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Just now getting word that Jacob Rees-Mogg has been sealed back inside the ceremonial grandfather clock and dropped in the sea

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"I spent a lot of money in that CVS, often multiple times a week, week after week, for years. If I wasn’t their very best customer on the consumer good side, I would like to meet my competition. And they drove me away, while providing me no mechanism to tell them why." itself.blog/2024/06/15/w...

What is the economy even for?itself.blog In my household, I am in charge of keeping us stocked with cleaning products and shared toiletries. For many years, this has been remarkably easy, because there is a CVS Pharmacy two blocks from our h...

Finally saw a Cybertruck in the wild; specifically, yesterday on Swan about a quarter-mile south of Sunrise. Discolored and patchy-looking. Would not recommend.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

As well-meaning publishers try to navigate the coming storm of state laws against diversity, I hope they'll consider Timothy Snyder's Rule #1 (from his slim book ON TYRANNY).

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Whenever one reads accounts like this it's also worth remembering the confederate regime had entire units of death squads dedicated to murdering - and burning the homes of - the many, many people in the South who resisted their rule.

"Home!" he snatches up the word. "We haven't any. You have destroyed them. You have invaded Virginia, and ruined her. Her curse is on you." "You shouldn't have invited us down here then," was the obvious reply. -Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, in "The Passing of the Armies"

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Creative types, this is a great week to reread your copy of Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by @charliejane.bsky.social. I mean, if you're feeling a little stressed out by everything and it's hard to focus.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

The Court's immunity ruling is, I think, usefully understood to be a continuance of the putsch from 2000, which put Shrub in power. Notice how many of the current Justices had some hand in it. We memory-holed the Brooks Brothers riot, but that was a clear warning we should have heeded.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

the conservative theory of law in one headline

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Must be nice to have choices

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

that's the whole idea, yes people lose their jobs, their health care, and their homes, and then, once they get arrested for sleeping rough or nonpayment of tickets, they become slave labor for prison jobs.

Like where are they even gonna get the money to pay the fine from? They might as well just bring back debtor’s prisons for how they treat the poor!

You don’t say, New York Times

Extending an olive branch can be healthy, but experts say forgiveness isn’t something people should feel pressured to do.

Sometimes, Forgiveness Is Overratedwww.nytimes.com Extending an olive branch can be healthy, but experts say it isn’t something people should feel pressured to do.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Reminder for a rough day: bad news gets re-shared 100x as much as good news, creating the morale-eating doomscroll illusion in which it seems like all news is bad, while real victories don’t get reported. We need to see victories to remind us the fight is worth-it. Don’t forget to #ShareGoodNewsToo

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Was just asked in an interview what one piece of advice I have for new writers. Enjoy the act of writing. If you can enjoy the process--the one thing you can control--then you'll be more resilient in the face of the things you can't control. And in this business, you can't control most of it.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Every morning I check the news and it's like -SCOTUS Eliminates Three More Basic Rights, Only Six Remain -President Mispronounces a Word, Will Now Lose Election to Senile Hitler -New AI Company Uses Artist Blood to Let Billionaires and Racists Live Forever, Gets $45 Billion Valuation

This. Seriously considering self-induced coma for a few days.

I'm not sure I've adequately braced myself for the awful punditry that we're going to experience over the next 24-36 hours.

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Most common writing advice (kill your darlings, no adverbs, show don't tell, etc) is intended to push back on the failures of freshmen in Creative Writing 101, not be applicable in all situations.

if u see this, quote-post with your tips for writers that no one gives anymore because they seem obvious (even though they're not)

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

One of the reasons I think fiction writers should consider their own tastes first and audiences second is because your own taste is actually a pretty good proxy for audience taste. Maybe not always mass appeal, but none of us are so idiosyncratic that nobody but us will like what we write

I disbelieve in the idea that Fred Hoyle was born; rather, he always existed in a stea—

Fred Hoyle [SFE entry: sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hoyle_... ] was born on this day, so here are some of his book covers (Artist: "Doc VLOO Young Artists", Adrian Chesterman, Lima de Freitas and [couldn't identify]):

This is long but fascinating, and you _must_ watch to the end

Just go watch this right now. Trust me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65F...

Badness 0 (Apostrophe‛s version)www.youtube.com Never before seen pilot episode. Keywords: Types If you see any errors, please post about them in the comment section! Source code, papers, etc.: http://tom7.org/bovex

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Importantly the Florentine elite were also terrified of commoner revolts, which were really frequent in that era and region. During Strozzi's childhood the oligarchy was overthrown by a working class revolt that then held power for about four years. That threat hung over their heads.

Sometimes people ask me about the super rich in Renaissance Florence, whether the art/culture/science boom was an example of trickle-down working. (A) Florence had a wealth tax, (B) its richest man Palla Strozzi had the equivalent of only $250 million. Want more Leonardos? Tax the Rich. 🎨🧑‍🎨🖌🎭🔭🖼📚📐🏛🎻💰

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Reminder that Aaron Swartz was facing 35 years in prison and financial devastation for trying to programmatically download and open the contents of JSTOR, which led to him taking his own life. But OpenAI is going to scrape all of academia and make billions by plagiarizing it.

New version of chatbot reaches level of function where it responds to all queries by making a little twisty-wrist gesture with pinched fingers and saying “But isn’t it more *complicated* than that?”

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Reply to

Screamer Jim

we’ve already mostly lost the generation of americans who experienced the depths of jim crow as adults, we will lose, pretty soon, the generation of americans who experienced jim crow as younger people. and when that happens this country will pretend like it never happened.

N: Gullfoss, Iceland E: Narita, Japan S: Wellington, New Zealand W: Ozette, Washington

N: Reykjavik, Iceland E: Tallinn, Estonia S: San Juan, Puerto Rico W: Zion Canyon, Utah

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

there are a lot of ways for the state to suppress dissident speech. one particularly bad one is by having armed agents of the state stand by and do nothing while partisan-aligned thugs or paramilitary groups beat you because of your speech, and then have the DA decline to prosecute the assaulters.

LA's District Attorney George Gascon has declined to charge Edan On, the man who injured several people in an hours-long brutal attack on UCLA students' pro-Palestine encampment last month. On was featured by name in a CNN report after his mother celebrated his crimes. www.cnn.com/2024/06/21/u...

LA County declines to charge man recorded attacking pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA, refers case to city attorney’s office | CNNwww.cnn.com The case against Edan On, the 18-year-old accused of attacking pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA in April, has been referred to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office for misdemeanor filing considera...

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This was cathartic ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-...

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicityludic.mataroa.blog

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Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I think people in the genre might be surprised about how few literary fiction novels are about ‘middle aged professors having affairs.’ Regardless of legitimate snobbery or reverse snobbery, this trope (and genre people do like their tropes!) is so fucking tiring.