John Scalzi

@scalzi.com

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I enjoy pie.

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Update: it was fine. Not great, but good enough and the second best of the series although that's not saying a huge amount.

Just put on the new Beverly Hills Cop movie, pray for me

1. My business associates are generally working M-F so I am tied into their schedules to a greater or lesser extent; 2. Krissy also works M-F so I want to be able to have weekends free for her; 3. When I'm doing conventions, they're usually on the weekend so I try to get work done prior to that.

Curious how which day of the week it is affects someone with your lifestyle/occupation (not being snarky)

I keep forgetting it's not Saturday

Lol. I have absolutely failed the "increasing income --> more conservative" pipeline, although that has as much to do with American conservatism becoming more (overtly) fascist as anything else.

This is how it always happens. You start out liberal and see a little success, then next thing you know… Same thing happened to me in CA when I voted in the republican primary in 2016.

Public records show my party registration is WHAT NOW (I asked for a GOP ballot in the 2016 primary election to vote against Trump, that's the only reason I can think of. I have voted Democratic and non-party ballots since, so I have no idea how this one stuck. I'll have to switch it out.)

As far as I'm concerned anyone telling people not to vote, in this election or any other, is doing for malign purposes, and the only correct response is "Well now I am going to vote EVEN HARDER."

see also the posts floating around pointing out that the author of that piece has voted in the last few elections according to voter records

Sorry, folks, this year "no vote" is a vote for fascism, don't be that person, voting is a necessary if not entirely sufficient act

Here it is, the dumbest thing you will read today www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/o...

I'm in fact taking a summer vacation from work, because I write a novel and novella in short order and have another novel to write later in the year so I need time to let my brain grow back. So for the summer I'm playing video games and making music and trying not to panic about the world. Fun!

Are you enjoying a writing holiday?

I'm perfectly content with rainy weather on this July 4, but I acknowledge I may be in the minority.

And now for the traditional July 4th blessing: Happy Independence Day, may you end the day with as many fingers as you began it with.

We went flower shopping today and saw this busy creature

Would

Someone just told me about this scene in Brooklyn 99 and of course I immediately thought of @scalzi.com

Happy voting, UK. Make us all proud.

This just in: Krissy says hello.

I would have Lucas plot the story and then Abrams write the script, that where their native strengths as writers are to me

Is Lucas a worse writer than JJ Abrams?

Same, Endless Screaming, same

AAHHHHHHHHHHHH

Krissy did not read a lot of science fiction before she met me, no (she had read fantasy, of the supernatural sort). She reads quite a lot of SF/F now. Her feedback is less about the genre and more about general readability.

Are your books something Krissy would naturally read on her own or no? What kind of stuff does she normally read? I am curious from a feedback perspective whether her being into that genre or NOT being into that genre would be more helpful to you. Or does it matter?(I phrased that awkwardly.)

FINALLY MY MOMENT HAS COME

[S] Your chance to be the steward of 92 wax figures related to John Brown's raid has arrived. cc: @scalzi.com wtop.com/local/2024/0...

As a Harpers Ferry museum closes, its 92 wax figures are looking for a new home - WTOP Newswtop.com The home of the John Brown Wax Museum in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, has been sold. Now, 92 of the 93 wax figures that help tell the story of abolitionist John Brown need a new home.

I can say that by and large the Wikipedia articles about me and my work are accurate. Sometimes errors slip in but they are not fabrications, and generally quickly corrected.

Yeah! This is why I recommend Wikipedia to people who want to know more about molecular biology, because proteins I knew about were accurately described.

LOVE IT

Starter Villain is bookstore cat approved @scalzi.com

One of the advantages, if you want to call it that, of having information of your own that you can check on Large Language Models, is that you quickly understand how badly they get what you know wrong, and if they get that wrong, what are they getting wrong that you DON'T know about?

Oh, God, I just did this with one of my own novels and the results are hilarious. The novel is on-line and free! It got, like, 30% of the plot. It actually identified the theme accurately, but completely hallucinated the three central protagonists!

Go on, you know you want to, all the cool kids are doing it (and by cool kids I mean goth nerds who dig surreal rock novels, which is, like, Bluesky's primary demographic)

The Kickstarter to bring KAMIKAZE L’AMOUR back into print is doing well, but with a week to go it could use some help getting it over the top. Please take a look at it and consider backing the project. Thanks! www.kickstarter.com/projects/kam...

One of my favorite things to do, paraphrased: Me (to "AI"): Recount the plot to [one of my books] and name five major characters and their roles. AI: [Generates bad plot, correctly names only the protagonist, all other characters and their roles made up] Me: That's wrong, you know. AI: I know.

A lot of people don’t understand that Generative AIs will just make things up. They’re more like Mad Libs than what we used to think of when we said “AI.”

Found yet another site with AI-created summaries for my books; those summaries are both inaccurate and hopelessly bland. Please, folks, if you have kids of book report age, tell them from me that these summary sites are just complete bullshit. Don't trust them and don't copy their blandness.

I have yet to have a PDF version of a W9 form allow me to fill it in completely without telling me some portion of the thing will not allow a text field and/or signature. It's a real fucking pain in the ass, is what it is.

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John Scalzi

Got a lot of Brit friends over here on Bluesky, so to all of you, I wish you an awesome and patriotic 4th of July! Send those Tories packing tomorrow and take your country back. Looking forward to returning to a kingdom that has returned to sanity.

To be scrupulously fair, there are botched edits as well -- There's the chainsaw editing of "The Magnificent Ambersons," and Harvey Weinstein was famous for taking films away from directors and having them chopped up to his order (which is something studios have regularly done, but he was notorious)

Think of how many bad movies could've been good. Lots of them could have used a little (or a lot) more "saving."

Lucas deserved neither award, though. If we were to de-Allen the '78 Academy Awards, I would give director to Herbert Ross and Original Screenplay to Neil Simon. But, all around it wasn't a great year. Allen's work was the best in these categories, even if he was (and IS) problematic as fuck.

Okay but real talk can we reverse that decision? I mean say what you will about Georgie-boy, but at least he ain't fuckin' woody fuckin' allen.

Also, there is no fucking shame in things saved in the edit; that's what the editing is for.

From what I've heard, Star Wars is the very definition of a film saved by the edit.