What I REALLY want to know about the news-behind-the-news is, why is Melania suddenly holding press conferences to say that she didn't know nothin' about Jeffrey Epstein and *especially* wasn't having a relationship with him?

I mean, with the right it's ALWAYS projection, right? So if she runs true to form for a conservative this probably means she had an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell.

#PennedPossibilities 973
How do you select the names of your characters? For you, is there a method?

Usually there's no method, *but* my most recent MS is set in a crapsack space empire where the noble families all have latin names … which are borrowed from various species of deeply unpleasant parasite or parasitoid. ("Duke Tapeworm" or "Count Leech" are a bit too obvious, but taxonomic cognates work beautifully!)

About trans rights:

They're a wedge issue. If you think it's okay to deprive trans people of the right to exist in the public sphere then you're saying human rights are conditional and/or can be withdrawn. Which puts you on a slippery slope to no human rights for anyone.

When you trace the roots of the modern anti-trans movement they boil down to some combination of bigotry and billionaire bullshit— the oligarchs think rights are for the rich.

So: trans-rights are human rights. No exceptions.

#PennedPossibilities 972
Do you ever have to deal with “trolls” where your writing is concerned?

Yup. I endeavour to deny them the oxygen of publicity. Except for that one guy, Vox Day. He should fill his pockets with rocks and walk into the sea.

THIS represents the absolute apogee of high concept silicon valley capitalism: it's been plunging towards a fiery crash ever since the late 1990s BUTT PRINTER

I mean, modern techbros should just give up and walk into the sea

https://mastodon.social/@dosnostalgic/116315527377949627

Welp, I just threw the first 20,000 words of SPACE PRINCESS STAR at my test readers. And now I can chillax at Eastercon next Thursday with a clean conscience.

(Whether it gets beyond 20K words depends on how effectively my agent can sell STARTER PACK, to which it is a sequel. Think "the Stainless Steel Rat tries to defraud Star, from Heinlein's 'Glory Road': everything goes sideways at high speed." Also, there is a Skullularity. That is: a Singularity, made entirely from Skulls.)

Just as cats remember they were once worshipped as gods in Egypt, chickens dream that they were once tyrannosaurs stalking their prey across the wilds of Pangaea.

We REALLY need to reintroduce the Roman custom of Damnatio Memoriae—"damnation of memory", excision of a name and person from the written record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae