Notices by Steven Hoefer (troublewithwords@wandering.shop), page 2

When you see a room full of only men, figure out the odds of that happening at random.

A room with 1 person, it's 1:2 chance of all men. With 2 people, 1:4 chance. 3 people, 1:8 chance, etc. 2 to the power of X.

It's literally a 1 in a 1,000,000 chance that a room with 20 guys and no other genders would happen at random.

Or a 99.9999% chance there's something keeping other folks out.

I am told that if people are going to find my novels I have to tell folks about them.

The Embassy is a series about Earth's embassy to extraterrestrials and one junior ambassador's attempts to keep the planet in one piece without causing an interstellar incident.

This does not happen.

https://readsteven.com/read/
https://readsteven.com/buy/

Everything is DRM-free from non-Amazon providers and reasonably priced.

It's going to be deadly hot this weekend in parts of the US.

Stay hydrated. Check in on folks, make sure they're staying hydrated. Learn about your local cooling shelters and see if people need rides.

Also places like public libraries generally are cool places you can spend the hottest part of the day.

Is there a mnemonic for remembering which is for screaming into and which is for staring into, void or abyss?

Planning a gender’s night out, just me and the genders, gendering it up!

The idea that LLMs contain "all human knowledge" and therefore untapped wisdom to be drawn on is kind of understandable, but very wrong.

It's like saying the contents of grocery store processed through a blender is a meal at Michelin 3-star restaurant because it's got all the same ingredients.

No, it's a gray paste, but if you've never eaten fancy before you might be tricked into believing it's fancy by people selling gray paste.

@dalias @futurebird I know that the Secret Service is one of those that already do polygraphs on their own employees. The gov already has the equipment and "expertise".

@futurebird Polygraphs are still very popular with police and other security folks who apply them to prospective hires.

Well, that was a terrifying read.

Suni and Butch talk about thrusters going out as they approach the space station.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/

Catch-22 but Yossarian's just trying to log into a website.

Speech-to-text is converting all mentions of "cow's milk" to "cosmic" and this is very good.

A glove has blown in front of your door. It is a rather nice left glove. It's not your size, and its a bit dirty from its mysterious travels.

What would you do with it?

Would you try to reunite it with its pair? If so, how?

My dad when I was a kid: "Don't do anything that would prevent you from becoming President or a priest."

Me, 2025: *dead stare*

I have not retooted
the toot
that had
an image

and which
you were probably
hoping
I'd share

Forgive me
it was excellent
except it had
no image description.

@mattl Didn't expect to find those there. Thank you.

Anyone want to give me a job where I can be proud of doing the work you ask me to do, I'll respect the people I work with, and they'll respect me?

I can learn pretty much anything you need me to do, and do it well. Touching words and computers are my forte, but I've done everything from audio/video production to illustration and construction.

At this point I will work cheap if you hit the points above. Ideally 20-30 hours a week.

#getHired #fediHire

Since 1996 I've done work for Microsoft, Marvel, Sega, Sony, Lucasfilm, and many, many more I've forgotten.

I can't do that work anymore. It's destroying my soul. I'm literally happier doing gig work getting less than minimum wage than I would be working for any of the above.

I'm looking for a small group of good people for whom I can solve real problems for for a bit of money.

Is the groundhog not happy any other day?

#WritersCoffeeClub Jan 30: "Do secondary characters sometimes get promoted to main characters?"

Not officially, but it does help to think of every character as the main character of their particular story, even if that's not the primary story I'm telling.

I remain a big fan of RSS.
If you're unable to cut yourself off from news, consider consuming it through an RSS reader. It won't give precedence to the most hyped/outrageous/most visited/most sponsored news. It's all just in the order it was published, all articles look pretty much the same.