Notices by RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe)

@joyce

The US media is too cowardly to cover the [Hands off!] protests for fear of Trump.

I assume you mean on broadcast TV. I get my news on the web, not on TV. Here is what I found:

Fox News isn't covering. USA Today says there are thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Washington Post, NBC, and New York Times, are completely mute. However CBS and ABC have stories. PBS is full throated on the spot with live feeds. CNN has below the fold (10 stories+ down) coverage. Axios, AP, and Reuters are covering prominently. Local Los Angeles affiliate television websites are also following.

#boostingIsSharing

#USPol #Politics #Protests#HandsOff #News #Author #Writer #WritersOfMastodon #Journalism #writing community

2503.04 — Glue #Writever #gender #fiction #SF

The young woman—no, teenage Martian—leapt up from her frog squat, unstrapping her respirator mask and removing thick rust-stained gloves when May Ri entered the dome. The place smelled of chemicals. Filter fans whirled loudly as she said, "I read that you want to build things. Right?" Slightly taller than than the Earther, she reached out a hand, smiling.

"Right." They shook. Warm, firm.

"Didn't get to finish school before the emergency boarding call? I got you assigned to me. I'll be your teacher. Isn't that nice?"

Emergency boarding, May Ri thought. A euphemism for kidnapping. Not this girls fault.

The woman squatted, like a frog. Her thighs showed muscles, which in 1/3rd gravity spoke volumes. May Ri sat beside her. She saw no EM Mars tattoo anywhere on her body, easy enough since the Martian basically wore skimpy tight underwear despite the temperature being at most 12ºC. Some sort of synth silk that outlined too much, with rubber-soled powder blue knit socks. She displayed serious curves, but only needed the tight black tank top on Mars to contain it. On Earth, scandalous; Decath propriety police would arrest her on the spot.

Pointing, the Martian said, "These cans are myco-expoxy. These bricks are shrooms grown with symbiotic proprietary algae and bacti." The cheerful egghead rambled on, thumping the rubber balloon outer dome membrane to show where the bricks would go.

"What's your name?" May Ri asked.

The girl stopped short, looking shocked as if static electricity had jumped between them. Redheaded, faintly freckled but with Asian eyelids, and very innocently sexy, her grey eyes blinked. "Um. S-sorry. I'm the first nisei—" First generation. "Reina Itō. Most people call me Onēsanue, which is kind of stupid." She continued her mycological construction techniques lecture.

When May Ri held up a hand, Reina interjected, "No fears! I'm teaching you all about martian building techniques and engineering because you missed out. I'm tops in it! I've got all the books."

She looked the age to be growing out of dolls and rebelling against her mother's clothing choices. It said something about Martian society, but May Ri wasn't sure what. "How old are you?"

"Just turned 7." She grinned brightly, holding up a left hand with long fingers. She proved her age by one thing: a barely suppressed squeal as she rotated a rusted-and-waxed steel ring on her fourth finger. It had a pebble texture that might be interpreted as artsy.

May Ri blinked, shook her head unable to not convert in her head: 13 years, 2 months? "The ring?"

Now Reina smiled. "Roger paid for it. He's on the Belt Asteroid Assessment crew. I married him on vid downlink on my birthday. He's a very cute hardworking import, like you, though kind of quiet, your age, and he'll be returning on resupply in half a year for our honeymoon!"

A Martian half-year. Reina bounced in her squatting position with tendons of elastic, but it was low gravity. May Ri thought it fortunate that no men were there to witness the spectacle. The movement caught her like a magnet to steel.

"We are going to be the people-glue that makes Mars strong, my sansei children and I. Can't wait. Sooooo excited...!" #RSMarsNeededWomen 04

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#writer #author
#sff #sciencefiction #Mars
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

2503.03 — Housewife #Writever CW: Dystopian

The day May Ri found an advert for the EM Mars Colonization effort wasn't a good one. During school prayer in history class, she moved her mouth with her head down, reading her book plate instead. She hadn't suspected the substitute teacher could read lips.

"Miss Ri, continue alone."

When she did an imitation of a gasping fish, the whole 9th grade history class watching, the teacher asked, "Were you even praying?"

May Ri went from embarrassed to angry in a heart beat. "I'm an a-theist. What do you think?"

That got her a meeting with the public school's Decath minister. Her father had told her to hide it, that the laws made pro forma good enough so long as she didn't hurt the feelings of her classmates—but it depended on the believer you mouthed off to.

When she later told Reverend Peters, "I don't have an invisible friend like you do," the elderly man smiled, turned away, hands behind his back, to look out at Lake Le Salle from their vantage on the 95th floor of the Chicago Lakeshore arcology. After minutes being ignored, she stepped beside him, to examine the expanse of blue water, framed by storm clouds to the north, wondering what caught his gaze.

He said, "Makes you feel small and insignificant, doesn't it? God knows you are. What are you planning on when you grow up?"

"I—I like building things. I can do maths."

"Not happening."

Her face heated up as he added, "You lack the necessary blessings. Let me explain it in a way even a girl can understand—" His lips were pursed as his brown eyes caught her gaze.

Only then did she realize she'd begun to sweat, that the temperature in the room was dropping quickly.

"Learn to keep your mouth shut," he said, counting on his fingers, lifting his forefinger. "Some man will marry you not because you are passably pretty but because you look strong enough to bear healthy sons." Another finger. "Become a housewife, do as he tells you, keep quiet, and allow him to teach the blessing to his children." Another thin finger. "Do so and you may yet live a good life, if undeserving..."

After school, she studied the advert posted outside the admin office, later saving it to her book plate. EM Colonizations paid a premium for women, provided schooling. It was understood in not so many words that she needed to bear children, but all hands male and female were precious so she didn't fear that. She understood also that she'd be able to build things, that she'd be able to put to use any engineering skill she acquired. If she couldn't prove Peters wrong, starting that day she had a plan.

Becoming a revolutionary? That was something you don't plan for. #RSMarsNeededWomen 03

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory #mars #dystopia
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

2503.02 — Rights #Writever CW: Fictional Violence

May Ri clanged the arm of the mining exoskeleton into the wall of the habitat, drawing sparks, blocking the onrushing man, cutting him off when he tried to dodge under—before flipping him backwards back down the corridor. Blood gushed from his nose to match what stained his hands.

"I have the right!" he yelled, arm across his face to stem the flow. "She's my wife!"

May Ri's footsteps clanged as she stomped forward. He slid himself back on the floor as the other women in the Vigilantes caught up. They'd used the ugly word, Vigilante, intentionally; women weren't allowed but needed to police their domes, or risk injury from stronger men who suddenly got ideas.

She said, "Your wife is an import, like me? You left her to give birth alone, to raise her daughter, and now you want to take that daughter away? To sell to your boss? Really? Your right?"

She looked at the harried women, some breathing hard, sweating. Faces gone pale in fear, others with wide eyes trying to process how cruel reality had once again smashed all sense of security. May Ri understood: if they kept the male returnees from the inner belt disaster locked out of the habitat long enough, they'd have to capitulate. However, if she failed to demonstrate now that the Vigilantes could hold firm when a man broke his wife's arm, beating her to have his way—

He yelled back, "Marrying her off to a better life? Yes! Who are you to argue a man's God given right—?"

"Really?" she interrupted. Women had never had reliable rights, if you trusted history hadn't been rewritten. She didn't. She'd read books made of paper, yellowed, that smelled of centuries past! Her five kilogram gauntleted hand already in motion, she screamed, "Mars is not Earth! It never will be!" #RSMarsNeededWomen

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #mars
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

2503.01 — Women #Writever

Mars needed women.

May Ri bought into the hype and the spiel, not realizing it was the last gasp of a long dead oligarch's dream. When the money dried up, nobody would finance the supply missions. Who cared about the ten thousand up there when you could outrage the millions down here with something less expensive? Earthers returned to their petty games of slavery—that wasn't called as such—and empire that ate nations.

On Mars, colonists were pushed to their limits: The terraforming mission, the domes, the spinlauncher and Deimosbase, the raising the first and second generation martians. Men died disproportionately. In the end, a few strongmen attempted to corner the growing "female resource" to their benefit and to the benefit their sons, working to crush the whisper of the half-forgotten promise of democracy that had followed May Ri to the planet of war.

She and her daughters led the way, fighting. Together with "sisters" and with "aunts," they redefined which gender would be considered a "resource."

They found that the blood of the ever-absent fathers spilled on the rusty regolith of Mars blended in nicely.

Earthers were outraged. #RSMarsNeededWomen 01

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSInklingsStory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#PennedPossibilities 595 — How does your SC feel about your MC’s temper or lack thereof?

This MC is the DJ I've mentioned a few times. After a demon gets unsealed, she is the only one to bow and swear fealty to a world-ending evil that gets sealed away hours later. The MC was 15. All she ended up doing was stopping a stampede by standing in the flow and glaring. Nobody learns her affiliation, that she's actually evil—her opinion; nobody would agree if asked.

Everybody knows in the face of danger to others, she's forgotten how to fear. You don't get knighted by a demon and not lose something.

A succession of SCs know her flaw. They don't want her outrage to flare into anger. They don't want to see her throw herself selflessly into fights when monsters appear—playing chicken with a creature that rewrites reality, trying to get a giant to trip and fall off a cliff, saving children from an invasion of slavers... Other than her lack of fear, she's just a DJ. Her true heroism has nothing to do with the situations she ends up fighting through most of her stories, or the damage she takes. The SCs to a one try to talk her down, and feel bad as her scars, physical and mental, accumulate.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author #thriller #romance #fantasy
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory

@amszmidt @kentpitman @ksaj @Aphelion

[Michelle's original post]

I now realize that what I took as a reply was an original post—not a reply to a perceived provocative incident. It made a point—like dumping pots and pans in the street past midnight will wake the neighbors—regardless of whether or not the intent was to redress a grievance. I need to reassess my response to this post and similar ones based on the head of the thread as well as the responses.

@Aphelion

[Being blocked or badmouthed about not using alt text, likely by accident or having not k own about it in the first place.]

@kentpitman
I use the service @alt_text to remind me when I oops and forget the alt text. Got dinged today; fixed it. I consider angry responses that assume a person is bad in such cases the worst bullying, and incredibly counterproductive. A gentle nudge saying, "Adding #alttext to images expands your audience to people who'll well appreciate your effort," both more effective and more Mastodonian. Often I put important extra info in the alt text and state it will behoove sighted people to read it.

#Photography #Accessibility #Writer #Author #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon

Lack of education and the conservative attack on any non-parochial education explains a lot. Ignorance and lack of questioning leads to authoritarianism; it is all about power and controlling people's minds by teaching them not to think. Interesting article attached.

#BoostingIsSharing
https://bigthink.com/thinking/a-c-grayling-we-dont-need-to-bring-back-religion-we-need-to-bring-back-education/

#Philosophy #Conservative #Liberal #Education #Religion #Humanism #Writer #Author #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity #Theism

@briankrebs If you're close to retirement, the package should count as income. Might be a deal for some.

FYI: This is how companies like Boeing downsize and lose their best older employees, with the result you've seen in the news about Boeing. (From an insider who retired with such a package and is consulting for way more.)

I turned off #Apple #Intelligence because not only did it write things resembling "My grandfather fell out of one of those things and died when he was a baby," they made it so that if you press the space bar twice (which used to insert a period) now will insert that frequently used phrase or sentence ending instead. If you're typing and not reading what you're typing, chances are you're gonna say some very strange things.

I could probably go up on a rant on this, but when did people decide that #writing ought to be dumbed down to what everybody else is saying, rather than using your brain to come up with something eloquent to move your audience? Are we really that lazy?

Yeah, I see the root causes: Greedy corporations wanting to jump onto the next big thing, Gullible #programmers racing to #code the killer feature and bonuses rather than judging the worthiness of the feature. It's a little bit like radium and watch dials, which I brought back for one of my stories with a twist. Madam Curie died because science didn't understand something essential about radioactivity, yet, and who knows how many cases of lung cancer resulted from the glow in the dark watches.

The problem with #AI and ethics is training, the source. A good writer takes training, and that includes willing teachers, reading, experience writing, and feedback. A good AI requires the same thing, they call the feedback "curation." That's "educating" it what is crap and what is gold. Moreover, the training ought be done on the writing of the person using the AI, or by willing and well paid teachers, and I really don't get why Apple didn't take this tack and create something truly useful to that writer.

My best guess why not? The psychology of their perceived user: The need for instant gratification. If we train each AI the way we train each human student, where's the ability to cut out the labor and mass produce writers?

I want the personally trained #AI that can fill in the missing word that's at the tip of my tongue, that can reliably flag my recurring grammar errors, that can complete my sentences with the accuracy of my spouse of decades. As an SF writer or as an essayist, it should recognize my idiosyncratic vocabulary and not autocorrect it, to the point of accepting new words or phrases. It astounds me that AI contribution isn't color-coded in a ADA safe way during composition to show where the writer might want to verify the generated contributions. That all auto correct auto complete doesn't do this is a serious set back to the technology.

Okay, I ranted.

A big thank you to @vextaur for the discussion I sourced this from.

#writer #writing #author #fiction #SF #sciencefiction #WritingCommunity #writersOfMaston #greed #economics #genai #chatgpt #openai

I will Huff and Puff and Wolf your house down!!!

Will they make it into the new year. GINGERBREAD!!!

#happynewyear #newyear #newyearseve #photography #photos #food #writingcommunity #writersofmastodon #writer #author #tinker #tailor #spy

Hey. Just realized being retired means I don't need #NTFS for compatibility with #Windows! Reformatting all my external drives to #Mac #APFS! Yay!

@RaymondPierreL3
Don't see it that way. I've been using Apple since I got an original Apple ][ . Windows was work related. I've no interest in *nix systems; programming for non-remunerative FOSS projects and using screwy but FREE open source crap makes Windows look logical and user friendly. Paragon NTFS just failed in my Sequoia update and I've no reason to more than patch with trialware to get rid of the recurring headache. ExFat might be better, but I'm just not worried about compatibility right now. I want mass storage to work on my devices outa the box.

@vextaur @RaymondPierreL3

the more niche [the]software…

I write novels and short stories, use Photoshop edit photos, and browse the web. I have used Pages, which is a proprietary file structure only found on Apple devices. That said I've also used Microsoft Word in the past, and have had to convert from older to newer formats. I could convert Pages to another file format, but as was pointed out I would have to do it file by file since Apple makes that difficult to do en masse. Scrivener exists on Windows and Mac platforms. So does Photoshop. The fact is that I am essentially cross platform already; it's not the software.

It's the devices.

I like Apple equipment, and compared to dealing with top of the line Windows machines, it's been relatively carefree. Apple equipment is so long lasting, even with their incredibly long support periods, they obsolesce before they wear out. I have worn out plenty of Dell machines; I know the difference. Amortized over the life of the machine, Apple devices are cost-effective.

This isn't to say I didn't go through my home brew phase. Personal computers, and by this I mean IMSAI and Altair, appeared when I was in high school. CP/M and BASIC were king. However, when I selected my first real computer on which I would write my first sold novel, I chose Apple. An Apple ][ Plus, which will still run if I turn it on. Back in those days, I even modified the DOS so that the directory displayed information that I needed.

I'm older now. What I need is something that lets me get the writing done or the images edited, and doesn't present headaches. I had been using NTFS because I sometimes would take files to work, or in my free time do some writing.

I am retired. NTFS has had to be updated every time Apple makes their system more secure, and it is annoying. Not that they make their system more secure and respect privacy better, but that I have a superfluous file system on a dozen external drives.

I am now remedying that.

Nothing that I'm saying should be construed to denigrate NTFS or Linux/UNIX systems. I've no use for Windows anymore and learning a new operating system has no appeal.

#Author #Writer #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMacedon #Fiction #Computer #Apple #Windows #Mac #ntfs

#Writever 241001 — Diet

"Lean pork or chicken?"

"Whichever is tastier. "

"Fatty pork is tastier. "

"You're the chef. I'm the guest. You choose."

"No dairy, right?"

"No crème sauces, otherwise it's good. I've got my lactase pills in case. Not keeping kosher."

"Did you ever?"

"My stepmom and stepgrands did. Too young to really judge the food critically. My visits to Dad during vacations resulted in a lot of spoons from the meat set being buried in the backyard. Before I went dairy intolerant. Hmm. I wonder if subsequent owners of that house found them when re-landscaping..."

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#sliceoflife #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

@Klaxun

All Google searches use AI and 10x power...

Um. I think this bypasses the AI. For now. Make it your default browser tab webpage if you want to use it.

https://udm14.com/

#boostingIsSharing #ai #google

#uspol Read carefully:

More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.

https://newrepublic.com/post/187537/kamala-harris-donald-trump-stunning-endorsement

#BoostingIsSharing

#Vote #Election #Kamala #KamalaHarris #Palestine #Gaza #genocide

@Inverse_Shadow

I feel the inability to write very short stories in my soul!

Having an approximately 850 word limit to a toot (5,000 characters) on my Mastodon instance, and really wanting to figure it all out, I've grown into being able to write short. In a sense, many could be the first scene or scenes in a novel where important things conclude sufficiently to end. Sometimes, I can make them done and finished. This all came from me accepting deep down that ideas and situations are not precious and limited, that I could always find another idea, I didn't need to milk one idea down to the last drop. Lacking an idea in the moment, there's plenty of story prompts on Mastodon like #writever or in one of the writing game prompts like this one.

So far, so good.

Mind you, these things aren't commercial. Cents per word, if a magazine or webzine is interested... That said, some may start novels. The rest could get collected into, well, a collection.

#boostingIsSharing

#writing #writer #author #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon

#uspol

"If you are not 100% voting for Harris, then you are either directly or indirectly helping Trump. Go ahead and try that again. That’s what happened in 2016 when people threw their votes away on that dope Jill Stein.”

—Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa

Undecided? Protest vote? Really?

#vote #election #kamala #kamalaharris #undecided #pennsylvania