September 13, 2023
Sometimes I wish I could put my thoughts directly onto paper. I think all the time, about everything…I see pictures in my head, pictures of my past — exact details of what I saw and experienced. Déjà-vu often occurs to me. It’s strange, that feeling of already having been someplace. Sometimes I can tell what’s going to happen in a matter of minutes. I can’t stand things like that — they send chills up my spine.
September 10, 2023
Way back in 2015, my good friend Rami Z Cohen came to me with an idea for a story. He had written two or three scenes about a group of asteroid hunters who stumbled upon something bizarre. The idea of mining asteroids was news at the time (and still is, although probably too expensive right now and not a worthwhile investment until we actually get some people in space who need metals without relying on NASA/ESA/JAXA/ISRO/etc).
I was more interested in philosophical aspects of finding that we are all (as the late great Carl Sagan loved to put it) “star stuff” (he meant carbon being created by supernovas, but we also know that asteroids are the way we got amino acids to rain down on ancient Earth).
So Rami and I began to email ideas back and forth for a few weeks, then we started to flesh out his characters and plot. I wrote a synopsis and outline and we hashed out the background.
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June 21, 2023
July is your best chance to find my entire ebook collection for a promotional price at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Bookmark https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos and stop by from July 1 through 31st! #SWSale2023 #Smashwords
(See my Smashwords profile here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mapple)
June 20, 2023
I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting much lately. Work has just become completely overwhelming, and the rainy season (here in Japan) hasn’t helped.
But I do read your comments and I appreciate them, and all your “likes,” too!
Just realized it’s been MONTHS since I posted the next installment of Bringer of Light.
Yikes.
Time to wrap up the first book and get to the climax already!
May 3, 2023
Scientists have found a way to decode a stream of words in the brain using MRI scans and artificial intelligence.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/01/1173045261/a-decoder-that-uses-brain-scans-to-know-what-you-mean-mostly
While not perfect, this is some seriously scary stuff.
FWIW the researchers themselves did recognize this…
Although it’s nowhere near being able to decode spontaneous thoughts in the real world, the advance raises concerns that, with improvement, the technology might mimic some type of mind reading. “Our thought when we actually had this working was, ‘Oh my God, this is kind of terrifying,’” Huth recalls.
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-use-ai-decipher-words-and-sentences-brain-scans
Participants have to consent to being “read,” and there are ways to prevent the software from figuring out even the “gist” of what they were thinking.
Still, imagine if some nefarious criminal group (or governmental agency, if there is a difference) decided to force someone to consent to have their thoughts read.
Long distance.
Permanently.
It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish scifi from reality.
January 30, 2023
It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene.
https://soranews24.com/2023/01/28/cowboy-bebop-anime-creator-was-disappointed-with-the-netflix-version-from-the-first-scene-he-saw/
Well, I managed to watch the first two episodes, but I really couldn’t continue after that.
Watanabe is right. Netflix screwed up by doing what all US-based companies do when they try to make scifi: they focus on the violence and forget about the ambiance.
But as he says at the end of the interview, “The value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.”
(Read the original interview in its entirety here, if you can stomach the political pop-ups.)
December 17, 2022
I’ve been testing ChatGPT over the last couple of days. (If you don’t know what this chatbot is, here’s a good NYT article about ChatGPT and others currently in development.)
The avowed purpose of ChatGPT is to create an AI that can create believable dialogues. It does this by scouring the web for data it uses to respond to simple prompts.
By “simple,” I mean sometimes “horribly complicated,” of course. And sometimes a little ridiculous.
As has been pointed out, chatbots only generate texts based on what they have been fed, i.e., “garbage in / garbage out.” So if you push the programs hard enough, they will generate racist, sexist, homophobic etc awful stuff — because unfortunately that kind of sick and twisted garbage is still out there, somewhere online in a troll’s paradise.
So far, I have asked the program to:
OK, and the verdict is:
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December 15, 2022
“Find my ebooks and a wide collection of great indie titles as part of the Smashwords 2022 End of Year Sale! Check out https://smashwords.com/shelves/promos before the end of the month and follow @smashwords for more promos like this! #SmashwordsEOYSale #ebook #sale #books2read #indiebooks”
(I swiped this from the Smashwords promo site as a “generic blurb.” But what else, really, do I need to write?
All my ebooks on Smashwords are “50%” off! That means the books that are listed as $0.99 are actually free, since they don’t do $0.49.
And don’t forget that all proceeds from Destiny in the Future are donated to fight cancer.
Gift an ebook to friends and family!
September 19, 2022
Just passed 200 followers on WordPress. Thank you, everyone!
I know I should be posting a whole lot more often than I have. There are LOADS of new science articles and events happening recently, so I’ll see if I can get caught up over the next couple of weeks.
Plus a new chapter of Bringer of Light by the end of the week! I promise!
(And it would be VERY helpful if WordPress didn’t “refresh” while I was adding tags and categories to posts, and then hiding those tags and categories afterward so that I couldn’t update them…Sigh…what was wrong with the older version that worked just fine?)
August 12, 2022
Our search for alien life is getting serious. With better telescopes and a growing scientific consensus that we’re probably not alone in the universe, we’re beginning to look farther and wider across the vastness of space for evidence of extraterrestrials.
But it’s possible we’re looking for too few signs in too few places. Having evolved on Earth, surrounded by Earth life, we assume alien life would look and behave like terrestrial life.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alien-hunters-need-to-start-rethinking-the-definition-of-life?
I agree that we are biased, simply based on the basics of what we understand as (carbon-based) life (i.e., ourselves).
And I agree — in principle — that scientists need to keep an open mind when looking for other life forms on exoplanets.
However, they also need to retain a sense of skepticism.
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