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visitingwriter.bsky.social
Jewish SciFi/Fantasy/Horror author. Developmental editor. University instructor. Chicago Manual of Style enthusiast.
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Depends on where you look. North America in the 2090s is coming out of the Great American War, focused on a 70-year conflict between the United States and the secessionist Allied States. The AS is on the brink of collapse after Texas backstabbed everyone (and then got its teeth kicked in by Mexico).

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

To this I would add two things, re: #genAI et al. 1. I'm extremely worried about students having declining social skills because they suffered homeschooler trauma during the pandemic and now I'm starting to see them take conversation prompts/cues from generative AI.

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

Without downloading new pictures, where are you mentally?

submitted 22 hours ago • 1 comment

I don't really do the flag thing but what the hell. These days I meander between... - Bi/Demi - Aromantic - Nonbinary ...with varying percentages and/or pie charts on each. So to save time I usually just go with "I'm queer" and leave it at that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

submitted 23 hours ago • 1 comment

Is US antisemitism real yet?

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Block button's about to get another workout, huh.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

As beautiful a yeet as any I've ever seen.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

4 Villains I've written: 1. A sentient(?) humanoid paragraph out to wipe out all individuality. 2. Eldritch serial killer but it's actually capitalism. 3. "What if I go ahead and predict the incel movement by 5 years?" 4. Dissociative bi-twink who'd rather destroy reality than go to therapy.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Most of the intelligence community are goddamn nerds. The current power players are all exactly the right age to think they're clever by naming everything after stuff from Lord of the Rings. That includes the ones like Thiel who vice signal by intentionally missing the point.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Your regularly scheduled reminder that Reality simply does not fuck with subtlety.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Adam Page should've beaten CM Punk at Double or Nothing 2022. It took years and multiple disasters before that view became mainstream among AEW fans, but I was banging that drum before the first crappy promo battle.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

#SFFChat Q4: Always get the jitters about sharing my work online due to AI scraping, but just this once...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I'm Ben Blythe, currently working on a cyberpunk/fantasy mash-up set in an alternate future where magic came back in the '80s and promptly screwed everything up even worse than it already is. Don't have anything to plug just yet, but hopefully the debut novel will be done later this year. #SFFChat

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

#SFFChat Q1: I really like to extrapolate from current religions and imagine how they'd evolve over time, especially under extraordinary circumstances (stuff like magic, easy FTL travel, aliens, whatever else). It's usually background stuff but I just love playing around with it.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

#SFFChat Q2: Depends on the character, depends on the story. My current main character is a not-quite-secular Jewish mage struggling to square his beliefs with his work, failures, and PTSD. He's really bad at being Jewish but he's trying and his most reliable supporter/conscience is his cantor.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

#SFFChat Q3: Ted Chiang and Isaac Asimov, oddly enough, because both of them are/were willing to play around with religion and explore it in ways that most authors can't or won't, and it feels more sincere for that. Hell is the Absence of God and The Last Question are all-time favorites of mine.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

My spine breaks every time I watch this woman. That is not a complaint.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Thing is, this isn't even just MAGA. Killing any kind of organized secular education, especially one funded by the government and accessible to the general public, is the oldest uninterrupted coherent policy platform on the right. It pre-dates our modern two-party system.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments