Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200929105100/https://scribe.rip/p/a-critical-look-at-david-cages-writing-and-why-it-is-intensely-awful-cf8ad51858cd originally retrieved Tue Sep 29 10:51:00 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "A Guide to Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems" https://web.archive.org/web/20210416144133/http://www.alysion.org/handy/althandwriting.htm originally retrieved Fri 16 Apr 2021 02:41:33 PM EDT
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20201009044111/https://scribe.rip/p/writers-block-is-better-than-writing-2587842db57e originally retrieved Fri Oct 9 04:41:11 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: ""Key to the City: Writing Code to Induce Social Change" by Jurnell Cockhren - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20171004125950/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Z0LGeQCWU originally retrieved Wed Oct 4 12:59:50 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: ""Experimental Creative Writing with the Vectorized Word" by Allison Parrish - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20171004113121/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3D0JEA1Jdc originally retrieved Wed Oct 4 11:31:21 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209122701/https://scribe.rip/p/writers-of-medium-please-stop-writing-about-writing-4fe7911b8e35 originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 12:27:01 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "Virtual Boy Architecture | A Practical Analysis" https://web.archive.org/web/20210216181834/https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/virtual-boy/ originally retrieved Tue 16 Feb 2021 06:18:34 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209094112/https://scribe.rip/p/writing-a-1200-word-essay-about-occupy-really-shows-how-even-7-years-later-people-on-the-left-have-ac84066906a9 originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 09:41:12 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "Combinators and the Story of Computation—Stephen Wolfram Writings" https://web.archive.org/web/20210623085444/https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-and-the-story-of-computation/ originally retrieved Wed 23 Jun 2021 08:54:44 AM EDT
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209090826/https://scribe.rip/p/what-i-do-instead-of-writing-on-medium-a8eb0f7ce8b1 originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 09:08:26 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "Writing a Simple IPFS Crawler · Gokberk Yaltirakli" https://web.archive.org/web/20180312115353/https://gkbrk.com/2018/03/writing-a-simple-ipfs-crawler/ originally retrieved Mon Mar 12 11:53:53 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Telling Stories In Order to Live: On Writing and Money" https://web.archive.org/web/20200121105317/https://longreads.com/2020/01/16/telling-stories-in-order-to-live-on-writing-and-money/ originally retrieved Tue Jan 21 10:53:17 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "When an AI Tries Writing Slashdot Headlines - Slashdot" https://web.archive.org/web/20171023121012/https://meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/22/1714246/when-an-ai-tries-writing-slashdot-headlines originally retrieved Mon Oct 23 12:10:12 EDT 2017
Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is boring and dangerous • The Register https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/semantic_ablation_ai_writing
Random link from the archives: "Column: Writing the Mythos: The Handy-Dandy Mythos Plot Structure | Innsmouth Free Press" https://web.archive.org/web/20171103114108/http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/column-writing-the-mythos-the-handy-dandy-mythos-plot-structure/
Random link from the archives: "Defunctionalisation - an underappreciated tool for writing good software | G Research" https://web.archive.org/web/20200310100458/https://www.gresearch.co.uk/article/defunctionalisation/ originally retrieved Tue Mar 10 10:04:58 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "How independent writers are turning to AI" https://web.archive.org/web/20240209140540/https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper originally retrieved Fri 09 Feb 2024 02:05:40 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209105404/https://scribe.rip/p/my-rejected-writing-topics-59fcfe07498a originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 10:54:04 AM EST
great that instead of designing languages to make efficient and effective use of our cognitive resources, we just doubled down on code generation, when the poor state of programming is largely the result of IDEs removing the friction around writing bloated boiler-plate nonsense
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20201009044111/https://scribe.rip/p/writers-block-is-better-than-writing-2587842db57e originally retrieved Fri Oct 9 04:41:11 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "How independent writers are turning to AI" https://web.archive.org/web/20240209140540/https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper originally retrieved Fri 09 Feb 2024 02:05:40 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "how I think when I think about programming - alice maz" https://web.archive.org/web/20220226103606/https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/program.html originally retrieved Sat 26 Feb 2022 10:36:06 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20190812212554/https://scribe.rip/p/a-critique-of-the-genre-of-mental-health-writing-part-one-6084087f71a3 originally retrieved Mon Aug 12 21:25:54 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209115546/https://scribe.rip/p/this-is-the-best-kind-of-writing-on-the-internet-ad1d3bdad054 originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 11:55:46 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "Email icon" https://web.archive.org/web/20190101180624/https://www.topic.com/cory-doctorow-how-writing-fiction-can-influence-the-future originally retrieved Tue Jan 1 18:06:24 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: "Behold, mortal, the origins of robotfindskitten..." https://web.archive.org/web/20200128150430/https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2017-Roguelike%20Celebration/ originally retrieved Tue Jan 28 15:04:30 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20190409083252/http://readthis.wtf/writing/hyperplastic-supernormal/ originally retrieved Tue Apr 9 08:32:52 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "I Grew Up in the Drug Culture, and Sort of Miss It | www.splicetoday.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20200505172342/https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-grew-up-in-the-drug-culture-and-sort-of-miss-it?fbclid=IwAR0FFu0IMuE-zvmSNo6ZJ9e6cbYpDI755t3aFxUL827HaLeTC9UahMv-NOw
Random link from the archives: "My old HyperCard stack (Phil Gyford’s website)" https://web.archive.org/web/20181113005426/https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2017/08/16/hypercard-tea/ originally retrieved Tue Nov 13 00:54:26 EST 2018
Random link from the archives: "Procedurally Generated Text: A Writing Process Built for Computers" https://web.archive.org/web/20191115054703/https://tedium.co/2019/11/14/procedural-text-history/ originally retrieved Fri Nov 15 05:47:03 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20191011152957/https://scribe.rip/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-writing-scenes-and-stories-c4e0296276f originally retrieved Fri Oct 11 15:29:57 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Stop Writing Classes - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20180425141235/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0 originally retrieved Wed Apr 25 14:12:35 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20200321162939/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM originally retrieved Sat Mar 21 16:29:39 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "How independent writers are turning to AI" https://web.archive.org/web/20240209140540/https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper originally retrieved Fri 09 Feb 2024 02:05:40 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "Procedurally Generated Text: A Writing Process Built for Computers" https://web.archive.org/web/20191115054703/https://tedium.co/2019/11/14/procedural-text-history/ originally retrieved Fri Nov 15 05:47:03 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200312091356/https://scribe.rip/p/50-creative-writing-prompts-efd98970d885 originally retrieved Thu Mar 12 09:13:56 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "The 10:1 rule of writing and programming" https://web.archive.org/web/20180813104833/https://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2018/08/12/the-10-to-1-rule-of-writing-and-programming/ originally retrieved Mon Aug 13 10:48:33 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Writing and lightness" https://web.archive.org/web/20200310091523/https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-and-lightness/ originally retrieved Tue Mar 10 09:15:23 EDT 2020
i need to stick to the games i'm already writing, rather than the MfoM sequel i keep imagining set in 2020 where ace reporter Mimi is living with clueless nepo baby with a heart of gold Aoi
Random link from the archives: "Letting neural networks be weird • A neural net tries writing Burma-Shave jingles" https://web.archive.org/web/20180719125008/http://aiweirdness.com/post/176056635992/a-neural-net-tries-writing-burma-shave-jingles
Some fandom activities: fanfiction, fanart, AMVs/edits, curation, moodboards, making your own cosplay, learning enough about a thing to write a book about it and then writing the book. Things that are not fandom activities: buy product, buy merch, free advertisement.
honestly, anybody who gets on television and doesn't respond by dancing in a strange, uncomfortable, and upsetting way then writing an academic article about it is somebody i can't relate to
Random link from the archives: "The umbra of an imago: Writing under control of machine learning - Serpentine Galleries" https://web.archive.org/web/20200820120937/https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/the-umbra-of-an-imago-writing-under-control-of-machine-learning/
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200312061225/https://scribe.rip/p/fiction-writing-as-trance-possession-conscience-place-and-story-mind-41155949ce4b originally retrieved Thu Mar 12 06:12:25 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "I Grew Up in the Drug Culture, and Sort of Miss It | www.splicetoday.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20200505172342/https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-grew-up-in-the-drug-culture-and-sort-of-miss-it?fbclid=IwAR0FFu0IMuE-zvmSNo6ZJ9e6cbYpDI755t3aFxUL827HaLeTC9UahMv-NOw
Random link from the archives: "Writing Software to Last 50 Years > Ying Wang" https://web.archive.org/web/20200113121712/https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2020/01/13/50years/ originally retrieved Mon Jan 13 12:17:12 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "Hardware Interrupts | Writing an OS in Rust" https://web.archive.org/web/20181022133117/https://os.phil-opp.com/hardware-interrupts/ originally retrieved Mon Oct 22 13:31:17 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Ontology Overrated" https://web.archive.org/web/20190123095136/http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html originally retrieved Wed Jan 23 09:51:36 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: "Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" https://web.archive.org/web/20180904134855/http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html originally retrieved Tue Sep 4 13:48:55 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Combinators and the Story of Computation—Stephen Wolfram Writings" https://web.archive.org/web/20210623085444/https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-and-the-story-of-computation/ originally retrieved Wed 23 Jun 2021 08:54:44 AM EDT
Random link from the archives: "The Good Room – Frank Chimero" https://web.archive.org/web/20180216114740/https://frankchimero.com/writing/the-good-room/ originally retrieved Fri Feb 16 11:47:40 EST 2018
How independent writers are turning to AI https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper
one thing i don't like about academic writing is when people feel like, for their introduction, they need to summarize adjacent work from other fields & they end up repeating stuff that's dumb specifically because another academic of higher standing said it & it's outside their interest area to really question. for instance, i'm reading this book about the intersection of horror and architecture, and in the introduction they basically shit on horror movies and use adorno to claim that horror movies are bad because modern media is lazy. now, as a horror movie afficianado: most horror movies are bad, yes. but, as somebody who is interested in the history of gothic literature: most gothic literature is bad (and the same problems we have with it today are, for the most part, what people complained about in the 18th century). there's a very straightforward framing of horror that explains why a lot of it is bad, but it's rooted in analysis that acknowledges the nature of 'camp' as genuinely vital & important violation of cultural norms. i'm sure the rest of the book will be fine but whenever i see somebody look down on camp in favor of 'high art' i see it as a giant red flag.
Random link from the archives: "Writing in Collaboration with the System | Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling" https://web.archive.org/web/20180620104704/https://emshort.blog/2014/10/29/writing-in-collaboration-with-the-system/ originally retrieved Wed Jun 20 10:47:04 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Thread by @enkiv2: "An article I'm considering writing: the (explicit) political use of ghost stories. The idea of the 'confederate soldier ghost' was explicitl […]"" https://web.archive.org/web/20180723103422/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1021352318028087297.html originally retrieved Mon Jul 23 10:34:22 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing" https://web.archive.org/web/20181005130904/https://longreads.com/2018/10/02/webzines-90s-online-media/ originally retrieved Fri Oct 5 13:09:04 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Aimee Bender on Writing Without a Plan ‹ Literary Hub" https://web.archive.org/web/20220426151515/https://lithub.com/aimee-bender-on-writing-without-a-plan/ originally retrieved Tue 26 Apr 2022 03:15:15 PM EDT
Random link from the archives: "Novels written and illustrated by an “AI” (Phil Gyford’s website)" https://web.archive.org/web/20210910202219/https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2021/08/31/novels-by-ai/ originally retrieved Fri 10 Sep 2021 08:22:19 PM EDT
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209104238/https://scribe.rip/p/writing-cyberpunk-flap-copy-ec638b1fb95e originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 10:42:38 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200620200115/https://scribe.rip/p/writing-clearer-error-messages-d57d6f388140 originally retrieved Sat Jun 20 20:01:15 EDT 2020
i've read at least five different books specifically about screenwriting, but i'll probably never write a screenplay, because if i do and somebody options it and then they actually make the movie they might ask me to go on set to do on-set rewrites, and as much as i love movies, literally any movie set sounds like hell
when franchise fatigue hits critical mass and the industry finally pivots (assuming the film industry as such survives, rather than turning into something unrecognizable) there will be a real hunger for original spec scripts for low- and mid-budget productions, so start writing your quirky arthouse horror-comedy screenplay now. (then send me a copy because i love that shit)
remember when spotify made a 'playlist for writers', and you clicked on it expecting a bunch of instrumental tracks to listen to while writing, but it was actually a whole bunch of wordy songs from different genres that were named after classic works of literature (even when they had nothing to do with them)?
The World’s Writing Systems https://www.worldswritingsystems.org/
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20190722095616/https://quinnkeast.com/writing/stop-blaming-people-its-a-design-problem/ originally retrieved Mon Jul 22 09:56:16 EDT 2019
language is a technology. government is a technology. writing is a technology. drawing is a technology.
AP Strange's Weird Writings: The Esoteric Secrets of the Three Stooges https://www.apstrange.com/2023/07/the-esoteric-secrets-of-three-stooges.html
i believe in abolishing all forms of IP law (and this is directly informed by my day job, writing the infrastructure that allows IP law to be executed at scale). if you are worried that abolishing IP law would screw over individual artists (though i would argue that small artists are already screwed over and IP law is mostly used against them, and in fact cannot typically be used to support them) then a reasonable half-measure is as follows: limit copyright terms to 7 years, and rule that copyright can only be held by a natural person, and cannot be transferred or inherited. this will prevent copyright from ever being used as a corporate cash-cow, and ensures that whatever benefits might go to the copyright holder always go to the artist instead. this doesn't address other forms of IP, but other forms of IP are really not available to regular people unless they're quite rich, whereas everybody you have ever met owns a billion copyrights in theory and doesn't know it.
an LLM is a plausible-sounding-bullshit machine because any purely-statistical generative system is a plausible-sounding-bullshit machine: it optimizes for least-surprise along the metrics it knows how to measure. it produces interesting output by breaking -- by failing to measure something important and therefore producing output that no human would produce, because no human could ignore whatever metric the model is ignoring. this is great for art: like random factors and constraints, an artist can use interaction with a statistical model to propel them out of a rut and onto a new path (as long as the model is sufficiently bad at predicting what a human would 'really' do -- i.e., so long as the training data in that area is sparse enough that the model's idea of the most-likely thing is absurd). it's horrible for anything where correctness is important: there is no negative feedback mechanism for factually incorrect or (in the case of code) non-functional output, only for output that is insufficiently boring from the perspective of event frequency correlations (where, in the case of an LLM or a markov chain chatbot, the event is a letter or word respectively). if you want reliably correct results, you need to be doing symbolic processing -- using a theorem prover, constraint solver, or expert system. this division between statistical and symbolic techniques in AI mirrors the system I / system II division in human psychology. with humans, it seems like system II is an extremely expensive epiphenomenon on top of system I -- that, through rigorous conditioning, humans are taught to sometimes simulate symbolic processing on statistical hardware. it's possible that computers could do this. but why would we want them to, when conventional computer hardware is much better at symbolic processing than statistical processing (and in fact, we are already doing it the other way around and implementing statistical modeling on symbolic hardware). (i say 'conventional computer hardware' because there are a couple dedicated neural net chips around, mostly built in the 90s; they are not heavily used, but if i didn't mention them somebody would probably complain.) IBM's 'Watson' was originally billed as something that could combine statistical and symbolic methods, but clearly, the statistical side has been given higher priority in ways that make it not just useless but actively dangerous for most of the tasks it is marketed for. the draw of statistical models for a corporation is clear: with an expert system, a human who is an expert in writing expert systems needs to interview domain experts (and all these people are typically paid very well for their time since there are few experienced expert system engineers and the domain experts are automating away some of their own future consulting contracts), whereas you just throw mountains of unstructured text at an LLM until it starts making coherent sentences (and there's a lot of unstructured text that's either in the public domain or where copyright claims are nearly unenforceable).
the fact that some people find LLMs useful for writing code is not a credit to LLMs but an indictment of the average signal to noise ratio of code: it means that most code is confusing boilerplate -- boilerplate because a statistical model can only reliably reproduce patterns that reoccur many times across its training corpus, and confusing because otherwise-intelligent people capable of convincing a hiring manager that they are competent programmers find it easier to ask a statistical model to produce an incorrect prototype they must debug than write the code themselves. we all know from experience that most code is bad, but for LLMs to be able to write more-or-less working code at all indicates that code is much worse than we imagine, and that even what we consider 'good' code is from a broader perspective totally awful. (in my opinion, it is forced to be this way because of the way we design programming languages and libraries.)
i actually often prefer made for tv horror. because it can't rely on gore or expensive effects, 100% of the scares need to come from good writing, acting, and filmmaking. and let me tell you: give dan curtis a dick matheson script and a five dollar bill and you're getting a movie that will scar you for life
I tried the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates, and it’s better than I expected - The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/24/23732252/sudowrite-story-engine-ai-generated-cyberpunk-novella
Random link from the archives: "Assisted Writing – samim – Medium" https://web.archive.org/web/20170608092012/https://scribe.rip/@samim/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally retrieved Thu Jun 8 09:20:12 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200325130325/https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/good-writing-irina-dumitrescu-book-review/?src=longreads originally retrieved Wed Mar 25 13:03:25 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200102091127/http://readthis.wtf/writing/towards-a-transcendental-deduction-of-jungle-interview-part-1/ originally retrieved Thu Jan 2 09:11:27 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and rewriting a running GUI" https://web.archive.org/web/20181112152554/http://www.righto.com/2017/10/the-xerox-alto-smalltalk-and-rewriting.html originally retrieved Mon Nov 12 15:25:54 EST 2018
i'm a big proponent of forethought -- planning, design work, et cetera -- but planning work can only ever be done effectively by people who are also capable of executing the plan, and while delegation is important, when technical work is deeply entangled it's not possible to plan and delegate work that you yourself do not substantially understand. in other words, non-technical management of technical tasks does not serve to produce actionable planning; instead, it simply forms a reporting layer that produces 'performance data' (always, by definition, nonsense bullshit) to upper management that must be ignored and that relays 'guidelines' to developers (typically nonsense bullshit, but almost always necessary to ignore) from upper management. basically, it's a layer that sits between developers and middle management & spews random noise in both directions. a good developer can perform all of the tasks involved in bringing a project to fruition (including getting user feedback, managing the project, communicating with and delegating to other developers, writing documentation, doing UX analysis & design, and performing maintenance in response to changing requirements), but non-technical management's skillset is limited to interfacing with institutional tooling for creating the illusion of taylorization around the inherent chaos of any real work (ex., using JIRA, holding scrum rituals).
does the handwriting of musical notation give clues into the state of mind of the scribe? like, is there a benefit to trying to play off original manuscripts so that the subliminal feel of the waver of the tail of that note, tracing a slight tremor of the writing hand, can be reflected in the way the musician plays the note
Random link from the archives: "Computers Writing Books?" https://web.archive.org/web/20211204055834/https://scribe.rip/p/computers-writing-books-54628883d2b8 originally retrieved Sat 04 Dec 2021 05:58:34 AM EST
Random link from the archives: "The Asymmetry of Open Source — Matt Holt" https://web.archive.org/web/20220318214202/https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source originally retrieved Fri 18 Mar 2022 09:42:02 PM EDT
Random link from the archives: "Novelty Songwriting Contests: How They Shape Offbeat Music" https://web.archive.org/web/20190529114351/https://tedium.co/2019/05/21/novelty-songwriting-contests/ originally retrieved Wed May 29 11:43:51 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Something went wrong" https://web.archive.org/web/20211115180216/https://scribe.rip/p/understanding-the-alt-rights-psychology-through-sartre-s-writings-e797e59a93fa originally retrieved Mon 15 Nov 2021 06:02:16 PM EST
Popular writing manuals that are actually pretty bad and should be avoided: Story by Robert McKee (meandering and abstract), On Writing by Stephen King (not really a writing manual), Writing for Interactive Media by Jon Samsel (unimaginative and obsessed with the limitations of mid-90s tech and market forces), any of the many writing manuals by Kevin J. Anderson (advice only applicable if you happen to be Kevin J. Anderson), Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (10% good advice, 20% repetition, 70% complaining about Kids These Days Being Too Woke), Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (contains exactly one piece of writing advice -- to trick yourself into writing -- repeated for 200 pages, interspersed with completely unrelated anecdotes about hanging out with some cult leader), Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway and Susan Weinberg (indulges too much in emotional bullshit to the exclusion of actionable advice, and more than half the pages are just reprinted short stories you've already read in high school english), The Anatomy of Story by John Truby (a mix of extremely abstract & confusing models & weird sweeping political shit)
Writing manuals actually worth reading: Screenplay by Syd Field, Writing Dialogue by Tom Chicarella, Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, Story Genius by Lisa Cron, Graphs Maps Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History by Franco Moretti, Writing Space by J. David Bolter
Random link from the archives: "Fiction-Writing as Trance Possession: Conscience Place and Story Mind" https://web.archive.org/web/20211202150524/https://scribe.rip/p/fiction-writing-as-trance-possession-conscience-place-and-story-mind-41155949ce4b originally retrieved Thu 02 Dec 2021 03:05:24 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "GitHub - robey/font-problems: command-line tool for reading and writing console bitmap fonts" https://web.archive.org/web/20180326093407/https://github.com/robey/font-problems originally retrieved Mon Mar 26 09:34:07 EDT 2018
some of early punk was, like, suicide writing a song about ghost rider and singing it while wearing sunglasses indoors and whipping bike chains at people and audiences having their minds completely blown. or like the lead singer of the damned dressing up like a christopher lee stunt double and demanding to be known as dave vanian. because music can be fun and meaningful, and anybody who makes art is in some fundamental sense dorky (self-expression means you have a self to express, and having a self is the fundament of cringe)
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200610223816/https://scribe.rip/p/the-wendell-berry-quote-that-frames-michael-pollans-environmental-writing-8695d70d7f1c originally retrieved Wed Jun 10 22:38:16 EDT 2020
"Stop Writing Dead Programs" by Jack Rusher (Strange Loop 2022) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ab3ArE8W3s
agile means that most new features and bug fixes in production code are the developer equivalent of grandma writing passwords on a post-it note on her monitor
The Rhythm of Writing: A Chat with the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist’s New Issue - Longreads https://longreads.com/2022/10/17/the-rhythm-of-writing-a-chat-with-the-writer-and-editor-behind-the-atavists-new-issue/
Deathmaster captured something interesting: cult leaders are often psychic vampires. When they have communes, they are functionally landlords as well. So it's justifiable, when writing fictional cult leaders, to use vampire semiotics: these are powerful people who entrance, produce fantasies, impose their will, feed off the people below them, but who generally operate through seduction. At the same time, as Van Helsing said of Dracula, in a sense they have 'a child brain', because the kind of fourth circuit fixation that makes you spend all your time perfecting your ability to generate charisma for the sake of ekeing out personal power over other people will necessarily also manifest in a kind of arrested development (can't imagine a form of self-worth that isn't based on external validation, like some kind of middle-schooler).
Bad idea of the day: rewriting book filing numbers in base 12: the duo decimal system
Random link from the archives: "Aaron Greenspan :: Writing :: Mark Zuckerberg's Ponzi Scheme" https://web.archive.org/web/20190723141028/http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190723/mark-zuckerbergs-ponzi-scheme/ originally retrieved Tue Jul 23 14:10:28 EDT 2019
geekdom/fandom can be broken down into two subgroups: one based on costly signalling (generally, the production of creative transformative works, but sometimes legally risky manouvers like tape-trading or technical ones like translation) and one based on consumption (sometimes, but not always, involving participating in a critical discourse, of varying degrees of rigour). these two groups are biased in very different directions because of the way the gatekeeping mechanisms manifest: one joins and participates in the costly signalling segment of fandom by defeating legal, technical, and cultural mechanisms of centralized media control manifesting in the form of market segmentation, artificial scarcity, and the fixation of elements into 'canon' based around authorial intent, and while this produces a widespread anti-IP sentiment, were these blockages fully removed, there would be no way for this group to meaningfully demonstrate their affiliation; the consumption-based segment, on the other hand, can only show its affiliation through legitimate and 'approved' channels, and is limited to officially-available media and tie-in merchandise, but benefits directly from network effects. While the consumption segment is broader in some ways (no skill or daring is required, nor any connections) it is narrower in others (one's cultural capital here is tied entirely to one's bank account, and wealth is not a good proxy for anything other than perhaps power, so not only is there no need to form a complex web of meaningful relationships within a fandom of this type, doing so is a negative since it limits the 'fan's ability to cut all ties with one fandom and gain social capital in another through buying and selling). completely opening up licenses -- flooding the market with new shows, licensing every anime in every region for simulcasting -- paradoxically gives in to the apparent demands of the first group and demolishes them: if your cultural capital came from fansubbing TV rips, you are no longer useful to your cohort when crunchyroll streams the new episode within a half an hour of broadcast (even if the official sub has none of the translation notes or karaoke subs or font changes that formed the basis of inter-fansub competition); if your cultural capital came from writing spicy and politically radical slash fics in private mailing lists under threat of bogus lawsuits, your cultural capital goes away when the showrunners begin to anticipate, manipulate, and lampshade the things you would say by lurking in fan communities and turning them into a kind of unpaid second writer's room. There are only a couple things left to do: go much further (in obscurity, by focusing on older titles that are not available, or in transgression, by making transformative fan content so culturally radioactive that businesses cannot touch it), continue what you're doing in a community that keeps shrinking because of a loss of a sense of meaning, or become a consumer-type (if you can afford it). Or, alternately, become one of the outside observers -- the people who do not actually participate in the cultural production but collectively provide social capital through a consumption of fandom that's wholly passive. It is these folks who leave the outer ring of costly-signalling-based fandom first: they have not done any costly signalling themselves, but they watch fansubs because they don't want to wait for an expensive dvd release that might never come, read fanfiction because they wish they were seeing these situations in the shows themselves, and (though totally silent and anonymous) their footprints produce view counts that justify cultural production. When the costly-signalling side of fandom shrinks, though, and this group leaves, they will necessarily find less fulfillment in observation of the consumption side: a lovingly constructed spirk-tribble orgy is always going to be more fulfilling than a photograph of someone else's collection of mass-produced dolls, because the former at least offers imaginative investment. One could always graduate from an observer to a member of the costly signalling based fandom culture: while skill is prized and confers social capital, all that is actually necessary to join is sacrifice (ex., a willingness to write bad fanfiction in public, which may over time become good fanfiction); the consumption-based group is only open to you if you can afford to spend money on worthless objects, and class mobility is such that if you can't, nothing within your power is likely to make it so that you can. I've tried to be NPOV here, but I think it's clear that the costly signalling based segment is doing something valuable (making meaningful cultural production, breaking down barriers, weakening the power of corporations and IP, being inclusive across class lines, transforming an interest in media into the development of useful skills) and the consumption based section is a kind of shallow one-upsmanship between rich idiots; it benefits IP owners to cater to the latter and try to demolish the former, and until that process began in earnest and cultural shifts became noticable in fandom spaces, there was very little interest in distinguishing between the two (who overlap anyway).
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209111205/https://scribe.rip/p/i-have-discovered-many-ways-to-not-make-money-by-writing-books-8ea5fd99492a originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 11:12:05 AM EST
John Milius: The Story Behind Writing Apocalypse Now | Ep12 | Making Apocalypse Now - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmBxs6Eyo8A
Random link from the archives: "Rewriting the Technical Interview" https://web.archive.org/web/20200923131127/https://aphyr.com/posts/353-rewriting-the-technical-interview originally retrieved Wed Sep 23 13:11:27 EDT 2020
Terre Thaemlitz - Writings - Introduction to Nuisance http://www.comatonse.com/writings/nuisance.html
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200929200747/https://scribe.rip/p/why-is-academic-writing-so-dense-88ca11cb368c originally retrieved Tue Sep 29 20:07:47 EDT 2020
My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span Journey away from smartphones | I'd Rather Be Writing Blog https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/awakening-moment-to-how-smartphones-fragment-our-attention/
Random link from the archives: "Something went wrong" https://web.archive.org/web/20211115180216/https://scribe.rip/p/understanding-the-alt-rights-psychology-through-sartre-s-writings-e797e59a93fa originally retrieved Mon 15 Nov 2021 06:02:16 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20210405185805/https://enkiv2.medium.com/writing-advice-should-stop-targeting-people-who-hate-to-write-6d7d658954d2?sk=85173f62e0e2f6400c2520c55b32e0fa originally retrieved Mon 05 Apr 2021 06:58:05 PM EDT
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200319161442/https://scribe.rip/@enkiv2/i-dont-remember-writing-this-but-it-looks-exactly-like-my-writing-style-1faf3ef0b394 originally retrieved Thu Mar 19 16:14:42 EDT 2020
Aimee Bender on Writing Without a Plan ‹ Literary Hub https://lithub.com/aimee-bender-on-writing-without-a-plan/
Random link from the archives: "Assisted Writing – samim – Medium" https://web.archive.org/web/20170608092012/https://scribe.rip/@samim/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally retrieved Thu Jun 8 09:20:12 EDT 2017
because copyright terms are substantially longer than the average lifetime, the publication rights & possibly royalties for your writing will almost definitely outlive you. is it straightforward to, for instance, write your will such that your books fall into the public domain on your death? what about donating the rights to your books to a local public library?
Random link from the archives: "Column: Writing the Mythos: The Handy-Dandy Mythos Plot Structure | Innsmouth Free Press" https://web.archive.org/web/20171103114108/http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/column-writing-the-mythos-the-handy-dandy-mythos-plot-structure/ originally retrieved Fri Nov 3 11:41:08 EDT 2017
two pervasive things in academic writing that bring reading to an absolute fucking halt: 1) interrupting yourself to explain why you've chosen to explain something in a particular way (save that shit for the intro), and 2) repeating yourself like you're afraid people are skimming or skipping around
The Asymmetry of Open Source — Matt Holt https://matt.life/writing/the-asymmetry-of-open-source
Random link from the archives: "Rewriting The Matrix Sequels - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20190612180244/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqhhy0yGAX4 originally retrieved Wed Jun 12 18:02:44 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Writing a Good Sentence" https://web.archive.org/web/20211122164748/https://scribe.rip/p/writing-a-good-sentence-4681cd65ed35 originally retrieved Mon 22 Nov 2021 04:47:48 PM EST
how I think when I think about programming - alice maz https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/program.html
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20220209111205/https://scribe.rip/p/i-have-discovered-many-ways-to-not-make-money-by-writing-books-8ea5fd99492a originally retrieved Wed 09 Feb 2022 11:12:05 AM EST
Random link from the archives: " Writing the Uncanny: an interview with Dan Coxon" https://web.archive.org/web/20220207195730/http://www.bigbookend.co.uk/writing-the-uncanny-interview-with-dan-coxon/ originally retrieved Mon 07 Feb 2022 07:57:30 PM EST
how often does the same native god (in a land invaded in the name of the church) become the basis for both a saint and a demon? and, how often is this simultaneous? my intuition is that the overlap will be small because demon names tended to be based on the gods of peoples that hebrews encountered during the writing of the old testament, the saints are mostly based on gods of peoples who post-300-AD romanized christians were encountering for the first time, and so any local gods would need to survive a roughly 500 year gap at the minimum (and probably more like 1000-2000) with very little sound variation, in a world where almost everybody is illiterate and so the vernacular has a high rate of churn
since close to the beginning of the pandemic, i've been a part of at least one (and sometimes 3 or 4) weekly book clubs on discord, and i just realized... that it's basically a college class? like, a bunch of us dorks decided to take it upon ourselves to do intensive studies of often-difficult texts and come together to discuss them for 2-3 hours, every week, for years. there are no tests & there's no credit -- we are doing this purely as a social thing and to learn stuff we're interested in -- and we're not even recording it for a podcast or anything. some of our book clubs have homework or group projects, even. at the same time, this work has been driving my media consumption habits & a lot of my writing and other interests for the past few years. this is a thing that people can do. while there are a bunch of reasons to attend an accredited university (including having qualified experts to personally advise you & being able to prove, in an easily-legible way, to future employers that you passed some kind of measure of competence), if your goal is to learn (especially to learn together & have all the positive social pressures that can keep you committed to often-difficult subjects) you can just... do it. you can just arrange with your friends to... do a class. the stuff i've been doing has involved occult tomes, works of critical theory, and mass-market nonfiction, but i think you can even do this with textbooks. and, with smaller groups, it's easier to negotiate an appropriate pace. while in these meetings there's always been someone to step up and gently guide discussion back toward the subject & make sure everyone has a chance to speak, there generally hasn't been a 'teacher' in the sense of 'expert', and for the most part, that's been OK. it captures everything i loved about being in college with none of the things i hated.
Four Ways of Not Writing Software Bugs https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/four-ways-of-not-writing-software-bugs/
Writing the Uncanny: an interview with Dan Coxon http://www.bigbookend.co.uk/writing-the-uncanny-interview-with-dan-coxon/
Random link from the archives: "World's Easiest Writing System: Origin of Hangul (corrections in the description) - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20170602131118/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K53oCDZPPiw originally retrieved Fri Jun 2 13:11:18 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200312091356/https://scribe.rip/p/50-creative-writing-prompts-efd98970d885 originally retrieved Thu Mar 12 09:13:56 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "The virus is rewriting our imaginations | MetaFilter" https://web.archive.org/web/20200510164800/https://www.metafilter.com/186857/The-virus-is-rewriting-our-imaginations originally retrieved Sun May 10 16:48:00 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "Avatars of Story – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling" https://web.archive.org/web/20191015085245/https://emshort.blog/how-to-play/writing-if/books-and-other-resources/avatars-of-story/ originally retrieved Tue Oct 15 08:52:45 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Writing in Collaboration with the System | Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling" https://web.archive.org/web/20180620104704/https://emshort.blog/2014/10/29/writing-in-collaboration-with-the-system/ originally retrieved Wed Jun 20 10:47:04 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Stop Writing Classes - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20180425141235/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0 originally retrieved Wed Apr 25 14:12:35 EDT 2018
lyotard was ahead of his time, writing about loli karl marx in 1975
Random link from the archives: "The Good Room – Frank Chimero" https://web.archive.org/web/20180216114740/https://frankchimero.com/writing/the-good-room/ originally retrieved Fri Feb 16 11:47:40 EST 2018
Post-mortem of a fiction generator: asemic writing with some properties of natural languages https://scribe.rip/@enkiv2/post-mortem-of-a-fiction-generator-asemic-writing-with-some-properties-of-natural-languages-2b008fbf8563
I don’t remember writing this but it looks exactly like my writing style. https://scribe.rip/@enkiv2/i-dont-remember-writing-this-but-it-looks-exactly-like-my-writing-style-1faf3ef0b394
Computers Writing Books? https://scribe.rip/p/computers-writing-books-54628883d2b8
10 Things I Learned About Writing From My $50,000 MFA Program https://scribe.rip/p/10-things-i-learned-about-writing-from-my-50-000-mfa-program-4d29891e8db2
50 Creative Writing Prompts https://scribe.rip/p/50-creative-writing-prompts-efd98970d885
Fiction-Writing as Trance Possession: Conscience Place and Story Mind https://scribe.rip/p/fiction-writing-as-trance-possession-conscience-place-and-story-mind-41155949ce4b
The key thing here is not that this time is different than the 60s, or that the people writing… https://scribe.rip/@enkiv2/the-key-thing-here-is-not-that-this-time-is-different-than-the-60s-or-that-the-people-writing-a44c7f62430e
Machine writing is closer to literature’s history than you know | Aeon Essays https://aeon.co/essays/machine-writing-is-closer-to-literatures-history-than-you-know
An Illustrated Guide to Writing Scenes and Stories https://scribe.rip/p/an-illustrated-guide-to-writing-scenes-and-stories-c4e0296276f
NO WINNERS, NO ENDS " Why have a writing jam? https://scribe.rip/p/no-winners-no-ends-why-have-a-writing-jam-d92d3e4f728a
Random link from the archives: "Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" https://web.archive.org/web/20180904134855/http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html originally retrieved Tue Sep 4 13:48:55 EDT 2018
I strongly recommend, in the rare cases when writing HTML by hand is untenable, rolling your own… https://scribe.rip/@enkiv2/i-strongly-recommend-in-the-rare-cases-when-writing-html-by-hand-is-untenable-rolling-your-own-961b90e97a2e
A Critique of the Genre of ‘Mental Health Writing’ | Part One https://scribe.rip/p/a-critique-of-the-genre-of-mental-health-writing-part-one-6084087f71a3
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20190803061827/https://medium.com/p/writing-software-is-hard-388d5e982ad9 originally retrieved Sat Aug 3 06:18:27 EDT 2019
Nearly two years after writing https://enkiv2.medium.com/i-do-not-see-myself-represented-in-essays-on-dating-78488462efa6?sk=705f8e1a535edbecb948fb7f9fd59034 I now know why this perspective is underrepresented. Reactions to this article are split cleanly in three: redpill-bros who call me a cuck, incels who think I'm a poor naive soul who hasn't seen the light & decided to blame women, and anti-incels who think I'm an incel. All three groups think this post is some kind of cannily performative bad-faith attempt to get a mercy-fuck -- as though I didn't know that mercy fucks are not worth the time, and as though I didn't know that this kind of essay wouldn't get me one anyway. I still think I can't be the only one in this specific situation, but despite a lot of readers, this essay doesn't seem to have produced new conversation about how to make women feel more comfortable with taking the initiative or how to discourage men from spamming unwanted advances.
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200928211955/https://medium.com/p/writing-your-own-programming-language-and-compiler-with-python-a468970ae6df originally retrieved Mon Sep 28 21:19:55 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "How Kubrick Adapted ‘The Shining’ into a Cinematic Masterpiece | Screenwriting - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20190810133107/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvk2zgUBpY originally retrieved Sat Aug 10 13:31:07 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "GitHub - deniskyashif/ssfst: Subsequential Transducer for Efficient "Dictionary-Based" Text Rewriting" https://web.archive.org/web/20170712152643/https://github.com/deniskyashif/ssfst originally retrieved Wed Jul 12 15:26:43 EDT 2017
Help! I Couldn't Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published https://www.gawker.com/media/dear-prudie-it-was-me-all-along
Novels written and illustrated by an “AI” (Phil Gyford’s website) https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2021/08/31/novels-by-ai/
The Co-Founder Of The Fact-Checking Site Snopes Was Writing Plagiarized Articles Under A Fake Name https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson
Dune's Writing is Incredible. Here's why. - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ms5hDWafhw
i wish i was a Real Philosopher -- i.e., somebody who got paid to read, write, and talk about philosophy -- but unfortunately i don't think such a thing really exists or ever has. philosophy professors get the closest, being paid to do paperwork relating tangentially to reading, writing, and talking about philosophy. i get paid to write code to make it easier for corporations to sue each other over patent disputes.
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200613234423/https://medium.com/p/the-science-of-writing-a-lot-7cec434493e9 originally retrieved Sat Jun 13 23:44:23 EDT 2020
Alchemy - The Life Times & Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelley - Beyond John Dee and Enochian Magic - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLgBPNEU9E4
Gnosticism - The Apocryphon / Secret Writing of John - Introduction to Gnostic Texts Scriptures - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22kxcbN8B_A
How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America | Open Culture https://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-american-creative-writing-famous-iowa-writers-workshop.html
Random link from the archives: "Hypergraphia: The Neurological Condition Behind Excessive Writing" https://web.archive.org/web/20191113081602/https://tedium.co/2019/11/12/excessive-writing-hypergraphia/ originally retrieved Wed Nov 13 08:16:02 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: "Are These Bad Habits Creeping Into Your Writing? | Literary Hub" https://web.archive.org/web/20190220140902/https://lithub.com/are-these-bad-habits-creeping-into-your-writing/ originally retrieved Wed Feb 20 14:09:02 EST 2019
How to Get Paid for Your Writing https://liminalwarmth.com/how-to-get-paid-for-your-writing/
Random link from the archives: "Defunctionalisation - an underappreciated tool for writing good software | G Research" https://web.archive.org/web/20200310100458/https://www.gresearch.co.uk/article/defunctionalisation/ originally retrieved Tue Mar 10 10:04:58 EDT 2020
Combinators and the Story of Computation—Stephen Wolfram Writings https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-and-the-story-of-computation/
Random link from the archives: "Virtual Boy Architecture | A Practical Analysis" https://web.archive.org/web/20210216181834/https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/virtual-boy/ originally retrieved Tue 16 Feb 2021 06:18:34 PM EST
Random link from the archives: "Behold, mortal, the origins of robotfindskitten..." https://web.archive.org/web/20200128150430/https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2017-Roguelike%20Celebration/ originally retrieved Tue Jan 28 15:04:30 EST 2020
Is there any known connection between Lovecraft & Francis Stevens? Her 1919 story 'Unfeared - Unseen' feels like a Lovecraft pastiche and even uses the phrase 'nameless dread' but it'd be weird for somebody outside his circle to pastiche this nobody. I know he did ghostwriting work for other pulp authors but I feel like if this was implicated, the anthology I'm reading would have omitted the story.
Random link from the archives: "The roots of writing lie in hopes and dreams, not in accounting | Aeon Essays" https://web.archive.org/web/20180717152850/https://aeon.co/essays/the-roots-of-writing-lie-in-hopes-and-dreams-not-in-accounting originally retrieved Tue Jul 17 15:28:50 EDT 2018
Writing Small CLI Programs in Common Lisp / Steve Losh https://stevelosh.com/blog/2021/03/small-common-lisp-cli-programs/
Random link from the archives: "Writing and lightness" https://web.archive.org/web/20200310091523/https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-and-lightness/ originally retrieved Tue Mar 10 09:15:23 EDT 2020
Writing a Technical Book • AndreGarzia.com https://andregarzia.com/2021/04/writing-a-technical-book.html
A Guide to Alternative Handwriting and Shorthand Systems http://www.alysion.org/handy/althandwriting.htm
Writing advice should stop targeting people who hate to write https://enkiv2.medium.com/writing-advice-should-stop-targeting-people-who-hate-to-write-6d7d658954d2?sk=85173f62e0e2f6400c2520c55b32e0fa
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200621212425/https://medium.com/p/jane-austens-masterclass-in-writing-sassy-narrators-b3c6e94492c9 originally retrieved Sun Jun 21 21:24:25 EDT 2020
A look at Self's object system - sin-ack's writings https://sin-ack.github.io/posts/self-object-system/
Random link from the archives: "What were we trying to make here? - Eva Monkey, an Evangelion Fan Website" https://web.archive.org/web/20190625121029/http://www.evamonkey.com/writings/anno-hideaki-what-were-we-trying-to-make-here.php originally retrieved Tue Jun 25 12:10:29 EDT 2019
The Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method | Eruditorum Press http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/
Random link from the archives: "GitHub - deniskyashif/ssfst: Subsequential Transducer for Efficient "Dictionary-Based" Text Rewriting" https://web.archive.org/web/20170712152643/https://github.com/deniskyashif/ssfst originally retrieved Wed Jul 12 15:26:43 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20201005215227/https://medium.com/p/horrible-writing-advice-70850c243df4 originally retrieved Mon Oct 5 21:52:27 EDT 2020
Virtual Boy Architecture | A Practical Analysis https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/virtual-boy/
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20201009044111/https://medium.com/p/writers-block-is-better-than-writing-2587842db57e originally retrieved Fri Oct 9 04:41:11 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "The cuteness of white noise" https://web.archive.org/web/20190927134045/http://writings.laurel.world/the-cuteness-of-white-noise/ originally retrieved Fri Sep 27 13:40:45 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Escaping the Default Future When Writing Science Fiction | Tor.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20180823122728/https://www.tor.com/2018/08/16/escaping-the-default-future-when-writing-science-fiction/ originally retrieved Thu Aug 23 12:27:28 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "One Free Trick: How to Use the Writing Skills You Have to Learn the Ones You Don’t | Tor.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20190411140252/https://www.tor.com/2019/03/25/one-free-trick-how-to-use-the-writing-skills-you-have-to-learn-the-ones-you-dont/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:02:52 EDT 2019
A handful of reviewers assumed Manna for our Malices was a japanese game localized into english, and that's the best compliment I could have asked for tbh. The second best compliment is that somebody whose reviews focus on writing said that unbelievable characters, tone whiplash, and exaggerated dialogue didn't detract from enjoyment, because... yeah, that's the point, that's why the studio's called double mojo, you found it, congratulations.
writing is creating an obstacle course out of words and forcing potential meanings to run though it
Exotic Programming Ideas: Part 2 (Term Rewriting) https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/exotic02.html
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200314032743/https://medium.com/p/computers-writing-books-54628883d2b8 originally posted Sat Mar 14 03:27:43 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "Addressing complaints about the last video, answering questions about JDATE, writing technique, etc - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20200625125836/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceG2TpNY5ck originally posted Thu Jun 25 12:58:36 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "When an AI Tries Writing Slashdot Headlines - Slashdot" https://web.archive.org/web/20171023121012/https://meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/22/1714246/when-an-ai-tries-writing-slashdot-headlines originally posted Mon Oct 23 12:10:12 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "AI art: I’m using a language model called GPT-2 to write my next novel - Vox" https://web.archive.org/web/20191001122732/https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/30/20840194/ai-art-fiction-writing-language-gpt-2 originally posted Tue Oct 1 12:27:32 EDT 2019
Aaron Sorkin, Grammar Nerd: How Language Defines Sorkin’s Writing https://tedium.co/2020/11/10/aaron-sorkin-grammar-language-history/
Distant Writing: Code Critiques from NaNoGenMo and NNNGM " CCS Working Group 2020 http://wg20.criticalcodestudies.com/index.php?p=/discussion/85/distant-writing-code-critiques-from-nanogenmo-and-nnngm
Random link from the archives: "Philosophical writing should read like a letter written to oneself | Aeon Ideas" https://web.archive.org/web/20190409123805/https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophical-writing-should-read-like-a-letter-written-to-oneself originally posted Tue Apr 9 12:38:05 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "The Future Will be Technical" https://web.archive.org/web/20171228134826/https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/background().html originally posted Thu Dec 28 13:48:26 EST 2017
Writing a book: is it worth it? — Martin Kleppmann’s blog https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-worth-it.html
Random link from the archives: "The Good Room – Frank Chimero" https://web.archive.org/web/20180216114740/https://frankchimero.com/writing/the-good-room/ originally posted Fri Feb 16 11:47:40 EST 2018
Rewriting the Technical Interview https://aphyr.com/posts/353-rewriting-the-technical-interview
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200613234423/https://medium.com/p/the-science-of-writing-a-lot-7cec434493e9 originally posted Sat Jun 13 23:44:23 EDT 2020
The umbra of an imago: Writing under control of machine learning - Serpentine Galleries https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/the-umbra-of-an-imago-writing-under-control-of-machine-learning/
Vivian Stephens Helped Turn Romance Writing Into a Billion-Dollar Industry. Then She Got Pushed Out. – Texas Monthly https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/vivian-stephens-helped-turn-romance-writing-into-billion-dollar-industry/
Peter Suber, "Logical Rudeness" http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/rudeness.htm
Random link from the archives: "Writing Software to Last 50 Years > Ying Wang" https://web.archive.org/web/20200113121712/https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2020/01/13/50years/ originally posted Mon Jan 13 12:17:12 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "Double Faults | Writing an OS in Rust" https://web.archive.org/web/20180730090937/https://os.phil-opp.com/double-fault-exceptions/ originally posted Mon Jul 30 09:09:37 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "I Grew Up in the Drug Culture, and Sort of Miss It | www.splicetoday.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20200505172342/https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-grew-up-in-the-drug-culture-and-sort-of-miss-it?fbclid=IwAR0FFu0IMuE-zvmSNo6ZJ9e6cbYpDI755t3aFxUL827HaLeTC9UahMv-NOw originally posted Tue May 5 17:23:42 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "Boffin rediscovers 1960s attempt to write fiction with computers • The Register" https://web.archive.org/web/20170830165125/https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/ibm_1960s_story_writing_software/?mt=1504125155672 originally posted Wed Aug 30 16:51:25 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "Rewriting The Matrix Sequels - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20190612180244/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqhhy0yGAX4 originally posted Wed Jun 12 18:02:44 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Philosophical writing should read like a letter written to oneself | Aeon Ideas" https://web.archive.org/web/20190409123805/https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophical-writing-should-read-like-a-letter-written-to-oneself originally posted Tue Apr 9 12:38:05 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned – Steven Pressfield" https://web.archive.org/web/20190328093751/https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/ originally posted Thu Mar 28 09:37:51 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20190819101855/https://medium.com/@enkiv2/i-strongly-recommend-in-the-rare-cases-when-writing-html-by-hand-is-untenable-rolling-your-own-961b90e97a2e originally posted Mon Aug 19 10:18:55 EDT 2019
If a popular author is awful, I recommend pirating their work and writing fanfiction engineered to piss them off.
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20191026053846/https://medium.com/p/understanding-the-alt-rights-psychology-through-sartre-s-writings-e797e59a93fa originally posted Sat Oct 26 05:38:46 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "Hypergraphia: The Neurological Condition Behind Excessive Writing" https://web.archive.org/web/20191113081602/https://tedium.co/2019/11/12/excessive-writing-hypergraphia/ originally posted Wed Nov 13 08:16:02 EST 2019
Is there a market for a quarterly zine of horror fiction, horror book and film reviews, and essays on the occult? I was thinking of titling it something like 'Devilry Quarterly' & releasing it as paperback and ebook on various platforms, writing everything myself until it became popular enough to justify commissioning submissions, and releasing it on the solstices and equinoxes.
Random link from the archives: "Writing Software to Last 50 Years > Ying Wang" https://web.archive.org/web/20200113121712/https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2020/01/13/50years/ originally posted Mon Jan 13 12:17:12 EST 2020
Random link from the archives: "GitHub - deniskyashif/ssfst: Subsequential Transducer for Efficient "Dictionary-Based" Text Rewriting" https://web.archive.org/web/20170712152643/https://github.com/deniskyashif/ssfst originally posted Wed Jul 12 15:26:43 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: "Philosophical writing should read like a letter written to oneself | Aeon Ideas" https://web.archive.org/web/20190409123805/https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophical-writing-should-read-like-a-letter-written-to-oneself originally posted Tue Apr 9 12:38:05 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "6 Ways That Fanfiction Makes Your Writing Stronger | Tor.com" https://web.archive.org/web/20190411140010/https://www.tor.com/2019/04/08/6-ways-that-fanfiction-makes-your-writing-stronger/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:00:10 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: "" https://web.archive.org/web/20200325130325/https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/good-writing-irina-dumitrescu-book-review/?src=longreads originally posted Wed Mar 25 13:03:25 EDT 2020
Random link from the archives: "404 Not Found" https://web.archive.org/web/20191205161747/http://shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/situated_software.html originally posted Thu Dec 5 16:17:47 EST 2019
Addressing complaints about the last video, answering questions about JDATE, writing technique, etc - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceG2TpNY5ck
Random link from the archives: "Stop Writing Classes - YouTube" https://web.archive.org/web/20180425141235/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0 originally posted Wed Apr 25 14:12:35 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Pete Corey - Writing Mandelbrot Fractals with Hooks and Forks" https://web.archive.org/web/20180417160227/http://www.petecorey.com/blog/2018/04/16/writing-mandelbrot-factals-with-hooks-and-forks/ originally posted Tue Apr 17 16:02:27 EDT 2018
Random link from the archives: "Are These Bad Habits Creeping Into Your Writing? | Literary Hub" https://web.archive.org/web/20190220140902/https://lithub.com/are-these-bad-habits-creeping-into-your-writing/ originally posted Wed Feb 20 14:09:02 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190529114351/https://tedium.co/2019/05/21/novelty-songwriting-contests/ originally posted Wed May 29 11:43:51 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20191205161747/http://shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/situated_software.html originally posted Thu Dec 5 16:17:47 EST 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190722095616/https://quinnkeast.com/writing/stop-blaming-people-its-a-design-problem/ originally posted Mon Jul 22 09:56:16 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20200505172342/https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-grew-up-in-the-drug-culture-and-sort-of-miss-it?fbclid=IwAR0FFu0IMuE-zvmSNo6ZJ9e6cbYpDI755t3aFxUL827HaLeTC9UahMv-NOw originally posted Tue May 5 17:23:42 EDT 2020/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20170608092012/https://medium.com/@samim/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally posted Thu Jun 8 09:20:12 EDT 2017/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180122111125/https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/15/writing-parsers-like-it-is-2017/ originally posted Mon Jan 22 11:11:25 EST 2018/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190803061827/https://medium.com/p/writing-software-is-hard-388d5e982ad9 originally posted Sat Aug 3 06:18:27 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190828043742/https://medium.com/p/no-winners-no-ends-why-have-a-writing-jam-d92d3e4f728a originally posted Wed Aug 28 04:37:42 EDT 2019/
Create a Zettelkasten for your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing • Zettelkasten Method https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-improves-thinking-writing/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20191009081043/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/king-crimson-interview-writing-21st-century-schizoid-man-891600/ originally posted Wed Oct 9 08:10:43 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20200128150430/https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2017-Roguelike%20Celebration/ originally posted Tue Jan 28 15:04:30 EST 2020/
!!Con 2020 - Writing {{‘poems that change’, ‘chance poems’, ‘dynamic poetry’}}! by Andrew Yoon - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNJAQcSA1vI
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180919034136/https://medium.com/p/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally posted Wed Sep 19 03:41:36 EDT 2018/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20200424140727/https://tedium.co/2020/04/23/forbes-early-listicle-writing/ originally posted Fri Apr 24 14:07:27 EDT 2020/
The virus is rewriting our imaginations | MetaFilter https://www.metafilter.com/186857/The-virus-is-rewriting-our-imaginations
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190328093751/https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/ originally posted Thu Mar 28 09:37:51 EDT 2019/
I Grew Up in the Drug Culture, and Sort of Miss It | www.splicetoday.com https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i-grew-up-in-the-drug-culture-and-sort-of-miss-it?fbclid=IwAR0FFu0IMuE-zvmSNo6ZJ9e6cbYpDI755t3aFxUL827HaLeTC9UahMv-NOw
Did I Publish the Listicle That Changed Forbes Forever? https://tedium.co/2020/04/23/forbes-early-listicle-writing/
Why is Academic Writing so Boring? | Tom Nicholas - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwGr9GOtO0
LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/post-mortem-of-a-fiction-generator-asemic-writing-with-some-properties-of-natural-languages-2b008fbf8563
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/i-dont-remember-writing-this-but-it-looks-exactly-like-my-writing-style-1faf3ef0b394
The Writing Simulators Waging War on Loneliness | MetaFilter https://www.metafilter.com/186082/The-Writing-Simulators-Waging-War-on-Loneliness
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20191026053846/https://medium.com/p/understanding-the-alt-rights-psychology-through-sartre-s-writings-e797e59a93fa originally posted Sat Oct 26 05:38:46 EDT 2019/
Defunctionalisation - an underappreciated tool for writing good software | G Research https://www.gresearch.co.uk/article/defunctionalisation/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20171025095732/http://www.righto.com/2017/10/the-xerox-alto-smalltalk-and-rewriting.html originally posted Wed Oct 25 09:57:32 EDT 2017/
Bad idea of the day: a word processor that shows the rate at which you're writing (words per minute), flashing red when you're below some configurable goal rate
i'm thinking of writing a medium piece along the lines of 'for better first drafts, write like a standup comic' but it's exactly the kind of hacky writing advice post i hate to see, so i don't have enough self-loathing to actually write it yet
When done by somebody who knows how to write, academic writing is often transcendently good -- the author is freed to use all the rhetorical, informational, and creative weapons at their disposal, and dare readers to keep up. This isn't to say that academia isn't full of Curtis Yarvin style ill-formed crap -- just that McLuhan and Bertrand Russel also exist.
Ramification of advice for copywriting / content marketing being applied to all nonnarrative nonfiction: you end up catering to a theoretical audience of people who don't care enough about the subject to pay attention, & inflate essays with repetition.
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190305110922/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html originally posted Tue Mar 5 11:09:22 EST 2019/
I wrote some writing advice: https://medium.com/@enkiv2/new-ways-to-write-8e9b8f209b17?source=friends_link&sk=f402a0eb7bd0730178ac7c22936792d0
bumper sticker: "My other #AuthorGoals are also #Writing"
Behold, mortal, the origins of robotfindskitten... https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2017-Roguelike%20Celebration/
Telling Stories In Order to Live: On Writing and Money https://longreads.com/2020/01/16/telling-stories-in-order-to-live-on-writing-and-money/
article idea: X writing methods to try. (Gibson's, free writing, extreme plotting, 'think like an engineer'/harmon story circle, templates & shuffle lit, oulipolian style changes, etc.)
conlanging has ruined me. i saw the article title 'writing a polyglot script' and wondered what the big deal was -- we all know roman letters and cyrillic right?
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-political-post-ive-been-avoiding-writing-7e8d4ee75679
Writing Software to Last 50 Years > Ying Wang https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2020/01/13/50years/
Every three or four years some jerk invents a new square wheel and gets a lot of attention from people who were never told about the round ones. Meanwhile, tri-star wheel assemblies and ekranoplans are a wikipedia dive away. Sometimes I wonder if documenting alternatives is worth it, since if it took me so little effort to find something, anybody who finds my writing will already know about it or will have already decided to avoid it.
if your game doesn't have a manifesto you run the real risk of it being based off the unstated boring & problematic manifesto that people hold in their heads when they don't think very hard about intent. the whole 'themes come after writing and publishing' thing is really a kind of conservative attitude. there will be themes sure but they might be really shitty themes that you wouldn't agree with after some thought. why not pack in some more? why not have more than enough, just in case? over the top is fine. tacky is fine. too much is never enough. just make sure it's not lame and boring. if you are a lame and boring person and you trust your intuition to put in themes for you, you will have lame and boring themes. don't do that.
I spent my vacation staying off the computer and reading / watching movies in order to try to re-seed my imagination so I could write better new stuff, but it backfired because I got out of the habit of writing & now it's tough to make myself write anything :(
Technical writing tip: examples are no substitute for tables of possible operations or the explanations thereof. Examples are great when they happen to exactly match what the user already wants to do or when modifying them to match user need is trivial & obvious, but they don't work outside the happy path. If your tool is flexible, you MUST provide enough information for users to understand how to use your tool to do things you haven't imagined yet.
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180312115353/https://gkbrk.com/2018/03/writing-a-simple-ipfs-crawler/ originally posted Mon Mar 12 11:53:53 EDT 2018/
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/i-strongly-recommend-in-the-rare-cases-when-writing-html-by-hand-is-untenable-rolling-your-own-961b90e97a2e
Why Racists (and Liberals!) Keep Writing for Quillette | The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/quillette-fascist-creep/
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/post-mortem-of-a-fiction-generator-asemic-writing-with-some-properties-of-natural-languages-2b008fbf8563
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-key-thing-here-is-not-that-this-time-is-different-than-the-60s-or-that-the-people-writing-a44c7f62430e
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190722095616/https://quinnkeast.com/writing/stop-blaming-people-its-a-design-problem/ originally posted Mon Jul 22 09:56:16 EDT 2019/
Procedurally Generated Text: A Writing Process Built for Computers https://tedium.co/2019/11/14/procedural-text-history/
Hypergraphia: The Neurological Condition Behind Excessive Writing https://tedium.co/2019/11/12/excessive-writing-hypergraphia/
Computers Reading Computers' Writing http://zachwhalen.net/pg/pres/elo18/#/11
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190828043742/https://medium.com/p/no-winners-no-ends-why-have-a-writing-jam-d92d3e4f728a originally posted Wed Aug 28 04:37:42 EDT 2019/
I'm writing an article about #NaNoGenMo and procedurally generated literature in general. Do any #botally folks have things they'd specifically like mentioned?
Avatars of Story – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling https://emshort.blog/how-to-play/writing-if/books-and-other-resources/avatars-of-story/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180719125008/http://aiweirdness.com/post/176056635992/a-neural-net-tries-writing-burma-shave-jingles originally posted Thu Jul 19 12:50:08 EDT 2018/
King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’: Inside Prog’s Big Bang – Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/king-crimson-interview-writing-21st-century-schizoid-man-891600/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190318102929/https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/how-wattpad-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-hollywood.html originally posted Mon Mar 18 10:29:29 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180319125726/https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/handwriting-j/ originally posted Mon Mar 19 12:57:26 EDT 2018/
AI art: I’m using a language model called GPT-2 to write my next novel - Vox https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/30/20840194/ai-art-fiction-writing-language-gpt-2
The cuteness of white noise http://writings.laurel.world/the-cuteness-of-white-noise/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190318102929/https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/how-wattpad-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-hollywood.html originally posted Mon Mar 18 10:29:29 EDT 2019/
/dev/lawyer The MIT License, Line by Line https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by-Line.html
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190411140010/https://www.tor.com/2019/04/08/6-ways-that-fanfiction-makes-your-writing-stronger/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:00:10 EDT 2019/
weird how so many 'writing advice' posts on medium are basically one sentence worth of potentially-valuable insight plus seven big unrelated photographs and three hundred words of unnecessary buildup
I've heard some folks arguing that 'genre is just a marketing label' & in some ways they're right -- nothing is stopping you from writing something unclassifiable -- but in other ways this is misleading, as though genre is a categorization applied to finished works only.
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20190411140252/https://www.tor.com/2019/03/25/one-free-trick-how-to-use-the-writing-skills-you-have-to-learn-the-ones-you-dont/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:02:52 EDT 2019/
Random link from the archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20180919034136/https://medium.com/p/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally posted Wed Sep 19 03:41:36 EDT 2018/
Spontaneous Poetics: On writing by Rishi Dastidar https://www.spontaneouspoetics.co.uk/2019/07/on-writing-by-rishi-dastidar.html
How Kubrick Adapted ‘The Shining’ into a Cinematic Masterpiece | Screenwriting - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvk2zgUBpY
Compactness and Orthogonality4.Modularity"/></head... http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch04s02.html
Hmm, maybe I should prioritize the art & writing for the basically-linear first arc of BotD so I can release a demo before the final release...
One of my least favorite genres of medium post: "somebody once said something obviously wrong to me, and I will waste 2 minutes failing to explain why they are wrong because I am bad at writing"
Random link from the archives: http://www.vpri.org/writings.php originally posted Mon Jan 28 14:01:31 EST 2019
Random link from the archives: https://medium.com/@samim/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19 originally posted Thu Jun 8 09:20:12 EDT 2017
Random link from the archives: https://www.tor.com/2019/04/08/6-ways-that-fanfiction-makes-your-writing-stronger/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:00:10 EDT 2019
Aaron Greenspan :: Writing :: Mark Zuckerberg's Ponzi Scheme http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190723/mark-zuckerbergs-ponzi-scheme/
Random link from the archives: https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/how-wattpad-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-hollywood.html originally posted Mon Mar 18 10:29:29 EDT 2019
Random link from the archives: https://www.tor.com/2019/03/25/one-free-trick-how-to-use-the-writing-skills-you-have-to-learn-the-ones-you-dont/ originally posted Thu Apr 11 14:02:52 EDT 2019
What were we trying to make here? - Eva Monkey, an Evangelion Fan Website http://www.evamonkey.com/writings/anno-hideaki-what-were-we-trying-to-make-here.php
Somebody with a suspiciously similar name to mine won a prize for writing an essay about my favorite show in 2006... http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/30817
Random link from the archives: http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/column-writing-the-mythos-the-handy-dandy-mythos-plot-structure/ originally posted Fri Nov 3 11:41:08 EDT 2017
Ten Reasons Why I Don't Like Golang https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/why-i-dont-like-go.html
Rewriting The Matrix Sequels - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqhhy0yGAX4
Novelty Songwriting Contests: How They Shape Offbeat Music https://tedium.co/2019/05/21/novelty-songwriting-contests/
Hot take: if you don't edit while writing, you're losing the primary benefit of using a text editor / word processor to compose.
Maybe after Trilogy is done I'll get back into the habit of writing on Medium every day. (Who am I kidding? I've been failing miserably to even do duolinguo daily.)
online writing advice blogs: 'what people really remember is STORY'; me: 'no idk i've seen literally all of magidex but i can't tell you a single thing that happened in it, but the robot trash cans were really cool'
One Free Trick: How to Use the Writing Skills You Have to Learn the Ones You Don’t | Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2019/03/25/one-free-trick-how-to-use-the-writing-skills-you-have-to-learn-the-ones-you-dont/
6 Ways That Fanfiction Makes Your Writing Stronger | Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2019/04/08/6-ways-that-fanfiction-makes-your-writing-stronger/
Philosophical writing should read like a letter written to oneself | Aeon Ideas https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophical-writing-should-read-like-a-letter-written-to-oneself
The essays I'm considering writing are all somewhat clickbaity: "A libertarian case for social justice", "Anarchy needs rules"...
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned – Steven Pressfield https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/10/writing-wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/
TFW you give yourself low-grade caffeine toxicity expecting to be productive at work but instead end up writing long twitter threads about strategic subculture destablization
How Wattpad Is Rewriting the Rules of Hollywood https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/how-wattpad-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-hollywood.html
Lessons learned: writing really long fiction - Charlie's Diary http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html
Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in British Music Writing https://longreads.com/2019/02/19/three-decades-of-cross-cultural-utopianism-in-british-music-writing/
Re: GPT-2 -- sure, this has neural nets and all, but you get higher quality output with less CPU time writing a template for a spinner.
Are These Bad Habits Creeping Into Your Writing? | Literary Hub https://lithub.com/are-these-bad-habits-creeping-into-your-writing/
The 'writing criticism' curator wrote a review of MfoM where they claimed that the characters were flat but the plot was engaging. I consider this a success, since I was worried about plot (since I don't 'get' it).
Atlas of Endangered Alphabets – Indigenous and minority writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them https://www.endangeredalphabets.net/
Female Viagra UK, Buy Viagra - Online Pharmacy, Best Offer. http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
The World’s Writing Systems http://www.worldswritingsystems.org/
Giles Bowkett: How Vim Shaped My Writing http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-vim-shaped-my-writing.html
Re: code -- keep throwing it away and rewriting from memory until implementing it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore. At that point, it might be marginally OK. (Or maybe you've just acclimated to your failures.)
Command-Line Options10.Configuration"/>
<div class="navh... http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.htmlToday is thanksgiving. Celebrate by determining who you don't owe a debt to -- who, in the total scheme of things, has had a net negative effect on your life -- writing them a nasty letter, and setting it on fire.
Today is thanksgiving. Celebrate by writing apology letters to everyone you have ever wronged.
Every computer program is also a persuasive essay & a work of interactive performance art, and if you don't consider it through those lenses when writing it you run the risk of persuading people of something you don't agree with.
My old HyperCard stack (Phil Gyford’s website) https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2017/08/16/hypercard-tea/
The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and rewriting a running GUI http://www.righto.com/2017/10/the-xerox-alto-smalltalk-and-rewriting.html
Bad idea of the day: to combat writer's block, use automatic writing as a divinatory method to predict what you would have written if you didn't have writer's block
I wonder if the reason why the average quality of writing-advice articles is so much lower than other types is that it's dominated by folks who are trying to write a certain number of words every day & have decided to publish all of them...
What Is The Morning Writing Effect? - Gwern.net https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing
GitHub - ChrisKnott/Algojammer: An experimental code editor for writing algorithms https://github.com/ChrisKnott/Algojammer
Hardware Interrupts | Writing an OS in Rust https://os.phil-opp.com/hardware-interrupts/
Maybe I should start doing writing exercises. You know, write a pastiche of an M.R. James story, and then one in Gibson's style, a Stephenson version, a Lovecraft, etc. Fiction is pretty hard.
Emic Automata & Thematic Automata | maetl https://maetl.net/notes/storyboard/generative-writing-with-cellular-automata
Computers Reading Computers' Writing http://zachwhalen.net/pg/pres/elo18/
You'd think that somebody writing for NME would know that 'Daddy's Car' isn't the first AI-written song. (Even if the earliest example they can think of is from Songsmith & they don't recognize that Bach was doing generative music.)
Discovery Writing and the so-called Forster Quote | rjheeks https://rjheeks.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/discovery-writing-and-the-so-called-forster-quote/
The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing https://longreads.com/2018/10/02/webzines-90s-online-media/
Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html
Escaping the Default Future When Writing Science Fiction | Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2018/08/16/escaping-the-default-future-when-writing-science-fiction/
The 10:1 rule of writing and programming https://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2018/08/12/the-10-to-1-rule-of-writing-and-programming/
Double Faults | Writing an OS in Rust https://os.phil-opp.com/double-fault-exceptions/
Thread by @enkiv2: "An article I'm considering writing: the (explicit) political use of ghost stories. The idea of the 'confederate soldier ghost' was explicitl […]" https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1021352318028087297.html
My old HyperCard stack (Phil Gyford’s website) https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2017/08/16/hypercard-tea/
Letting neural networks be weird • A neural net tries writing Burma-Shave jingles http://aiweirdness.com/post/176056635992/a-neural-net-tries-writing-burma-shave-jingles
The roots of writing lie in hopes and dreams, not in accounting | Aeon Essays https://aeon.co/essays/the-roots-of-writing-lie-in-hopes-and-dreams-not-in-accounting
Writing in Collaboration with the System | Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling https://emshort.blog/2014/10/29/writing-in-collaboration-with-the-system/
More Hints for Writing Unix Tools | Mario Campos https://www.mariocampos.io/blog/more-unix-tools-hints/
Have you tried reading the manual? Have you tried writing the manual?
Writing long, overly complex, & logically flawed apologia of bad mainstream ideas in order to recast them as revolutionary is a growth industry. (See the 'intellectual dark web', whose major unifying trait is boringly normie positions.) Why not reach for a surreal or absurd take?
Hints for writing Unix tools https://monkey.org/~marius/unix-tools-hints.html
I've been shitposting about writing composable GUI systems with proper hypertext & network transparency in postscript but actually that existed at Sun & seems to have been pretty cool: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4
Bad idea of the day: a letter-writing campaign to members of CS program accreditation boards (at their home addresses) requesting algorithmic bias & data ownership be a part of mandatory ethics classes in the curriculum.
Stop Writing Classes - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0
Pete Corey - Writing Mandelbrot Fractals with Hooks and Forks http://www.petecorey.com/blog/2018/04/16/writing-mandelbrot-factals-with-hooks-and-forks/
I love Wait But Why, and so it's a real shame that Tim Urban has transformed into Elon Musk's personal PR guy for the past few years, rather than writing on a wider array of topics.
GitHub - robey/font-problems: command-line tool for reading and writing console bitmap fonts https://github.com/robey/font-problems
Handwriting Programs in J ⢠Hillel Wayne https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/handwriting-j/
Writing a Simple IPFS Crawler · Gokberk Yaltirakli https://gkbrk.com/2018/03/writing-a-simple-ipfs-crawler/
Ted's ComParadigm in OneLiners http://xanadu.com.au/ted/TN/WRITINGS/TCOMPARADIGM/tedCompOneLiners.html
Understanding word vectors: A tutorial for "Reading and Writing El... https://gist.github.com/aparrish/2f562e3737544cf29aaf1af30362f469
The Good Room – Frank Chimero https://frankchimero.com/writing/the-good-room/
Writing parsers like it is 2017 | the morning paper https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/15/writing-parsers-like-it-is-2017/
SOME PEOPLE HAVE POINTED OUT THAT WRITING APPS IN POSTSCRIPT IS SANE-ISH. THIS IS TRUE. IT'S HARD TO COME UP WITH COMPARABLE SITUATIONS THAT ARE MORE ABSURD, BECAUSE WE COLLECTIVELY DID THE ABSOLUTE WORST THING AND THEN CONVINCED OURSELVES IT WAS OK.
Emic Automata & Thematic Automata | Storyboard | maetl https://maetl.net/notes/storyboard/generative-writing-with-cellular-automata
Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition http://openingup.wonderboxpublishing.com/
Gopher: Remembering the web that wasn't – Andrew Writing – I make websites, and write stuff. http://ajroach42.github.io/gopher-remembering-the-web-that-wasn-t/
Column: Writing the Mythos: The Handy-Dandy Mythos Plot Structure | Innsmouth Free Press http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/column-writing-the-mythos-the-handy-dandy-mythos-plot-structure/
The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and rewriting a running GUI http://www.righto.com/2017/10/the-xerox-alto-smalltalk-and-rewriting.html
Dymaxion: Please Stop Writing Secure Messaging Tools https://dymaxion.org/essays/pleasestop.html
When an AI Tries Writing Slashdot Headlines - Slashdot https://meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/22/1714246/when-an-ai-tries-writing-slashdot-headlines
"Key to the City: Writing Code to Induce Social Change" by Jurnell Cockhren - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Z0LGeQCWU
"Experimental Creative Writing with the Vectorized Word" by Allison Parrish - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3D0JEA1Jdc
Boffin rediscovers 1960s attempt to write fiction with computers • The Register https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/ibm_1960s_story_writing_software/?mt=1504125155672
GitHub - deniskyashif/ssfst: Subsequential Transducer for Efficient "Dictionary-Based" Text Rewriting https://github.com/deniskyashif/ssfst
5 Gaming Tools to Help Your Writing | Tor/Forge Blog http://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/07/10/5-gaming-tools-to-help-your-writing/?utm_source=exacttarget&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=na-haspilarticle&utm_content=na-readblog-blogpost&utm_campaign=torjuly17newsletter&et=35866-n19595941
Assisted Writing – samim – Medium https://medium.com/@samim/assisted-writing-7adea9aed19
Types of Writing Systems (correction in the description) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2TVRjK3aHc
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