Steven Hoefer🖋 @readsteven@mastodon.xyz
Trouble with words. Writing Science/Fiction & Technology. Pragmatic optimism.
Joined Aug 2018
Saturnrise over Earth's Moon. An oldie, but new to me.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130407.html
It has snowed more on me this week in Las Vegas than it did last week in the Midwest.
Every time I fly, I walk around airports humming an old John Denver song.
A real Close Encounters feel to the plane deicing. (If they find my plane in the Sonoran Desert, please come to Devils Tower to find me.)
Steven Hoefer🖋
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Shitposting is not an excuse to ignore CWs.
Steven Hoefer🖋
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Ann Leckie's Provenance, a book in the Imperial Radch setting, is on sale on US Kindle today.
#AnnLeckie #Provenance
#SFFBookclub #SFF #SciFi #ScienceFiction #Books
Steven Hoefer🖋
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My short story, ‘Due By the End of the Week’, is out on the Fireside Magazine website as we speak—with a literally stellar illustration by @ashantifortson@instagram.com and narration by the brilliant @csecooney@instagram.com (which I’ve included the briefest snippet of here to entice you)! So if you’re into tired Black magical girls letting out their Sociology-class-related frustrations by kicking aliens in the eyeballs, you should definitely check it out.
#speculativefiction #magicalgirl…
I’m far down the disused concourse, the one with signs for Pan Am and Braniff still on the walls. There’s a bar there, just for staff I assume. Tonight it only has me and two others. The bartender, drooping mustache, watching Mama’s Family reruns on a tiny tv with such focus I hate to interrupt him. Behind me, in the darkness of the room, someone moves chairs between tables in a continuous loop.
Did not intend to do anything Presidential for the day (particularly given what passes for that nowadays). But I somehow put my butt in the same place as old Dutch. Patron saint of the Republican Party, but who once had a marriage proposal refused because he was a Democrat. (This should be a bigger drinking holiday.)
“Join us saving the environment!" the hotel asks, as I peel open yet another individually wrapped plastic cup because they keep throwing out the one I was using.
American fascism Show more
Women in rural Malawi training as solar engineers, electrifying their villages. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2019/feb/11/barefoot-engineers-malawi-solar-power-in-pictures
That time the US Air Force proposed stopping the Earth's rotation as a nuclear defense. https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/05/the-u-s-air-force-proposed-using-rockets-to-stop-the-earths-rotation-as-defence-against-a-nuclear-attack/
Steven Hoefer🖋
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Sprockets For All Perforated Films Tapes Charts from LaVeggi Machine Works, Sprocket Specialists since 1908. https://archive.org/details/TNM_Sprockets_For_All_Perforated_Films_Tapes_Charts_from_LaVeggi_Machine_Works_20170623_0401
Steven Hoefer🖋
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Boquila trifoliolata is a vine which lives in temperate rainforests in Chile and Argentina. It looks pretty unexciting, but that's just what the plant wants you to think!
This plant will mimic the leaves of any tree it grows on, or even mimic leaves which happen to be nearby. No one knows how it does this.
The vine doesn't need any physical contact to do this. Some botanists think it can "smell" and recognise nearby plants. More outlandishly, others wonder if it might have rudimentary vision.
View of Earth from the International Space Station. One full orbit in real time. (Put it on your biggest screen. It's in 4k) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkEV4FljRaM
To bring everyone up to date on my podcast/newsletter:
1) It will return next month.
2) It has a new name: Planetshine (And a nifty new logo!)
3) Content will be the same: An optimistic view of the future through speculative fiction and science.
Steven Hoefer🖋
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The idea of plant vision isn't quite as ridiculous as it may first seem.
Some cyanobacteria can "see" by using their entire single-celled bodies to focus light. A little like tiny swimming eyeballs. The idea that higher plants could contain similar structures (called "ocelli") has been hypothesised by botanists for some time. Among others, Francis Darwin (the son of Charles Darwin).
Here's an article from Scientific American with more info:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-vision-do-plants-see-the-world-around-them/
Steven Hoefer🖋
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Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with "Purposeful Stupidity" (1944) http://www.openculture.com/?p=1010784 https://t.co/EExAa7HT0K
Steven Hoefer🖋
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@readsteven I love reading about the process writers go through to create the stories and characters in their books. I still have to hear about any two authors using the same method.
It's fascinating that we are all so bad at explaining creativity to each other.
Trouble with words. Writing Science/Fiction & Technology. Pragmatic optimism.
Joined Aug 2018
