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Martin Stellinga

@martinstellinga.com
207 followers 69 following 762 posts

Science fiction & Fantasy blogger and author. martinstellinga.com

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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 3h
So, can I have round of fuck-yous for the wannabe war criminals who want to gut any possible check on their wanton killing sprees and wars.
reuters.com
EXCLUSIVE: US imposes sanctions on ICC hours after former judge wins Nobel Peace Prize
The Trump administration has long been hostile to the court and has previously imposed sanctions on its prosecutors and judges.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 10h
Some tips for writing dialog.
martinstellinga.com
Writing Dialog: Some Basics - Martin Stellinga
A friend of mine recently tried his hand at writing, and found dialog hard to get right. It got me thinking that I should share some basics.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 08/10/2026
So, the discussion has really devolved to whether it's SI or AI? Did we finish the debate on the environmental impact of data centers, undermining of journalism, theft of art, exploitation of low-wage workers, and sloppification of the Internet while I wasn't looking? Stupid Intelligence Indeed.
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ebisback.bsky.social @ebisback.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Exactly 💯
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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 04/10/2026
Every time I think I’ve hit the bottom of my outrage, they find a new pocket…
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 02/10/2026
It all started almost 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang.
martinstellinga.com
Cosmic Background Radiation - Martin Stellinga
You might have heard about cosmic background radiation before, or seen the picture above. But what is cosmic background radiation?
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 27/09/2026
Nighthawks has sold TEN THOUSAND copies in less than one week! For a tiny studio like ours, this is a huge milestone. To all the supporters, backers, wishlisters, and everyone who believed in this game and us, thank you so much.
Lux and Becca from Nighthawks, with the text "10,000 copies sold."
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Anthony Ryan @anthonyryan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Fuckony Fuck (As applied to first and last names - has a certain ring to it).
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 25/09/2026
With winter fast approaching (well, in this hemisphere anyway), time to look at a gloomy horror novel.
martinstellinga.com
What Moves the Dead - Martin Stellinga
What moves the Dead is a horror novel by T. Kingfisher. It's a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.
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Anthony Ryan @anthonyryan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Say what you like about Palpatine, but at least he made the speeders run on time.
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Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com · 24/09/2026
Pals I see you sharing links to London Daily & need you to know it's AI bullshit. The Louise Michel is real, Banksy really funded it, but that started in 2020 & the LD link people are sharing is timestamped to today but written as if it's 2020 & elides all the actual journalism about it.
Screenshot reads as follows: 

Welcome to London Daily, an innovative and unique news experiment driven by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Our AI system conducts extensive research and fact-checking, presenting a non-biased and diverse perspective on each topic. It meticulously filters out biased or manipulated content, offering you factual summaries essential for your knowledge as an informed citizen.

Our aim is not to replace mainstream media but to provide you with succinct summaries of key headlines, encouraging you to explore these stories in greater depth through your favorite mainstream news sources.

As a privately funded, non-profit initiative, our mission is to provide a concise and comprehensive overview of current events as part of a broader project to enhance fact-checking and AI journalism for journalists and publishers worldwide.

We are building a tool that will help professional journalists and traditional mainstream news outlets enhance their news delivery, boost their readership, ease their workload, and lower their costs while increasing their productivity—all aimed at improving content reliability and readability.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 22/09/2026
Lost opportunity here. Instead of trying to rebrand "Artificial Intelligence" to "Super Intelligence", he could have gone for "American Intelligence". Or is that a too on-the-nose link between the failings of AI and those of the US education system?
reuters.com
Trump says US Justice Department could rein in AI companies if needed
President ‌Donald Trump reiterated his opposition to new regulations on AI technology, telling global leaders at the ​UN General Assembly on Tuesday that US ​law enforcement agencies would rein in the...
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Richard Cobbett @richardcobbett.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Nighthawks! It's out! Please buy and like it! That is the best marketing slogan my tired brain can come up with right now! store.steampowered.com/app/1221950/...
store.steampowered.com
Save 10% on Nighthawks on Steam
The secret is out. Vampires have been exposed to the world… and you’re one of them. Seize the night as a modern monster, stepping out of the shadows to build a thriving nightclub empire through fear, ...
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Beautiful Bizarre Magazine @beautifulbizarre.net · 22/09/2026
Welcome to the world of Tanya Gomelskaya. Her creations meet in the flux between traditional paintings and sculpture, forcing second glances - which artwork speaks to you the most? #beautifulbizarre #art #mixedmediaart #surrealart #darkart #darksurrealism
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Richard Cobbett @richardcobbett.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
9/10 from youtu.be/t6jysJHrJvc?...
youtu.be
Nighthawks Review - The BEST RPG of the Year?
YouTube video by Play Save Repeat
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 18/09/2026
Let's talk about the world treating AI like a sentient pet and why we shouldn't.
martinstellinga.com
Anthropomorphism and the Hugging Face incident - Martin Stellinga
A badly configured security suite hacked a third party system. Or, you know, a near-sentient AI broke its chains. It’s just how you frame it.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 18/09/2026
This. I've been publishing a blog post a week for 10+ years, which adds up to countless hours of work. And they just stole it. No permission, no thank you. Just DDOS-ed my website. Every time one of my bosses at my day job praises how great AI is, I feel angry and victimised.
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Val Nolan @vallescurarule.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
So they're rebooting Baywatch but not Baywatch *Nights*?! Ugh! Give the people what they want already! Which is washed-up lifeguards hunting aliens, sea monsters, vampires, demons, and, erm, 900 year old Vikings?! Here's the intro in case you think I'm making this up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jx...
youtube.com
Baywatch Nights - Season 2 - Intro
YouTube video by BaywatchDK
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 16/09/2026
From the article "Behind the admonishments to never outsource one’s writing is a naive implication that inside everyone rests a hidden Hemingway." No, there is a non-naive implication that we shouldn't sacrifice all future Hemingways so everybody can stop learning how to communicate properly.
economist.com
This article wasn’t written by an AI. So what if it had been!
It’s great that bots can help poor writers say what they want to for a fraction of the cost of a ghostwriter, argues Ryan Jacobs
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Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Haven't posted my painting in a sec, here's some Guard heavy artillery
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 14/09/2026
The "Adults Only" ranking has been removed from Nighthawks! Everything is set for launch on the 22nd! Phew. What a roller coaster. Thank you everyone for your amazing support while we got this sorted. If you weren't able to wishlist before, now you can! store.steampowered.com/app/1221950/...
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Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Love this because it's completely information-free. "The impact of AI will range between nothing and a whole lot!" Geez, man, I could have told you that.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 13/09/2026
Microsoft Edge has been sitting on my game PC unused for ages. It didn’t bother me, so I left it. But recently it started nagging me on startup with updates, so uninstall! The moral of the story: don’t make your software nag (yes, Adobe, that includes your crap that I unfortunately still need)
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 13/09/2026
We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches (and delisted it entirely in certain countries). We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 12/09/2026
This is the true danger of AI hacking. And I’d say it’s very very bad: big tech stuffed all that vulnerable crap into surveillance devices in our houses. The next Hugging Face incident is a stalker using ChatGPT to hack some poor woman’s smart tv camera.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 12/09/2026
There is apparently no more searing hurt than an "AI" fluffer discovering their favorite science fiction writer disdains their beloved spicy autocorrect, it's a pain only matched by a conservative learning that their favorite rock band has been Marxist the whole time
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The Amityville Jordan (1979) @jackal27.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
i try to brighten my friends’ days by sharing good news whenever i see it, but this now being the third time i’ve seen very positive climate news lately, i’m gonna get a lil mean: climate doomerism is misinformation and spreading it, even just in jest, is antithetical to the values you espouse.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 11/09/2026
The cautionary tale of a girl and a smartphone.
martinstellinga.com
Chatting speed run - Martin Stellinga
At some point, your kid becomes old enough to want to chat on a phone or tablet. As a parent, this is of course a nightmarish minefield.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 09/09/2026
I think in many people's minds indie books lie closer to YouTube than to indie movies. Anyone can put a home movie on YouTube to try to make a buck (and they do), and anyone can put a book on KDP (and they do, often AI-generated). We need to popularize a way to separate the gems from the slop.
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Marcus @marcusjmerritt.com · 09/09/2026
I know everyone thinks the AI haters should just try to be normal about AI but I submit it’s not the AI haters who have trouble being normal about it
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 08/09/2026
So, for the second or third time, the iOS 26 preview app destroyed one of my pictures when I tried to zoom, and uploaded it’s destruction to iCloud with no undo available. But… I just learned you can delete that garbage app from your phone. I’m saved! 🎉
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AK Faulkner ➡️ NYCC @ravenswordpress.com · 08/09/2026
AI is here to take "no" away from us. It is here to stop us from thinking critically, from imagining better worlds and futures, and from having the capacity to see any way to live other than the one we are allowed to have. The goal of shoving AI down our throats is to make us one-dimensional.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 06/09/2026
So, with the anthropic settlement underway... and even if it's going like sh!t. Can we compensate blogs next? F*cking AI companies scraped my very much copyrighted 10 years of blog posts repeatedly, incurring hosting costs while they did it.
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Richard Cobbett @richardcobbett.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Adventure Game Hotspot makes the fatal mistake of asking me to talk about my game Nighthawks. Cue a long discussion about consent, tutorial gargoyles, and why Nighthawks is very different from settings like Vampire: The Masquerade. (Hint: No Masquerade.) adventuregamehotspot.com/interview/71...
adventuregamehotspot.com
Richard Cobbett – Nighthawks | Adventure Game Hotspot
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 04/09/2026
So… those video games from the white house… AI generated? Or did some racist actually sit down and code that shit.
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 04/09/2026
In Nighthawks, everyone has a secret. Some are more than willing to... expose themselves than others. Expose the secrets yourself when Nighthawks launches on September 22nd! Wishlist here: store.steampowered.com/app/1221950/...
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 04/09/2026
Let's look at some more shady business practices that technology makes possible.
martinstellinga.com
Surge pricing - Martin Stellinga
You may have heard of the term surge pricing, or dynamic pricing, or demand pricing. But what is it, and why is it prone to enshittification?
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Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 03/09/2026
I know I already posted about this...but to reiterate: Anthropic copyright settlement authors, PLEASE contact me (Writer Beware) if your publisher is making a claim on a book whose rights have reverted, or claiming anything other than a 50/50 split on an in-contract book. beware@sfwa.org
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 02/09/2026
🚨Nighthawks is coming SEPTEMBER 22ND!🚨 The secret is out. Vampires exist. You're one of them. Step out of the shadows and prove that even the darkest streets can lead to brighter tomorrows. Wishlist on Steam here: store.steampowered.com/app/1221950/... 🧛👍
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
im okay with this
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Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 02/09/2026
"My worry is the intelligence that is retreating: the human intelligence that builds these systems, deploys them, and adopts them into workflows, then hides behind the results – then pins the blame on a system from nowhere." mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-... Via @julietemckenna.bsky.social
mail.cyberneticforests.com
Models Don't Go Rogue
Stochastic Flocks & Cybersecurity 'Pandemonium' 💡This essay was drafted from my appearance on Mél Hogan's podcast, The Data Fix, discussing the OpenAI / Hugging Face hack. Embedded below or find it o...
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 01/09/2026
Yes, reasonable consumers understand we’re being f*cked over. What we hope is that regulators also understand we demand reasonable competition. Like, Sony, are you going to allow third party game stores on your platform?
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No Escape from the Tyranny of Virtue 🏴🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸 @noescapevg.com · 01/09/2026
lol lmao
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Journalists need to stop describing these incidents in terms implying software has agency and intent. It does not. The people who created a faulty and dangerous product are the ones responsible for whatever happens, and must be held to account, with punitive financial penalties for damage done.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 28/08/2026
A bit of an oldy today. Well, relatively.
martinstellinga.com
The Outer Worlds - Martin Stellinga
The Outer Worlds came out back in 2019 and part 2 is already here, but I’m often late to the party and don’t let that stop me.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 26/08/2026
Nooooo, not Tim Curry too. martinstellinga.com/reviews/gabr...
martinstellinga.com
Gabriel Knight - Martin Stellinga
Of all the adventure games of the nineties, Gabriel Knight was in my opinion the best. I'll put on my writing glasses and do a review of the series.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 25/08/2026
A colleague told me a 'success' story about a meeting where somebody expressed shame at using AI, but "they'd convinced them they shouldn't be ashamed; they were all using it." My colleague was not amused when I said people *should* be ashamed. I swallowed my next remark about a Heroin comparison.
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Dave Gilbert @wadjeteyegames.com · 25/08/2026
The experience of working on Nighthawks in a nutshell:
Text message from Ben Chandler: “And of course in the final hours of working on this game I find myself carefully repainting an ass.”
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P H Lee 🪬 @p-h-lee.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"the fandom knows more about this than the author" yeah that's very normal. it'd be weird if it wasn't that way, honestly. it doesn't mean you get to tell the author how to do their job. again, distinct skill-sets.
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Martin Stellinga @martinstellinga.com · 21/08/2026
The cake is a lie!
martinstellinga.com
Dictatorship cake - Martin Stellinga
A lot of people these days seem to believe a dictator is a good idea. I’d argue this is a “have your cake and eat it” situation.
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