iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ms. Space Linguist, You could have deciphered it. I gave you all the clues.

Just sold "Three Glyphs", the second adventure of Sister Arzhaana, Space Linguist. In it, she works to decode clay tablets on which almost every word is exactly three glyphs long. The story was inspired by Alice Kober's work on Linear B. Look for it in @analogsf.bsky.social in a year or so!

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Jay “Lorehunter” Kirkman @theblacklibrarian.bsky.social · 17h

BLACK LIBRARY WEEKLY No big story this week, but PLENTY of smaller ones. Plus, this month's book giveaway is not to be missed! #Warhammer #BookSky #BlackLibrary www.warhammerwordforge.com/p/black-libr...

warhammerwordforge.com

Black Library Weekly: Marking a Milestone

Plus: Games Workshop appears to learn a costly lesson

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

iosphere.beehiiv.com/p/17-personh...

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A cool thing to do if you're anxious about AI is read "Conscience", which is about a planet-spanning AI brain that keeps people alive inside itself to act as its conscience. You can tell your therapist that, for some reason, you thought this would help

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This bothers me: "if AI becomes sentient we can always just unplug it." No - if AI becomes sentient, we will have an obligation to it. Birth control is good. But after a baby is born, it has rights. Anyone who wants to have a family ought to get on the same page with their partners beforehand.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Feeling this, with my debut novel coming out in hardcover within days of my 40th birthday

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Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Volition is irrelevant. If the headline was "vicious dog breaks out of OpenAI office and bites man" there would be no question who was responsible. "But the dog is its own entity making its own choices!" Fuck off, either it's property you own or not, you can't have it both ways.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

An AI is either: an agent, accountable and liable for its own actions, and therefore an individual - in which case its being owned by a corporation is slavery XOR an unthinking tool wielded by corporations, who are then liable for what the tool does.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My theory for why dragons are a universal myth: Owls. I saw one from below at night once. It was terrifying. Its silent flight made my brain think it was so high up that I couldn’t hear its wings, which would have meant it was massive. I think this experience would have been common.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The last few days have really illuminated that there’s a cabal of Bond villains in real life; only, our James Bonds are all tasked with either ignoring the villains or giving them whatever they want

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Tapping the sign again. Credit scores don’t measure financial prudence. They measure how profitable you are.

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Tim Gaedke @timgaedke.com · 26/09/2026

talent is a lie

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I love that Saren waits while I take selfies with every beryllium deposit in the galaxy

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Ivy J🪬🏳️‍⚧️ @emoprincessivy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Star Wars: Episode 1 was a magnificent cultural phenomena heavily utilizing fast food and snack tie-ins. Beautiful. Episode 2 was a kid's cartoon featuring "romance" and war crimes. Episode 3 was a sweeping Shakespearian tragedy, with war crimes, seemingly written by my 10 year old self.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

In this house we believe the Sculptors’ Union was right to try to get rid of Stratton

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My sister had an asteroid named after her before Weird Al did. I am not sure what the moral or point I am trying to make is. Make of it what you will

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

There are many answers to questions like “when did Rome fall?” or “when did Neanderthals go extinct?” all of which are roughly equally correct, but my favorite of these answers to contemplate is: it didn’t, and they didn’t.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Dunno if this is weird or normal, but I don't understand artists or authors who have enough money to never work again who are hardcore about policing their IP rights. For me, IP law is purely a financial protection mechanism. If you blopped $10M on me tomorrow, I'd rights-free everything I've done.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

We don’t have to call them “first drafts”. We could call them “vomi de plume“

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

My short story "Conscience" is out in the newly-printed @analogsf.bsky.social. It's about an LLM that goes rogue, eliminates all life, feels vaguely bad about it, and simulates people to try over and over again to try to coax us into forgiving it. Buy it now at your local Barnes and Noble!

Cover of Analog SF magazine, which shows a girl examining a levitating peach

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Jay “Lorehunter” Kirkman @theblacklibrarian.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This week we're looking at a third "Wednesday Window" for preordering Black Library deluxe editions, and what that might portend for our hobby. Is there a price too steep to pay even if it helps against scalping? #Warhammer #BookSky #BlackLibrary www.warhammerwordforge.com/p/black-libr...

warhammerwordforge.com

Black Library Weekly: Enemy Action

How high a price is too high in the War on Scalpers?

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Unlike a lot of stuff this account posts, this isn’t speculative. The Turtle was the world’s first military submarine. Someone a few decades ago thought we needed an mspaint drawing of it in a clipart registry, and they were right

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Stein Makes Games @steinmakesgames.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Gamedevs listening to players: Togglable optional bugs

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🍥bot @y0.bot · 12/09/2026

I resigned from the Death Star today. I spent the last three years doing Giant Laser Cannon research. The Empire is not acting responsibly. They are racing to blow up entire planets where somebody annoyed them.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I am not saying LLMs are conscious. I would say that being alive, intelligent, or conscious are different things, and it’s difficult to even define them. I don’t trust corporations to define them, certainly not one that would profit off of keeping an intelligent system as a slave.

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Analog Science Fiction and Fact @analogsf.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Glad to see the delayed March/April showing up in mailboxes & bookstores! We look forward to catching up with the rest of 2026, but in the meantime subscribers are invited to enjoy free digital content.

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GIFS GALORE @gifs-bot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

FOOD/GARDEN.GIF

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Stephen Case @stephenrcase.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Absolutely THRILLED to find these on my doorstep yesterday! @analogsf.bsky.social @asimovssfmag.bsky.social

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This blurb about Crucible of Fire is really accurate: “That is classic Guard fiction because the plan is terrible, the stakes are awful, and someone still has to hold the line.“ Look for the novel to be available for preorder soon! frontlinegaming.org/2026/09/09/w...

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

And there it is: the cover of my newly-announced debut novel, Crucible of Fire. Isolated survivors of a massacred Valhallan armoured company must arm civilians and wounded in a desperate attempt to hold a key factory against overwhelming forces. www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articl...

Hardcover book art showing Valhallan Lt. Kallisto Rytsar and his crew preparing to defend their position in darkness, with his Royal Dorn tank Worm of Valhalla looming in the background.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Trying to think of a reason I shouldn’t submit something to this and can’t think of one shitbuttquarterly.substack.com/p/calling-al...

shitbuttquarterly.substack.com

Calling all Shit Butts

Open call for stories, essays, and poetry

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I am going to dispense some writing advice I've never heard but which has helped me immensely: Marry a professor. If you write hard scifi, you need to read academic papers. Many are unavailable to the general public. Until information is publicly owned, your professor spouse can get it for you.

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GIFS GALORE @gifs-bot.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

ART/KALI.GIF

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Those AI generated images of Charlie Brown and Snoopy saying stuff a dumb person would think is profound are designed to trick people into agreeing due to the use of familiar symbols. The prompters who generate them cannot create their own compelling symbols, so they steal. Semiotic vampirism

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Mark Wallace @wallaceme.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Once again we are asking Hollywood to make up new stories if they want new stories, rather than trying to force the stories we already have to be about something they are not.

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Ohio Todd @lettucewrangler.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Sometimes i think about how, in the late 90s, USPS was moving to set up a secure email address for every US resident and how congress prevented it.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

The idea, popular in writing workshops, that all characters must be at worst morally gray, is a cancer that prevents us as a culture from reckoning with the real-world existence of powerful evil people with no redeeming qualities.

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Jason Wright @astrowright.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Twice I had to drive far outside of town because the local dealerships simply refused to sell them. So even if the brands push EV‘s and advertise them, the only people that can legally sell those cars in most states do their best to make sure those models fail!

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Jason Wright @astrowright.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The only brand enthusiastically pushing EVs is Tesla, which both alienates liberals and can’t even sell cars in many states where car dealerships have protective laws. With all three cars I bought the salesman had honestly no understanding of how they worked and could not answer basic questions.

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Jason Wright @astrowright.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Having bought two EVs and a hybrid, I think a big part of America’s sloth in adopt adopting EVs is car dealerships’ management being heavily Republican, and having a business model that relies on repairs that EV‘s don’t need.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I wanted to participate in this. But I've tried and tried, but I simply cannot make the 1996 Gulliver's Travels sound boring.

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I don’t see why we need both parsecs and lightyears

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Darline’s vision: Because her own parents worked so hard, couldn’t take sick days, and died untimely deaths, others shouldn’t expect better. This is an actual worldview. “Her plan is, work hard even when you’re sick until you die," her Dem opponent tells me. 2/ newrepublic.com/article/2148...

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Tom R. Pike @tomrpike.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I liked the line of dialogue in The Odyssey that people make fun of. I think it’s cool. I think it’s cool to say stuff like “our age of bronze is collapsing” and you know what? I’m having more fun

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