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David Millington

@vintagedave.bsky.social
378 followers 313 following 154 posts

Current project: Cathedral City, cli-fi adventure/horror in the post-sea-rise dystopia of flooded Estonia. daveon.design Personal account only.

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Reposted by David Millington
Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 29/04/2026
My best craft advice is "Put a giant worm in it." You can never go wrong with a giant worm. Sci-fi: Giant worm on an alien planet Fantasy: Giant worm in mountain sitting on a pile of gold Horror: Giant worm (eats people) Romance: Giant worm causes third-act breakup Mystery: Giant worm investigates
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
I love this. Says so eloquently what it is hard to explain. There’s a horror in subversion, in seeing something meant for one message used for its opposite.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Today I learned about Rebecca Heinemann. What a shame to learn of someone only when they pass. Read this: an amazing interview, and she was truly impressive, both in abilities and strength through personal life. corecursive.com/doomed-to-fa...
corecursive.com
DOOMed to Fail: A Horror Story - CoRecursive Podcast
Today Rebecca Burger Becky Heineman shares the tale of porting Doom to the 3DO console under extreme conditions. There is an engine to tweak, deadlines to hit, hardware acceleration to get working, an...
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Google Antigravity: when I saw the headline I genuinely thought, for just a hopeful moment, that a research lab in an admittedly evil corporation had made a world-changing breakthrough. But no. It’s another AI-focused VSCode clone.
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Reposted by David Millington
Scott Edelman @scottedelman.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
On August 12, 1971, 16-year-old me mailed the first story I ever wrote off on its first submission to my dream market, F&SF. My tale was quickly rejected. On July 17th, 2025, I finally sold a story to that magazine. Here's why I felt I had to withdraw that story. www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/20...
The cover letter to my first submission:

August 12, 1971
1381 East 72nd Street
Brooklyn NY 11234

Edward L. Ferman
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fistion
347 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022

Dear Mr. Ferman,

I am submitting for possible publication the enclosed story, "Gem of the Gods". Too long has Sword and sorcery been dead. I hope this may help revive it.

A stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed in case of rejection.

Sincerely yours,
Scott Edelman
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
I’ve seen agents advertising here on 🦋 who don’t seem to have sold a lot of books and I worry about their effort. Finding an agent is hard. I’ve been selective; doesn’t make it easier. No acceptance yet (in a whole month :))
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Conflicted here — the lyrics are her own. She’s using AI to sing them. So half of it (the most original half, the singing voice sounds generic) is human. I read one comment that she should be a songwriter… but writers don’t get public credit the way a singer does. I understand trying to be direct.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
This reads like a litany of poor leadership in companies in general. I could feel my heartrate speed up as I read it.
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Reposted by David Millington
Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 02/09/2025
A good post on the growing menace of AI-generated PR scam solicitations (I wrote about this type of scam a couple of weeks ago). Included are helpful practical tips on identifying these scams and protecting yourself todnewman.com?p=1656
todnewman.com
When AI Becomes a Weapon: The Rise of Sophisticated Book Marketing Scams - todnewman.com
scams against writers using AI
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Right NOW as I write this an entire church is being moved several hundred meters, in Sweden. Livestream here: www.youtube.com/live/mTuVp4o...
youtube.com
Live: Historic Kiruna Church Moves Across Arctic Road
YouTube video by DRM News
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Reposted by David Millington
Martha Wells @marthawells.com · 13/07/2025
A really thoughtful essay on Murderbot: ‘Even If They Are My Favourite Human’: Murderbot Just Explained Boundaries countercurrents.org/2025/07/even...
countercurrents.org
‘Even If They Are My Favourite Human’: Murderbot Just Explained Boundaries | Countercurrents
Murderbot might seem like another sci-fi show about robots and space missions. But it turned out to be one of the most emotionally resonant shows in recent memory. The Apple TV+ series is based on All...
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Reposted by David Millington
Luis Villa @lu.is · 20/02/2025
I cannot recommend enough replacing a lot of your normal news consumption with Fix The News, a newsletter focused on serious, deep good news from across a broad swathe of human achievement. We can’t and shouldn’t ignore bad news, but this really helps give me perspective.
fixthenews.com
Fix The News
We report stories of progress
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Fascinating and terrifying look into a probable goal: corporate-style (CEO as king) or actual corporate governance. Think cyberpunk dystopias.
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Reposted by David Millington
George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
This is what the government did with 120K+ Japanese Americans in 1942. I know. I was there in those camps.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Malevolence. It’s a cli-fi story where the rising sea has drowned a lot of the city. Sea creatures are mysterious and horror-like, rarely seen, lurking under the water. Sailing is dangerous and buildings are sealed overnight. There’s an underlying sense the sea itself is a creature/aware. #sffchat
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Writers of #bluesky, is it normal for publishing houses to ask for unagented manuscripts? I thought an agent was a filter for low quality (ie they’d be inviting a huge pile of rubbish to their desk) plus a safety net for authors re financial aspects (ie no publisher ‘should’ sign unagented)?
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Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
The struggle is real.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Vibes.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
This is probably the saddest news about an app that I will ever share. Delicious Library was a thing of beauty, joy, playfulness, when it only needed to be utility. mastodon.social/@wjs/1135393...
Screenshot of Delicious Library 1 from the Ars Technical review. Brushed metal window, wooden bookshelf with books on it.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Post-apocalyptic flooded city novel now has 3000 words on what money actually is. By way of fish and octopus. This was not intentional. I feel I went a bit Neal Stephenson.
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Reposted by David Millington
Rob Bignell, Editor/Author @inventingreality.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
#authors #writerssociety #wip #writer #writing
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
If you see this, post a photo of a beach from your camera roll.
Photo of the south peninsula of Saaremaa, taken from the lighthouse looking down to the point. Thin stone beaches on either side of a jagged sand spine a bit like a crab’s claw.
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
New blogpost: deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-...
deevybee.blogspot.com
Why I have resigned from the Royal Society
The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert H...
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Reposted by David Millington
Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Hi friends! I just wanted to give a quick update on The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars, which we can’t wait to relaunch as the dumbest website on the internet. The long and short of it: We won the auction and — you're not going to believe this — the previous InfoWars folks aren't taking it well.
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Graeme L Scott @glscott.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-...
interactive.carbonbrief.org
Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world - Carbon Brief
Attribution studies calculate whether, and by how much, climate change affected the intensity, frequency or impact of extremes – Carbon Brief has mapped every published study on how climate change has...
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
This is it. AI as assistant, AI as creating a new sentient lifeform: incredibly exciting. But AI as replacing art and writing, the best of human endeavours: _awful_. If tech creates tools they should be new washing machines: remove the grind. Not tools that displace creativity and humanity.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
A local opinion piece here: ‘The age of the liberal world order ends with Trump.’ Strong statement. Possibly right. Terrifying. We can hope for a united Europe. news.err.ee/1609519429/e...
news.err.ee
Expert: Age of liberal world order ends with Trump
President-elect Donald Trump won't even try to retain the liberal world order, with a new strength-based way of doing things looming, Kristi Raik, deputy director of the International Center for Defen...
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Reposted by David Millington
Josh | writer, painter, tinkerer @tworuru.com · 13/11/2024
I asked a neuroscientist (and AI programmer) of my acquaintance about this and his response was a pretty succinct “no” open.substack.com/pub/webworm/...
open.substack.com
Why AI is Arguably Less Conscious Than a Fruit Fly.
“So many people assume if behavior appears human, consciousness must be underneath.”
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Love this. Insightful about how humans work.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
‘She marked 1(a), that the sea was the enemy, and hoped that voting truly was anonymous.’
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 09/11/2024
I’m an Australian who lives in the far north of Estonia. Working on Cathedral City: cli-fi adventure/horror set in a post-sea-rise flooded Tallinn. More about the politics of the non-flooded island villages left over, with the inescapable dream-like presence of the malevolent sea. #SFFTalk
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 05/11/2024
Using PHP for the first time in 20 years. It has a package/dependency manager (composer.) Definite structure where I recall PHP being a free-for-all. I am a newbie again. Trying to do anything advanced, like package up dependencies for a WP plugin so they don’t interfere with other plugins? Hard.
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David Millington @vintagedave.bsky.social · 02/11/2024
How to build a copilot / coding assistant! The first post in a series. parnassus.co/building-a-c...
parnassus.co
Building a Copilot: #1 Servers, Streaming & Fundamentals - Parnassus
Hi folks. Today I’d like to start blogging about a personal project I’ve been working on for many months: building a copilot, an AI coding assistant. The goal is an assistant that initially targets De...
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