iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Suzanne Palmer

Elizabeth Bear @matociquala.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I have a new novella out in the 20th Anniversary edition of Clarkesworld this month! "The Job" is about a woman with serious self-image issues who takes a contract to survey an alien ocean for corporate exploitation, wearing the body of a bioengineered whale. clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_10_26/

clarkesworldmagazine.com

The Job by Elizabeth Bear

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 12h

Capclave! 412 miles later and I am here! Why is it so quiet? …is everyone hiding?

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

September 30th, 2026

$Streaks of clouds before sunset, with the yellow/red/orange patch of a faint sundog, which is a rainbow-like phenomenon caused by light refracted by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Often in pairs to either side of the sun, only saw one this time. Winter is coming, but reminds you Pride is always, and f*ck JKR.$

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 01/10/2026

schmitt’s a fucking stupid dumbass even by the standards of missouri republicans

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’m sorry but if there is no Kermit what stops me from murdering people? A genuine internal desire to not harm others? Uh keep dreaming aphibiests

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Hey, fluent French speakers out there! Sanity-check something for me? If I had the phrase "we can fly!" like an aspirational thing, would "nous pouvons voler" be the best translation? THX <3

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James E. Clyburn @repjamesclyburn.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The American people should never forget that when they faced exploding costs from a failed war in Iran and dangerous uncertainty from unchecked artificial intelligence, House Republicans decided to cancel work in Washington and go home for nearly eight weeks. Shameful.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So, btwn minor distractions this spring/summer such as: * breaking my ankle * slicing my thumb open * hitting a deer on the highway & wrecking my car * day job going thermonuclear busy * mother in hospital ...I just now realized I forgot to fill out the usual programming survey for Capclave. )-:

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Johnny Normality (Spooky Mode) @probgobl.in · 14/09/2026

Use the power of positive thinking. You are NOT "trapped in an oubliette". You ARE "having an extended experience in THE PARTY CYLINDER".

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

September 12th, 2026 Author with elephant.

Selfie of me standing beside one of the elephant sculptures of the Great Elephant Migration, which is in a Boston through tomorrow

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Fuck, 25 years. I wish it was raining today, so it didn't feel like that day, sitting outside staring up at the empty, blue, quiet sky knowing that nothing would ever be the same again.

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Ed Markey @edmarkey.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

In Massachusetts, we have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable and stand up for those who need it. We don’t throw trans kids under the bus for political points. We protect them—and all of our neighbors—because trans rights are human rights.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

In other news, finally got my knee looked at, and the official verdict is that my kneecap is "annoyed"--walking funny post-ankle-break the likely instigator with the left, but both are cranky. PT ahead. That said, Suzanne and the Deeply Peevish Kneecaps would make a great band name.

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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

reddit comment:

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply:

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.

Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I need book recs! My elderly mother is in the hospital & bored. She doesn’t do SFF, although something borderline fantasy might suffice. She likes Laurie Penney but I’m pretty sure she’s read all them. Also Tony Hillerman, but same. Something recent enough that I can probs find it in B&N.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

When you excitedly introduce yourself to a fellow SFF author whose name and works are often mentioned alongside your own and it is clear they have never heard of you.

static.klipy.com

Emotional Damage Meme

Alt: Emotional Damage Meme

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tunes to make you run away @whippoorwont.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

After you recover from the WTAF stun, the replies are gold.

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Seanan McGuire @seananmcguire.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I have known many trans kids (and cis kids who needed procedures that would fall under "gender-affirming care"). None of them have suffered harmful consequences for getting the care they needed. The harmful consequence for having that care denied is frequently death.

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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

this is kind of stunning tbh

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functional moron @fiveburger.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

the lesson of this primary seems to be that being old is now a major issue for dem voters, but not as big of an issue as being a massive prick

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is pretty fucking wild. I had assumed in a worst case scenario he would target blue zip codes and toss ballots based on technicalities but this is even worse than I imagined.

Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an
impracticable zero percent failure rate.
13 When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume
batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that
batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to
USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for
example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then
USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. As the whistleblower notes,

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Has anyone out there actually gotten a *not*-dead tree from the Arbor Day Foundation?

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

There's no forgiving this. No living it down. It's a stain on our humanity. When all this is over, the monsters who did this should be pariahs. And the soulless thugs who cheered it on while dehumanizing Haitian immigrants should be reminded of what they did every day of their lives.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

FYI that there are currently 2 signed copies of Ode to the Half-Broken at Broadside Books in Northampton, MA.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Lake Ontario. ONTARIO ONTARIO ONTARIO OMFG IT’S ONTARIO YOU PATHETIC EVIL ORANGE MANBABY JUST STOP. Also it’s still the Gulf of Mexico.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 28/08/2026

Microsoft purged the data of over 170,000 nonprofits with little to no warning. Yet another entry in the ledger of “big tech should not be surprised that people hate them now.”

slate.com

The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits

When the tech giant retired a popular software grant, years of nonprofit data vanished with it.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Also omfg the Nepal footage is terrifying and horrific. Keeping everyone in my thoughts. )-:

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Fantastic interview w/ @doctorow.pluralistic.net on my (semi-) local NPR station re: his new book. As always, thoughtful, entertaining, and razor-sharp. I expect it'll be available online soon, for anyone interested: www.wamc.org/show/the-boo...

wamc.org

The Book Show

Each week on The Book Show, host Joe Donahue interviews authors about their books, their lives and their craft. It is a celebration of both reading and writers. Joe holds interesting conversations wit...

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Rachel Handley 🏳️‍🌈 @rachelahandley.com · 27/08/2026

I received psychic damage from this.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

So, the very same Goodyear blimp I failed to get close enough to in Oshkosh to try to bum a ride on is now over in the Philippines, and I wanna know who I need to contact to convince them they need to an SFF writer on their world tour.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I have eaten way more happy meals in this past week than I have in the past 20 years of my life, but I’m now only missing two of the Hello Kitty x Godzilla toys. One must have goals.

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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I know it’s hard to watch all these beautiful things be carried away by time and see the wrong things growing in their place. But listen. Listen. We have to be the beautiful things now. It has to be us. It has to be us. Courage.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Maria (and Locus) always have great reviews, as well as interviews and other SFF news. And they are good peeps.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

In other news, I have hit that level of stress where I feel like every muscle in my body is twitching.

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

New on Things My Kid* Says To Me While He Is Sleepwalking: "Those green lights are the formation."

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Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This reminds me of how the most bizarre problem of our time is powerful ppl not understanding they are principal actors w/ responsibility. Hefner was not a particularly good human being. But he did understand that he had power and could use it against a common enemy. So little of that these days.

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τreez 🎃 🎂 10/22 @zoetreez.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

you are a human being not a human doing. stop doing so much shit. you can just be for a bit

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Suzanne Palmer @zanzjan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I feel like for every 10 min a customer spends failing to get anything coherent out of CVS’s pharmacy AI, they should get a $5 coupon & every employee in the store should get a $.25 an hour raise. Pre-aggravating your customers before they have to go in person to get what they need is shitty to all.

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Grand Admiral Shaun Duke @shaunduke.net · 13/08/2026

A friendly note for Twitch streamers: They turned on a setting that uses your streams to train GenAI. You didn't opt into this. You have to opt out because they're assholes. To turn it off, go here: twitch.tv/settings/s... Then look for "Training for Generative AI." Turn it off.

twitch.tv

Twitch

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