Muffin It Up

Over the weekend I had a startling revelation about how the misperception of technology makes the ineffective seem deliberate. On Saturday, I noticed an email in my spam folder that seemed almost identical to one I'd received and deleted on Friday. Obviously, I didn't feel the need to read the same information twice but I …

The Friar’s Lantern by Greg Hickey

Hickey mixes theories of mind, characterful situations, and reader choice to produce a book that is both an interesting story and a blurred mirror on the reader’s free will. You are offered a place on a scientific study into whether human choices can be predicted a week in advance. You are a potential juror in …

What a Way to Make a Hobby

Last Friday, Athena Scalzi bravely stated that some computer games are too difficult for her to enjoy. As someone who gets more from the story than from collecting achievements and trophies (does that come as a surprise to anyone in the audience?) I too dislike games that require nigh perfect skill to proceed at all. …

Haemopolitics

Whilst modern portrayals of vampires are as varied as modern society, the most common trope in Western media is still the male vampire biting female prey (whether willing or not). But why does this image endure so strongly when other classic monsters are portrayed without such a clear biological divide? Unsurprisingly perhaps, a combination of …

Pitch Black Gnosis

Theories disagree on why exactly cultists might embrace the worship of Lovecraftian beings, but a common thread is forbidden knowledge, insight into a greater truth beyond normal human understanding. But what if the opposite were true? What if true cultists actively sought the oblivion rather than arrogantly assuming they will avoid it? The gospels of …

Edge Cases

I came across this video earlier today—ironically, not while doing research for the Legend of the Five Rings game I've just started. There's a pleasing combination of athleticism and humour from both combatants. However, one thing did seem very wrong; wrong enough for what appeared otherwise to be a great short film that I spent …

Cucku

A poetry community to which I belong selected one of my haiku for October Poem of the Month. Which obviously brought me joy, but also highlighted how subjective the experience of poetry can be. A little cuckoo Echoes from beneath my feet A cave in winter The haiku is part of an ongoing series shaped …

Cosmic Head Scratch

One of the common themes of Lovecraft's oeuvre and cosmic dread in general is that the threat comes not from some moral imperfection or defined antagonism but from mutual incomprehension, from a universe filled with intelligences so different from humans in outlook and scale that we are irrelevant. The analogy of humans seeming as ants …

Life Through a Pain of Glass

History shows us over and over that atrocity doesn't come solely from a single malevolent entity, unregenerate in their inhumanity, but also from ordinary people making imperfect choices in the face of an imperfect world. And so perhaps the path to a less imperfect world is to accept that those who oppose what we think …

What Time Is Now?

Is midday in the morning or the afternoon? Is it more believable that midday is in the morning or the afternoon? And why might that make the moon landings seem implausible? I took a brisk walk to a nearby business park this morning because the closest health food shop to me rents a unit there. …