Against a dark blue watery background, an orange octopus extends its tentacles. Image from MediumMonday, July 24, Elon Musk officially changed Twitter’s blue bird logo to a capital X. (Remember, he changed the logo to a cryptocurrency dog logo for a while there.) He already announced he was changing the name. Poor Linda Yaccarino, that’s all I can say.

John Scalzi posted on his blog about his plans vis-à-vis X-Twitter.

This 5 minute video has interesting material and some beautiful images of cougars, or Florida panthers in Florida.

Alex Horman writes about leaving the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (inspired by the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off) after two years as a judge. Points are made about the prose quality of self-published work, specifically proof-reading and editing or the lack of it.

Still trying to recover the “lost library” of Milton.

“Bad in ways no human was bad before.” I didn’t attend this panel at ReaderCon, but someone from File770 did, and here is the consensus of AI-created stories for the submission portals of all the major magazines in the field.

Rachel Ayers writes about the delights of “competence porn,” over on Tor.com.

Barbie’s first weekend garnered  $155 million, while Opperheimer earned $80m, to studio executives’ shock. I was tempted to read something psychological into this and then I remembered that Oppenheimer is 3 hours long.

All-electric Polestar is becoming competitive on the world stage. (I believe they are a partnership between Xingi Meizu, a Chinese cellphone company, and Volvo, a Swedish car manufacturer.)

Nerds of a Feather reviews the current season of Black Mirror.

Today’s image is an octopus for no reason except I like them. This photo is from Medium.

Author

  • Marion Deeds

    Marion Deeds, with us since March, 2011, is the author of the fantasy novella ALUMINUM LEAVES. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthologies BEYOND THE STARS, THE WAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, STRANGE CALIFORNIA, and in Podcastle, The Noyo River Review, Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Online. She’s retired from 35 years in county government, and spends some of her free time volunteering at a second-hand bookstore in her home town.