The treasures and terrors of the Internet: my windows on the world in the last week of November.
The Last Human (In a Crowded Universe) - A web comic shared in the comments last week, this turned out to be a remarkably touching little series about parenthood and the perfect love that really small children bestow on their parents…even when their parents are monsters. And the perfect love that monsters can give in return. This series is clearly not as popular as it deserves to be! It reminds me of my daughters, Elder Spawn and Younger Spawn, and often brings moisture to my lachrymal ducts.
Researchers Claim That Their New AI Can Beat You At Diplomacy - Found this article on Ars Technica about research at Meta/Facebook, an AI model that has been trained to beat human players at an on-line version of the board game Diplomacy. I was amused that they had named it Cicero, given that this was the name of the AI that my protagonist Cai Rui carried in his body in The Deacon’s Tale (little did Our Hero know that he was just a training model!).
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, as Cicero is a pretty obvious name to give to a master of Diplomacy and Communication! But nonetheless I always chuckle when some scientific news in the real world reminds me of the work I did for Sword of the Stars.
Toward a Mexican American Futurism - Author and Linguist David Bowles has published a free-to-read Manifesto on Medium, which I recommend that all serious writers, readers, and knowledge workers in the SFF space should read. “Toward a Mexican American Futurism” is a sweeping summary of inequality in North American publishing combined with an aesthetic and practical call to action. I particularly recommend the brief but potent Reading List at the end, which has links to academic works and a great list of books and anthologies—I’ve only read about a third of them myself, and I am delighted to have a handy list of more reading material all gathered in one place.
Did you find any cool stories, comics, videos, essays, or news stories this week? Share them in the comments! I love to hear from you.
Thanks for sharing all of these. All were very nice surprises on this evening.