jim_p

Each would-be pet owner gets three simple rules for taking care of the exotic animals Count D supplies. How hard could it possibly be to follow three simple rules?

Pet Shop of Horrors, volume 1 by Matsuri Akino

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

james_davis_nicoll

Silverside Station attracts the rich, the famous, and the bizarre, as well as two Allowed Burglars bent on flamboyant larceny.

House of Shards (Drake Maijstral, volume 2) by Walter Jon Williams

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: amused

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: hot

james_davis_nicoll

Bestiaries and DM sourcebooks from Andrew Cawood at Cawood Publishing for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (2014) and compatible tabletop roleplaying games.

>a href="https://bundleofholding.com/presents/CawoodMonsters">Bundle of Holding: Cawood Monsters

james_davis_nicoll

Encouraging the next generation of space pirates and superheroes...

Five Stories Featuring Highly Supportive Parents

james_davis_nicoll

2002: Cherie Blair wows Britain with a notably successful real estate deal, Terry Pratchett's Night Watch wins the Best Scottish Socialist novel Prometheus Award, and an earthquake shakes England after Margaret Thatcher makes a public appearance.

Poll #33279 2002 Clarke Award Finalists

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

Which 2002 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Bold As Love by Gwyneth Jones
10 (31.2%)

Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
7 (21.9%)

Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson
7 (21.9%)

Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
9 (28.1%)

Passage by Connie Willis
22 (68.8%)

The Secret of Life by Paul J. McAuley
5 (15.6%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2002 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Bold As Love by Gwyneth Jones
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson
Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Passage by Connie Willis
The Secret of Life by Paul J. McAuley

james_davis_nicoll

But I ended it by reuniting one fellow with his wallet and someone else with their car keys.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: entertained

james_davis_nicoll

The Delikon invested millennia trying to civilize humans, a gift for which humans intend to show appropriate gratitude.

The Delikon by H M Hoover

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: amused

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: amused

james_davis_nicoll

(quoting from an emailed newsletter because if there was a press release, I missed it)

Voting is now open for this year's Aurora Awards. CSFFA members have until 11:59pm EDT on July 19th, 2024, to submit their ballot.

Only current members of CSFFA can vote in the Aurora Awards.

james_davis_nicoll

Could some kind person update the awards section of my Wikipedia article?

Also, could some kind person add my latest Aurora nomination to my ISFDB article? Unless it is OK for me to do so.

james_davis_nicoll

Funk & Wagnalls published at least one SF anthology, and my library has a copy.

james_davis_nicoll

Five works new to me: 2 fantasy, 1 non-fiction, 2 science fiction, of which 1 belongs to a series, and the other 4 are stand-alone.

Books Received, June 14 to June 20

Poll #33275 Books Received, June 14 to June 20

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by A. M. Alker, M. D. & Ashely Alker (January 2026)
24 (53.3%)

The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear (June 2025)
24 (53.3%)

From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos (May 2024)
8 (17.8%)

The Prestige by Christopher Priest (July 2025)
9 (20.0%)

Deathly Fates by Tesia Tsai (April 2026)
13 (28.9%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
31 (68.9%)

brickhousewench

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/magazine/ai-new-jobs.html

This doesn’t mean the disruptions from A.I. won’t be profound. “Our data is showing that 70 percent of the skills in the average job will have changed by 2030,” said Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs report, nine million jobs are expected to be “displaced” by A.I. and other emergent technologies in the next five years. But A.I. will create jobs, too: The same report says that, by 2030, the technology will also lead to some 11 million new jobs. Among these will be many roles that have never existed before.

If we want to know what these new opportunities will be, we should start by looking at where new jobs can bridge the gap between A.I.’s phenomenal capabilities and our very human needs and desires. It’s not just a question of where humans want A.I., but also: Where does A.I. want humans? To my mind, there are three major areas where humans either are, or will soon be, more necessary than ever: trust, integration and taste. [emphasis mine]

Not a particularly encouraging article. Basically it boils down to, AI can’t be trusted and doesn't have good taste like people do, so humans will have to oversee it. But that means that AI is going to be doing all the easy/grunt work, and the overseers are going to have to be even more educated about our particular subjects in order to tell when the AI is hallucinating. So, TL;DR, it’s going to take even more education to get a white collar job. And robots are still coming for your blue-collar jobs.

And just to make it worse, MIT says that using ChatGPT erodes your critical thinking skills.

https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/

Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.

The paper suggests that the usage of LLMs could actually harm learning, especially for younger users.

“The task was executed, and you could say that it was efficient and convenient,” Kosmyna says. “But as we show in the paper, you basically didn’t integrate any of it into your memory networks.”

Yo, tech bros, Who is going to buy all of Amazon’s products once AI takes most of our jobs?

AI might be a good worker—and great for a company’s bottom line—but it’s the worst customer a company could ask for.

So if AI can’t buy Amazon’s stuff, and human workers are now unemployable because AI took their jobs, who shops at Amazon, then?

james_davis_nicoll

This is a painting by Édouard Frédéric Wilhelm Richter, who I had never heard of. As well, it's an example of "orientalist" painting, which I had also never heard of. Seems to be depictions of the east (starting at the middle east), as imagined by a painter whose online bio does not mention having ever visited the east.

Some interesting detail work in the expanded version.

Reading

Pet Shop of Horrors, volume 1 by Matsuri Akino

Two and One

House of Shards (Drake Maijstral, volume 2) by Walter Jon Williams

enjoy this witticism

Kakotheres

Bundle of Holding: Cawood Monsters

Five Stories Featuring Highly Supportive Parents

Clarke Award Finalists 2002

Well, it was a long day

Oh Mickey You're So Fine

The Delikon by H M Hoover

Cookery

Poor Poor Pitiful Me

Pet Peeve No More

Voting is open for the 2025 Aurora Awards

Two favours

TIL

Books Received, June 14 to June 20

AI and Jobs

New to me

Profile

February 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags