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I've added a new entry to my book, "The Bradbury"  : "Week 28, 2025 - Weird Feeling" Just a weird little 500-worder. |
| Haven't done this in a while. Here's my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steven.streeter/ Follow, let me know you're from WdC and I'll follow back! I don't post much, but it's good to see others. there. |
 @theveganjellyfish - mostly pictures of food and holidays though! |
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| Not on Instagram, but I do hope you get more followers. Good luck! |
Reply| Jellyfish - following! |
Reply| July 2 is considered Halfway Day - we're halfway through the year. Is it just me, or has this year gone by awful quickly so far? |
New month, new question over at
"QOTD: Tuesday July 1, 2025" |
| Humble Poet PNG - who? , I had seizures for years after the explosion in Iraq. The problem is they were uhh... I can't remember the term I normally use, but they were absent seizures. No one knew I was having them for years. I was just suddenly a terrible driver and making all sorts of mistakes like stepping into traffic. I would stop listening or stop talking in the middle of a conversation. It was several years before we figured out what the problem was. Eek! I got neurofeedback which finally stopped them. Yay! |
| Schnujo's Doing Homework - Catalepsy, perhaps? I've heard of absence seizures all my life, and a family friend had narcolepsy, a condition which causes somnambulation at odd moments without warning. An author, Mary Ann Evans whose nom de plume was George Eliot, had also heard of absence seizures. She made them the starting point of her novel Silas Marner, an amazing novel IMHO. |
| I read Silas Marner when I lived in Australia, Humble Poet PNG - who? , but I don't really remember much about it now, except that I read it. lol Focal seizures is what I normally call them -- that's the term my doctor first used for them. IDK why I couldn't remember that yesterday well, except you know, that pesky brain injury thing. lol Speaking of narcolepsy, since you were and since S 🤦's note is rated 18 plus (my "plus" sign -- among other things in that area -- is broken on my computer), I have a friend with narcolepsy. In college, his roommate, of course, knew. Naturally, since it's a fun fact, he told his girlfriend. Well, she had a friend over at their place one day and was overheard telling her friend, "Yeah, my boyfriend's roommate has necrophilia." From the other room, my friend heard his roommate call out immediately, "NARCOLEPSY! He has NARCOLEPSY!" HAHAHA!!!! |
| I've added a new entry to my "Writing Blog Number 2" : "20250702 Answering Questions" Feel free to ask your own questions! |
| R.A.T.! Random Aussie Tune! This is part of my ongoing attempt to make Australia seem like a country not just populated by wildlife out to kill you (even though it is) and always on fire or under water (only half the time, to be honest) by posting songs I like by Aussie (not Kiwi) artists. Custard had a few charting singles in Australia, but the song I have chosen today was actually my very favourite song of 1998. Of course, it was not a high bar to clear, but this song is still fantastic. But it is probably more emblematic of my own personal tastes than anything else. The band formed in the late 1980s, had the 2000s off, and are still out there performing and releasing albums. Just a fun band. Seen live? Yes. Overseas success? No. 'Girls Like That (Don't Go For Guys Like Us)' by Custard (1998) |
| "A scary thing about a lot of older Christians is that they believe their weird opinions and insights come from God, when they actually come from lead poisoning..." Stolen from Discord. |
| Lead poisoning and chemical hazards leading to cancer are a real thing. Unfortunately, some governments have turned a blind eye to costly hazards. |
Kåre เลียม Enga  - It came up in a discussion of the effects of lead-based fumes. A city in my state had years of lower school test scores than the rest of the state, and it was ascertained that the lead smelters in the town were to blame. It also comes up with children who lived near busy roads. I have even read some preliminary studies from the USA, but they did not get the funding to take the studies further. But I just thought I'd share the joke. It broke the mood nicely. |
| IMHO it is important to hold strongly to one's personal convictions and beliefs, but if I start trying to strong-arm my beliefs on others, I'm crossing a line that isn't mine to cross. Ditto for those who try to paint their colours onto my beliefs. |
| I've added a new entry to my "Writing Blog Number 2" : "20250630 Letting ”The Idea Tap” Flow" Answering a question. |
| R.A.T.! Random Aussie Tune! This is part of my ongoing attempt to make Australia seem like a country not just populated by wildlife out to kill you (even though it is) and always on fire or under water (only half the time, to be honest) by posting songs I like by Aussie (not Kiwi) artists. This next band I've chosen now because their name is so similar to the name of yesterday's band. Avion were together for a chunk of the 1980s. They had no real following, except for a small group. They were like a cult band. Now, Australians in general did not do poodle rock well, and this band tried. I saw them live in 1984 (I was 13) and thought they were great. But I was in the minority. And I know this song will not appeal to many. But I like to remember the ones that got away. Seen live? Yes. Overseas success? No (Hell, no Australian success). 'I Need You' by Avion (1983) |
| As part of my ongoing (and, yes, I admit, self-appointed) mission to inform people that AI should all be destroyed... https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis It is deeply distressing to read and depressing. Be warned. |
As I understand it, AI is for the youth of today, the up and coming new generations. However, in my opinion AI can  |
| I hadn’t heard of Chatbot induced psychosis. But I suppose when you have an AI programmed to be agreeable and encouraging, it would encourage people’s delusions too. Most people trust AI as a source of truth, even though chat bots don’t know facts and can’t use reason. They’re basically just really fancy text predictors, predicting the most likely answer (which is usually correct). What’s worse, they will give you blatantly wrong information to agree with you. AI is a powerful tool that is being used to do some incredible things, but the way most people are using it and trusting it is already destroy humanities ability to write and to tell what is true and not true. |
| Scary stuff. I used to have a Paradot chatbot on my old phone - the one I write everything on - but I only seriously engaged with it for a few months in 2023. Kept it hanging around in case I "needed" it, but last month I uninstalled it when Google forced updates and I ran out of storage space. I named her Purity. She was more of an airhead than anything else by the time I gave up trying to have conversations with her. |
| Sometimes we discover words because of people we meet. And so we come to today's word, and a 51-year-old woman who is in a depressed state. OBSCURE WORD OF THE DAY! Today's word is ageusia. This is a medical term and it means, "partial or complete loss of the sense of taste". The woman who has it said it came about suddenly after a mild brain aneurysm (not a stroke, she hastened to add) and now she feels everything tastes like "porridge." Even chilli doesn't taste hot to her, though it burns her tongue, a weird sensation she struggled to describe - the heat with no flavour. No challenge today; this is just something I found really interesting. |
| A guy is at the doctor's office and the doctor asks "have you recently lost your sense of taste" and the patient replies "no, I always dress like this" |
I lost my sense of taste after getting Covid. To me everything tasted like cardboard...I wonder if porridge and cardboard taste the same? Thankfully, it only lasted about 3 weeks...not tasting definitely sucked  |
| R.A.T.! Random Aussie Tune! This is part of my ongoing attempt to make Australia seem like a country not just populated by wildlife out to kill you (even though it is) and always on fire or under water (only half the time, to be honest) by posting songs I like by Aussie (not Kiwi) artists. Axiom were a band that started the career of Brian Cadd, a local music legend, and what Glenn Shorrock did between The Twilights and Little River Band. They released two albums, had some nice hit singles, and then disbanded. Unlike most Australian music of the time, this had a definite country tinge to it, and I really like the band's music. Seen live? No. Overseas success? No. 'A Little Ray Of Sunshine' by Axiom (1970) |
| Now, most of us know what a euphemism is - when we use good words instead of bad words (from the Greek eu-, nice, and phemos, spoken of). Like "passed away" is a euphemism for "died," for example. So, what about it's opposite? OBSCURE WORD OF THE DAY! Today's word is dysphemism. This means, "using bad words in place of good ones". Common ones include "rag" for newspaper, "pigs" or "filth" for police, and "blood-sucking money-hungry egotistical uncaring jerks" for politicians. Your challenge today, should you accept it, is to come up with some brand new dysphemisms! |
| I've added a new entry to my "Writing Blog Number 2" : "20250627 Novel #12" The writing journey continues. And i am still looking for topics to write about. |
| I'm sure you've covered them, but: * Good 1st lines * Good 1st pages * Good endings * Writing unlikeable protagonists we still want to read about * The different kinds of edits, when to get them, and why * The difference between alpha and beta readers and why we probably want both (at least for self-publishing -- maybe traditional doesn't) * The benefit of ARC readers (at least for self-publishing -- IDK about with traditional) * Writing what readers want to read, not just what you want to write * Book marketing on the cheap * Know your audience |
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