Big Stretch

What is going to be your big stretch this week? What are you going to do beyond your comfort zone? Try something new? Eat a new food? Write a bit? Write a lot? Travel?

The week I signed up for BlueSky phone app. I’ve been on Threads for a while now. But because I didn’t have an invite to BlueSky, I hadn’t sign up for it. There were a bunch of news reports about people signing up for BlueSky, I was like what? You don’t need an invite? So I’m signed up now.

My initial reaction is like it was the early days of Threads. People congratulating themselves for leaving Twitter. Which is great. I fully support people leaving any social media platform that makes them feel uncomfortable. But after that was there enough activity to make it interesting?

BlueSky has starter packs that allow you to follow a whole pile of people at a time. That is a great time saver. I’m not sure I remember everyone’s social media handle.

What am I doing differently? I’m following more art and writing accounts. While I do have strong feelings about politics, Social media isn’t the greatest at communicating those beliefs. You could spend a lifetime battling people who don’t believe in the same things, but would you change anyone’s mind? Probably not!

Hopefully, BlueSky keeps it’s positive spin. I know it doesn’t have an algorithm, so maybe the outrage postings will not be as important. I know that shit posters are already showing up. (Shit posters are reply guys who latch onto a popular post and talk shit about the OP/their opinions/etc.)

Have a great day!

How Much Intolerant Behavior Can You Tolerate?

This week more people are moving from Twitter to Threads. The X owner has decided to make more horrible poorly considered posts on his social media platform.

Consequently, there are a bunch more people migrating to other social media platforms, like Threads. They come bemoaning the drop off in followers and the joy of starting anew on a different platform. (I’m not going to show any examples, because I respect their choices.)

I left twitter when it was still twitter.

The current twitter exodus has me thinking. What would it take you to leave your social media home? I guess a reasonable list of reasons to stay.

  • Employment/ Job Opportunities. Twitter has been the most successful platform for your business/job. Twitter is the most quoted social media platform. They might need to have a certain amount of engagement required for their career. I get this reason. A few of my posts had some legs and I made some money from it. But just because it worked in the past, doesn’t mean that you will get profitable outcomes. In fact, if you broaden your social media presence, it’s more likely to go viral. Venture outside of your comfort zone. 🙂
  • It isn’t that bad. Twitter has had all sorts of problems from the start. Porn Bots, Spoof accounts, Keanu Reeves has a whole army of pretendees that they use to scam other users. (Keanu Reeves doesn’t need your money, fyi.) One could easily justify that most problems are exaggerated. Just because you don’t see the problems, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
  • My audiences is here. It’s hard to let go of a bullhorn that has a willing audience. Really hard. But did you know the vast majority of people aren’t actually reading anything you write. In fact, some of them might be fake accounts. I had about 500 twitter accounts follow me from 2009 onward. I never saw a tweet from them after 2011. They were inactive zombie accounts. You can see this on a larger scale when Twitter used to clear out the paid twitter accounts. Celebs would loose many of their followers.
  • Sunk Cost. You have invested so much time and money into your twitter account. That is true, if you have a large following you probably did invest time and money into your twitter account. You probably have graphics software, invested in a proofreading software, and perhaps have paid social media experts. Those same skills can be moved to a new social media account.
  • I enjoy arguing with other social media accounts. Well, you are arguing with another account, it doesn’t mean that you are talking to a real person. It could be a scammer, an employee, or someone trying to platform their own opinions. That’s why so many ‘reply guys’ have been blocked. Why respond and give them a larger audience?

Feel free to comment on reason people want to continue on being on a social media platform when it doesn’t promote your own goals. (Yes, I know just about all of them have problems.)

When you know, you know

I realized this morning after reading some book reviews on Reactor Six Closed Circle Mysteries To Ensnare Your Brain – Reactor (reactormag.com) that I was actually writing three different books in one. I have three different parts to my first book. I should make each one its own novel. I have three different core mysteries set in a science fiction universe. I should split up the story to three books so that I can properly resolve all of the closed door mysteries. 🙂

Here are the things that I looked at:

  • I was giving plot armor to the side characters so they would have sufficient character development. Solution? Destroy the plot armor. 🙂
  • Three different story lines that I was rushing through. Perhaps sit a bit and soak in the misery that I’m putting my MC through.
  • Mary Sue? I needed side characters to know too much. Would someone really be able to create a hydroponics garden and maintain robots? Perhaps not. 🙂

Hopefully, breaking the manuscript into three sections, will be step in the right direction.

Onto the Second Draft of My WIP

It’s onto the second draft of my WIP science fiction novel. It’s just over 50K words now. My goal is to fix all the plot holes and to pull everything together. I have a better sense of my characters now, so it’s time for the next draft.

This morning I startled a rabbit on our front lawn. We had been on our road trip long enough, that the rabbit wasn’t accustomed to us. The rabbits the last few years have been eating all the dandelions in our front yard. This past year, they started moving to the back yard as well.

Now if only they would also take out the blackberries!

50K Words on my WIP

50K words on my WIP science fiction novel. I’m hoping to get it published sometime early Summer 2024.

I will be self publishing the book on Amazon Kindle.

It’s a story about what happens the promised FTL spaceship drive is never installed on the ship.

Mars Rover Picture

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/images/index.html

If you were going to move to Mars, this is what awaits you. Bleak landscape. Maybe some robots roving the planet. Not enough air to breathe.

It would take quite a bit to make this a liveable landscape. Maybe a first step would be getting a liveable inside space that would provide sustainable food, water, air and shelter. Safety would also be a bonus.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/can-plants-grow-with-mars-soil

So if you need convert Mars soil to a growable soil, there is a ton that you need to do. One of the main barriers is perchlorates would need to be removed. They don’t play well with human biology. However, they can be used in rocket propellants and in oxygen production. There remains quite a bit of work on how use the chemical on Mars. It’s contaminated soil and water in the US and has not been helpful.

Oh forgotten blog, how are you?

I have renewed the blog, I should write something on it.

The covid-19 crises is still in the first part of it’s expansion. It’s increasingly becoming pretty clear that I will be spending quite a bit of time at home through 2020.

This little blog that keeps surviving, might be an excellent outlet for positive thoughts.

Keep Safe!