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Reposted by Dave Morris

Roz Morris @rozmorris.bsky.social · 7h

How do we keep readers gripped? One scene pulls the reader into the next...
How to do that. nailyournovel.wordpress.com/2025/09/14/a... #writingcommunity #writingtips #authorcommunity #skywriters

Age of distraction: two simple principles to keep readers’ attention in longform stories

Is longform fiction dying? Everywhere we’re told attention spans are shrinking, readers want brevity and writers should be adding flash fiction or essays to their repertoire. So today I’m speaking …

nailyournovel.wordpress.com

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 7h

Main takeaway from Madsen's brilliant what-if doc The Visit is that humans are rightly nervous of revealing their worst side (xenophobia, war, racism, injustice, prejudice) to aliens.

It's probably too late to keep AIs from seeing right through us, unfortunately.

www.imdb.com/title/tt3833...

The Visit (2015) ⭐ 5.9 | Documentary

1h 23m | Not Rated

www.imdb.com

Reposted by Dave Morris

Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 8h

And the same comic’s back cover featuring The Daleks!

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 7h

Wouldn't that be a root node problem?

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 2d

name an italian more worthy of an american holiday than columbus

Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 7h

I admit the bits I enjoyed writing most were the bits Mary Shelley skimmed over -- how Clerval's body ends up in Ireland, how Victor and the Creature get to the Arctic, etc. Anyway, great review here by @hjdoom.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAhI...

Bonus Episode - Frankenstein

YouTube video by hjdoom

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 1d

Cosmic inflation’s biggest criticisms can’t undermine its success

There are always lots of arguments to be made against a leading scientific theory.

But good ones?

Take a close look at the ones against inflation, & see how weak-sauce they are.

bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #physics #astro

Cosmic inflation's biggest criticisms can't undermine its success

Inflation's two main criticisms, that it can predict anything and that the "measure problem" remains unsolved, can't erase its successes.

bigthink.com

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 23h

#DeepMind made ~1 billion years' worth of Ph.D work on protein folding available to all for free. You're welcome, humanity.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Demis Hassabis on AI, game theory, multimodality, and the nature of creativity

Podcast Episode · Possible · 04/09/2025 · 57m

podcasts.apple.com

Reposted by Dave Morris

Nature @nature.com · 1d

CRISPR-based tools can’t easily access the DNA in mitochondria, but researchers are finding other ways in

go.nature.com/3J94Zhk

Faulty mitochondria cause deadly diseases: fixing them is about to get a lot easier

CRISPR-based tools can’t easily access the DNA in these organelles, but researchers are finding other ways in.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Barns. The E isn't required @elevatedpachyderm.bsky.social · 1d

Coming soon from Red Ruin Publishing. A prologue to the epic Blood Sword quintet from @davemorris.bsky.social , Oliver Johnson, and Jamie Thomson.

Cover art and interiors by @deanspencerart.bsky.social

Two hundred entries of adventure from Martin Dangov.

#solo #gamebook #bloodsword

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 23h

Nice to come across this at Orc's Nest...
#BloodSword #5e

www.orcsnest.com/blurber.asp?...

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 3d

"Holding rightwing views is associated with strong disgust responses in individuals [...] Populists try to gain power through 'othering', and when they do gain power their first attack is on teachers and education."

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Readers reply: Why do people become leftwing or rightwing?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

www.theguardian.com

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 3d

"Morris gives an arch nod to #BladeRunner too."

More than one, if I remember rightly.
#Frankenstein

www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks-rev...

Frankenstein iOS - BSECS

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, presented as an app for Apple devices.

www.bsecs.org.uk

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Tim Harford @timharford.ft.com · 3d

Great fun at the Oxford Half today - and a good warm-up for the London Marathon.
Overwhelmed by the support so many people have given to Teenage Cancer Trust. We're through £7000 now! Thank you. If you fancy chipping in some more, here's the link:
www.justgiving.com/page/tim-har...

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Roz Morris @rozmorris.bsky.social · 3d

Plan smart, write fast, finish strong: my guide to writing a novel in 30 days

Soon it will be NaNoWriMo time! The official National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organisation closed earlier this year, but the writing world is still hard wired to Nano in November, come what may. (What’s…

Plan smart, write fast, finish strong: my guide to writing a novel in 30 days

Soon it will be NaNoWriMo time! The official National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organisation closed earlier this year, but the writing world is still hard wired to Nano in November, come what may. (What’s NaNoWriMo? A worldwide event where the aim is to write a work of 50,000 words in just the 30 days of November.) This year there are several official alternatives, if you like to be official.

nailyournovel.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Gauthier Wendling - auteur @wendlingauthier.bsky.social · 5d

Réédition de la série de #livrejeu "L'Epée de Légende" (@davemorris.bsky.social, Jamie Thomson & Oliver Johnson) par Alkonost : ça se précise !

Traduction corrigée, règles revues & peut-être des illus 🇬🇧 inédites en 🇫🇷 rétablies.

Visuel des couvertures de Laurent Centro:
fr.ulule.com/livres-jeux-...

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 3d

"Colossus was the brainchild of a degreeless Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers."

In fact Flowers did have a degree in electrical engineering, earned in his early 20s via University of London evening classes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies

The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of comput...

www.theguardian.com

Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 5d

Seems to be the thing now to hoist flags everywhere. Here's the only one I want to see.

Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 5d

"If you go down to the woods today..."

As a child that always struck me as a wonderfully sinister song, which is probably the seed that eventually grew into Jewelspider.
#ttrpg
www.patreon.com/posts/its-in...

It's in the trees! | Dave Morris

Get more from Dave Morris on Patreon

www.patreon.com

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 5d

Errors in simple reasoning like Ayaan Hirsi Ali is making here suggest that natural general intelligence is still a long way off.

substack.com/@davemorris1...

Dave Morris (@davemorris1)

Answers like “I choose to believe” to a factual question have infuriated me my whole life. It’s very disappointing (as it will have been to @Richard Dawkins too) to hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali using them. ...

substack.com

Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 5d

*Another* #DragonWarriors #RPG adventure?! You'd think it was the 40th anniversary or something.

This one's based on a #Knightmare novel: The Fortress of Assassins.

fabledlands.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

"The Flameheart's Heir" (a Legend scenario for Dragon Warriors)

This scenario for Dragon Warriors adapts The Fortress of Assassins ( Knightmare book 3) into a quest to discover the fate of King Rigar ...

fabledlands.blogspot.com

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 8d

"When the Spartoi catch a living person they skin them & stitch their preserved flesh into a garment that the Spore puts on like a suit of clothes. The Spartoi wearing the freshest skins are the chieftains."

#5e #rpg #DragonWarriors #Vulcanverse
fabledlands.blogspot.com/2025/09/dans...

Danse Macabre (a rattling good adventure with Dragon Warriors and D&D 5e rules)

The Vulcanverse series consists of five open-world gamebooks designed for solo roleplaying, but they provide such a sweeping story arc that...

fabledlands.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Brian Klaas @brianklaas.bsky.social · 9d

I wrote about all the lived experiences and strange structures of modern society — many of which we take for granted — that were literally impossible for all previous generations of Homo sapiens. www.forkingpaths.co/p/we-are-dif...

We are different from all other humans in history

Countless experiences that have become routine for us are unprecedented in the history of our species. Here's why that matters.

www.forkingpaths.co

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 8d

Once a player spots the loophole that breaks the game, that's it. No going back.
flatearthsgaming.blogspot.com/2025/10/dark...

Dark emperors

Dark Emperor was an Avalon Hill boardgame of the mid-1980s that had a decent stab at rules evoking the story arc of a fantasy epic. One pla...

flatearthsgaming.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Dave Morris

Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 12d

"The child shook his head free of the goddess's hand, and fixed her with his savage eyes.
'The fearful tale. Give me another nightmare to ride.'"

A photo of copies of The Golden Shadow and The God Beneath the Sea by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen. The cover art and interior illustrations for both books are by Charles Keeping.

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Dave Morris @davemorris.bsky.social · 12d

Brubaker's Criminal series is the perfect modern noir. Now I'm wondering, as Chandler was inspired by Mallory, whether Lancelot is hardboiled and Gawain is noir...

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