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John Bierce

@johnbierce.bsky.social

220 followers 82 following 550 posts

Fantasy novelist, author of Mage Errant, The Wrack, and More Gods Than Stars (out February 11th!) johnbierce.com

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John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 2d

Simon Winchester is a great writer in general, excellent at exploring the overlaps of history and geology. That said, Krakatoa's ad copy is a little weirdly focused on Islamic extremism (it was published in 2013), but the book itself isn't too crazy focused on it.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 2d

For anyone who wants to learn more about Krakatoa, I highly recommend Simon Winchester's book on the topic, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded! Explores not only the eruption and its immediate impacts, but its role as basically the first global mass media event, given the new telegraph networks.

Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 2d

kept hearing about how the 1883 Krakatoa eruption was the loudest sound ever recorded so looked it up and the volume at the site was 310 decibels.

At 194 db sound waves become shock waves.

At 300 db thats 20,310,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pascals of pressure. This was 310

Unreal

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 2d

Tambora was a lot bigger, but looms less large in collective memory because Krakatoa happened at the dawn of global telecommunications, when telegraph networks had just spread across the world. It was, in some ways, the first global mass media event!

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 7d

Like, this game made me cry several times.

Not the hardest thing to do, of course, stories can wring a few tears from me easy, but goddamn were these well-earned. I genuinely froze up at several moments of the game because I was emotionally unready to move forward.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 7d

I just beat Expedition 33, and it absolutely destroyed me emotionally. Absolutely, unquestionably my GotY, and one of my favorites of all time instantaneously. Holy shit.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 8d

One Battle After Another was so ridiculously good!

I need to go see it again soon, just to pick apart that story and figure out how it works so freaking well. (Apart, you know, from just being amazingly well-executed in every respect.) Hot damn.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

And in fairness, I do have really broad reading tastes, to the point where I sometimes need to force myself to read more inside my own genre. But it just doesn't feel quite the same.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

I often miss the days as a kid before my reading tastes solidified, when I would read literally any volume I could get my hands on. Of course, cultivating your tastes isn't a bad thing (as long as they're not too narrow), but... I do miss being so open to anything.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

I'm the Assistant to the Executive Assistant of the Undersecretary to the Secretary of Executive Assistants of Antifa.

Could be worse, I could be the Assistant to the Executive Assistant of the Undersecretary to the Secretary of Assistants to Executive Assistants of Antifa.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

I didn't take the time to scroll back across their whole timeline to try and puzzle it out- even if I thought I could puzzle out the true answer that way, which I don't, I just don't want to sort through the tech booster bullshit.

It's still going to disappoint me, though.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

Have they fully embraced the grift to drink down as much VC capital as possible before the bubble pops, or did they somehow fool themselves into becoming a true believer?

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

I immediately unfollowed, and moved along with my day, but it's kinda stuck with me, wondering how they went from the whip-smart, intimidating person I met at a friend's party to running an AI start-up.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 10d

Just logged into one of my old personal social media accounts for the first time in a while, and saw, to my disappointment, that an old acquaintance had gone in HARD on AI bullshit Was pretty disappointing, given how impressive their career in tech had been up until this point.

Reposted by John Bierce

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 11d

I don't like him personally, but David Simon on AI is the final word on the subject.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 11d

I'm excited for fans of Famous Artist, at least! But yeah life's too short to have an opinion on everything.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 11d

Nope, we're in the same club! I have no strong opinions about Famous Artist That Just Released an Album, and have not listened to said album.

Reposted by John Bierce

the idea slumlord✨ @mollytanzer.bsky.social · 11d

When a famous musical artist I don’t care about / don’t like releases a new album I simply ignore it and don’t listen to it, which apparently makes me unique in this day and age

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 11d

If you're looking for a dark Weird Western comic, I highly recommend the just-released Dead Acre! I got the chance to read it early, and it definitely hit the spot for me! Love me some Weird West.

read.vaultcomics.com/book/dead-ac...

Dead Acre | Vault

About The Book The Creative Team Buy The Book Demons. Monsters. Witches. His sacred duty as a Black Badge is to hunt them down. Life isn't simple for a ...

read.vaultcomics.com

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 11d

Hah nice!

Reposted by John Bierce

Grem, of 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐏 🔜 MCAtlanta! @gremlin.world · 14d

I will never not repost this

(Sound on for maximum effect)

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 12d

I'm in the sizeable minority of progression fantasy authors that don't serialize yet, though there's so much money down that path that it's certainly tempting.

But yeah, like you said, market incentives always matter!

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 12d

I also see lots of authors chasing the market in a way that's simply not possible for other modes of publication, because they can start writing and monetizing a serial via Patreon (offering early chapters to audiences) within literal weeks or even days of starting the story.

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 12d

extremely long series with almost precisely 150k length volumes- which is the length that said audiobook publishers prefer, in turn due to Audible's internal incentives- and very non-traditional story arcs due to the serialization.

(Audible's new system might be changing that.)

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 12d

I've been seeing that massively in my own niche subgenre of fantasy (Progression Fantasy, a close cousin of LitRPG), which overwhelmingly dominated by web-serials, and combined with the dominance of audiobook companies as the main publishers for the stories in book form, results in...

John Bierce @johnbierce.bsky.social · 15d

Yeah, those are far and away the weakest of the permanent boon trinkets- switching to Odysseus instead at the end works well too.

Someday I want to pull off the Max Arcana build, using Circe and the bottom right Arcana card

but today is not that day, because I'm off to bed lol