Walt Boyes
Annalee Newitz 🍜
Michael Gemar@annaleen But what if I *want* the Torment Nexus?
Untitled Goose Name@michaelgemar @annaleen I have a couple of invites to the closed beta if you want one. You just gotta find a way to upload some of your blood for the signup process.
@goosname @michaelgemar I heard you had to give bile and mucus if you wanted into the gold-level beta
Cassandra Granade
LAHosken 🇺🇸👀@annaleen @goosname @michaelgemar
How _can_ one get in on the gold-level
@TormentNexus beta?
Andrej@lahosken @annaleen @goosname @michaelgemar @TormentNexus
Mass virignbloodsacrifice over blockchain? Gives proof of stake entirely new meaning.
Mass virignbloodsacrifice over blockchain? Gives proof of stake entirely new meaning.
Coprolite9000@michaelgemar @annaleen
Thank you for making the exact same reference I was about to!
(Nerds! Nerds! We're all nerds here - and I love it!)
Emma Builds 🚀SF writers are now getting sued by Big Tech because the Torment Nexus was a trade secret. 😆
Drooling Fan Girl@michaelgemar @annaleen I keep forgetting it’s not real.
“On November 8th, 2021, two weeks following Meta presenting their metaverse vision at Meta Connect 2021, Twitter[1] user @AlexBlechman made a humorous tweet in which he described a tech company blindly creating Torment Nexus from a sci-fi novel called Don't Create the Torment Nexus. The tweet gained over 35,000 retweets and 120,800 likes in seven months (shown below).”
Cyber Yuki
WndlB@annaleen @GreatDismal Is this ⬆️ true and correct?
Rachel Rawlings
@LinuxAndYarn ha! you and I should teach a class for techies on understanding dystopia
@annaleen You give me too much credit. My undergrad dissertation was a 16-page poetry chapbook.
@LinuxAndYarn I'm pretty sure that makes you even cooler and more qualified
Stanley Jones@annaleen Truth. But not just sci-fi. You could print and frame any Littlefinger quote and it would fit right in on the wall of a startup.
@stanley ugh too true
jones.fotografiert
~nPeople probably already do this. 😑
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/game-thrones-4-epic-littlefinger-193440201.html
Gurre Vildskägg
Daniel Pawtowski@annaleen Have you considered Seattle? We have coffee.
Erika Hammerschmidtnow THIS would be a fascinating premise for a dystopian story. 1984 meets ...Minority Report?
@Earthtoerika dammit you just caused a new startup devoted to automated dystopia detection to get funding
@annaleen The Novel-Writing Machines versus the Novel-Analyzing Machines
Rebeca@Earthtoerika @annaleen ... A Novel
Bitnik@annaleen @Earthtoerika at last, the real reason GPTChat was created. "Write an elevator pitch for a startup based on Delos Inc, the theme park company from the Westworld TV series."
aaron
CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️🌈= 
@annaleen Further injunctions have been laid against @pluralistic and @cstross coexisting in the same Bay Area coffee shop due to possible Spontaneous Singularity Events or Cthonic intrusions.
Charlie Stross@cautionwip @annaleen @pluralistic Luckily I was last in the Bay Area in 2016, and am unlikely to return any time soon (ahem: pandemics ain't over).
@cstross @annaleen @pluralistic
Hey there! Incidentally, I think we first met IRL at WorldCon in Mtl 2009 at a barcon. Cory dropped you in a seat and said something to the effect of “this is my friend Charlie!” and I hadn’t encountered your work at that point. :) it was awkward and I’ve since devoured and adored your various canon.Thankfully no NerdRapture. And yah. Pretty sure the pandemic ain’t going nowhere. :(
Evan Prodromou@annaleen cue the pitch decks full of misremembered plans for a city called Norman, Texas
Voron@annaleen the creator of cyberpunk I forget his name (first and only TTRPG POC author iirc in the TTRPG hall of fame) said in an interview it’s bitter sweet to read the news and realize the dystopian fiction he wrote in the 1980s & 90s is today’s reality
The Doctor
Life Sim Engine@voron you're thinking of Mike Pondsmith
author_is_ShrikeTron🔠💉x5@annaleen @GreatDismal @ShrikeTron no Mike Pondsmith the writer of the cyberpunk game
@voron @GreatDismal @ShrikeTron Wow he's had an amazing career -- I had no idea the same person created all those games! The Cyberpunk RPG was (if you'll forgive me) a gamechanger!
Zalasur 🐸🇺🇦@annaleen They're calling it the Torment Nexus Law
brocolie (tots not a vampire)@annaleen Very important measure, the proliferation of tech startups is a global healthcare risk! But particularly so in the Silicon Valley hotspot. /s
Archana Dhakal
(((o))) Acoustic Mirror@annaleen Neal Stephenson has announced a press conference where he intends to offer self-critique and a public apology.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@acousticmirror @annaleen Fingers crossed that we don't get to the point where James Cameron should have to do so. Or a T-1000 that looks like James Cameron.
bassplayer@annaleen The worst part of Horizon Zero Dawn is it seems so plausible. The runaway AI driven self replicating robots not the cool terraforming robots. #fucktedfaro
Polychrome 
@annaleen it's like keeping tide pods away from toddlers. You don't know they won't eat it.
Vireo olivaceus 🇺🇦@annaleen Utopias banned too, as found to be even more dangerous, so enticing that the end might seem to justify the means (heaven -> religious wars, inquisition, theocracies; communism -> Gulag, Holodomor, Cultural Revolution; transhumanism -> tech startups - again, NeuroLink, ElonBot ruling Mars colony…)
@annaleen Dystopian science fiction is known to the State of California to give people bad ideas.
catraxx@annaleen Certainly inspired musky Musk.
Kay 
@annaleen very brave of you discarding part of your reader market 😉 Will #SolarPunk or #HopePunk #SFF become compulsory?? Please?
Ninja 🦝 
Ankit Pati@annaleen Startup idea: a VPN that allows San Franciscans to access dystopian science fiction.
And automatically pairs binge watchers with VCs most likely to fund their specific tastes in dystopian technology.
Now, who’s funding me for this? /s
(I hate that the `/s` is necessary, or I’ll probably be a billionaire by evening.)
Cyberwizard@annaleen too late - it's not fiction any more
Claude Rains@annaleen On reflection, this is a Capital Idea.I mean, we're still recovering from Heinlein, and George Pal's WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
Gurtbeef Robe@annaleen can you imagine if a science fiction writer made a religion out of it? There’s no way any actual adult would believe that, right? That’s just crazy nonsense. Nobody would be dumb enough to believe that Sci-fi is real, especially enough to give their $ to it. Even if they were just a goofy club of nerds, the IRS would never give them tax exempt status for being a religion. That’s just crazy nonsense, right?
Micah@annaleen screen job candidates based on mandatory genetic tests you say? Billion dollar valuation plz.
Killer robot to prowl our streets? SF city councils on board, already making money.
Everyone lives in a water world? It’s called seasteading, sell it billionaires as a backup to the apocalypse.
Whole earth destroyed by nukes and bad politics and only a few can be saved to reproduce with as many women as possible? Erm also sell to billionaires as a backup.
sneedy maccreedy@annaleen the bay area has been an increasingly dystopian hellscape for 20 years (i'm from there)
Jorge StolfiActually the ban should be extended to all SF, especially from pre-WW2 times, lest Phony Stark gets "new" ideas for "revolutionary" tech.
Just check what he did after seeing Tintin's Moon rocket...
Dave Byrne@annaleen Shouldn’t that read “MORE tech startups”? After all we already have FB and Twitter.