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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I tried to do what you want and found it not only untenable but frivolous and wasteful to both time and money.

    I left NYC and got a 4K sq/ft home for a mortgage that was 900 dollars less than renting my 1200 sq/ft basement apartment in NY.

    The perks of city life just aren’t worth it in the long run, but if you’re insistent then all I can say is get to grinding that work culture life and grit your teeth, you likely won’t get there anyways but at least you’re trying for want you want in life!

    Good luck, you’re desperately going to need it even with a lawyers income. (Ps, eat some pizza and bagels for me, only thing I really miss)


















  • And his explanation here:

    My comments on BasedCon

    It is unfortunate that Rob has made BasedCon so intentionally provocative. I told him as much after the event last year – I felt a little uncomfortable. There is a demographic that welcomes the in-your-face posturing, but it drives away sympathetic people that would otherwise be happy to talk about craft, stories, and technology.

    Even when someone gives you a clear signal, it is a mistake to extrapolate it to an entire constellation of beliefs and behaviors, and then to assume they are contagious by association. That shortchanges a lot of people.

    I’m not a culture warrior, and I don’t want to strike blows against anyone. I don’t follow activists on either side, including Rob, because I tend to think that all the negativity and resentment is detrimental to both the author and target.

    The back story:

    I like hard science fiction stories with a bit of competent libertarian vibe. I have ever since Heinlein, but it isn’t a mainstream genre. People here on twitter introduced me to a few contemporary authors that scratch that itch, and I have happily read a half dozen new books in the last few years from authors I would have otherwise been unaware of. It is great to be able to get a recommendation, read a book, then drop the author a DM and say “Hey, I liked your book!”

    One of those authors was Rob Kroese, who had started organizing a small gathering of authors and fans that fell a bit outside the mainstream of SF/fantasy. This is a tiny niche of a niche, but I had had Twitter conversations with three of the authors attending, and I was interested in the contrast with the big commercial SF/fantasy conventions I had attended.

    I was initially going to just show up as a fan, but I wound up giving a talk about AI and sitting on panels about aerospace and fact checking novels. I met several more authors, and came back with a backpack full of new books to read. Politics didn’t come up once in my conversations.

    https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1659173689986883584

    Meh, still annoying to me personally, his excuse that he likes libertarian sci-fi books so he went to see what it’s like vs “mainstream” cons, is pretty sus.