#writing

What this server has with the tag: posts by people here, and posts from elsewhere that reached it. There's more of it on newsie.social, oslo.town.

@ZhiZhu@newsie.social

"I find the prospect of predicting the incredibly dismal – even offensive. A predictable future is set in stone, immune to human agency. A predictable future runs on rails, and we're the prisoners of , tied to the tracks...

My intention isn't to demoralize you into tying yourself to history's tracks – I'm here to show you how to grab the wheel and steer off the rails altogether."
- @pluralistic

pluralistic.net/2026/10/27/tie

Headline and text from article:
History is something you do (permalink)

Prediction is hard. Especially about the future. That Yogi Berra gem proves that you don't have to be a science fiction writer to get irritated with people insisting that you must know what's going to happen tomorrow, but (as a sf writer), I can tell you that this is one of our main occupational hazards.

Obviously, this is a self-inflicted injury. Our genre is full of big names who self-mythologized as scientific Nostradamuses. From the "future history" bar-charts in Heinlein's books (I was once on a panel with Robert Silverberg where he referred to RAH as "Robert A Timeline") to the McGuffin of Asimov's Foundation series: a "scientific" discipline that could predict the trajectory of human civilization for millennia into the future.

But me, I find the prospect of predicting the future incredibly dismal – even offensive. A predictable future is set in stone, immune to human agency. A predictable future runs on rails, and we're the prisoners of history, tied to the tracks.
@hallvors@oslo.town

Little did the Caesars of Rome know that one day, a small plate on their table – a simple course from their feasts – would rule the world. The humble mix of fresh vegetables with a sprinkle of salt and vinegar would establish a lasting empire, far beyond Pax Romana at its height. Their "Herba salata" rules from American salads to Japanese sarada – a word that conquered the world.

Hail our famous green emperor, Caesar’s humble heir!




@stevencudahy