#commentingiscool — Public Fediverse posts

#ScribesAndMakers 2025.06.06 — What’s your best dish? What are the ingredients and how do you make it?

Not going to say it is my best, but it is a new favorite invented by my spouse. It's super easy super tasty, and I want to share it with y'all.

Soufflé Hamburgers 🤤😋

This recipe creates fluffy tender moist burgers that almost fall apart. It is not suitable for the bbq grill. I've only pan cooked them, but the recipe might work in the oven. Practice raw meat and egg safety when making this.

Makes 4 large burgers.

Essentials:

• 2 eggs or 3 egg white portions (see criteria below)
• 20 oz of ground meat: beef, chicken, or turkey
• 1/2 cup finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese; more to taste. Substitute similar cheese if desired

Add ins to taste:

• Your usual burger seasoning if not wet, or add salt and pepper being aware the cheese is a source of salt

Or mine:

• Fresh torn basil leaves, 6 or more
• Fresh chopped oregano, about a tsp minced or more
• Rosemary leaves chopped, 1/4 tsp or more
• Cloves of garlic minced fine — I use a tsp (1 clove) freeze dried, ground in a mortar
• 7 Black peppercorns ground in a mortar, or more

Preparation:

1. Mix (by hand recommended) ground meat in a bowl with egg
2. Mix in seasoning
3. Mix in cheese

This makes an intentionally soupy mixture (like a thick pea soup, but it mostly holds shape). If your meat is very dry, or your mixture isn't soupy, you may need to add more egg. For this reason, a carton of egg whites might be easier to work with.

Because of the soupiness, we often freeze between parchment paper 4 large burgers, then cook from frozen in a ceramic surface pan with a tiny bit of olive oil (enough to prevent sticking). However, you can ladle or spoon into a hot pan immediately. If so, you'll need slightly more oil. Be careful when turning to wait for the burger to harden on a side first.

These burgers cook much faster than you expect! Use your food thermometer.

Extra credit:

Place a bottle of cooking sake, red wine, or large glass of hot, preferably boiling, water together with a silicone cooking brush beside the stove. As the burger cooks, the fat browns and burns on the surface of the pan. This is part of the taste produced by the Maillard reaction, lost! Pour in at least an ounce of liquid (do not drown pan) and brush the pan as if deglazing, scrubbing up and dissolving all burnt or browned juices. Add enough that it doesn't boil away. Once the burger has a hard shell on top, brush the glaze on the burger. Repeat while flipping until the meat reaches doneness. I often start with the wine then when there is a few ounces in the pan, I switch to water. Brush flipped burger on plate with any remaining liquid.

Serving Suggestion:

On a bun or toasted low carb bread (I recommend Inked Bread Co. Keto), lightly slathered with brown or Dijon mustard. Extra decadent? Top burger with a medium fried egg and squash the bread down so the yolk runs!

Bon Appétit!

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.14 — Would you enjoy living in a creative village/house/shared accommodation? Or do you already?

The question did not ask if I had enjoyed living in a creative space (past tense).

I did.

I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop (Clarion West). It's for Speculative, SF, Fantasy, and (I think) Horror Genre writing. It's for professionals or professional wannabes. You have to submit work to qualify.

It was literally (pun intended) the best six weeks of my life as an author.

Don't get me wrong, selling is fabulous, but the feeling lasts only a moment (like sex). The sense of community and actually living the life of an author while attending the workshop cannot be beat.

We lived together (except for a few locals) in the dorms of a college in downtown Seattle, cooked together, used the showers together, had our own floor to ourselves. We spent many hours in the common areas gabbing and blue-skying. Mostly, however, we wrote.

Then read what others wrote.

Then critiqued. Learned how to do that well, learned how to anticipate certain critiques from specific authors and to fix our stuff (assuming we thought we need to), learned how to have a hard shell by accepting criticism that helped us, and rejecting what didn't. Largely, we also helped each other through our fears.

Week days we had a guest lecturer who was a professional writer or editor. One day a week, we attended readings, usually at Powell's, by a local writer, though once at an author's place (I think that was for Octavia Butler).

The feeling of community and support was amazing. One time I wrote a 15,000 word novella in 15 hours for critique the next day. That was my max output per hour or per day ever.

I never felt burnt out. Those six weeks seemed to compact six months of life into a short span. When I returned home, I barely recognized my surroundings or old life. Ask my spouse!

Highly Recommended

PS: After reading other responses I want to qualify that I am cripplingly shy, introverted, and write fiction that doesn't go much with my persona. Nobody knew my gender despite an enormous email thread until I arrived, and I got the nickname Ambiguous Spice (and Oblivious Spice) for a reason. I warmed quickly because these were people like me. Kinda weird, some introverted, some extroverted. All in love with words and stories. I warmed up quickly.

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#EngenderedWriting 92 — How would it change society if women were and had always been physically stronger than men? CW: Patriarchy dissected.

It's a fun idea, and I know authors who are making it work. Still, my opinion, if strength is the only factor I am not sure it would have resulted in a society substantially different than our own. I'll analyze it for you authors so you can rewrite history.

It takes more than strength to make two people evenly matched. (I've been researching prizefighting.) Arm reach is the difference between your punch being blocked and being able to hit with few injuries. Speed and stamina matter. Weight and inertia matter. Think wrestling. All are more important than quantitative strength. This is why there are weight classes in most combative sports.

Unfortunately, women have a smaller stature on average. Weapons are an equalizer here, especially if women can wield heavier weapons than their male opponents. In a fantasy context, magic could be an equalizer. The male tendency toward aggression in aggregate could tip the scales if overwhelming force is applied.

The Indo-Europeans might have invented the concept of controlling women's sexuality to ensure a man could guarantee the paternity of a child and thus make passing property only down the male line arguably reasonable. This usurps matriarchy. This is the true definition of patriarchy. Theories are that Indo-Europeans attacked pre-existing matrilineal societies. There is archeological evidence of prior societies that seem to have been lead by women. Their demise might be the genocides hinted at in the Bible. Who would win (or would have won) if women were significantly stronger?

Women do have their advantages. Arguably speed due to less inertia, especially with added strength. Not natively aggressive in general, they might be better able to pick the winnable fights while angry men might be thinking emotionally. Flexibility. A greater biological investment in offspring might make women less likely to look at fighting as a game, the way men to this day are prone to do (not all of them, of course). For men, fighting can be fun. The danger is a gamble, but we understand the psychology of gambling, too.

For women a fight that includes protecting genetic family from child killers is never a game. Remember that paternity is imperative to a patriarch, more than life itself. A woman, especially one who's stronger than a man her size, might fixate on the death of an attacker and become ruthless. Protecting one's child changes the concept of mercy and surrender. Are either even reasonable?

We aren't those precursor matrilineal people anymore, so it's hard to characterize what could have happened were women stronger. I didn't address women's language skills or diplomacy as these aren't strength dependent, and did not prevent the obliteration of matrilineal societies by the Indo-Europeans. What I've listed are things I'd consider if I were to rewrite history with only one change: Women being stronger.

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 14 Nbr 18 — Do you read scripts? Would you try writing a script or screenplay?

I don't read scripts.

When my agent optioned a novel of mine, I decided it might be a good idea to create a script from that novel. Nice to have a screenwriting credit, right? I thought, how hard can it be?

I learned the hard way that there is a lot of skill required, and the ability to chunk down a novel-sized idea into its essence, to create a limited number of scenes that abstract its most important story lines whilst preserving the feel of the original novel. I did not have that ability. At that time, I couldn't write anything shorter than 100,000 words. To be able to write a script, not only do you have to have facility with dialogue, which I do, you need to be able to write very concise scenes.

I am not going to try writing a script or screenplay without being hired ahead of time and given somebody to help tutor me to do the best I can.

I suspect that won't happen.

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 12 Nbr 15 FEV— Have you used any form of AI to help in creating your work? Do you have a red line? Where is it? Full Essay Version

I've been around long enough that I remember when the #Altair 8080 (the first commercial personal computer) got a full page ad in Scientific American. My BFF and I talked about it after school (11th grade, I think?) for hours. I had my own slimline phone on my own extension. I was a privileged kid. The #computer club had a teletype connection to a computer that ran #BASIC. We also had access to an #IBM mainframe assembler using #MIS (pencil in) punch cards. A friend built an #IMSAI 8080 with 256 bytes of memory and it played songs we could listen to by tuning to part of the FM band influenced by the frequency of bits passing through the memory buss.

Why do I bring this up? The first things we programmed (after ping-pong on the toggle switch lights, Star Trek, and later adventure games) where types of artificial intelligence. We've been "teaching" computers to "think" for us since we could rip them away from the greedy money grubbers who wanted to do things like accounting and payroll. Current concepts of AI rely on pattern matching against databases, in very simplified terms. Early #AI were procedural, and if it solved your math problem, spelled your word correctly, or found data in the noise, it was intelligent. It is inescapable that unless we write longhand or type on a typewriter, that we have used what someone terms AI.

Anybody remember Clippy?

The key to this question, and how I am going to take it, is to focus on the word "creating." To me, that highlights generating something. Text. Graphics. Though this implies #genAI (the current thing, something like #Diffusion or #ChatGPT). It also means graphic tools that I use to remove and add image elements to photos, or otherwise intelligently improve them in ways I could imagine but was previously incapable due to lack of talent, practice, or understanding of the unenhanced tools.

As for text, I remember once writing a chatbot psychologist. IF-THEN-ELSE. In BASIC, back in high school or it may have been in an equivalent language on a DEC-10 at university. It did not pass the Turing Test, but it could lift one's mood, which could help with me "creating" work!

I've no interest in using something like chatGPT to build a story from prompts. It would be the program's story, not mine. It would be a Cliff Notes version of an unwritten story, summarized, never provided a soul, before even being written. Because these things work by pattern matching and predicting what would be the next word (based on an average of everybody's writing or specific genres or authors), it would be pure statistical fabrication—not even fabulation, which implies creative fantasy. It would be a story with none of the emotion, feeling, or meaning I'd put into it. It would be phantom chatter masquerading as wit through statistical randomness. No enlightenment possible, except by accident.

As an author, why would I even try to replace myself, or create the tools for others to try to do the same? I suspect people that do, do so as I wrote above because they are "incapable due to lack of talent, practice, or understanding of the tools." I'll add, also laziness, though I tar myself with the same brush as I wrote above.

Never discount greed. Authors cost money. Computers cost once.

In any case, the AI tools built into the software I do use barely save me time as it is. I can't start a dictation with the 1st person personal pronoun on any of my systems. Statistically, more people start dictation with "Hi" then "I," so I always have to correct that. Thanks to auto-incorrect, even the words I spell correctly (few enough as it is) get changed. In this very article, the tool insisted I had a "teletype connection to a commuter!" Not only do I have to be aware of my own tendency toward grammar issues and typos, I have to proof for AI typos, including chaining typos since the tools keep track of some meaning and can spawn a hellacious brew of misconception and embarrassment should it slip out to readers. I know what I mean to write. Sometimes I find myself overruled by my own tools.

Have I used AI? Not genAI. Procedural tools, yes. Not for willingly generating text.

Red line? Yes. No generating story or text. What's the point?

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#PennedPossibilities 357 — MC POV: Tell us about one of your bad habits.

Well, I'm... um... People around me know that I am very encouraging and equitable, distributing assignments on merit, listening to suggestions, reprimanding fairly, and demonstrating when necessary. I do tend to observe and evaluate everything. Thankfully, what I think, uh... emotionally in the moment, or angrily or in disappointment, doesn't leak out to effect how I treat people or change my decisions. I know better. Except when I have to deal with stupid. I have some tolerance for people who tease me, less for people who harass me for their own benefit, and almost none for those who work to provoke me—assuming I don't have to tolerate such treatment for the sake of my people or my objective.

When that happens, the snark inside leaks out. I wield my vocabulary like a weapon, which is better than using a fist. I remember this one time a guy wolf-whistled me. When he took exception to my ignoring him, he followed me, taunting me, doing everything from spewing a running commentary for his companions on my "curves," and lack thereof, to trying to lift my skirt. I acted stupid, bubbly even to diffuse his interest—but I was trained enough to be faster at dodging than him grabbing. Made him try harder. I'm afraid my retorts, while sounding stupid, had vocabulary above his head. When he asked my name, I said, "Gelding." Then told him, "It's a verb."

He understood that one. Not happy. Angry. Red faced. Made me grin.

Fortunately, he'd followed me into the territory of a rival gang. That I used my "magic" to push them together and start a fist fight made the evening all the more amusing! That led to more fun with his girlfriend who took exception to me somehow beguiling him in the first place. My fault, huh? Really? (#pennedpossibilites 356: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112675803247963180)

Now that I think of it, all of it was great fun. I really enjoy when people give me permission to play with them!

Really is a bad habit!

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Yep, I make a template file each month that includes all the monthly questions for the #WritersCoffeeClub and #WordWeavers prompts. Cut/paste/delete: It's how I answer reliably and quickly; I minimize the repetitive parts.

I copy the questions to the template from the text source posted with the questions (thank you folks for doing that!), or in the case of #Writever, I OCR the text. I add my introductory lines with double-clickable replacement text and my hashtags so I don't have to bother with each post. See the example below.

To answer a prompt, I duplicate the template file and start writing! For prompts like #PennedPossibilites, I have a template file that I never have to change. I copy past the canonical question directly from @floofpaldi's post.

Below an example of my headers and hashtags. Note I haven't revised the hashtags specifically for this post. Normally I delete the non-applicable ones. I'm being illustrative. Sorry!

EXAMPLE: (For those that don't see it, there is a right facing angle bracket before the first hashtag for my signature formatting flourish.)

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr nn — Question

text

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 6 Nbr 20 — What's the secret to writing a good blurb?

Since I have no secret, I'll give you what I would do. (Example below.)

• Pick an interesting cliffhanger, realization, or quote (or a combination) from the middle of your novel that stars your most empathetic character. Think of it as cover art in word form.

• Summarize it in five sentences.

• End with a "but they didn't know, or dreaded that they did know, " that they were "in danger, found a lover, or was being kidnapped, etc." type of last line.

• Do not explain place, politics, or personalities or /anything/ that could be considered /getting into the weeds/. Only "plain words" or "common genre jargon" may apply. No exceptions. This is the same rule for the first half page of a short story, and first three pages of a novel.

• If 3rd person, give a name for the reader to latch on to.

• If 1st person, make the 1st person POV sound like they know they are in deep doo-doo.

• Do give a hint of whether it is space opera, high fantasy, romance, historical, etc.

• If the story revolves around gender, gender roles, sexual preference, body image, eroticism, or other potentially niche sub-genres that would sell to your intended audience, or cause the wrong audience to never to read a story by you again, ensuring that's clear may be advisable. Your choice.

• You need to make the five sentences intrigue the reader. You may want to make them mysterious, also.

• You are under no obligation to explain the whole story. /So. Don't./

• It is okay for the blurb to mislead about the broader story so long as:

  1. The event happens as portrayed.
  2. How you portray it is valid in the context of the story.

/Keep it simple./

Example: (For /Inklings/)

/Beasts/ I could understand. /Beasts/ were straightforward in their dangerous natures. Not so much /human beasts/. Because Her Highness had figured out it was me who'd spoken to the red dragon and convinced it to stop setting farms afire, and that I lived amongst and hunted with wolves I'd also befriended, she forced me attend her magic university to learn to become more human. What I didn't know about acting like a "normal" human female wasn't simply embarrassing in society's eyes—like you don't wear only a loincloth in public—certain offenses could also get you killed.

Analysis:

• Five sentences, some much larger than others.
• First three sentences are a quote.
• They signal fantasy, as "magic" and "dragon" later do in plain genre jargon.
• "Human beast" is intriguing.
• Convincing a dragon makes the POV sound strong.
• Wolves makes POV sound dangerous.
• "Her Highness"is a name to latch on to and signals royalty.
• University suggests a milieu, modernity, and suggests character ages.
• "Befriended" says not in Kansas Toto and adds mystery.
• Loin cloth and embarrassment set body image issues and possibly nudity, possible suggestive content.
• Last sentence suggests POV is a fish out of water and is worried she might get killed despite seemingly powerful. It makes you wonder why and worry how?
• Events all taken from story, though emphasis is changed.

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R.S. (@sfwrtr) #MastodonAnniversary — Nov 17, 2023

1 year ago, at the urging of an online friend and with a great deal of assistance, I joined Mastodon. It has been a journey of discovery, and plenty more, where I've met a great number of diverse authors and learned /so much/ about the craft and the experience of writing that my mind wants to explode. Along the way, I've met numerous artists—who I'm following as perspective cover artists, as well as for genuine inspiration—photographers, pundits, and other creatives. Every day has been fun. I've enjoyed answering your questions from my experience as a writer. As a shy introvert, who's somewhat #autistic, you've gifted me the opportunity to experience community very unlike my experience as an author, pre-Internet. I might not have burnt out and had to rediscover writing had I had you'all around.

So...

Thank you! ❤️

And to the 499 followers I've garnered, here's a special warm thanks: 💫 I don't award a gold star to just anyone! I hope I've entertained and inspired you along the way.

Any one want to be my 500th follower?

EDIT: @gryphonEschmidt got the honor, but you can still follow. 750 is the next target. 😇​

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Hashtags I follow:
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#WordWeavers 9.18 — Do your characters worry about their health?

In TB&T, everyone's heath is vulnerable. It's damned if you help someone "sick" and damned if you don't situation. People worry about this because it not only changes your life, it changes you. That said, it is a well understood issue that most people can avoid. But not the MC.

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#WritersCoffeeClub ! - Intro: Shameless Self Promotion. Tell us about yourself, your published work or WIP.

Hi! (Waves.)

I am a conventionally published #feminist #sf and #fantasy author. RS is a name my #Clarion friends knew me by, so if you are reading this direct message me and say hi! I intend to use RS as a pen name for my next generation #speculativefiction stories, in particular for what I call my Reluctance #sff series. I do write fanfiction, also, but I'm somewhat shy about talking about it. I wish to point out how thankful I am for discovering that outlet. It provided a speed-publishing microcosm in which I could write and get quick feedback. It allowed me to return from a complete authorial burnout at the turn of the millennium. (I'm so proud I can finally use that "turn of" phrase!) I hope to be retiring from my day job soon so I can focus exclusively on my novel writing.

Since I write a lot about gender issues, I purposely use language that masks my gender. Allowing a reader to freely know that bit of information, I feel, adds a subtext to anything I write. When I was growing up, I was an über fan of André Norton. Learning the author's gender had a profound affect on me. It's not that you cannot discover my gender if you dig, but I will make you think if you do so—like why is it important and does it color my perceptions?

My newer writing is subversive and often breaks societal conventions. Saying how would be spoilery. The greatest complement you can give me is that I made you think.

Everything else I've admitted about myself you can find pinned to my Mastodon profile, including a list of sample fiction I wrote for posting. As such, they are all no more than 800 words. Please check it out.


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